What matters?

The Tamil lady passed away on Friday morning, 9^th 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.