Witness
Every now and then I'm in the right place at the right time. Not for me but for somebody else. Mostly I don't think about it in-between but as the number of these occurances pile up I do get to musing about them.
Yesterday afternoon was another one.
I was at the mall with my brother getting a last-minute thing but as we were leaving one traffic light was malfunctioning. In fact, the only part of the light that was not working was the lanes going our direction. I bailed out of the car, deciding it would be faster to walk back to the office.
I stood on the corner of NE 8th and 104th AVE NE in the rain. I had my hood up and was feeling fairly festive. A young lady waited for the light to cross to the South while I was heading East. The light turned in her favor and she set off in pursuit of whatever purpose brought her to that point and time.
A silver Mercedes pulled out, making a right-hand turn from 104th on to 8th right in front of me and struck the girl. She rolled up on the hood slightly then crashed to the wet and cold pavement. So often cars will creep out then wait for the pedestrians to clear which is how I expected the scenario to play out only the Mercedes did not stop. The time and distance between the creep-out-and-wait and the impact was a couple of feet and half a second.
I've replayed it many times in my head since then trying to determine if there was anything I could have done to prevent the collision and I come up frustrated each time.
The girl popped up right away saying she was OK. I was at her side in a handful of rapid steps. She kept repeating that she was OK but seemed (unsurprisingly) dazed. Another man ran up with 911 on the phone. I found out later he was using the nearby ATM and had his back to the incident but heard the impact. I told him to make sure the driver didn't get away.
It concerned me that the girl would have just wandered off with shock and adrenaline masking injuries so I guided her to the sidewalk then found a bench where she could sit. A passenger in the offending vehicle jumped out, the driver's son it turned out, to check on things and apologize but I ignored him and focused on the girl.
Very quickly a motorcycle cop arrived followed rapidly by a blaring parade of emergency vehicles: fire engine, Medic One, another police officer, who knows what else. By the time I had given a statement to the first officer the EMT's decided to transport her to Overlake Hospital. It wouldn't surprise me if she had a concussion and some nasty sprains but that's not a bad trade for a meet-up with a Mercedes.
They whisked her away and that was that. Probably will never have any more involvement in the case, she will never know about me -- maybe not even remember me -- but that's how this seems to work. I found my way to be at that spot at that time so I could take charge for a few minutes until the emergency people could take over.
As I said, every now and then these things happen. My daughter thinks it's my knack but then she's been reading the Alvin Maker series. I'm not ready to admit to any such thing but I have found out that these things do not seem to happen so much to other people. I'll leave the explanation to others.