It was a full moon so naturally i was on edge, the nights always seem to be more violent when it is a full moon, i was even more concerned when we did not receive a single call for service for the first few hours. I'm sitting in the passenger seat with the radar gun aimed down a completely dark road that had been deserted for hours, discussing about how the department doesn't supply the officers with anything that wasn't bought at a fucking surplus store back in the 1980's. As we sat there debating the worse parts of being an officer in that particular county, a call went out that every graveyard shift officer dreads:
*emergency tones go out over the radio)
Dispatch: Car 123
a perplexed me: 123 go ahead
Dispatch: respond for a possible 10-50F (traffic accident, fatality) on ******** rd, EMS is already en route
As soon as we heard dispatch say "10-50F" the radar gun was on the floor, i was lighting up our mobile christmas tree complete with siren, and the officer was slamming the pedal through the floor in an effort to get us there as soon as possible.
Halfway en route to this wreck we were hitting 110mph down back roads with no lighting when possibly the worst imaginable thing happens... The officer knocked his knee against our siren and lighting system box while cutting a sharp turn, as soon as this happened we lost ALL visibility. the lightbar and siren shut off, our wigwags were off and for some reason the headlights shut off too. Naturally both of us were screaming every cuss word we could think of while i unbuckled my seat belt and bent down to fiddle with all the wires going into the piece of trash. We were still screaming down back roads with no lights for about 3 minutes straight when i found a wire and fiddled with it causing everything to come back on at once which caused me to smack my head on the dashboard.
nursing the soon to be major headache i still had the presence of mind to put on my surgical gloves as we rolled up on scene and found a four door sedan smashed through a k-rail and hanging over a twelve foot drop into a small river. As we ran over to the car my heart was in my throat as i saw a child's toy in the back window and prayed there was not a child in that mangled wreck. We got to the open driver's door and found blood all over the compartment but startlingly and slightly relieving was the fact that there was no one inside the car. We discovered the driver further up the windy back road right before she nearly got crushed by one of the fire engines responding to the wreck. After we checked her out and confirmed there was no child that had been in the car and loaded her into ambulance that had finally arrived on scene we finally discovered what had caused the wreck when there were no skid marks at all.
It turns out, that that day was the anniversary of the death of the young woman's son who had died last year. She was suicidal and decided a good way to end her life was to come down the windy road towards the twelve foot drop off and just accelerate as hard as she could, thankfully her car was hung up in the railing and too disoriented to attempt another way.
That moment while i stood staring at the blood covered car with the children's toy in the back window, the whole scene bathed in the red, blue and white flashing of the emergency vehicles was one that has stuck with me for a long time. I still am able to close my eyes and flash back to that scene several years later.
As i stood there and tried to cope with the whole situation, the officer i was with came up behind me and patted me on the shoulder, standing there with me staring, at what could have been a very different night except for one strong K-rail. He told me " This is why we're out here, it takes a certain type of mentality to deal with what you see in this line of work and do what we do. Just remember, if you aren't willing to put everything on the line and help these people...who will?" It seems i have taken that statement to heart even after all this time.
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