She stood by concrete curb, dazed, confused, perfectly still among the chaos and flurry of activity. Police cars, fire trucks, lights flashing, flares burning, men yelling, women crying, squawks on a thousand radios, broken glass twisted metal, wreckage. She was like a statue amongst it all, frozen with cell phone in hand. Knowing who to call but forgetting how to speak. A bomb had dropped. Life would never be the same. I got a passing glimpse into her eyes as I passed by, me and the other rubber necks checking out the carnage, driving slow to soak it all in. You could see it in her eyes, lostness, hurt, pain, shock, remember to breath. Everyone was running around like she didn’t exist and she just stood there without a coat, blood on her shirt and hands and small white snow flakes fell. “It’s freaking Christmas time” I thought as Silent Night played on the all Christmas song station. I felt her pain, the pain of the person who would soon be on the other end of the line when she finally made that phone call. Someone’s world was about to be shaken. Someone would spend the night in a badly decorated hospital waiting room, crying. To someone Christmas would never be the same. I drove away a little more cautiously after being reminded of the danger.
How can life be filled with such joy one moment and the next so much pain? How is it that laughter can be sucked from our lungs in an instant? I wanted to stop and cry for her, to bear her pain just a little so that maybe it didn’t hurt so bad. I turned off the radio and drove away.
