Crush. The word centric to my nightmares the night prior. The word I woke up with in my head. The song I listened to this morning. The word that describes what happened. Let it roll off your tongue; “crush”, and listen to the story I have to tell.
It was around 3pm, and the sky was grey, but the heat made me weak. I’d spotted some towels outside a shop, dark red, and figured I had the cash to spare. Distracted by a call from my parents, I seated myself at a public bench and talked. About 2 minutes later, a crack pierced my ears, followed by an almighty plastic-metallic crash. Head spun, behind me, the sign outside the shop had freed itself from its fixture, and fallen. Trapped under the weighty sign, unconscious and trapped by its weight, crushed by the impact was a woman in her 60s. Distantly, I became aware of the phonecall I’d gone silent on, and calmly informed my mother what had happened.
No more than five seconds later, a bystander had rushed over to lift the huge sign from the woman, more knelt to her side to check for breathing. Crowds started to form, crowding the unconscious victim. A child started to cry, adolescent quips of “somebody’s getting sued” filled my ears as I gave a broken commentary to my parents on the phone. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people took photos before they called emergency services. How many put spectacle before help.
I watched, silent as an ambulance arrived. Around me, people in tears, hysterics -as if they were suddenly aware of their own mortality-or overcome emotionally by the injury of another human being. I felt nothing, as if dead inside. ‘It’s not that I’m disrespectful. It’s not that I feel nothing for the family or the injured woman,’ I thought as I held the call to take a photo. Quite the opposite, I hoped nothing more than for woman to be okay, as I caught glimpses of her arms moving, a distant, weak voice in the shocked crowds. Still, I couldn’t help if the deadness to it made me a monster, as I observed the shocked and stunned crowds around me.
Police arrived, shooing off the crowds in thick Yorkshire accents; “Owt to see ‘ere. Move along, move along.” Still, people stayed, watching like hawks from the sidelines, including me. I didn’t leave til I saw the injured woman get carted into the ambulance, strapped down onto a stretcher, head immobilised. Police took notes from witnesses, shop staff and manager stood outside, raised voices of argument over the crowds. Sun now out of the clouds, blazing and making me wince with nausea. Slipping away with a glance over my shoulder at the wrecked shop front and the crowd of onlookers, I let out as a shaky breath.
I can’t help but feel if I’d gone and bought that towel -if I hadn’t been distracted by that call- I would have been the one crushed under there. Say it again, the word of the day. It seems almost prophetic.