Reflections on the Car Accident, by Andy Winter

Caramela

We were just getting our evening meeting started when I heard and felt a huge crash. My first thought was that the second floor of one of the nearby buildings collapsed. I ran outside and heard screaming from the road and new it must be a car accident. I went into Emergency Medicine mode and sprinted to the van, got my first aid kit, and hollered to a couple of students to get my big flashlight from our meeting place.

The smells of antifreeze on a hot engine block and burning rubber filled the air as I approached.

I surveyed the scene. There were many people there already and a woman with blood running down her face screaming “my baby …my child” in Spanish. There was a totaled car and another one maybe 75 yards away that had crashed into a building or something. I saw several people gathered around someone on the ground.

I pushed my way into the small crowd and found a little girl not much older than Emmy. She was unconscious. I could see she was breathing and I checked her pulse as I asked if there were other people hurt. Her sister and mother were in the car as well but seemed to be okay said someone nearby. Someone else shouted that the driver of the car was okay.

ABCDE
How many times had we gone over this with my classes last year?
Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, Environment

“What is her name?” I asked and the answer came back a moment later … “Caramela”. In an instant I could see “caramel” was the perfect name for this sweet little girl laying so peacefully in the gravel parking lot.

ABCDE
Her pulse was strong and fast. Her breathing was strong as well. Her pupils were equal and slowly responded to light.

“Caramela” I whispered into her ear, “you will be OK, just breathe, open your eyes when you are ready” as I checked for broken bones and other injuries. The whole time just hoping she would regain consciousness … hoping her spine had not broken … hoping her head injury was not too severe. Why is it taking the ambulance so long, I wondered.

My head to toe revealed no other obvious major injuries and I whispered, “your mommy and sister are here for you. We are all here for you Caramela”. Her breathing and heart rate began to change so I pulled my stethoscope from my small crowded first aid kit to listen to her lungs half afraid of what I might hear. Is there internal bleeding I wondered?

Slowly I placed the stethoscope to her chest, wishing with all my heart, “please be OK”. As the cool metal of my stethoscope touched her chest she woke with a loud cry “Mommy”.

She began to thrash about and we struggled to keep her still and to keep her mother from picking her up. She screamed until the voice of her mother penetrated her fear. A few minutes later the ambulance arrived and the local EMTs took over.

That night as Emmy and I lay down to sleep under the starry Kino sky she asked me to retell the story again. I was in tears by the time I finished and there was a few seconds of silence, then she propped herself up on one elbow looked me straight in my teary eyes and said “I guess she was lucky because it could have been much worse, couldn’t it?”

*** Post script: We found out several days later that she was released from the hospital with no major injuries.