It had been an exhausting day full of financial Q3 reports to aggregate & analyse after a very early alarm clock and the weekly long & delayed trainride to Amsterdam. "Just a quick meal, one dish, I am going to return to the hotel quickly" , I had warned my colleague who joined me for dinner, while I guided him to an area with multiple little restaurants where I go more often.
While we look inside to check if there's free tables, we hear a big bang and right in front of us I see an older lady smacking down on the street while a scooter and its rider are rolling down the sidewalk towards us.
Instinctively I run immediately towards the lady while I didn't notice anymore that the bike was sliding dangerously close towards us. Fuck fuck, I need to do first aid, what do I do? Other people were yelling to phone an ambulance and the 112 emergency number so I knew that was taken care off. Silly enough I remembered very well the introduction sentence, learned in my emergency first response course, which seemed pretty unusefull at the moment and also the fact that I did not have any plastic gloves on me to put on as we had drilled in that course and which importance I had found rather exaggerated.
The lady was inresponsive and making weird scary gorgling sound while her mouth seemed to hang a bit. I really feared she had a serious head injury, but didn't dare to lift or turn her head. All I could, dared or thought of doing was touching her cheeks and talking non-stop to her in different languages, asking if she could hear me & that help was on its way. It was pretty scary and I was cursing for the ambulances to come faster. Other people came to cover her with some coats, which made me feel so guilty for not thinking of that. I should have known to protect her from shock. All of a sudden a girl stopped on her bike, telling she was a doctor so I was relieved to let her take over from me. The lady just became a bit more concious.
While retreating back to the sidewalk, I could see the man from the scooter was also back on his feet, looking very confused and appearing to want to drive off...which triggered multiple people to take pictures of him & his number plate but in the end they convinced him to take the offered chair from the restaurant to sit down again with a little blanket on his shoulder. Than I realised I was standing next to the ladies husband, who stared silently to all the fuss around him.
Much to my relief the lady started asking repeatedly if we could check where her green purse was. Thank goodness she was asking for a green purse which we found under the pile of coats on her...it gave me a relief that she was concious & less confused by the time the ambulances arrived. The sound of the sirens approaching has never been so welcoming and there was probably 5 to 10 of us waving them closer when they turned into the street. I noticed very clearly that the police spent the first minute on site putting on...yes, plastic gloves :p
We stood by very uselessly for a while on the sidewalk watching both victims being taken care off by the ambulance personnel , not certain if we were required to stay as witnesses but the police didn't seem very interested in our story, having plenty of restaurant people as good witnesses. After all the coat owners had been identified and coats, chairs & blankets returned where they came from, we went in pretty shaken up to force ourselves to have a small meal even though we had no appetite for food.
And now I wonder how the lady, her husband and the scooter rider are doing? Are they still in the hospital?
I could have offered the husband to phone somebody but only thought of that when going to bed. Some man gave the husband a business card with the question to give him an update later....probably the least of the worries the husband had at that moment. Oh well, everyone really tried to help and that was nice to notice in such a situation. I wish the 3 victims all the best.
