The first car flashed its headlights at me twice. In the middle of the Utah desert, between the small towns of Monticello and Moab, I could think of only three reasons for this. One, there was a policeman waiting ahead to pull over speeders--in which case I was fine, as I was hauling a load of rocks and sand and in no position to be speeding. I was getting just over 9 miles to the gallon as it was. Two, there could be wildlife on the road. But it was nearing twelve o'clock noon, and most animals are bedded down by then, particularly out in the hot sands of the Utah desert. Three--and the thing I dreaded--was a wreck in the road ahead.
When the second car flashed its lights, my wife suggested that maybe something was falling apart on my truck. That would have been no suprise, as I had already had three automotive issues while in Arizona, two of those fairly traumatic.
But then I saw the vehicles pulled over to the shoulder maybe a half mile ahead, and people running across the road. It was then I knew my EMT training was about to be called upon. But I could still pray I was wrong . . .
As I neared the chaotic scene near the crest of the hill on Highway 191, I saw the remains of a Chevy Tahoe lying upside down in the orange sand down about thirty feet down a rock and sank embankment. For many years, I have kept a pair of surgical gloves from my work at the Pocatello, Idaho Fire Department in a compartment in my door. Until this day I had only used them once. I pulled to the shoulder, grabbed my gloves and one way breathing mask and headed across the road, where I saw an elderly man covered profusely in blood, being held in a sitting position beside the remains of his vehicle. There were possibly ten onlookers milling around, but other than the one nearest the victim none seemed busy with aiding anyone from the vehicle. When I asked, "What do we have?" all I received in answer were blank stares.
Getting on my knees in the glass-strewn sand, I could see a pair of tennis shoes and khaki pants protruding from the front seat area of the vehicle, and I heard those God-sent words, "I'm a paramedic." Until then, going by sheer odds, I was betting that I was the only other medically trained person on scene. I was never much happier to hear three words in my life.
It turned out "Peter," who lives in Cortez, Colorado and works sometimes in, of all strange places to which to commute, Alaska, was heading southbound and home when he came upon the scene of the crash. He had already pulled the old fellow, whom I will refer to as "George," from his partially ejected place near the driver's window of the vehicle. Peter was now in the act of holding George's wife up, quite literally, in the front passenger seat--and she was upside down!
Peter, also quite obviously relieved when I told him I was a Pocatello firefighter and EMT, told me he had done a brief once-over of George and that he found no major damage, just a lot of surface abrasions and torn skin, most of it on his head. Head wounds are notorious for copious amounts of blood, and Peter's analysis fit what I had seen at a glance and set my mind at ease.
However, his wife, whom I will call Carol, was a different story. Peter had been forced to release her seatbelt because in the position she was in, hanging upside down, it had been compromising her airway. However, because of the horrible nature of the crash, the condition of the vehicle, whose passenger side roof was caved to within inches of the bottom of the window, he did not want to risk pulling her roughly out of the vehicle. So, by some miracle I don't understand even now, Peter, who lay on his left side, had his right arm foreward, holding up Carol's entire body weight so that she didn't fall down and possibly injure her neck worse than it might already have been. Other than the sheer power of God and a good dose of adrenaline, I don't know to this day how Peter had this kind of strength, but he managed to hold Carol in that upside down seated position for the entire fifteen or twenty minutes of this rescue.
I learned that at this point Carol was still coherent and could answer questions, which judging by the condition of the vehicle and the launch it had taken down into this gully was nothing short of amazing. Peter's main concern was the strong smell of gasoline and an eerie hissing coming from inside the engine compartment. I tried to help him by getting on the passenger side of the vehicle to hold Carol up, but access on that side was impossible, even though I got down in the glass on my side and tried to reach up inside. Peter was thus left to his own devices, with my prayers that his strength would hold out.
We had one small fire extinguisher on the scene, which a passing semi truck driver had brought down, and I managed to roundup another one when a passing car containing another EMT, a beautiful Hispanic woman, arrived. I don't really know how beautiful she was, but when I learned we had a third EMT she sure looked beautiful!! Probably about the same way that my voice had sounded beautiful to Peter when I said the word "EMT," if you can understand that.
I had the newcomer hold traction on George's head, so he couldn't move around and injure himself worse, as I tried to get the bleeding stopped on his arms and face. Bless his heart, all George cared about was Carol, and he kept on asking about her welfare. Peter seemed to take this repeated questioning as a sign of a head injury, but I could see into George's face when he was asking, and it was nothing but genuine concern for his bride.
I know now the vast feeling of relief that comes with the sound of a distant siren. As the rescue trucks and police officers began to arrive from Monticello and Moab, I was flooded with a sense of gratitude to God for saving these people. Then two ambulances arrived, and my relief was double. I stayed to help in the packaging of George, because, bless their hearts, the EMT's on the ambulance had apparently not had a whole lot of experience in that arena, and they gladly let me continue my work.
We got George on a stretcher, a collar protecting his neck, spider strapped him on, then with six people managed to get him up the slick sandstone embankment to the first ambulance. My EMT angle was at his head, and I held one hand behind her back and one hand on the backboard, in case she slipped and fell on the very dangerous rocks, which she had already done once while pulling George onto the board. This entire time, George's only concern was that they not take him away until his sweetheart was also packaged and ready to go.
As the ambulances finally rolled away, I thought back to a decision I had made a half hour earlier, and suddenly I realized that God had sent me a message, and inadvertently I had heeded it. You see, for twenty years I had been driving this highway, pretty much every March. And every March I had been passing this monolith of red and yellow sandstone whose name I don't know even now. It stands a sentinel out in the sage and sand, grazed about by red and black cattle. At its base is a black hole, which for all of these years I have believed was a cave. But this monolith of rock stands far out in the desert, five hundred yards from the road behind a padlocked gate. And every year when I pass it I am generally in a hurry to get back home, and other than stopping behind the gate for a photo now and then I simply admire it and hurry on.
Today, however, something--or someONE--had said, "Go get a closer look. Go see the cave. Get close and personal." This year is possibly the last year I will take this annual trek to Arizona with my oldest son, Jacob, and I have spent a week of mixed emotions with him, my wife and son Matthew because of that. So although we were already two days behind schedule, my wife and I both decided to go behind the locked gate this time, to walk out and see what this cave at the base of the monolith was all about.
As it turns out, it is a hole that has been blasted there by man. You can still see the drill marks for the placement of the dynamite. It is a ten foot high, fifteen feet wide, fifteen feet deep hole. Nothing more. At one time it may have bene used to store hay. Now it stands empty, and it is a place for passing dreamers and lovers to carve their hearts and their names. But at least I knew, at last. And more importantly, I had delayed my progress--or someone Whose power is far beyond mine had delayed it--just long enough for the wreck to have happened shortly before my arrival. Incidentally, it turned out that George had fallen asleep, probably three hundred yards before the final resting place of his Tahoe, and taken out a whole line of reflector posts, leaving vehicle parts strewn all along the way.
But both George and Carol were fine, when I last saw them, and I have every reason to believe they remain so to this day. Thank heaven for Paramedic Peter and his superhuman strength, and thank God for making my curiosity get the better of me, so that I decided after twenty years to see that hole in the rock.
I think, in honor of George and Carol, I am going to name it for myself: Lucky Rock.
