About One Year Ago

This here is the text of an email I sent last year on October 18th. It recounts an incident I witnessed on the Manhattan Bridge. This morning I remembered this incident and decided to share it. The moral: Wear your helmet!

From: Ethan Fugate [mailto:ejfugate@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 1:43 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Always wear your helmet

So...I'm on my way to work this morning. Beautiful, warm, morning. I'm having a nice ride...except I notice that here and there, the surface is a little slippery--wet leaves on Clinton, metal plates all over the place--I'm thinking, be careful not to slide under a truck or something, Fugate. I get to the downhill Manhattan side of the Manhattan Bridge, which is always a nice part of the ride. You relax a little and let gravity do its work. I notice that about 100 yards in front of me is a familiar figure. It's the little old lady I see most mornings on my commute. She rides this tiny kids' bike with a bananna seat and is quite slow. I always enjoy seeing her. She's Chinese I think. You go, little old Chinese lady!

The Manhattan Bridge has two bike paths--one on the north side of the bridge and one on the south. The north path is supposed to be the bike path and the south side is the foot path. Earlier this month, they closed the north path for repairs and have redirected bikes to share the south path with pedsestrians. The south path has these metal connecting plates (I think they're connecting plates) which are curved and create a slight bump in the path. They aren't pleasant to ride over at high speeds. And this morning, one of them turned out to be treacherous for little old Chinese lady.

I'm catching up with her on the downhill and am about 30 feet behind her when she goes over one of the metal bump connectors. And then it was like watching one of those extreme video clips in slo mo. Her front tire gets out of control and turns 90 degrees, she goes over the handlebar like a rag doll, slams into the railing. I see her head head the concrete (no helmet) and then she ends up limp on the bike path. A pedestrian heading our way from about 40 feet from where we are drops her mouth and freezes.

I'm off my bike and next to her in what seems like an instant. She's face up and obviously in some kind of distress. I attempt to make a verbal assessment and ask "Are you okay? Are you okay?" The pedestrian has unfroze and starts to walk up to us. She's also of Asian descent. The old lady's eyes flutter open and then closed and then she makes this weird gurgling sound. I go to my saddle bag and get my phone to dial 911. I'm back next to the old lady and telling her she's going to be okay and trying to explain to the 911 dispatcher that no, we're not on the Brooklyn Bridge, we're on the Manhattan Bridge! about 5 times. As I'm talking to the dispatcher, I'm looking at grandma and suddenly this pool of blood starts to spread out from under her head--just like in the movies. "She's bleeding, man!" I yell into the phone and they tell me the EMTs are on the way and that I should try and stop the blood with a clean cloth.

I try to ask the pedestrian, who has stopped to gawk, whether she has any clean cloth, but she doesn't understand so...off with my outer shirt and I started applying pressure. There is so much blood. Meanwhile another cyclist stops and asks to help. I explain that I've called 911. He says "I saw a cop on the other side of the birdge. I'll go get him." and off he rides.

I'm holding the ladies hand and trying to keep her from getting up (which she does a couple of times) and trying to figure out the best way to staunch a head wound. The pool of blood is getting pretty big and I'm a little freaked out. The way that the blood had clotted in her hair made it feel like a huge flap of her scalp had been peeled off and egads it was freaky. Grandma touches my hand, which is covered in blood and then there's this point where she looks at her fingers, now covered in blood and realizes that she's bleeding. This look of terror fills her eyes and it's like her and me and I'm thinking "please don't die. please don't die little chinese lady."

A trio of joggers comes up and one of them all bossy like is "What happened?" She explains that she's a nurse practicioner and takes over. The bike cop that the cyclist went after finally arrives and now there are two folk who are more prepared for this kind of thing than me. Her two friends jog back down to the Manhattan side of the bridge to wait for the EMTs.

Nurse lady takes over. I've gotten my shirt under grandmas head as well as to apply pressure and she's like, no--don't elevate head wounds. She asks the cop for some gloves and he produces a pair of sterile gloves for her and she proceeds to examine the wound. Meanwhile, I'm still holding onto grandmas hand and trying to reassure her.

The cop takes my name and asks if I want gloves too and I hold up my bloody hands as if to say, doesn't really matter now. After what was about 5 more minutes, but something that seemed like more like an hour I spot the EMTs...fat, and casually walking up the path toward us. I mean they couldn't have walked any slower. Nurse explains to the EMTs when they finally got there. that it looks like an abrasion and that grandma's color is still good and she's responsive. I was glad to hear this. While the EMTs are wrapping up grandma's head, Nurse tells me, "Yeah. It really looked a lot worse than it is. Scalp wounds always bleed more than other wounds. It was a good thing you were here though." "But I was terrified. I thought she was dying." "Well she probably has a concussion, but you helped keep her calm. Blah blah blah." The EMTs get her on the gurney and I wave goodbye to grandma (she waves back) and then I proceed to finish my commute to work.

Moral of this story. Always wear a helmet.