Hit and Run Car Accident Causes Fatality Around Bend

The hit and run accident happened on one of those curvy roads full of potholes in Southern Spain. They were nearly at the beach when the huge lorry appeared from around a sharp bend not leaving enough room for Janet's car to pass. With a sudden turn of her steering wheel Janet veered off to the right but an unnoticed pothole made her car tip towards the ditch. The huge lorry long gone; its driver never noticed killing someone. Janet compensated by sharply turning the wheel to get back onto the road. Too sharply because the road was smooth and hot, her foot jammed on the brake, tyres squeaked, and they skidded to a BANG! CRASH into a hard clay mountain wall on the wrong side of the road!

Now Janet imagined flames blowing out of colliding cars from movies she’d seen so she quickly forced the door open with a bang of her shoulder. Must get out - get them out. Next to her on the front passenger seat, her grandmother Maria was moaning and breathing heavily. In the back her two children Sarah and Tommy were screaming in shock but apparently uninjured, safely strapped in their seat belts.

As for Janet herself, she noticed, as she got out of the car, that she was holding her left side with the right hand. She was bent over to the left and forward, like Quasimodo. Must have cracked a few ribs she thought. With an agonising pain in her side Janet quickly lifted her daughter Sarah out, stumbled around the back of the car, opened the door and pulled Tommy out. Grandmother Maria on the front seat was doubled over. The back of her seat was bent forward. Janet tried to move it back, to help Maria out, but it was stuck, she couldn't get her grandmother out. When she stepped back, Janet could see that her car had literally crunch-crashed. Its entire front was unrecognisable, like a Colley suddenly turned into a Bull Dog, smashed like that, smashed flat. Bits of bumper and glass were scattered all over the road. Water was leaking from the broken radiator.

Some workmen in uniforms and helmets rushed up towards them. One of them was already phoning the emergency services. A couple of men co-ordinated the traffic, which had began to form queues on both sides of the road. The children were holding onto Janet's skirt and crying,  calling Mummy, mummy. Janet put her hand on grandma Maria's forehead. She was moaning 'Ohhh, ohhh. Oohh...'. Janet’s sunglasses were on the floor by Maria's feet, who was conscious but in shock. Her huge eyes were rolling around like curled up caterpillars.

Within a few minutes a police bike arrived at the scene of the accident. Old Maria’s head was now somewhere near the floor by the gearbox. Janet bent down with a groan and picked up her sunglasses from between Maria's feet. A police van and an ambulance arrived. Two paramedics clumsily and briskly straightened the passenger seat, pulled Maria upright and tried to put a supporting collar around her neck.

Careless Paramedics

But Maria had no neck; she was a near hunchback at her ripe old age of 85. She appeared to be losing consciousness. In a great hurry, they dragged her off the seat, roughly plonked her onto a stretcher at ground level and, shouting ‘Move up' at the accumulating bystanders, they lifted Maria into the ambulance. The left side of Janet's body shrieked with pain as she and the children were helped into the ambulance. She held onto the front seat with her right hand to try and steady herself while the siren of the ambulance rushed them through the traffic to the nearest hospital emergency unit. No one spoke; everyone dealing with their own situation as best they could. Maria was looking up at the ceiling breathing heavily and moaning. A paramedic put an oxygen mask over her face.

At the hospital Maria was wheeled into emergency and disappeared. Janet and the children were taken to a room where a female doctor sitting behind a desk asked for her papers. She reluctantly handed over her passport wondering where and when she would get it back as she would want it when contacting the insurance company, the details of which were at home. Sarah and Tommy were a little calmer now. They looked around the clean, air-conditioned room with some delight after the trauma.

‘Where is Maria?’ Sarah asked.

‘It’s OK darling, the doctor has to take a look at her to make sure she is all right.’

The doctor gave the children a quick examination. ‘They are just suffering from shock.’ When it was Janet's turn to be examined she said: ‘I’m fine; there is nothing wrong with me. Where have they taken my grandmother? She looked distressed and in pain.
'It’s all right,’ the doctor said. 'Please sit down'.
Janet didn’t have time for this she wanted to get home to phone the insurance company to get the car towed. She was blaming herself for not carrying her insurance papers with her.
In a calmingvoice, the doctor asked her to get up so she could have a look at her. Janet stood up making sure to use her leg muscles only and, to show the doctor what was wrong with her she performed a slow motion full arm circle with her healthy right arm. When she tried to demonstrate the same movement with her left arm, she could not, it hurt too much. The doctor looked at her and said:

After endless typing of data into a computer a piece of paper screeched itself out of a printer. The doctor scribbled something illegible on the form and handed it over together with Janet’s Passport.

'You must go to the X-ray department with this note.'

