Minutes and Seconds

I watched a man die today.

A few minutes before, he was a man who lived two houses down the street from me. I didn’t know him, but as is the nature of such things, I had seen his car in the mornings and in the afternoons coming to and from work about the same time as me. We would follow each other in and out of our small neighborhood. There aren’t many people here, so it’s easy to recognize the same cars travelling these roads.

On this particular morning, I didn’t see the red Acura Integra leave the neighborhood, but saw it waiting at the stoplight further down the road at the end of Hudson Bend Road and 620. At least, I thought I recognized the car as the same one that lives down the street, though I couldn’t be certain. No matter.

We turned left on 620 and headed towards 2222. A sheriff’s patrol car pulled out between us and I got stuck going the speed limit, while the old Integra moved ahead. As we approached 2222, the sheriff went straight and I pulled into the right turn lane. The car in front of me didn’t make the turn signal and we had to wait for traffic to cross the intersection before we could turn. We turned on 2222 and soon came upon a red light at the River Place intersection. I pulled into the right hand lane behind a school bus and another car. In front of me, in the left hand lane, was the familiar red Integra. When the light turned green, several of the cars in the left lane moved ahead, before I was able to change lanes. I was in the faster lane and I set my sights on the pack in front of me, already trying to mentally negotiate my path through the traffic ahead.

The big hill on 2222 is tricky. Drivers handle the hill in every sort of random way possible. Some blast down the thing, while others will ride their brakes for a quarter of a mile in the left hand lane. Because of the different ideas about how to drive down the hill, there is usually much jostling for position. The slower traffic stay right signs on 2222 are impotent, unenforced, and meaningless. I began down the hill. In less than five minutes, the Integra driver would be dead.

At that moment, it was an early weekday morning like every other. It was maybe 6:40 am, so I was on time and traffic was light. I was picking my way through traffic, cataloging the cars as I went, in my usual way. I was aware of the school bus and white Nissan Murano behind me, the silver Infinity G35 sedan which moved right to let me pass on the left, the silver Ford Taurus in front of me, and the red Acura Integra less than 100 feet ahead of me. There was a car next to the Integra, but I couldn’t see what it was yet. The police say it was a silver 2006 Mercedes. If I had been closer, I would have been able to tell them the model.

I saw the Mercedes veer from the right lane into the left, unaware of the Integra. The Integra shot to the left, across the double-yellow lines and into the oncoming lane. When it turned back towards the right side of the road, the driver lost control of the car and it fishtailed right and then back left again. This time when it went across the double-yellow, he went head-on into a pickup. The impact was shocking. The Integra exploded into pieces and came to a rest in the eastbound left lane. I has hard on the brakes, hard on the horn, and already reaching for the hazard lights. I moved right and saw that I had room to go past the Integra and get my car off of the road. I ran over the Integra’s spare wheel, which had been ejected from the rear hatch, causing some damage to my own car. I pulled my car off of the road and ran back up the hill to the Integra, trying to dial 911 on my cell phone.

I ran up to the Integra driver, slumped in his seat. The details of what I saw stopped me in my tracks and were quickly lost in an overwhelming feeling of helplesness – I can’t fix this. I can’t fix this. The driver was still alive, but he wouldn’t be for long and I couldn’t stop it. Maybe nobody could. Another witness was there and an RN, on the way to her job at a nursing home, had run up to assist. The Integra driver’s neck was tight against the old-style shoulder belt that attached at the top of the door. “Get that goddamned thing away from his neck. He’s trying to breathe!” I yelled while still trying to dial 911. Every time I tried to dial, the recalcitrant phone said – Calling…Kim. Fuck me.

“Sir, there’s help on the way. You stay with me!” I yelled. His eyes were open and he continued to cough-up blood, but he didn’t react to me at all. Then the RN and I engaged in a debate about moving the driver. She didn’t want anybody to touch him, but I could see he was going fast and I was arguing that his need for CPR would trump exacerbating a neck injury. I was also concerned about fire. The other vehicle was up the road on an embankement and was completely engulfed in flames. She held up her hand to calm me down.

“His neck is already broken,” she said, “I can tell.” He’s dead already. “See? He’s passing now. His color is already changing.”

She was right. Our debate was as meaningless as his body’s final labored effort. He had left upon impact, minutes before. I quietly committed his soul to God.

The Integra had been less than 100 feet in front of my car. Much less. A car going even just 60 miles an hour covers 100 feet in less than two seconds. Two seconds. So what if I had left for work two seconds earlier? Would I have beat him out of our neighborhood and to that first intersection? Would the sheriff have pulled-in behind me and slowed the Integra down? Would the Integra driver have watched me smash into the pickup truck? Is it as simple as that? By how many minutes and seconds do I cling to life each day? Five minutes? Less? Two seconds?