Why yes, it hurt…
So, I’m driving along at 60 on a motorway.
It’s 11PM, traffic is light, the thermometer in my brand new car on the first day of ownership is reading -1.5 degrees celcius.
I’m about 2 miles from my exit, and my final destination after travelling 500 miles in the prior 12 hours. I’m a breath away from home.
I check my rear view mirror. Nothing behind.
Moments later, a tremendous impact from my nearside behind. I see the central reservation. I see the hard shoulder and the barrier whils’t I travel backwards. I feel something soft hit me from my side as my head crashes into it. I see the central reservation, again, but this time its stationary, so obviously I am too.
I sit there. Looking. Not moving. Just looking. I’m in a car, my car. There’s smoke everyhwhere. White things hanging over the windows. The click of the hazard lights. I’m being asked if I’m ok.
In no more than 30 seconds, metal has been crunched, people have been thrown around and lives have been altered.
I don’t believe my luck. I’m not even sure yet if this really happened, or if I’m about to wake up and laugh at the terrible dream I just had. Either way, I’m so glad everybody walked away from this one with relatively minor injuries considering the forces that were involved here.
Irony is a powerful force too, I don’t think I’m going to be listening Headlights on Dark Roads by Snow Patrol again in the car.
I’m Famous!
Courtesy of BBC News
Into the valley of the ER
A picture and poem kindly borrowed from http://erstories.net/archives/1484 that a colleague had printed for me to see last night, excellent work!
Half asleep, half intact
Half alive onward,
Cuff’d and cursing the cops to Death
Intoxicated kindred
‘Forward, the Drunk Brigade!
Charge the triage nurse!’ he slurred;
Into the valley of the ER
Must have been a hundred.
‘Bypass the Drunk Brigade! Bypass!’
Yell’d the Doc dismay’d!
Not tho’ the EMT’s knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Their’s is not to make reply,
Their’s is not to reason why,
Their’s but to transport “that drunken guy”:
Into the valley of the ER
Despite being divert’d
RN’s to the right of them,
Doctors to the left of them,
Sicker patients in front of them
Piss’d and thunder’d;
Stumb’ling in they fought and fell,
Horrible stench from them did swell,
Into the valley of the ER.
Their gaping maws smelt like Hell
I wish they were obtund’d.
Flash’d all their genitals bare,
Three months of filth in their hair,
Swinging at security there,
Charging the RN station, while
All the staff wonder’d:
But in the benzodiazipine-smoke
Right thro’ the 4 points they broke;
The Guards were rushin’
Reel’d from the faecal-soak
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they fell back, but not,
Not yet all obtund’d
Doctors to the right of them,
Police to the left of them,
Bearing haldoperidol behind them
The stalwart RN’s thunder’d;
Scream’d at but still drunk as hell,
While a clumsy bystander tripped and fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the ER of hell
All the was left of them,
Somehow not obtund’d.
When can their odour fade?
O the pathetic charge they made!
When at last they all slumber’d.
Depsite the valliant charge they made,
Thus ends the Drunk Brigade,
Finally obtund’d.
James
Thomas
woodger
