yikes

Last night I saw my first dead body.

I was driving home about 2:30 in the morning after an evening out with the lads and I was nearing my house. I came upon an rolled-over pickup that looks to have run off the paralleling highway.

I was the second vehicle to stop and try to render assistance. There was a husband and wife there before me. The husband was on his phone with 911 telling them to get asses there right now while his wife was knocking on the passenger-side window and trying to get the driver's attention. he was unresponsive. I got my flashlight out and we started to look inside.

All I could see was the driver's arm and side of his head. There was a sizable pool of blood in the ceiling area of the cab. The steering column and dash looked to be pinning him in in conjunction with his seatbelt. About three minutes after I showed up other people stopped as well. One guy promptly kicked the window out and reached inside. he tried to wake the driver up by shouting and shaking him (while taking care about possible head or spine injuries). he then checked for a pulse and couldn't find one. The guy was certainly no doctor, but the driver did look (from my kinda-distant vantage point) pretty much gone.

The cops appeared right about then. Since none of us actually saw the accident happen we were all asked to leave the scene. We went.

I got home and came to the realization that I was in a 'keyed-up' state of mild shock. Next I realized that I didn't have much of an emotional response to the fact that I just saw an ended human life.

The wife of the pair that was there before me was bawling her eyes out just before we all left, but here I was not feeling anything more than mild jitters. I know that I'm a little on the emotionally distant side, but am I really that cold? I sure hope not.