Dismemberment, Entanglement, and Dark Humor

My throat hurt, and I was exhausted. Those two things were truly the only care I had at the present moment as in the late hours of night, I closed my eyes against the traffic ahead, and tried to shut out the radio chatter, and the squealing of the brakes coming from the ambulance I was working on that shift.

I had found it hard by then to become excited or nervous about a potential scene. I was simply burnt out. The call we had been assigned was for a car wreck on the highway, a stretch with the ironic title of "suicide alley". Halfway there and we now hear the dispatchers calling, frantic, as if their own relatives were in the cars, screaming at us to hurry up, it was possibly a double fatal.

After what seemed like forever, (and I really had to pee), a final squeal of brakes announced our arrival. As I stepped out and took a quick glance around, I saw simply catastrophy, covering well over two hundred feet of highway. The state police, and fire dept. had just arrived as well, and as I walked over to the first crumpled vehicle, I noticed the boyish looking trooper dry heaving on the other side.

The first vehicles sole occupant was deceased, without a pulse, and both arms torn off at the shoulders, a byproduct of the engine resting in the back seat with him. The second vehicles sole occupant was dead as well, pulseless, but what initially appeared to be relativelty blunt force injuries. Ironic I thought, as I scanned the median, looking for a place to urinate, that both vehicles were corallas, both occupants were asian, and they were the only two vehicles on that stretch of highway that night, but managed to find each other head on.

By this time, the traffic had blocked us in, and we were trapped there until the police closed the highway down, and routed traffic the opposite way. My partner and I took this opportunity to help the medical examiner load the bodies up. The patient who we originally thought had no visible injuries was extricated first. He was wearing a hooded grey sweatshirt, and as I grabbed his hand and pulled, his entire arm came with it. Same thing with the other arm. Jokes filled the air as the fire dept. was rattling off every "arm" joke they could come up with. My throat still hurt.

Four hours later, and we were cleared to leave, the mess still hadn't been picked up. As I climbed into the passenger seat of the ambulance, I hear a voice calling my name. I looked to the left, and it was a firefighter, yelling, "hey, you have a call!" Stupidly, I climbed back out and went over to him, where he was holding an arm, with the hand still gripping a cell phone.