Bloody Saturday

Today was going to be boring. Pretty mundane...go to the church fall festival, come home, chill with hubby until he had to go to work. Instead, less than 3 minutes after we left the house this morning, while we were driving along a scenic road near our home, we spotted a man laying lifeless on the road next to his bike. Knowing that we had to do something, but without a shoulder to park the car on, hubby jumped out of the car while I called 911 and turned around. I made it back to the scene shortly and ran to the two of them. The man was bleeding severely from his head (he had not been wearing a helmet) and wouldn't talk. All he was doing was moaning. Then he kept trying to get up and became quite combative. He kept lifting his head and then placed it back on the ground. Each time, I heard the unmistakable sound of crunching bone. Knowing that the bleeding needed to be controlled and having that reinforced by the dispatcher on the other end of the line, I asked my husband to take off his shirt. It was a cute mock turtle neck from his alma mater that he had never worn before and it looked REALLY good on him. Of course, the one day that I say to him "Oh honey, you don't need an undershirt"...(poor guy). Without a second thought, he took off his shirt and handed it to me. I put it on the back of the man's head where the bleeding appeared to be coming from and began to apply pressure. Then I stopped. His head was soft. I felt like I was touching his brain. Suddenly, he became calm and began talking to me. I asked him his name to which he responded Mark* and I told him mine. I asked him if he had lost consciousness and he said "no" but didn't remember what happened. He then asked if he was jogging or riding his bike. Then he said he was tired. Of course, I wanted to keep him awake. We continued to converse calmly and I asked him if there was someone we could contact for him (I noticed a wedding band on his hand, but not on his ring finger...perhaps too big?) -- he seemed to think about it for a second in great confusion and then hesitantly answer "I don't know" or "no" or something like that. Thankfully, EMS arrived in good time and they took over...they asked him his address - he couldn't remember it. Thankfully, he could recite his Social Security number and the police officer retrieved his information that way. I emerged from the commotion with bloody hands (of course, no gloves) but surprisingly not one drop on my stark white hoody. My poor husband standing there shirtless...I noticed how good he looked...he has lost weight! We got his address to arrange to get his bike home and climbed into our convertible (with the top down - which just made the whole shirtless thing worse on a crisp morning) and drove home. When we got home, we noticed that hubby had gotten cut in all the mess...and there was quite a bit of blood at the scene. He called his colleagues at the hospital at told them the situation. As of this writing...the HIV test on Mark came back negative (thank you God!) and the results for the Hep B and Hep C labs won't be back until Monday.

Eventually, we got to the church festival and found out that one of our church members actually lives next door to Mark...and his wife...and new baby. Neither one of which he seemed to be able to remember.

What is the moral of the story? Geez, I don't even know. But, if you carry one thing away from this experience let it be this - WEAR A HELMET!

As for me, I held a man's broken head in my hands today I looked into his eyes and wanted to be reassuring. I doubt he will remember me...I hope he doesn't actually...because then he will have to remember the physical pain of that moment. But, I can't wait to be a physician.

*not his real name