A tin can, spinning

 

You know that bit about how people in dangerous situations seem to experience them in slow motion? Totally true. It’s also true that adrenaline gives you dry-mouth with a really bitter taste. It’s been almost 12 hours since the crash, and I can still taste it. I’m writing down this story now because: 1) I can’t stop thinking about it, and need to talk it out; 2) I’m feeling some funny emotions about the whole thing, which is to be expected; 3) as silly as this might sound, I need affirmation that I did the best I could; and 4) I want to get it down before I forget what happened.

Our ZBC team was driving to a small town called Mliba this morning to hold our monthly class there. We were running behind normal schedule, so our team leader (who was driving) probably was feeling a little rushed. Everyone else was in the car when they picked me up in Manzini at about 7:50am…

[Now before I go on, you need to know that I ALWAYS wear my seat belt under ALL circumstances, and have ever since I attended this seat belt safety seminar in high school that was taught by a state trooper. In the space of less than two hours, he’d told enough stories to convince me that wearing a seat belt in a car is the probably the most important safety precaution in the world. And now I’ve lived one of those stories. It’s because vehicles are designed so that the safest place to be in virtually any accident is in your seat, and seat belts are designed to keep you in your seat regardless of what happens to the vehicle. And not only that, but seat belts also prevent some accidents this way (by keeping the driver in their seat), thereby giving the driver the best chance to control the vehicle for as long as possible.]

…The funny thing about this particular pickup is that I didn’t fasten my seat belt right away (I don’t even remember why). Then, when I noticed that I didn’t have it on, the thought actually went through my mind to leave it off. I have no idea why I thought this, I never have that thought EVER. I have absolutely no clue why it went through my mind on that occasion. Anyhow, I put my seat belt on. And it turns out that if I hadn’t, I might very well have been dead right now. As we pulled out of town and starting going faster, I noticed that the car was shaking a little more than seemed normal. It caused me a little concern, but the driver didn’t seem worried about it, and in Africa you wouldn’t go anywhere if you never traveled in a vehicle that caused a “little concern.” It’s simply a different world here than in developed countries, and it’s difficult to understand unless you’ve spent a good bit of time in Africa.

The accident happened sometime between 8:15 and 8:30am, just outside the village of Luve, which is itself about 15km from Mliba. I was in the front passenger seat (that’s the left side for you Euro/American types), the wife of my team leader was sitting behind me, and one of our students was sitting behind the driver. The driver was wearing a seat belt, but the two women in the back were not. [Another side note: often people do not wear seat belts in Africa, for various reasons. Sometimes there are too many people in the car, sometimes cars are old and the seat belts don’t work, etc.] I don’t know exactly what caused the car to skid, I was looking at my phone at the time and not paying attention to the road. However, my best guess is that something broke on the left rear wheel, which caused the rear of the car to swing wildly to the left. When I felt the car do this, I looked up, and I estimate that we were going at least 100kph (60mph), maybe faster, but I don’t know for sure.  

START CLOCK. [I’ll explain what I mean in a minute.]

When I looked up, my analysis of the situation was literally instantaneous. I knew that there was no way that the driver would be able to save the skid, we were about to be catapulted off the road to the right. I could also tell from our speed that the car would roll multiple times once we hit the ditch. The thought that then went through my head was, “I might die right now.” It was really surreal — the only thing I can guess is that adrenaline was already coursing through me — but there wasn’t any emotion attached to the thought at all. No terror, no fear, no panic, nothing like that. It was simply a matter of fact. If I had to describe what I felt in that instant, I would describe it with the phrase, “well, here we go,” although I didn’t have that specific thought at the time.  

As we hurtled off the road, I instinctively (not deliberately) raised my right hand above my head to shield myself from the top of the car as we started to tumble. I had my eyes open and my mind was active and alert through the entire crash. It was strange and surreal. In that moment, I lost all perception of everything outside the car, it was as if the universe had shrunk to a car-sized tin can. I even lost perception of the others in the car during that moment — it was just me and a spinning tin can. I was only cognizant of one thought going through my mind, and it almost makes me laugh at (again) how matter-of-fact it was. I thought, “Well, this is what it’s like to be inside a rolling car.” I felt an impact on the roof. No pain. I was still OK, but I knew there would be more. Another impact. Still no pain. Eventually, the tin can stopped spinning. Immediately, my brain told my body, “GET OUT!” It wasn’t a scream like that, but it was not the same matter-of-fact thought as the two previous. I must have unbuckled my seat belt (although I don’t remember doing that) and pulled the door handle. I didn’t expect it to open, but it did. I got out.

