Run

Run
 
It is very early morning. Darkness blankets the world in peaceful quiet. Nell has just returned home from work and is preparing for bed when the sound of a catastrophe rips through the silence.
“Damn” she hisses, selfishly wishing that she were buried under her blankets fast asleep and oblivious to the world. She was dead tired. Whoever was outside on the highway had probably hit a dear and she felt a stir of sadness in her gut.
“Help”
Nell wrinkles her brow and heads down the hall to open the front door and peer out into the chilly November night.
“Someone help.”
Her knees suddenly wobble with anxiety and she looks to the phone. She grabs it and dials 911 to alert the police that something is wrong then hangs up quickly. She hugs herself and stares through the screen door up toward the yellow blinking lights not 500 yards from her porch.
“Damn,” she whispers again, and turns to quickly pull on a pair of sweats and her fleece jacket.
The cold autumn night hits her cheeks as she makes her way over the short distance of lawn to the edge of the road. The night is so damn quiet, but for the heavy voice coming from the slight rise of pavement.
“Oh my God, Help, anyone?”
Her heart is pounding with terror, but she could not stop herself running up the middle of the road, her sneakers slapping pavement in the silence, her breath casting long puffs of steam in the air as she realizes there are two vehicles, not one, and the victim is not an animal, but a man.
Head lights turn the corner on the other side of the blinking lights. She sighs with a bit of relief as she reaches a truck, the front right side dented and bashed, where a young man is leaning on the broken metal. “Are you alright?”
She reaches out to him, but he nods and points to the other smaller vehicle that looks as if a sledge hammer had hit the front end and the entire hood had flipped back like the lid of a tuna can.
Nell stopped, her feet planted on the cold pavement. The car that had turned the curve slowed and pulled up alongside. A man wrapped in flannel let down his window and glanced over the scene before looking at her and the young man leaning on the truck.
She turned to him, realizing he was not a police officer, but just someone who happened by. He nodded at her. “You got this? I got to go.”
She raises her hand and feels a stab of terror rip through her stomach as he pulls around the smoking truck and heads off into the night.
Oh my God, she thought. What the hell was she supposed to do now? The young man went over to the edge of the road and dropped onto the hard ground, pointing to the broken, bent car.
“He’s,” his voice hitched. “I’m okay, but he’s.” He stopped and let his arm fall.
Nell looked him over quickly without realizing it and noted the blood flowing down his face from a cut on his forehead. “Just stay there okay?” Her voice is steady, though she has no idea how or why. “I called the police, they should be here soon.” Hell they better be here soon. She has no idea what she is doing and her body is trembling with fear.
.She turns toward the tiny car willing herself not to run. She wants to, God how she wants to, but there is no one else here. Hurrying, though it feels like time has stopped and moves forward in strobe light staccatos that flash and blind her with trepidation, she goes to the car where one occupant still sits in the drivers; seat. The door is gone, molded back along the rear side of the car, leaving him exposed to the chilly air. Burned rubber and engine smoke floods her nostrils and her mouth goes terribly dry. He isn’t moving. He keeps flashing in and out of her vision as the yellow lights from the truck blink rhythmically.
Reaching his side, she takes it all in and feels the need to flee hit her again. He is trapped, pinned, locked into that seat by the front of the car that has folded in upon him like an accordion. Her body trembles all over, but she slowly knells down next to him, her knees landing on the cold pavement.
“Oh,” she breathes, trying to still the stabbing throb of her heart. “Hey.” She says softly, “’I’m Nell, I’m right here.”
The man is breathing, but blood oozes over his cheek and his hand twitches. She reaches out and rests her own cold fingers on his. There is warmth there: that must be a good sign.  
The man turns his head, eyes unfocused. She gulps and desperately tries to think of something, anything to say. “What’s your name?”
He lets out an unsteady breath, eyes half closing as he turns his head towards her shivering voice. “Matthew,” he whispers, voice rough and cracked like parched earth.
“Hello Matthew,” she says quietly. “Where were you going this morning?”
It is Thanksgiving. Was he going to visit family? Was he going to work? Was he heading home from somewhere? She tries not to cry, thinking about how his holiday is not going to be at all normal.
“Work,” he croaks. “I just got out of work.”
She focuses on his face, resisting the urge to look down to where the lower half of his body is distorted under the dash. God this is awful.  
“Is there someone at home you want me to call?” Her voice is surprisingly steady. How she doesn’t know. Her lungs feel taut, her body is trembling, and her breathing is on the verge of hyper ventilation, but she manages to sound calm and soothing.
The area begins to flash with the reflection of blue lights as a state trooper finally arrives and stops his cruiser a few yards away. She glances over in his direction and tries not to let the panic she feels rise up and out of her like a tornado. He appears so stolid and strong and sure of himself as he moves from his car to the dented truck, the young man on the side of the road, and finally over to her side by the injured driver. He hunkers down next to her and pushes the rim of his hat back a little out of his eyes as he peers in at the gentleman pinned to his seat.
Nell looks at him, feeling hope and relief that he is here, finally someone who can handle this.
“His name is Matthew,” she says softly. “He’s pretty out of it, but I’ve been trying to keep him still.”
The trooper looks at her and nods. “You’re doing great. I’ll take care of any traffic and try to keep people away. The ambulance should be here soon. Just keep him from going to sleep alright.”
She jerks as he quickly stands and turns to head back in the direction of his car. “I’m not a responder: I just live up the street.” Her voice sounds high pitched in panic. She wants to run home and not see this horror, not see the pain on Matthews face, not sit here and tremble with doubt and fear, but stand on her porch and resume her role as speculative bystander.
“You’re doing fine. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing until the paramedics get here.”
 
