On Tuesday, I was sitting in my office waiting for the person I was calling to pick up the phone, and I heard a loud crack. The kind of crack that is unmistakably the smacking of one car against another. When your office is right outside a major intersection and you have very little sound barrier, you learn these traffic sounds quickly. As soon as the cars hit, one of them began honking it's horn - and never stopped. This is bad. I was picturing someone's face plastered up against the wheel slamming the horn trigger indefinitely in place. I immediately put the phone down and rushed outside while announcing to everyone in the office that there was a car accident.When I opened the office door, what I saw was somewhat confusing. There were several cars parked in the middle of the road and it took me a second to determine which two had been in the collision. Both cars were facing the same direction, were in the same lane, had their airbags discharged, were smashed in the front, and were about 15 yards apart. The other cars were the awesome men and women who had immediately responded to the accident and were helping as best they could. And the horn was still honking. The scene was so crazy - cars were passing by slowly to watch, one woman in her car holding her mouth and crying, another in her car trembling slightly, a guy in work gloves [where did he get those] was pulling hard to try to get one car door open while the other car was slightly filling up with smoke from the engine. There were car parts, fluid, and debris all over the road, and that horn was just going on and on.
By no official meeting everyone helping silently figured the best thing to do was get the women out of their cars. One lady who was probably in her mid to late 20's and was driving a tiny little white SUV, the other, elderly lady was driving a huge, white grandma car [like a big lincoln or ford]. The stereotypes couldn't have been thicker. When I saw them being set in the grass, I went and got a few chairs from our office so they didn't have to sit on the ground. Probably not 2 or 3 minutes after I heard the initial smash, the police, ambulance, and fire department were there. I was impressed with how quickly they responded.
Later that afternoon when the officials were just finishing up, we went to retrieve our chairs and we could only find one. We looked all around our building, where the women had been sitting, in the street, on the roof, in the gas station across the street, in the dumpster, in our cars, in squad cars...pretty much everywhere. And there was no second chair. We asked a policeman who said he had no idea. When we were giving up and walking back in, this police officer called us back and told us that sometimes the paramedics will load people up however they are situated instead of moving them to a stretcher or whatever. That's dumb.
So, Chair, if you are reading this, please know that you weren't left behind, and we didn't forget about you. Please come back, we miss you. It's so sad to have an empty chair at the table, we just feel so alone. Those medical folks don't care about you, they are only using you. You know that we miss you and we're saving your spot right next to chair #4.
