Left Turn
I sat on the wet, cold grass. Blood trickled from my chin. I wiped it with a gauze pad a paramedic gave me. In spite of everything that had just happened, I was okay.
It was like I was in the middle of a horror movie. The scene around me was unthinkable: flashing lights, sirens, people yelling, running in different directions like ants scurrying to build underground tunnels. Twisted and burned metal objects once resembling cars and trucks lined the narrow road. Sheet-covered bodies dotted what little pavement was available. And there was a lot of blood.
I never took this route home. My little brother was always raving about this route. Kevin always took this way home. He told me of the mountain the road hugged, winding up and …show more content…
The three-ton flat deck hit him broadside, crushing his car, severing his leg. I stared at him as one paramedic pounded his chest in a desperate effort to regain a heartbeat. She frantically gave him mouth-to-mouth between chest beatings, while another one tried to stop the bleeding from what was left of his leg. But he was already gone. Just as well, I guess. He would have been a vegetable anyway—so they said.
If only I had gone the usual way home, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have had to pull over when my car died, blocking traffic on the narrow road. The cars behind me wouldn’t have had to swerve into the oncoming lane. The steady flow of traffic coming towards us wouldn’t have had to find alternate routes to try and avoid one another.
Three cars went over the embankment. No one survived the mountain run. Two more cars were dangling dangerously over the edge, with only the guard rail clutching small bits of metal, trying to grasp whatever it could to hold on to the cars so they wouldn’t fall. I listened to a lady inside one of the cars screaming for someone to help her baby, still buckled into his car seat, but hanging out the window.
Three vehicles had burst into flames. Those inside would forever be scarred, if they lived. I wondered what was worse, being burned to death, or surviving
I sat on the wet, cold grass. Blood trickled from my chin. I wiped it with a gauze pad a paramedic gave me. In spite of everything that had just happened, I was okay.
It was like I was in the middle of a horror movie. The scene around me was unthinkable: flashing lights, sirens, people yelling, running in different directions like ants scurrying to build underground tunnels. Twisted and burned metal objects once resembling cars and trucks lined the narrow road. Sheet-covered bodies dotted what little pavement was available. And there was a lot of blood.
I never took this route home. My little brother was always raving about this route. Kevin always took this way home. He told me of the mountain the road hugged, winding up and …show more content…
The three-ton flat deck hit him broadside, crushing his car, severing his leg. I stared at him as one paramedic pounded his chest in a desperate effort to regain a heartbeat. She frantically gave him mouth-to-mouth between chest beatings, while another one tried to stop the bleeding from what was left of his leg. But he was already gone. Just as well, I guess. He would have been a vegetable anyway—so they said.
If only I had gone the usual way home, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have had to pull over when my car died, blocking traffic on the narrow road. The cars behind me wouldn’t have had to swerve into the oncoming lane. The steady flow of traffic coming towards us wouldn’t have had to find alternate routes to try and avoid one another.
Three cars went over the embankment. No one survived the mountain run. Two more cars were dangling dangerously over the edge, with only the guard rail clutching small bits of metal, trying to grasp whatever it could to hold on to the cars so they wouldn’t fall. I listened to a lady inside one of the cars screaming for someone to help her baby, still buckled into his car seat, but hanging out the window.
Three vehicles had burst into flames. Those inside would forever be scarred, if they lived. I wondered what was worse, being burned to death, or surviving