STOP CLOCK.

[Now, all of what I just described in the last two paragraphs must have occurred within the span of about three seconds; or at most, five. But it felt like an eternity. I know, that’s what you always hear, right? But here’s the thing. There’s no other way to describe it, really there’s not. I can’t say it felt like three minutes, because it didn’t feel like three minutes. It didn’t feel like three hours. It didn’t feel like three years. The only way to describe it is: it was three seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I was keenly self-aware during the entire crash, and it was exactly like watching it in slow motion. It was, undoubtedly, the most surreal experience of my life.]

The next 20 seconds or so went like this: I looked in the car. I remember feeling afraid of what I would see, but it was almost like the fear was somewhere else at the moment, like it was unimportant just then. I saw the student first. She was alive, moving, and bleeding from her head. But our team leader’s wife was gone. I think I cried out her name, looking for her. She had been thrown from the car, and was on the ground about ten feet behind and to the right of the vehicle. She was moving around and moaning in pain, but no blood that I could see. She was calling out her husband’s name, who had been driving. I came back around to the front of the car to see his condition. He had a large gash in his head that was bleeding, but he was conscious and moving. No one was dead, and it didn’t appear that anyone would die immediately.

After these 20 seconds, the next 30 minutes are an utter mish-mash. I could tell that I was not myself, but I was lucid, and my clouded brain was entirely focused on one task: I have to take care of the others. The student was struggling to get out of the car — she was the most vocal about needing help, and her injury appeared to be the worst. She got out of the car, and I took my fleece jacket and put it on her head to slow the bleeding. She was able to hold the jacket against her own head, so I went to check on the driver. By this time he had gotten out of the car. He was bleeding, and his eyes had a look like he’d been hit in the head. I said something to him, and he muttered a reply that I couldn’t understand. [I’m sure he was concussed.] I took off my shirt and gave it to him, and he was able to hold it against his own head. He was in a bad way, walking around kind of aimlessly. All the while his wife was moaning and clutching her left shoulder, I thought some part of it was probably broken. By this time vehicles were stopping, and people were starting to come around in order to help. I found my phone in the car, amazed that it still worked. [My Facebook page was still up, even. In fact, all four of our phones came through the crash and still worked. I couldn’t believe it.] I called our principal who was at his house in Manzini. telling him that we were in an accident and needed an ambulance. I told him what I knew at that point about the injuries that I’d seen.  

I don’t know what specific order all the rest of these events happened. [I said earlier that I was lucid, but not really. I was uninjured (as far as I could tell) and even-tempered, but I was in shock. Many people were asking me if I was hurt. On two different occasions in the next hour I tried to save a man’s number to my phone, and failed both times. I have no idea what I did wrong. The second time I even seem to remember typing the man’s name into my phone and pushing “Save,” but it didn’t save, so I must not have.] The man I just mentioned was one of the first to arrive on the scene (I think?), he was the one who ended up taking the others to the hospital. He was a government employee in the Ministry of Works, he said that he had called the police. The student was starting to act hysterically, so I checked her head again, a little more thoroughly this time. She was bleeding from at least two different wounds, and because of her hair I couldn’t tell how large those wounds were. She was bleeding from her ear, part of which was missing. I asked her if she could lie down, which she did. I looked at the nearest woman and asked her to hold the fleece jacket over the wounds, keep pressure on them, and not to let her go to sleep. Well over a dozen people were around now and starting to move the wife into the man’s bakkie (i.e. pick-up truck) to take her to the hospital. She was still moaning, and getting worse. The husband was still walking around aimlessly. The principal called me back to say that he had called an ambulance to come, and I told him that people were starting to load up the injured to take them to the hospital. There was quite a bit of confusion now as I was trying to ascertain what everyone was doing, communicate with the Ministry of Works employee (whose bakkie it was), and communicate with the principal on the phone. The principal told me to wait until the ambulance came, which I acknowledged and then hung up because I was needing to communicate with the bakkie man. Other people had brought the student over and were loading her in the bakkie as well. The Ministry of Works employee told me that he was going to rush them to the hospital. I told him that our principal had called an ambulance, that it was coming, and that I thought we should wait for it to arrive. He asked what direction it was coming from, and I replied that it was coming from Manzini. He said, “Ok, we will go and meet them on the way.” The student, now in the bakkie, asked me to fetch her bag out of the car because it had some money in it, so I did and brought it to her. Our team leader (the one who had been driving our car) was still holding my shirt on his head and wandering around. I told him to get in the bakkie because he needed to go to the hospital. He asked me if I would stay with the car and supplies, and I said that I would. The bakkie left, carrying all three who had been injured.

