Steve and I saw someone killed in a wreck this morning. We were in the eastbound lane heading downtown, and right in the middle of one of the huge construction sections on I-40. It's always nasty driving through there, more so in the westbound lanes - they're working on three overpasses right now - and this morning was no different. We had just passed under White Bridge Rd and a white truck just ran underneath a tractor trailer. The back corner of the tractor trailer was basically sitting in the back of the truck. I don't know how many people were in the truck, or what precipitated the wreck - but I know there is no way anyone survived. You see it, but you don't really see it ....
I've seen death before - I've seen mangled bodies. I worked in surgery for several years - but I always saw the bodies, saw the severly injured people, AFTER the wrecks, after the shootings, after the stabbings. It's different to see them in a semi-controlled environment of a hospital. It's still tragic, it's still bloody and messy, but you see them there, and you realize they are there so that you can help them. They've made it that far - you're going to help them make it through. But this morning, I saw what happened before they got there. And I know, the people in that truck won't need help from a hospital. They were dead as soon as their windshield broke.
A few months ago, a couple & young son from our church were driving home after the holidays. A tractor trailer drove through a stop sign and hit a utility pole. The pole hit this couples car, killed the husband and son instantly. The mother survived. She survived to bury her son and husband. An amazing person, this woman. She's still living here, in the same house. She truly is a survivor. Therapy, depression, anger -- thats going to be her life for a while though. This is what I was thinking about this morning as Steve drove me on into work. I was just sitting in the car wondering what how many people's lives will be changed instantly with the phone call that will be coming any time now. Telling them their husband, mother, father, brother -- whoever they were -- has just been killed.
What a way to start a morning. Now I remember one of the reasons I was always so churned up when I worked in healthcare. I don't seem to have that "turn off" button.
Thought you might like to know the guy wasn't killed. He was severly injured...and had to be cut out of his vehicle, but alive.
Someone here in the office heard that he was at Vanderbilt ... I still wonder how he could be alive??? Wow. Thanks for the comment ... I'll have to see what else I can find out online.
Good to know he wasn't killed. My office is right by a heavily-trafficked stretch of highway, and we see at least one wreck a week - some minor, some major. We did see a fatality one day, and it was tough to watch the coroner's van come out to set little privacy screens around the body.