The Tamil lady
passed away on Friday morning, 9th November 2012, in Sultanah Amirah
Hospital in Johor Bahru. She had been hit by a motor cyclist while crossing a
busy road the day before, on Thursday morning, a stone’s throw away from our organisation’s local office. At the time of the accident a group of colleagues and I
had walked briskly to the scene of the road side accident. Another colleague
had in fact partially observed the accident from the office window; several of
us had heard the sound of the impact of the motorcycle on the lady’s body, that
unforgettable thud noise. Later it was reported how the body had been thrown some
distance due to the impact, had been almost bounced along like a rubber doll.
She was
bleeding badly when we arrived road side. It was unclear from where the blood
was coming. Possibly the side of her face, but there was blood oozing from her
mouth and nose as well. She appeared to be breathing, and occasionally breathed
more awkwardly as if feeling the pain more acutely. An arm was broken, and I later
learned from her relatives at the hospital that in fact she had also broken her
hip bone and her leg. Her condition roadside was critical. I lay beside her stroking
her shoulder, checking on her breathing, occasionally offering comforting words,
a part of me terrified that I might have to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
We had placed her in the recovery position, but with all those broken bones,
perhaps in retrospect, such movement had only made the trauma all the more
worse. What else could we have done? An ambulance had been called, but seemed
to be taking an interminably long time to get there. There was in fact a much
closer private hospital nearby, but this lady would be a government hospital
patient, and would have to wait for her transport to the hospital in a more
distant part of town.
When the ambulance
finally arrived, maybe half an hour or more after the collision, the staff
seemed hesitant about the scene before them. They were slow in their application
of a neck and arm support and clumsy it seemed in positioning the limp body on
the mobile stretcher, a body which was then shunted into the back of the ambulance
vehicle in a rough sliding motion. There seemed an absence of compassion at the
scene, these ‘medical’ men, nay boys, just doing their job, picking up the body
and transporting it to the hospital. I wondered what level of training they might
have had. It appeared quite minimal.
I was troubled
that I had been weak and ineffective at the roadside, and I felt ashamed that
in my mind at least I was hesitant and nervous at the prospect of having to do something
more demonstrable to try to save this lady’s life. Every time the lady appeared
to stop breathing I was afraid that this was going to be my moment to give
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and I was not at all sure if I was able or up to the
task, even though eighteen months previous I had undertaken an Emergency First Response
(EFR) course. I scolded myself for my shallow recall of what needed to be done
in this situation.
That night at
home I watched again my EFR videos and hoped that I might be a little better prepared
if there was a next time and I found myself in such an emergency situation.
The following
day at work we reflected on the inadequacy – at least by western standards - of
the emergency response services here in Malaysia. ‘Life seems quite cheap’ was
a comment banded around. Why had the woman tried to cross such a busy road? Why
had she not walked a little further along and used the over pass? Why was she running?
Why and how had the motor cyclist not seen her? Had he been travelling too fast?
To his credit - poor man in a state of shock - he had accompanied the Tamil lady
to the hospital in the ambulance. I wonder what will happen to him now, now
that the Tamil lady has died from her injuries brought on by him, or at least
his motorcycle. Is he to blame? Will it be a charge of manslaughter against him?
What a tragedy. What a waste of a life.
What really matters?
God rest her
soul, rest in peace, battered woman. I pray your family grieve well and learn
from your accident and death, if at all possible.