How Bad Can It Get?

             I had been working on cleaning the third truck for about thirty minutes when the telephone rang. It was a nice spring day, so I had the door to the office propped open while we were outside working. I ran inside to answer the telephone and while I was helping the customer on the phone, I noticed that the truck was beginning to roll. I ran to the door, and just as I ran outside I saw the right side rear wheels of the truck bounce up, and Joshua was lying on the pavement. The truck continued rolling across the street and stopped in a bunch of wooded brush. It was around 5:00 pm and traffic was very heavy on Pratt Road.

            I ran toward Joshua as fast as I possibly could. His body tensed up as it jerked a couple of times and rolled towards me. When I got to him I checked for his pulse and could not find one; he wasn’t breathing, either. His eyes were wide open, and it looked as though I could see miles into those clear blue eyes. There was a terrible rattling sound coming from his chest and absolutely no movement from him. I quickly ran back inside the office and grabbed my cordless phone and then rushed back outside to where he was lying in the driveway. I kept trying to call 911 but for some reason I wasn’t able to get a dial tone on my cordless phone. I just dropped the phone and ran back inside to use a corded phone that was mounted on the wall behind the sales counter. I finally got connected with 911 and told them that my son had been run over by a truck and was hurt very badly. They placed me on hold while they put me through to the ambulance company. I kept screaming into the phone, “My son is dying; I don’t want to hold.”

            I rushed back outside to where he was lying in the driveway. By now several cars had stopped in front of my business, and someone had started CPR on Joshua. It seemed like no time before I started hearing police and fire department sirens in the distance. Within minutes the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department had arrived and deputies had taken over performing CPR on Joshua. The Arch Street Fire Department had also arrived and their paramedics had begun to work on Joshua as well, but he was still lifeless and his lips were beginning to turn blue. I knew from my own experiences in life that the worst possible thing that could have happened to him had already occurred. All I could do was cry out, “Oh my God, my baby, oh my God, my baby.”

            Within a few minutes things were really beginning to get crazy, and there were people everywhere. Joshua’s mother had arrived, along with some other members of my family. I didn’t know how any of them could possibly know what was happening.  The sheriff’s department had stopped the flow of traffic and the paramedics with MEMS ambulance had arrived and there were many people working frantically to save him. There were also quite a few bystanders watching this terrible tragedy unfold. I remember that there were a couple of preachers that were there and they were trying to console me.  Several television stations had already begun filming the accident scene and they were interviewing people who might have seen what happened. Sheriff’s Deputies were searching for a place to land the med-flight helicopter that was on the way. There was still no movement from Joshua as the paramedics frantically continued to try and revive him.   As these moments passed, it seemed as if my life was moving in slow motion and that I had no control over what was occurring.