Since there was nothing more I could do for any of them, I turned my attention to myself. I had blood on my arms and hands, and nothing but my tie with which to wipe it off. That didn’t work very well, and now I was starting to be concerned about getting blood off me as soon as possible (which is a major concern in a country like Swaziland with high HIV prevalence). At this time I was also able to locate all my belongings except my small satchel bag, in which I had been carrying money. Not a terribly large amount by American standards, but not insignificant. I was looking for it when the police came. They started questioning me about a number of things, and I communicated to them that the others in the car had been hurt and were going to the hospital. They left to follow, saying they would come back to get my statement. I returned to my attempt to find my satchel, and the paramedics came.  

This was now between 30 and 45 minutes after the crash. I asked the paramedics if they had met anyone on the road, and they said, “no.” I briefly explained what had happened, and they asked to check my blood pressure. They checked me out thoroughly, confirming that I had no discernable injuries. They also wiped some of the blood off my arm. Before I had come out of the ambulance, our principal had arrived. Having no else to check out, the paramedics left. Some time after that, the bakkie returned. The driver said that he had passed the ambulance and tried to flag it down but was unsuccessful. He had taken the others directly to the hospital, and they were receiving treatment. The principal and I loaded as many things from the wrecked car that we could salvage into his vehicle and drove back to Manzini. I could feel my sense of shock starting to dissipate, and I was starting to have brief waves of emotion. I also began to feel soreness in my left arm and right wrist, just minor bruising from the impact. I’d asked the police, the paramedics, and the principal if they had any wipes with which I could clean the blood off, but no one had any. I was now starting to be concerned about the length of time blood had been on my skin. I was pretty sure my level of risk was 0%, especially since I didn’t see any cuts on me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. We returned to the principal’s house where I washed myself thoroughly and changed out of my undershirt (which had blood on it).  

At this point I was safely out of danger and away from the scene of the crash. I still had no physical pain to speak of, but I could tell that my brain was not right. The principal told me that I was walking slowly and unevenly, and he asked me directly if I was sure that I was all right. I assured him that I was, because I didn’t have any external pain except on my left arm and right wrist, and the paramedics had checked me thoroughly for signs of internal injuries. The police officer found us, and I wrote out my statement. That was an interesting experience, because my brain still felt kind of drugged. I kept having to scratch out words and rewrite what I was really trying to say. It turns out my satchel had been placed in the bakkie with the injured folks, so I walked over to the hospital and retrieved it. I was amazed to find all the money was still in it — thanks be to God! — especially because the reason I was carrying so much money was so that I could give it to our principal for his orphan care project. I did so, and the principal drove me back to the bus rank (i.e. the transportation center, where all the taxis and buses and kombis arrive and depart from) so that I could get home. My sense of shock had worn off now; I felt very, very weak, and it was starting to get hot (about 11am now). I stopped at the Tandoori Express and ordered a small dish of fried rice, a Russian sausage, and a fat cake (i.e. a bun, deep-fried and usually sprinkled with a little sugar). I sat down and ate all of everything, after which I had much higher energy levels.

I got on the next kombi headed for Mbabane and sat in silence. The crash kept playing over and over again in my head, and I had to exercise immense mental discipline to not let myself imagine what that experience would be like had my children been in the car. I knew that if I let my mind go there, I would get hysterical. My phone rang. It was the principal, calling to tell me that the student had gone in for x-rays and the doctors thought she might have broken vertebra in her neck. I hung up, telling him that I would be praying. Then another thing started happening - I started trying to evaluate myself and what I had done after the crash. I kept second-guessing what I did, thinking that maybe her injuries would have been less if only I had done this, or that, or the other. But as I thought about the situation, I decided that everyone involved truly did the best they could. Maybe I could have made different and better decisions if I’d been more-clear headed, or if I’d had more information at the time, or if I’d been able to to communicate better. But none of that was the case. Those were all irrational lines of thought, and I needed to focus on what was true.

