This morning while waiting for a bus in front of my building, I heard a huge thud from the street. I turned around to see a car stopped in the centre lane and a girl on her hands and knees in the curb lane. Immediately the driver began screaming, even before he got out of the car. He made no effort to help her up, he just stood there in hysterics, screaming and crying.
The young woman made no noise at all as she tried to get enough breath to contemplate getting up. Another bystander and I rushed to help her. We checked to see if she was able to stand, directed the driver to move his car to the curb, and held her steady as she got to her feet. Through it all she was stoic, resistant even, wanting only to be on her way to her original destination. We tried to convince her to let us call an ambulance, to at least let the paramedics check her out. We urged her to stay and give a statement to police. She would have none of it, only promising to visit a doctor so that I’d leave her alone, and the other bystander walked her across the street and into my building where she was headed.
Meanwhile the driver continued to flip out. Through the conversation with the girl, I was also trying to calm the driver down. He stood there, screeching, “I’m sorry! Oh my God!” over and over again. It took me asking two or three times to find out if he had a cell phone. Four times I told him to call 911 while he fiddled with the phone, putting it back in his pocket and then pulling it out again. He never did place the call (no one else at the scene had a cell phone on them), and as the girl left the scene, he stood there wondering what to do.