Picking up the pieces of life's traumas

Impact.

Early morning quiet. Odd and disturbingly peaceful. No traffic. The road is closed because earlier traffic was too fast, too careless, dangerous, and possibly criminal.

Fatal.

Firefighter brothers and sisters provide light that cuts the night. Fellow coppers have your back at each end of the scene until you’re done reconstructing what happened. If you’re lucky, you have others to bounce ideas off of … what and when are easily figured. The who follows, but not always completely.

How – that’s the calculated challenge. Why, forever unanswered.

With cops, firefighters, EMS on hand, even curious onlookers, scenes have solitude, moments. Death contemplated. A silent prayer over an innocent taken, their body left behind. There’s an edge of anger. Someone was wrong. You wonder what could have been prevented.

Hazards are everywhere. There’s crumbled glass, twisted metal, plastic shards, bloodied upholstery, spilled gas, slick oil; and evidence in pavement gouges, skid marks, scraped curbing, telltale debris and deep damage. Shattered lives are also on scene, and elsewhere – some unknowingly await notifications – others already on edge at the hospital. Strangers’ lives intersected, impacted by literal collision.

Tow trucks arrive. Work for some. Tragedy and grief for others. Trauma for all. Everyone picks up their respective pieces.

Some in an instant. Others, forever.