A child dies

Late one night I listened as the ambulance at our station on the other side of town was dispatched to a head-on collision on a rural stretch of two lane highway, almost 12 miles away. Experience tickles your antennae on certain calls and this car wreck had a lot of potential for a bad outcome.

The volunteer fire department from the nearest town arrived first and they reported two vehicles involved and extrication was being started to cut the car away from trapped passengers. Moments later the radio reported two fatalities.

Reportedly, an older model sedan crossed the center of the road and collided head-on with a mini van carrying a family of five on vacation. Police reported that two men were seen exiting the sedan, then running into the surrounding sagebrush fields. This stretch of road was void of any houses. The nearest civilization was a 10 minute drive from the crash site.

A second ambulance from our town was sent to the scene and a total of three patients were taken to the hospital, suffering mostly minor wounds. The third ambulance toned out was my station. Proceed code one (no lights and sirens, aka, no hurry) to transport victims' bodies from the scene.

My partner drove and we hardly spoke during the 15 minute drive. Two county sheriffs raced up behind and screamed past us, lights and sirens. "K9 unit" was written on the bumpers of both cars. On the radio, the incident commander was asking how soon the bloodhounds would arrive. A rural manhunt was underway for the two occupants of the sedan, reportedly at fault for the collision.

A sweeping left-hand turn in the highway opened up upon the scene. The night was an insane emergency disco; red and blue lights whirling and strobe lights chaotically stabbing into the darkness. Straddling the dashed yellow lines, center stage on the asphalt, were the two vehicles that had crashed, surrounded by erratically-placed fire trucks and police cars. The two ambulances that had carried away the survivors were long gone.

The sedan was almost unblemished except for two flat front tires and a broken windshield. The driver's door was open and the headlights were still on. The van was obliterated. The engine was pushed into the front seats. Rescue crews had cut the roof and the driver's door off. Both lay on the road atop a red and blue kaleidoscope of the van's shattered windows.

We grimly approached the van and with the help of volunteer firefighters still on the scene, cut away the front passenger door, carefully removing a dead mother, who just an hour earlier had been making good time through the summer night, while her children slept to the hum of tires on the road.

Laying in the very back seat was a sleeping boy. There was no visible trauma. No blood. No problem. Just a sleeping boy. As I awkwardly stooped in the cramped interior I carefully lifted him; so carefully, to be sure not to wake him. He was about five years old, I guessed. With every little step as I carefully backed out to the sliding door, I kept expecting him to stir; to fuss. He never did.

As we turned around and headed back into town with two shiny black body bags zipped up in the back of our ambulance, flashlight beams bounced about in the sagebrush fields on either side of the highway. The manhunt for the sedan's two occupants would carry on for months.

Much later I learned that the two men were extradited from Mexico on charges of vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving. They might have got a few years at most. I'll remember that boy forever.