One Tragic Moment

I saw someone getting CPR today. Driving home we came to an intersection where a car and a motorcycle had come head to head in a way they were never designed to. A man lying prostrate surrounded by a crowd, his body hopelessly floppy as a stranger pumps at his chest, breathing for him on the kerbside. I didn’t see the accident, I didn’t see whose fault it was or how the motorcycle must have flown and skidded, flinging its two passengers aside. I didn’t see the witness hastily pull over and spring from their cars. All I saw was the chaos that ensued, desperate moments in which from one tick of the second hand to the next, someone’s life becomes a big flashing question mark. The scene is bubbling and boiling, spinning around a helmet and a mangled bike.

It stirs a mixture of emotions to drive past, a mere witness to calamity as I carry on about my way.

But imagine you were on your way home, driving up to a traffic lights, switching radio stations, hitting the indicator -then all of a sudden the moment is torn open by an enormous roar – the screech of brakes, metal on metal, skin on bitumen. Instead of carrying on home like all regular trips along this road, you become the difference between life and death for this motorcyclist, as you rush to his aid. Others stop, their way barred by blood and crushed metal. They call emergency services, direct traffic around the accident, stop the life from flowing out of someone’s arteries and onto the road. Will you walk away from this a hero? Will you walk away from this heavy with regret, despite the fact that you did all you could do, and nothing but God could have saved him?

Imagine instead you were driving straight along the street, you indicate right, turning when the way looks clear and then, seemingly born out of air itself, comes a motorbike carrying two people, and it is you that drives right through them. Their bodies crush the front of your car while the front of your car pounds the life from them. When the screeching ends you stand by the wreckage and you breath. You panic. You’re bleeding but you’re ok. You’re ok but you may have just killed someone.

In an instant, one tragic moment, your world and theirs become permanently entwined. Others drive past, deeply aware it could have just as easily been them, and carry on their way.