But Janet did not go to X-ray. Instead, she grabbed  Tommy and Sarah's hands and walked out, through the corridor, and out of the building.

'I have to get home to phone the insurance company so they can come and tow the crashed car away. We must get back to the car. But where is Maria?'
They were standing outside in the heat, in front of the emergency entrance. Janet got out her phone to inform her husband Iain. Not wanting the children to hear, she sent a text message:

‘Come quickly to EU at hospital – accident. We are OK.’

Waiting for Iain in the shade of a huge wisteria tree in full blue bloom, Janet reflected on how lucky they had been. Maria was old but tough. She would be OK. Still holding her injured side, Janet could now see her husband’s car approaching. He stopped the car and speedily got out.

‘What happened? Are you all right? You don’t look all right. Where is Maria? Hello children.’

Iain crouched down and gently hugged them both in one embrace. ‘Tell me what happened.’

The children began both talking at once.

‘Mummy drove into a wall.’ Sarah said.

‘She broke the car’ Tommy shouted.

‘OK, get into my car and wait for me.’

He opened the doors, helped Janet onto the front passenger seat and strapped the children into the back.

‘I am going to find out how Maria is doing. I’ll be back in a minute,’ Iain said as he walked away towards the self opening glass doors of the accident and emergency unit.

While they were waiting Janet suggested a game of “I spy with my little eye.” The game they always played when the children had to be kept quiet in the car. When it was Sarah’s turn she said:

‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with... “S”.’

‘Sssssss.....tupid!’ Tommy shouted.

‘No.’

‘I give up,’ Janet said.

‘OK, my word is: “sad”. Why do you look so sad mummy?’

Iain came rushing back and got into the car.

'They are doing tests. They’ll phone me when they know the results. Let’s go home.’ And they drove off.

‘We must get back to my car,’ Janet sighed, leaning forward while protecting her ribcage against the bumps in the road. ‘We must get back to the site of the accident. I’ll show you where it is.’

The whole scene had expanded. There were now many more people standing around, several police vans and other cars. A police officer asked Janet to follow him. He beckoned her into a police van with its sliding doors open. Janet told the children to go and stand with their father and wait for her.

Janet could not get up into the police van so the officer climbed in first and pulled her up by her right hand. Ouch! She flopped onto the seat with a stinging pain in her left side. There was a computer ready to take her statement. She moved herself as best she could onto the shady part of the seat and again, handed over her I.D. papers.

While the officer sat down, arranging some papers, another policeman climbed into the van carrying a breathalyser. Janet had never been breathalysed before. She shook her finger.

'Alcohol? No, no alcohol.'

The policeman nevertheless gave her a piece of white plastic tubing to unwrap from a cellophane bag and asked her to put it into her mouth and breathe. No, the other way round. Oh, OK. Janet breathed as best she could but her ribs were hurting. He took the tube out of her mouth and mimicked that she should breathe deeper, stronger, and harder. OK I'll try again. This time she took a deep quivering in-breath before blowing through the tube. As she was blowing, the policeman was moving his fingers rapidly towards himself.

'More, more.'

When she ran completely out of breath he said,

Meanwhile Iain had put all the bags from the back of the crashed car into his car and was distracting the children while they waited for the interrogation to finish.
Next question:
'What speed were you driving at?'
'Sixty? (kmph)' she lied. Janet must have been driving at least at 70, she had been feeling confident, happy. She had been in a gay mood and her driving must have reflected that until that lorry had come at her from around the corner. The policeman clearly felt sorry for her because she was crying and holding her side at a crooked angle and rocking a little to help her breathe for some reason.

'Were you wearing a seat belt?' Janet nodded affirmatively.

'Was the lady passenger wearing one as well?' He asked nodding himself for Janet.

'Yes, yes, my grandmother as well' Janet reassured him.

‘I need to get home to phone the insurance people.’
Iain’s phone rang. He moved aside and answered it. Then he slowly stepped towards Janet and whispered:

‘Look, they just phoned from the hospital. Maria is dead; she died just five minutes ago.' He wrapped his arms around Janet's shoulders.

'No, NO, NNNOOOO! She repeatedly screamed with tears pouring out of her eyes now releasing emotions of guilt, inadequacy, sorrow, shame and anger and at last she could now allow herself to cry out loudly over the increasing pain in her chest and ribs at every breath she took. She stood there crying with her head leaning against Iain’s chest. When their eyes connected he hugged her harder.

‘Ouch!’

‘Oh, sorry darling.’

‘I killed her, I killed her,’ Janet was crying.

‘Don’t be silly, stop that. It is not your fault.'

Iain gently guided his wife around the car to the passenger seat and closed the door. He strapped the children into their seat belts in the back and, brushing his forehead he sat down in the driver seat with a positive:

'Let's go home.'