City life

Today, I saw a person get hit by a car, a car leaving the side street I was approaching. There is no way to describe the sickness, the panic, the utter horror and devastation felt in my soul when I realised in my brain what I had just seen. My eyes knew immediately, but it took my brain a second to wrap itself around the concept -- that what the young driver had hit and slammed on his brakes about was not a bird, not a squirrel, but a human being, an 11 year old boy wearing a blue and white basketball jersey. When I first saw the twisted bike under the car, I thought it was a stroller and felt like I'd been punched in the stomach by Mike Tyson and I couldn't breathe. We pulled over to call 911, but by the time my aunt had gotten her cellphone out of her bag, there were already two other people on their cellphones. I wonder how the little boy is doing now, at the hospital, and I wonder how the driver is -- how he's coping with the fact that he hit a human. I wonder if his hands are shaky, if his whole body feels all quivery the way mine still is.