Blood and Dust

I was eighteen and the world was about to explode. I was out of high school, out of boot camp, out of Navy “A” School where I had just learned to be a Corpsman, and I was about to go on a mission for my church. And I was out for the summer with my best friend Dan. And of all places we had just visited a girl we had both dated and lived to tell the tale. We were all still friends and the summer had just started.

We were driving Dan’s powder blue VW bug. He had bought it several year earlier, and through high school and loved that bug back into mint condition. Well, as mint as a bug can get. It still rattled and hummed and vibrated dangerously at speeds over 60 mph but it got us where we were going. That bug was awesome. The bug had taken us all the way down to St. George and was now taking us back home. We had been hiking and picnicking and done all the things kids are supposed to do for the summer. We had had fun.

As we drove down the freeway, along a particularly lonely stretch of road I could see up ahead a man sitting on the side of the road. No car. Just the man, sitting on the railing of bridge that passed over a dry riverbed that only ran during the raining season, which in Utah is two days a year. But it’s enough that we don’t want our roads washed away. He was sitting hunched over a bit, his back to us as we drove passed. It was odd to have someone out there like that. I turned to look at the man as we passed him and was shocked to see that his face, hands and shirt were covered in blood.

I turned to Dan and told him to pull over and go back. There had been an accident. Now, in “A” school we had been trained for this kind of emergency. I had been in school for months training how to be an emergency responder. And one of the first things they teach is that diseases kill responders. If you’re not gloved up, you need to seriously think about whether or not to help. I had no gloves. Unfortunately we were both Eagle Scouts and Mormons to boot, which meant we were eager to see if we could heal in the name of Baden Powell and convert in the name of Joseph Smith.

Dan pulled over and backed up as quickly as he could. I jumped out of the car and ran back to the man who was still just sitting on the side of the road looking at his one hand like it was something alien. His nose was bleeding pretty bad and his fingers looked bent and strange. I tilted my head to the side to get a better look at him and asked, “Sir,” I had just gotten out of the Navy. “are you all right?” I couldn’t think of what else to ask, it seemed a smart question at the time. He looked up at me with bleary and watery eyes, blood coming out of his nose and he just looked at me. It was at that point that I came right up to him and off the bridge, I could see, down in the dried river bed, a car. The dust was still settling, one of the doors was ajar, and I could hear music from somewhere.

“Please,” he said, for the first time, “my wife is down there.”

It’s strange how your mind works during a crisis. At least the way mine worked at that moment in my life. I picked my way down the small hillside into the dry riverbed and found my way to the car. My mind didn’t go blank, in fact it seems like it was the opposite. I’d been trained for this very thing. I was only weeks out of the Navy Corpsman school; I had the equivalent of a Emergency Medical Technician License and a Licensed Practical Nurse degree. I couldn’t perform surgery but I was confident enough, and well trained enough to handle almost any normal emergency wounds.

The car was an old, dark blue model, one of those tanks on tires. I’ve never really been that good with car makes or years. It car was still right side up but facing crosswise to the road above; if it had been capable, it could have driven down the riverbed and under the freeway. The dust was still settling and I could hear an animal whining somewhere. There was music playing – classical music. I could smell the heat of the car and hear the popping of the engine as it cooled down. I came to the passenger side first and could see that there was a woman lying face down in the back seat. I’m still not sure how she got there. Maybe she stumbled there after the wreck, or was thrown there, I really don’t know. But I moved around to the drivers side rear door. I don’t remember if I opened the door or if it was already opened, because my memory just skips to the next horrific moment, where training meets the real world.

I dropped down to her level, where she was lying face down on the back seat. We had been taught to be careful when touching or moving accident victims and so I only wanted to see what was going on before I moved into the backseat to help. “Ma’am.” I said, still fresh from the Navy. “Ma’am. Are you all right?” I will never forget that moment as she struggled for consciousness and raised her head.

Her face was deathly white and her eyes were glazed and funny looking. But there was only one thing that really caught my attention. There was a gash in her upper forehead that was several inches long and was deep enough that I could see the bone beneath. The blood was coming out of it, running across her face and off her chin at the same rate water would run off if you dumped a glass of water over someone’s head. It looked like a fountain. She raised her head as far as she could and gasped out the words, “Help me. Please.” And with that her head plopped down back onto the blood soaked backseat.

My heart stopped. This was the real thing and I had no one here to check my work. No one here who could say, “Damn it McKell, you’re an idiot. Let me show you how to do it.” Or “NO! Study harder.” The studying was over. I was alone out here in the desert. Just me and the knowledge I had gained from how much attention I had paid in class. As her head dropped back to the seat I knew there was little else I really needed to know about her injuries. If I didn’t stop the bleeding quickly, she might not live.

I quickly moved into the backseat and checked her for other injuries. Broken bones were not a threat, but I needed to know about them when I moved her. I was also checking for other bleeding injuries; that’s what I was most concerned about. I didn’t want to stop one bleeder only to have to leak out somewhere else. I finished checking her body for other injuries, and finding none, I was ready to flip her on to her back; at that moment my friend arrived, breathless and pale. We were both Eagle Scouts; our scoutmasters had always talked about stuff like this, but you never think you’re actually going to see it.

Now, moving an accident victim is not always the best plan. They could have injuries that you don’t know about and you can increase the damage. But in this case I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stop the blood by myself using pressure from below. I had to get her flipped onto her back. “Help me flip her.” I said and my friend nodded without a word. He took her feet and I took her shoulders and we got her over as smoothly as we possibly could. The blood was still pouring out of her head.

“What can I do?” My friend asked.

