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Topic: Rain (09/07/04)
TITLE: Blood And Rain By Lucian Thompson 09/13/04 |
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“509, go ahead Dispatcher.”
“509, respond to the 6000 block of Kellam Road, you have an accident, car in the ditch.”
“10-4, Dispatcher, I’m en route.”
Well, here I go again! Every time it rains some fool has to drive like a bat-out-of-Hades and wind up killing himself, or worse, some innocent victim. Why don’t people realize that driving the speed limit during a heavy rainfall is hazardous to their health?
As I turned right off Virginia Beach Boulevard onto Kellam Road, my hands tightened on the wheel and my stomach began to churn. That, oh-so-familiar feeling, swept over me like a cold chill. I pulled to a stop and radioed my arrival to the Dispatcher and quickly ran to an overturned car in the ditch on the opposite side of the road.
Smoke was spiraling from the hood and the right front tire was slowly turning like a spindle top. The horn was blaring an eerie, low sound like a foghorn moaning off shore. The rain had eased up to a sprinkle and everything seemed to glisten in the low light of the mercury vapor street light on the far corner. I looked down into the front passenger seat area and no one was there. Shining my flashlight in the rear seat area revealed the same thing.
No one seemed to be around, not even the person who called in the accident! I walked around the car, up and down the ditch, nothing. Where’s the driver? What’s going on here?
“509 to Dispatcher, I can’t locate the driver or anyone for that matter. Who called in this accident?”
“509, the caller didn’t give their name.”
“10-4 Dispatcher, better start a wrecker.”
I guess some yahoo ran off the road in the rain, and walked home. Probably had a little too much to drink and didn’t want to be found with his car. The left front of the car was badly damaged. While shining my flashlight in that area to assess the damage, the light reflected off something under the mud.
“Wait…what is that? Is that something in the ditch under the wheel of the car? Oh, no…oh, no…Dispatcher, send me an ambulance, stat!”
I got down in the rain-filled ditch on my hands and knees and pulled the weeds back to reveal a woman’s head barely visible from under the twisted metal of the fender. She was a bloody, gory mess. I felt her neck and was surprised to get a faint pulse.
“Oh, Lord! Please help me get this lady out of this ditch alive! Oh, God, please!”
It wasn’t much of a prayer, but I was calling out to the God I knew from my youth. I knew that if this woman was to live, God had to do something.
As I was trying to get the woman out from under the car, the wrecker driver appeared. I instructed him to hook his wrecker to the front of the car and lift it enough for me to extract the woman, which he accomplished quickly and skillfully.
I was able to pull the lady from under the wreckage and up onto the side of the road. In the light of the wrecker, I could see that the woman was actually a young teenage girl. She had multiple contusions and lacerations on her face, head, shoulders, and arms, and her right shoulder appeared to be broken.
When the car hit the ditch, the teen was catapulted out the side window into the ditch and the car continued to roll over her. Her life was spared by the wheel embedding in the ditch bank, keeping the weight of the car off her.
The paramedics arrived and stabilized the young lady, then transported her to the hospital. The wrecker pulled the mangled car from the ditch and drove off.
As the rain began to fall heavily again, I stood there in the darkness, soaked in blood and rain. My mind was numb.
The heavy rain caused the inexperienced driver to run off the road and severely injury herself. Sometimes we let the trials of life inundate us so that we lose control of our lives and go off the road. God is calling us back to Him. Don’t let the rain of inexperience catapult you under its heavy burden. Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2Ti 2:15.