disalarming | On Calling 911

I called 911 for the first time today.

I was in the backseat of the car, with my mother behind the wheel and my brother in the passenger seat. I was looking out the window, listening to my iPod and not paying attention. All of a sudden, I heard my mom scream, “Oh my God, oh my God,” and I yanked my earbuds out of my ear and frantically tried to figure out what on earth was going on.

There was a sedan two cars ahead of us that randomly pulled out of our lane and angled his car so that it was perpendicular to the flow of the traffic in the opposing lane. I’m not sure what was his train of thought was or if there even was one, but next thing I knew his car had collided with an SUV that was driving in the other side of the street. The front of the sedan crumpled and the fender of the SUV fell off; the airbags deployed and everything seemed to happen so much faster than it actually did.

The SUV pulled over on the side of the road and the two passengers climbed out, both unhurt. The driver of the sedan wasn’t in great shape; his face was bleeding profusely. However, he was well enough to get out of his car and take his shirt off so that he would have something to stem the steady flow of blood (I’m assuming he had a broken nose as there was a lot of blood). My brother went to go talk to the SUV passengers and the man in the car in front of us went to talk to the driver of the sedan. Meanwhile, I placed a call to 911.

Help arrived within several minutes. The cops arrived first, then an ambulance pulled up and the medics checked on the driver of the sedan. After that, there wasn’t much else we could do, so we hoped that everything would work out okay for those involved and then drove away.

It’s so strange to look at my list of recent contacts in my phone and to see 911 listed.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.