When I got to Mbabane, I saw that I would have to wait a good long time to catch a kombi back to my house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home quite yet, anyway. My thoughts and emotions were still really whirling around. I went across the street to the shopping center, hoping that I might run into someone I knew who could take me back home. Sure enough, in less than two minutes I saw my friend Viki (who, with her husband Barry, had had us over for dinner on the Friday previous). My friend Viki is awesome anyway, but she was just the right person for me to see at that moment. Of course she asked me how I was, and I told her that I’d been in a car accident. I was on the verge of breaking down. She could see that I was really shook up, and I told her plainly that I wasn’t quite right in the head at the moment. She said something like, “Oh, you dear,” and gave me a big hug. And it really helped settle me down at that moment. Then she said, “Well, if you can stand to wait about 10 or 15 minutes while I do my shopping, I’d be glad to drop you off at home.” We chatted while she bought her items and during the drive home. As we were close to arriving, I profusely expressed my gratitude and appreciation to her, that I was really feeling better than I had thirty minutes earlier. She replied, “I’m so glad, I think you just needed to talk. Now just sit down and put your feet up for the rest of the day!” I wasn’t able to quite do that, but she was right, I needed to rest.

As I walked in my door I looked at the clock, and it was 12:35pm — almost exactly 4 hours since the accident. I texted the principal to tell him that I was home. After a few minutes, Allison arrived home bringing William from pre-school, and I told her everything that happened. (I had been unable to reach her all morning because she had inadvertently left her cell phone at home while she’d been at work.) We decided that I should go get checked out by a doctor, especially because there was a possibility that I’d been exposed to HIV. Neither I nor anyone else had seen any cuts on me (which is an utter miracle!), so I thought that I was at zero risk of infection. But HIV isn’t something you should leave to guesswork, so I went to the clinic to at least talk to doctor, get checked out, and see what the best course of action might be.  

I got right in to see the doctor, and he checked me again for broken bones and other internal injuries. Nothing. He told me that just because I wasn’t feeling any pain then didn’t mean that I didn’t have injuries, because the adrenaline will mask them, and the adrenaline was still in my system. He said that the area of greatest concern with vehicle accidents is the neck, because of whiplash-type injuries, of course, but also because the muscles are strained very hard while trying to keep the head immobile during the crash event. He said there was also to potential for the spine to swell inside the skeletal structure surrounding it, so he recommended wearing a neck collar for at least a couple days. He prescribed me anti-inflammatory tablets, a neck collar, and a course of post-exposure prophylaxis drugs for HIV. I filled the prescriptions and went home.  

It was now 3:20pm. Allison loaded the kids up and went to her Tuesday afternoon play group, and I laid down on the living room floor (the hardwood felt good on my sore muscles, actually) and slept for a while. We went through our normal evening routine, and after the kids went to bed I sat down to write this. It was therapeutic, especially because I was starting to feel bad emotionally. I started having the same thoughts again as I’d been having earlier in the kombi, and I was having to discipline my mind quite severely to keep my thoughts from running away with me. It took me until 1:30am until I was finally ready to lie down and sleep, which I did. And I slept pretty well, I think … about 5 hours of good quality sleep. I woke up the next morning in a much better place then when I went to bed.

It’s now the evening after, as I’m writing the end of this. In the final analysis of the situation, I think this is the truth: I did the best I could in a very difficult situation to try to take care of people who had suffered severe physical trauma, using what I knew at the time and what I was able to communicate to others. I had suffered trauma as well, it just didn’t look like it because I didn’t have any visible injuries. I think the correct view of the situation is that all of us, including myself, could have died, and perhaps even should have died. But no one died — thanks and glory be to God. Everyone, myself included, did the best they could with the information they knew they had. It’s just a horrible situation, and it’s difficult for me to be the only person in the car who walked away unscathed, so to speak. But there’s no legitimate reason for me to feel guilty (or privileged) on that account — it’s merely a matter of fact.  

Both the driver and his wife were released from the hospital this morning. The wife broke her collarbone, and the husband received stitches for the lacerations on his head.  I never heard if the doctors confirmed he had a concussion.  The student did not have broken vertebra, but rather dislocated vertebra. She was transported to Johannesburg today and will undergo surgery tomorrow to straighten the three dislodged vertebra in her neck. Then, we all need to heal.

Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers, creator of the changes of day and night, giving rest to the weary, renewing the strength of those who are spent, bestowing upon us occasions of song in the evening. As you have protected us in the day that is past, so be with us in the coming night; keep us from every sin, every evil, and every fear, for you are our light and salvation, and the strength of our life. To you be glory for endless ages. Amen.

[A Collect for Evening, Book of Common Prayer (Anglican), p.113]