Right Place at the Right Time

So my partner, Rock, and I were driving to McDonald's for breakfast (him, not me... I'd already had my granola with yogurt and banana, thank you very much), down the dark roads of downtown Adrian. We pull up to a stop sign, waiting for traffic to clear, blankly staring up the road.

In the tangle of headlights and taillights, I see a set of red lights violently bounce up and down about two blocks up.

What the hell?

"Did you see that?" I ask Rock. "See what?" he responds. "I just saw some taillights jump up and down, like those pimped out cars with hydraulics," I tell him. He just shrugs as we start driving toward what I had seen.

As we get closer, we still can't figure out what's going on. Traffic is not moving; headlights are pointing the wrong way; and people are moving around in the road.

Suddenly it all comes into focus. There's a sedan sideways in the road, steaming and smoking, with a crumpled front end. There's a city pick-up truck with a crushed front corner and buckled back end. And there's another car with mild front damage, and woman looking dazed behind the wheel. Bits of vehicles are strewn all over the road.

"Oh, shit," Rock says, "That was an accident you just saw!" He grabs the radio and says, "504, we've got a MVA at Main and Butler. Please dispatch fire to our location."

We bail out and split up. Rock heads toward the pick-up driver who is standing in the road on his cell phone. I head toward the sideways car, where I can now see the driver, who is conscious. His window is broken, so I tell him to not move his head and to keep looking straight ahead. I open his door, but it won't open all the way. I put my back and legs into it and manage to bend the door past the warped fender panel. Airbag deployment, seat belt worn, no loss of consciousness, some neck pain - so far, so good.

I can hear the fire department's sirens now, so I yell over to Rock, "You OK over there?" He shouts, "Yeah, got things under control. You?" I shout back, "We're good."

I climb into the back seat and take C-spine (hold the patient's head in neutral alignment to minimize any chance of more spinal damage/injury). I start asking the patient all the standard questions about medical history, allergies, etc.

Fire arrives and shuts down the road. A swarm of firefighters appears and takes over patient extrication and packaging. I hand off C-spine to one of them and then head to the ambulance to get the cot and backboard. The young man is collared, backboarded, strapped down, bundled up, and loaded into the ambulance.

Luckily, everybody was fine, and later in the day, when we brought another patient into the ER, I ran into the guy as he was being discharged with a soft, neck collar in place. We shared details about the experience - apparently he turned left in front of the truck. He thanked us, we shook hands, and he walked out the door.