Almost a Good Samaritan

New Years eve is ripe for interesting experiences and this past one was no exception.

I was returning from Pizza Hut with some pizzas, a few Cokes, a ½ gallon of ice cream and two of my younger daughters when we came upon some cars stopping in the road.

It was early but already dark so I saw taillights as I approached a curve atop a long hill. I pulled behind the few other stopped cars and turned on my flashers. It was obvious some sort of accident had occurred, just not how bad or what or who was involved. I told the girls to stay buckled while I went to check things out.

I noticed a woman standing to the side and she had blood running down her face. Somehow I got the mistaken impression that she was OK and that the guy running around with a cell-phone pressed to his ear, was her husband. I ran ahead to where I could see several people standing around a badly damaged pick-up to see if anyone was hurt. No one was so I turned around. As I walked back to my van I could see taillights far away down the hill in a pasture.

I stopped back by the bleeding woman and tried to get her to sit down. She said she was afraid she might not get back up. I checked on my girls and called my wife.

The scene quickly became a traffic mess with dozens or cars trying to get by, the arrival of several emergency vehicles etc.

In all this no one seemed to be attending to the woman off to the side. I went back to see if she would get into my car to keep warm. She let me take her arm and I led her to the front seat. I explained to my girls and sort of introduced them although it wasn’t until later that I learned the woman’s name; Ashley. I sat with her for a couple of minutes, prayed for her, then I went looking for an EMT.

I told the first official looking woman I saw that I had an injured person in my car. Pretty quickly Ashley was attended to by this EMT and eventually three or four others. One climbed in the back-seat and asked my girls to move to the rear. They all began working on Ashley’s head and neck and put on a neck-brace.

I decided it might be better to stay outside while all this was going on. While I was in front of my car an EMT started across the road carrying a big stretcher-type board. He was looking to his right while to his left a car was coming up pretty fast. I jumped out in the road and yelled at the driver and put my hands up. He stopped and the EMT crossed. Then I got yelled at by a man in a Sheriff’s coat who told me to stay out of the road. That they had traffic under control and I was only confusing the drivers. I tried to explain that the EMT was about to be hit and I was getting the drivers attention. He told me again to stay out of the road.

The EMTs worked on Ashley for several minutes before they moved her from my car to the board thing which they used to carry her to a wheeled gurney. They got her loaded in the ambulance and that was that. But now I was still stuck with a Fire Truck in front of me, the road blocked and nowhere to go.

I walked to the Sheriff that had yelled at me and asked if I could go and he said I could and wished me Happy New Year. As I was pulling away the first EMT came over to tell me thanks for my help.

So with two very hungry girls, some cool pizza and melted ice cream we headed home, having spent perhaps an hour at the accident scene.

No one ever figured out exactly what happened except that Ashley apparently crested the hill, saw someone either in her lane or crossing the road and over-corrected causing her to lose control and careen several hundred feet down the hill. I’m amazed she made it out of her totaled car, up the hill, over some barb-wire fence and back to the accident scene.