Wake up in the road

This is as honest as anything I will ever write, the first time I saw an after I had my first aid training I ran away. Ran might sound a little melodramatic to you but it's what happened, I was leaving work and heard something going on behind me and when I turned round I saw a cyclist had been hit by a bus. I panicked and walked off as quickly as I could thinking that there were probably any number of better trained, less fragile people at hand (which is no excuse but an interesting self justification) and had almost got to the station before I managed to slow my breathing and self loathing got the better of me. By the time I'd crept back they were being dealt with and I turned around again and went home. I know I'm not a good person so I would have thought that I had no opinion of myself to lose but everyone likes to think they'll respond well in a crisis and I couldn't get over the feeling of being overruled by the stifling sense of panic telling me that bad things were happening and I needed to leave. I did learn something important about my first responses though and I thought, next time I will do better.

A month or two ago the weather was nice enough so I decided to get out of the underground and walk for a while. I heard a cyclist getting hit by a car before I saw him on the ground, it's a sound I remember from when it happened to me and over the years I'd managed to convince myself that I was exaggerating but I could hear it through my headphones and it's just as sickening as before. This time I channeled the sick feeling into more useful action and ran across the road¹ to try and do something. I wouldn't describe myself as calm or competent, more like flustered and the only available option, but I'd checked to see that the driver had stopped and desperately tried to remember the most useful parts of my grand total of four days of training.

I forgot things, I made mistakes, I wasn't able to keep the driver who was also in a bit of a state from crowding the cyclist and didn't remember why I should stop him drinking water. I managed to get him to try and stay still twice, answer some basic questions, not touch any of the open wounds and keep him at the scene until the paramedics turned up. He was wearing a helmet so I suspect it was just scrapes, shock and a possible concussion but I wasn't willing to risk it. By that time I was starting to get very vivid reminders of exactly what being hit by a car felt like so as he was safe with the actual professionals I gave my details to the driver and left.

Horrible though it may sound to get experience at the expense of someone else being injured I know more now and next time I hope to do better.

1. And yes I looked both ways first.