Stacy
It was really a dreary kind of November day in the mountains. Temperature in the mid-30s, rain on the verge of freezing – wet and sloppy most everywhere.
Stacy was 19, probably in love for the first time. 5 ft something, blond, slim – pretty and cute. I didn’t know her more than that. But I got to know her in the most intimate way possible.
I wish I hadn’t.
She had been in town with her boyfriend who was at work. I’ll call him “SB” for Stacy’s boyfriend – I never knew his name, never met him, never knew what job he was working; I suspect he was early 20s, it appeared he was in construction but not too many construction jobs allow girlfriends on site. Maybe his job was somewhere else and he just had construction tools in his vehicle.
Speculation on my part so who knows?
SB had forgotten something at home. Stacy offered to go get whatever it was so SB didn’t need to take time off.
Stacy knew how to operate a vehicle but she didn’t have a license and didn’t know how to >drive<.
Found all that out later from the police report.
The call came about 2:30 in the afternoon. Being a lightly populated mountain area, it was difficult getting a full EMS crew together on a weekday – but Mo and I had worked together for almost 7 years and we both happened to be on duty that day. Three would have been a better crew but two was better than none.
Mo was the EMT; I was fire & extrication with the fire dept but filled in as a driver for the ambulance. Up there it made sense for the two separate organizations to work together – manpower was short enough as it was. So the two of us allowed a “full” crew to be on duty – and there’s lots of things to do on an emergency call that doesn’t require licensed medical training.
This day, we were “lucky” – we worked the east side of a mountainous 2200 sq mi county and most of our calls were at least ½ hour away; too often, closer to or even more than an hour response time. Some of those back roads even in good weather …
You wanted to live in the back country, didn’t you?
This call however, was almost at our driveway.
It’s hard to work an accident scene with only two people. Help was coming but not soon … and now was of essence.
Right now. 10 minutes ago now.
The scene was right there where the road bends away. The station was about ½ mile up the (dirt) road to the left by the sign.
The road was wet, maybe a bit slick with not-quite-sleet. Steep embankment on one side, creek down below on the other – not much shoulder.
Tracks on the road told the story.
Stacy was in a hurry, heading into the picture. Probably doing 60 in a 45. She took that corner too fast, drifted into the wrong lane.
Met one of these coming the other way …
What are the odds?
Not much traffic on this road but enough – it’s the only route through here; still needed to place traffic control. We used the ambulance to block one direction, the truck had swung partially around when hitting the brakes – it worked to block the other direction.
Oh, please hurry up guys. We need extra hands here.
People get pissed off when the road is blocked …
Mo and I got Stacy out of what was left of her boyfriend’s car. Got her to the side of the road. Did an initial eval. The truck driver was OK … sort of. Not physically injured. Well enough shape we didn’t need to attend to him right away. Stacy on the other hand …
This isn’t good … call in Life Flight. Meanwhile …
I was supporting Stacy’s head and neck in my lap while Mo was doing what she could with the equipment on hand.
Oh, lordy, lordy … I don’t pray often … the answer was No.
Stacy hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and her head had smashed hard against the passenger side B post after impact.
Her skull was cracked – broken into pieces – and leaking. She was still breathing …
Then she wasn’t.
I don’t need to have someone breathe their last in my arms again.
She had been unconscious at least; it wasn’t an easy death.
Help finally arrived and the scene was properly conditioned during clean-up. The truck driver was physically OK but went into shock; not hurt but this was ugly. He got a ride home. I don’t know if SB came to the scene – it was cleared and we were gone if he did. Mo and I left the others to finish up – we were still on duty but no more calls that day. Probably for the best.
That was almost 20 years ago. Images still in my mind. Mo and I are still friends but left the service long ago; Mo now lives in the city, I’m on the west side of two ranges over from there.
Someone – SB maybe? – still leaves flowers on the marker where she died.
Lot of calls during my time; one develops a weird sense of humor. Not the only death call either, but this is that one of all.
Haven’t been on that side of the mountains for quite a while.
Maybe one of these days I’ll head over and place a few flowers myself.
Eeerie, idn’t it?
So sorry about all of it, DT. First paragraph was a little misleading but that’s probably just me. After I finished
reading everything I went back to the first
paragraph and all became clearer. Such a sad story.
Maybe just my style of telling the story.
Howard sez:
This bread and circuses routine is looking pretty played out.
The bread, of course, is pizza, the Soylent Green of these seeming end-times, underwriting the nation’s romance with morbid obesity (and perhaps with degenerate sex).
The circuses — last week’s Grammy Awards, the Winter Olympics tonight, Sunday’s looming Superbowl — give off an odor of utter cultural exhaustion.
What will it finally take for Western Civ, and its avatar, the USA, to stop embarrassing itself before God and history, and find better things to do?
More…
https://www.kunstler.com/p/blood-in-the-water
DT, Excellent. Very moving. I would guess that the flowers are left by the truck driver. Have to ask where this took place.
Could be. Parents also. Maybe all of them.
An hour or so outside Boise.
Damn. You’re good.
Well, that was heartbreaking, DT. Praying that you find some peace from the weight of this memory.
I’m OK with it. I was involved with the service for 8 years; it’s not so much you get used to it, it’s that you learn to deal with it. Some incidents were even more tragic than Stacy’s but her story stuck with me more so that the others.
Some of the stories could be considered “funny”, many show the very little things that can affect your life, most just leave you scratching your head wondering the why and wherefores of life.
Maybe someday I’ll tell some others.
With Stacy, that road didn’t have heavy traffic. For that log truck to be in that place at that time … ???
Murphy or God … perhaps both working together.
Hope you do grace us with more of your stories.
Heard a horribly loud BANG and I thought a bomb had gone off where we were rebuilding a bunker at the main gate (the only working gate, actually) of Camp Holloway outside of Pleiku but it wasn’t that at all. Two ARVN convoys were passing going opposite directions when two jeeps crossed the center line and hit head on. Most of you wouldn’t know, but when Vietnamese units moved the whole family went with them, wives, kids, old, gray-haired mama-sans, everybody and those jeeps were packed full. I thought we were surely blowed up dead but I looked up to see the two jeeps up off the ground where the momentum had lifted them with bodies flying thru the air and lots of them. Those jeeps were open, usually without restraints of any kind, you see, with nothing to keep the contents in the container. Out they came.
Picking up the adults was bad enough, but the kids were the worst. Eventually I got home and got out and more or less got drafted into the local small town volunteer fire department where some other human messes had to be cleaned up, one or two people at a time, but that was the worst thing I’d ever seen before or since. DT knows what it’s like, for sure, and I pray God the rest of you never have to find out.
Wild, wild, west. Welcome home! 68-69 4th ID