Saturday, I was driving with a friend of mine, and we came upon a car that had skidded in the rain, and crashed into a telephone pole. We stopped to investigate, and found a girl of 20 in the passenger seat. She was awake and coherent, but scared shitless. She said that she had just bought the car, and hadn’t had time to get the insurance on it. In the car was a dog, named Digit. Digit was a little banged up, but okay. She (Digit) had busted her little puppy lip open, but was otherwise okay. The girl, it turns out, was 25 weeks pregnant. The impact with the telephone pole was on the driver’s side door. Once we freed the dog, I climbed into the wreckage (I didn’t want to risk moving her, and since the car wasn’t on fire, it seemed like the safest course of action) to sit with the girl, Sarah, holding her hand, talking to her, trying to calm her down, until the paramedics came. I also had to call her mother, and her boyfriend’s mother. The paramedics came, freed her, took her to the hospital, and admitted her to observation. I called the hospital a few hours later, and was informed that she had been released, so it appears that both Sarah and baby were fine.
In speaking with my friend afterwards, she advised me that what I did could be considered heroic, to an extent. I don’t see it. It’s ingrained in me. My mother’s a nurse. My late father was a firefighter. This sort of thing is just a facet of me. There’s nothing heroic about it. It was just doing what needed to be done.