“Go get help.” I said, I’m sure with more fear in my voice than I intended. “Fast.” He nodded, and without a word, ran back up the hillside and was gone. Leaving me completely alone with this woman and her wounded and worthless husband on the side of the road.

The backseats were covered with bath towels, the really thick kind. Luck was on my side, at least for this small moment. I grabbed a towel and cleaned away the wound so I could get a good look at it and understand its dimensions. Once I knew what I was working with I covered it with a town and pressed down, hard. At this point this was all I could do. press and pray. Press and pray. Not letting up on either for a second. We were literally in the middle of nowhere. Even if my friend could find a phone it would take a while for an ambulance to get called, mobilized, on route and arrive. I hoped my friend could remember exactly where we were. I sure as heck couldn’t. And so I pressed down hard and I prayed even harder.

Once I got myself positioned over her in such a way as to maximize the pressure I could put on her wound I was left with my thoughts and my training and my environment. It was at this point that I really tuned into the music that was playing, the smell of hot engine oil, the dusty riverbed and the sound of whining from somewhere in the bushes. The face beneath my hands was covered from her nose up, so I could barely see her, but her mouth and nose were uncovered so she could breath. Her voiced reached up, shaky and unclear, like a strange music. “Where are my dogs?”

“I don’t know ma’am.” I said, “I’m gonna take care of you for a minute. Then I’ll find your dogs.”

“I’m okay.” She said with little volume and less force. “Go find my dogs.”

“No ma’am.” I said, “I’m gonna stay right here and we’ll find your dogs in a minute. So, tell me about your trip. What’s your name?”

I have no memory of our conversation. I know we talked. I know I asked her every question I could think of. I needed to accomplish two things. First, I needed to know vital statistics for the ambulance and hospital – her name, age, where she had been, what she had eaten, and her medical history. All of those things were important to know. But more important was the second reason for talking to her. I needed to keep her conscious. I needed to keep her awake and alert, or I ran the risk of loosing her to shock or unconsciousness or even worse. If she stopped talking, then her brain wasn’t working on anything important, which means the blood she was loosing and her attention would cause her to brain to start paying attention to other things, namely nothing, and it would start to shut down.

I was there for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes later and my buddy pulled back in. It had taken him that long to drive to a phone, call the police, and drive back. “They’re on their way.” He said shakily. “What can I do?”

“Grab my planner and write some of this down.” I wanted to write down all the information I had gotten from the woman. He ran back to the car and came back with my planner. I then recounted everything I had learned, along with vital information like pulse rate, breathing rate, and other things I had been trained to gather.

I’m not sure how long we waited there. It seemed like forever. But I think in real time it was about forty-five minutes until the first police car arrived. The policeman made his way down to the car, surveyed the scene, opened the rear passenger side door, and took in what I was doing. “What’s going on with her?” he asked. And I responded by telling him that she had a serious head wound and needed immediate assistance. I described the wound to him in detail. And showed him the amount of blood we had already soaked up. “I need to see the wound.” He said.

I shook my head. “It’s bad. I’ve just got the bleeding slowed down.”

“I need to see it.”

Now, I’ve played this moment over and over in my head. His take charge attitude. His condescending nature. And his insistence in removing a pressure dressing from a wound. And if this incident were to happen to me today I would tell the officer to go call the ambulance in no uncertain terms. But, at this moment in my life I was eighteen, fresh out of the military, and I had been trained to respect authority, even when it was stupid. So I said, “Yes, sir.” And I removed the dressing.

Blood immediately gushed out of her wound, down into her eyes and down the sides of her head. I slammed the towel back onto her head, pressed harder than ever, and gave him the best I-did-what-you-asked face I could, without being condescending. His order made my life much more difficult and possibly endangered the woman’s life as well. “We need the ambulance here.” I said calmly.

“It’s coming.” He said, and backed out of the car and went back to his position on the side of the road.

About twenty minutes later, maybe forty-five minutes from the time we came upon the accident the ambulance arrived. The paramedic that showed up was probably an emergency responder from a nearby farm. These little towns didn’t have full time crews. This man knew his stuff, he just didn’t do it for a living. He did as the policeman had done, he came down the hill, surveyed the situation, came into the back seat and asked me “What do we have here?”

I responded exactly as I had with the policeman. I told him, in detail, what her wound looked like and what her vitals were. Recognizing me for what I was, a commonly trained medical person, he nodded approvingly and asked, “Can you handle this?”

“Yes, sir. I can.”

“Tell me what you need and I’ll assist.” And with that he came around to my side of the car, flipped open his medical supply case, and presented me with a complete set of everything an emergency technician would want. I surveyed the case, made a list of what I needed in my head and the order I would use them, and then began telling him what to hand me. Within minutes we had the woman bandaged and ready for transport. It was a completely different experience between the policeman and the paramedic. One seeing me as an obstacle who couldn’t help him; the other seeing me as an asset to make his job easier.

At that time I had been trained on civil cases as well. It wasn’t uncommon for victims to sue their rescuers for injuries that occurred during the recue. I was nervous. We had done everything we could have done. We were as diligent and competent as two teenagers could have been. But we didn’t stick around. Cops still scared us. So we left.

As we got back into the car and drove away, I was finally able to take a moment and look at myself. I had blood from fingertips to elbows on both hands. It was gory. Dan knew where the next rest stop was, that’s where he had called for help. About fifteen minutes later we pulled in and parked. It was a bit odd walking to the restroom with my hands and shirt covered in blood. I took some time to clean up and cool down. It was traumatic for me.

I often wonder what happened. How were the two of them doing? Did everything turn out okay? Was it really as bad as I remember, or as I perceived at the time? I still have her name and statistics in my old planner, and I wonder if I could find her and ask her about that day. Not for thanks, but to hear the end of the story. That was a day I will remember forever.