the accident

When I was 16 or 17, I played ultimate frisbee every saturday afternoon at a field several miles from my house. I would drive there on my motorbike and on the way home would often stop at the local market to buy dinner. One night I was going home, it must have been later in the year because it was getting dark early, and I bought fried chicken and sticky rice. Back on the highway, I stopped at a roundabout to turn around to go home. As I was waiting for an opening in the traffic I heard a crashing sound and looked behind me to see people and a motorbike flying through the air, and then skidding along the road at high speed.

I immediately pulled off the road and went over to the first woman, who was mostly delirious and scratched up, but probably not very hurt. I carried her to a roadside restaurant where some people cleaned her off with rags. She'd bled on my bag, and I think I had some on my hand, and thought about AIDS. In hindsight, it may not have been smart for someone like me (totally without medical training) to move her, but I don't think it did any real harm. I dont remember if there was a little girl, too, but I think there may have been. I left the woman with some of the Thais and went over to the second woman. By this time, there were plenty of people crowding around on the road and it was starting to rain. The second woman was bleeding from her head (none of them were wearing helmets), and there was a puddle as thick as ketchup around her head.

I must have had a cloth, because I remember I was going to hold it to her head to staunch the blood flow, but the Thais nearby stopped me, and I couldn't understand how we could all stand there and watch her bleed out of her head, and no one would touch her or help. I still don't know why, if it was fear of disease, or of touching a dying person, or of liability, or some medical reason, but I still feel ashamed that I didnt do more to help. Eventually an ambulance came and took them away, and I went home.

A week or two later I took some friends by and showed them where it had happened, and there was still a blood stain on the road where the woman's head had been. I haven't told this story to many people, not when it happened or since. I'm not sure why. I don't think of it very often, but I was thinking about it today for some reason.

Another night, after a school dance, I was driving to a friend's house when up ahead I saw several motorbikes and a group of men on the roadside. When i drove past, I saw them dragging someone into the ditch by the side of the road. I stopped a little ways up the road, and they looked at me, but I didn't know what to do, and I was scared for myself, so I kept driving. On the way home, I went back and shone my light into the overgrown ditch, and looked around, but didn't see any bodies or any one. I still don't know what happened, whether they were helping their drunk friend throw up, or if someone was seriously injured or killed, and I witnessed them hiding a body.