Saving a Life
After I ran over and killed an 8-year-old boy named Brian who darted in front of my car, I became obsessed with all the sudden, violent, accidental ways we can die.
Besides being hit by a car, there’s choking on a hot dog, getting trapped in a house fire, getting caught in the undertow, falling off a mountain, slipping on ice, tripping on stairs, and dropping the hair dryer into the bathtub. There’s diving into shallow water, getting heat stroke while running a marathon, crashing your bike, or getting your hair caught in the filter of a hot tub. You name a setting, and I can tell you how you might accidentally die there.
Killing a child was every bit as anguishing as you might imagine. For a few weeks, all I could do was hide in my stiflingly hot student apartment, blinds drawn and lights off. While I sat on the lumpy couch staring at a water stain on the ceiling, my mind replayed scenes from the crash over and over, all day long and sometimes all night long too — a slide show of trauma, gore, grief and terror. But the worst part was the guilt. What I’d done seemed unforgiveable.
I no longer wanted to make the honor roll, see the Stones in concert, visit Paris, or date the cute guy who lived in my building. Instead, what I wanted to do was save someone’s life. It was the only way to redeem myself that I could imagine. I could never make up for what I did but maybe I could even the scales.
The problem with this was that I was, and am, physically cowardly. In the fight, flight, or freeze sweepstakes of life, I go to freeze every time. I tried to overcome this tendency with preparation. I took first aid, CPR, and Heimlich maneuver classes. I bought a gigantic first aid kit. I mentally rehearsed jumping off the Santa Monica pier to save a drowning child. I did what I could to get ready in case the opportunity to save someone ever presented itself.
About seven years post-accident, I heard an alarm going off right next door. The alarm beeped irregularly at first, then beeped faster, and then turned into one long continuous beep. When I finally realized it was a smoke detector, I pounded on my neighbor’s door and, when no one answered, I ran back to my place to call 911. “What’s the address?” the dispatcher asked, and even though I’d lived in that apartment complex for a year, I was so rattled that I couldn’t remember.
It turned out that my neighbor had left a potato to bake while he went to the gym, and all the accumulated crap in the oven had started to smoke. There was no fire. I hadn’t saved anyone. My neighbor was pissed off because the firefighters had kicked open his door and broken it. He tried to get me to pay for the repair.
The closest I ever came to saving a life happened in Malibu, ten years to the day after the car accident. I had taken an early morning hike at Topanga State Park. At a scenic summit, I said a prayer for Brian and mentally apologized to him for the millionth time. After, I drove down the hill and parked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway, so I could spend some time at the beach.
But when I left the car, over the sounds of cars whizzing by on PCH to my left and the roaring surf to my right, I heard a banging noise. It was coming from inside the trunk of the rusted old Chevy in front of me. “Let me out, let me out,” some guy was yelling, although his voice was muffled. The banging noise was him kicking.
I stood there trying to process what was happening. I could feel the adrenalin flood me — heart racing, face flushed, mind spinning.
Finally I lurched into action. “I’ll get you out,” I screamed back at the man. I screamed it a few more times for good measure.
This was before the cell phone era, and I was parked in the middle of nowhere. I looked around for someone to help and spotted a couple of teenage boys. They fooled around with the trunk latch but couldn’t get him out. After a few minutes they gave up and left.
As usual, PCH was backed up with beach traffic. It would take forever to reach a telephone. I ran to the side of the road and stepped in front of a bicyclist, forcing him to stop. He was irritated, but he promised to call the cops as soon as he could.
I yelled to the guy in the trunk that the police were coming. He didn’t answer and he’d stopped kicking. “Are you okay?” I yelled, worried he was suffocating.
“I’m locked in a fucking trunk. What the fuck do you think?” he said.
It wasn’t, “Thank God you found me,” but at least I knew he was breathing.
As I waited, a tiny seed of hope started to grow. Maybe I was, finally, saving a life. They guy had probably been mugged before ending up in the trunk. His wife and kids might be panicking because he hadn’t come home.
About 15 minutes later a police car pulled in. The officer moved slowly, taking in the scene. He ambled over to the car. “Did you look inside to see if the car key is in there?”
I shook my head no, mortified. It had never occurred to me.
The officer opened the unlocked car and looked around for a key. I hoped he wouldn’t find it. It would be too embarrassing. Fortunately for me, if not the victim, no key turned up (the car was too old to have a trunk release). The police officer couldn’t get the trunk open either. He called for the fire department on his radio.
“You can go home,” he told me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what the victim would look like (or smell like) after spending hours in the trunk, and I felt like an idiot, so I left. Later, I called to ask what happened.
The officer laughed. “He’s okay. Probably not the first time this has happened to him. Let’s just say he’s not one of our better citizens.”
And that was that. The whole thing was a let-down. If I hadn’t found the guy, someone else would have. Also, even though I did sort of save him, I still felt guilty. It wasn’t enough.
It took a while longer for me to realize that the life I needed to save was my own. Advanced CPR wasn’t going to help. It was time to figure out a way to live that wasn’t all about death.