Time crawls and she tries to keep herself from feeling anything. The sounds around her begin to blur as she focuses on the man, not two feet away, who may not survive to see another Thanksgiving, ever. Firemen arrive, they move around  the crashed vehicles, checking for gas or other dangers. A few stop periodically and ask her a question, peering in at Matthew and talking about how they can get him out of the car. From time to time someone touches her shoulder and says she is doing great and asks how he is. She is scared, but Matthew is in and out of awareness. At one point he tells her he has to move, he cannot feel his feet, but his legs hurt so bad. If he can just get up it would be alright. Nell gently strokes the back of his hand and tries to sooth him into staying still. Time has no place here on the road by her house.
The sky is turning bright with the rising dawn by the time two paramedics lean down and ask her what she knows. One immediately starts talking to Matthew and the other takes her elbow to help her stand as he listens to her intently. She rubs her arms and hugs herself, reciting all that she has seen and heard.
The man in blue nods gratefully and kneels down next to his partner leaving her alone. She glances down at the bright yellow stripes of the middle lines in the road that now seems far more deadly than it had before.
Controlled pandemonium circles her as the professionals do their work. The truck and car look like casualties of a warzone, colored glass liters the area and reflects in the light of sunrise. Traffic is now filing in a steady stream past the macabre scene and faces stare out windows in morbid curiosity.
Nell shivers again and looks around, numb in the aftershock and unsure what she should do. She goes to the trooper who was the first to arrive and asks if she needs to stay any longer. He looks behind her and sees the paramedics, asks her if she witnessed the crash and at the negative nod of her head tells her she can go. Looking once more toward the man she knows only as Matthew, she briskly walks the now busy road back to the safety of her lawn.
Her neighbors are there, wrapped in long coats and untied boots, all asking questions and trying to see all they can. She gives them short clipped responses in answer to inquires but does not look back at the terrible scene. She asks for the time and sighs. In two hours she has to be on the road to her own family gathering. Sleep it would seem is out of the question.
 
