Witness to someone flying through the air.
October 30, 2009 / 11:23 p.m.
Friday night...I'm drunk.
Yesterday I was walking away, along 39th and waited for the bus on Division. I was looking across the street at the smokers sitting on the wooden benches outside Tom's Sports bar, and looked at the little asian girl walking fast just in time to see her get nailed by an SUV as she was walking in the crosswalk. She went flying into the air and came down in the middle of the lane. It was rushhour and getting dark and i stepped off into 39th and dialed 911 on my stupid fucking new fancy smart phone I got that day. Someone got out of their car and grabbed her hand as she screamed weakly in pain. I walked out and talked to the operator as they grabbed her. This guy was rubbing her head. She was wearing this new Parka, and I was told to ask if she was bleeding, and I screamed the instuctions at them to look as they grabbed her lapel and swung the jacket open and looked around. Nothing. At this point I had to stand in the lane that people were turning into... her body was on the ground right where people would swing around and drill her and the few people down with her. The 911 operater told me not to move her and to tell her that she couldn't be moved no matter how dangerous it was... so I walked over and screamed it at them and went back to the edge of the intersection and put my arms up wide. I guess I was talking to the operator, but I was trying to create a big stature so people would go wide...
The guy who hit her got out after parking in the Rite Aide parking lot... and came over to me and mumbled cuss words and looked at me passively... And then started walking back towards his car... I started cussing into the phone, something along the lines of 'What the fuck is he doing.. walking back to his car... not taking off?' They were telling me to stay in the lane and the police were gonna get there soon to set up traffic control. I walked back towards him and watched him get in his car, trying to make out his license plate, but he got back out and walked towards me as I walked out back into the street with my hands up, or trying to. He Was wanting some sort of comfort... I handed the phone to him so he could state his name, and Then he hung up.
Strangely, as he was saying his name, he looked at me, broke off the conversation, and said, 'You got a call coming in...'
'... Just let it go.'
The fire truck pulled up and wedged themselves right into the lane where nobody could fly into us.. and they went to work. So impersonal they all were. I clearly remember their Lieutenant saying passively, after surveying the scene and asking what happened, 'Okay, let's spine her out...' as they laid a board out next to her and felt her body.
Such clean haircuts they had, and clean skin and crisp colored red windbreakers.
Portland Fire Department.
I was talking to the burly cop with the goatee who showed up.. gave him my ID and it stuck to his notebook, as I had tried to scratch the temporary sticker off when I moved back to my old place with Sarah... told him that she flew right towards me and I didn't know what the lights were like or who was at fault. He told me I could hang around or take off after he got my number, and then I rembember the driver coming back and telling the officer that he wasn't currently insured. He just rolled his eyes at him and passively said, 'You could have told me that before you went back there to get your insurance.' That was it.
They wheeled the lady, all 4-11 and 90 pounds of her. She was wiping some tears off her face with her right hand, and I guess her left arm was broken or immobilized.
And then I took off, and walked down the narrow sidewalk on 39th... tears rose up out of my eyes... too much shit to deal with.
Had to call Sarah, respond to her voicemail she left me as this was happening, telling me I needed to move out by the first, that I couldn't stay there anymore.
I walked to the belmont library out of habit... and didn't think to remember it had been closed for hours.
Then I went back to Fred Meyer's and ate a Bima burger in the cafetaria as the Fire Truck sped off to another tragedy.