 
Ten years later, Nell is bent over in her chair. The sunlight filters in through the large window to her right and the woman across from her is silent, listening to her with patient support.
“I was terrified.” she says, a hitch in her voice as the tears close her throat and she sobs again. “I wanted to run so damn bad. The trembling in my body was so severe I felt cold and shivered all day.” Another cry escaped her as she remembered Matthew, his legs twisted under a ton of metal, his face contorted in pain, his voice as it shivered with shock. “Oh my God, I’d never seen anything so horrible.”
The woman across from her made a sound, but Nell didn’t look up. She didn’t talk about this, she never talked about this. The experience hovered in a quiet place far within her mind where she remembered, but didn’t allow herself to feel anything about it, until now.
Now she was facing death again. She seemed to face it a lot. Each time her body would rebel and adrenaline would kick in urging her to RUN, but she never did, and she was tired of hiding the pain, tired of struggling with guilt and feelings of helplessness that everyone around her leaves. It is inevitable… it is unavoidable…. It is just the way life is.  Be it accidental or the natural passing of time, sickness, or suicide, cancer, drowning, freezing, drugs, eventually living ends, but why did she always stay around and witness it? She’d seen much while working in the health field. Hell, death was just part of the job, but it never got easy, it was never truly an empty numbing experience. She can recall every face, the before and after, the life and the lifeless, the full and the empty. And her heart feels like a bleeding wound, open, raw, and oozing with all that real life experience that a part of her feels dead already.
She sniffs and tries to get her sobbing under control, but it has been bottled up for a long time. Her arms cradle her stomach and she rocks back and forth trying to comfort the part of her that holds all those faces and all those last moments.
“I feel helpless. There is nothing I can do. Even though I’m there and I do all I can to help it is out of my hands and I cannot stop it. Why do I run towards it when I know it will hurt so bad? Why run into that burning building when I don’t have to?”
The woman reaches down and pulls out a tablet that lies tucked in a bag by her feet. She scrolls through it and Nell tries to stem the flow of moisture from her eyes. The pain sits in her chest, deep and hard, like a weight that cannot be contained any more. Her fingers absently rub her breast bone.
The woman reads to Nell
 
“Cry Out in Your Weakness 
A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.
And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” He or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7062162-cry-out-in-your-weakness-a-dragon-was-pulling-a
As the words flow, Nell feels a new swell of tears and pain. She gets it, though it hurts. She is a helper, has always been a helper, though she usually uses a different word, Caregiver.
After a bit, she manages to get her tears under control and sniffs. “He found me you know.”
The woman raises an eyebrow in question.
“Matthew,” Nell says, “A couple of years after the accident, he called me out of the blue. He said that after numerous surgeries and months learning to walk again he was doing very well. The paramedics and police that night told him about me. Though no one knew my name, or how to get a hold of me, they told him that I helped him stay alive. He wanted to thank me.
I was so embarrassed, I certainly didn’t feel special, I didn’t know what to say to him except that I was glad things turned out alright.”
Nell sniffs again and encourages herself to continue. The conversation turns to the moment, this moment, this time in her life when another person she cares about is in pain and the desire to help, but run still wars within her.
“It is life,” the woman says, “the experience of living. Embrace it, cherish it, and feel it. That is all any of us can do.”
Nell laughs softly and shakes her head, “A half a century of living and I’m still trying to figure how this all works. I think I’m glad the journey hasn’t ended yet, though I know it will eventually.”
The woman smiles, “And that is the lesson we keep learning. Try to embrace the wonderful passion of your compassion,”
Nell wrinkles her brow and lets those words sink in for a moment. “Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way.”
 
A short time later as she walks out of the building and enters the early spring sunshine, she can feel the lightness in her step and knows that a window has been opened in that part of her mind that has always been kept in shadows. She understands that it will not last, that for this tiny point in time it is what it is. A half hour ago, she was in pain, a lot of pain, but at this very moment she can feel the sunshine and does not have tears in her eyes. It is enough, it is the journey, it is the ebbing and flow of life. She smiles and tilts her face to the suns lovely warmth and realizes a sudden unexpected desire to RUN.
 
RRG ©2.2018
 
Poem inspired by the event and what made me want to share the story. 

Run

Etched out in the pit of night
Flashing yellow stammers a terror
On the edge of the gray
Lays a caution line
In the distance a scream of pain
Run away, she should run away
Bowels tighten up with tension
Visceral fire runs into her feet
But she is fixed, frigid on a pin point
November frost hisses in the wind
Fear shivers into her trembling limbs
Run, her mind urges, pain strikes her heart
Run away from someone else’s suffering
Flashing yellow stammers, staccato, like her pulse
She moves, she will not kill, she cannot stop
Run, her mind screams
Burnt rubber, smoking engine, and blood
 
RRG © 2.2018