DOA

January wrapped its frigid arms around us. We raised our thick, woolen collars to keep her breath from slithering down our necks. The patrol wagon’s windows still held the winter’s icy visage outwardly while our materialized breath steamed their insides.

I had been on the job less than a month. I was assigned to Fort and Green AKA 4th Precinct. The precinct was an olio of communities each one disconsolately isolated from the other. This night, we were assigned area 10, which is where the FHA built segregated housing for African Americans in the shadow of Ford’s River Rouge plant at that time the largest assembly plant in the world.

We were assigned a wagon because the year was 1969 and the first class of EMT’s was not yet EMT’s. They were in the jungles of Vietnam and Laos, pulling teenage boys and young men out of firefights, lifting them like they were, tender damaged youths, into the bowels of helicopters racing them to surgeries and, the less fortunate, plastic bags.

We were policemen who also had the job of hauling the injured to hospitals as quickly as possible.

After roll call, we headed out of the station’s parking lot to the area 10. We had to cross a bridge that spanned the Rouge plant stretching at least 1 and ½ miles. Unfortunately, the engineers did not anticipate that there would be accidents along this span so there were no points where emergency vehicles could cross over its hard divide.

As soon as we were on the bridge, the radio squawked the details of a collision on the bridge without indicating which side. As luck would have it, the accident was on the other side of the bridge. By the time we made the turn around, at least 5 minutes had elapsed. We had passed by the scene as we rushed to get there. I noted that there were two cars involved.

Finally, we arrived. Imagine our surprise to see a head-on collision. One of the drivers entered the bridge going the wrong way. Immediately, we called for back up. There were two unconscious men, neither had any passengers.

We had to dislodge driver A from his car. He had suffered what I came to learn was the head-on collision syndrome. His knees were wedged against the dashboard. His hands were locked on the steering wheel while the steering column had lunged from its fixed place slamming into his sternum. He couldn’t help us because he was dead. I remember his blue eyes seemed blankly aware. He seemed, as warmth from his body rose as dissipating steam, still stunned by the abruptness of his irretrievable absence.

Although he had obviously been killed in the accident, we had to free his carcass, strap him to a stretcher and rush him to Detroit Receiving Hospital because we did not have to power to pronounce anyone dead. If we were certain (like, say, had he been decapitated) we would call the coroner, tape off the area, close the freeway ramp, wait hours for the coroner and then return to the precinct and do tons of paper work. My partner, a veteran of some years, rejected that option and packed the corpse into our wagon. He reasoned: whose hurt by this decision?

We arrived at the hospital and rushed the cooling corpse into the ER. The head nurse looked at us with something a little more than disgust. She knew and understood my partner’s logic.

This was my first death on the job. I had pulled, tugged, bent and otherwise contorted this man. I had handled a dead person for the first time in my life. Now a nurse and I went through his pockets, his wallet, counted his money. We both signed the book and the envelope.

I can still see the pictures of his wife and family, all smiles despite the horrific nature of his death. He was probably in his early forties driving home from work or running an errand for his wife. The other, drunken and, according to the accident investigation report, likely suicidal driver had changed directions each time our victim attempted to steer his vehicle away from the wrong way driver.

Death jumped out of the cold and grabbed him. No illnesses. Business still unsettled. His toothbrush, hair pomade, his underwear, the half finished bottle of Jack Daniels still in the desk drawer in his study; all of the detritus of a life in progress, a life planned, snatched by a man drunk and intent on dying.

This was the most disturbing suicide by auto. Most of those who choose to commit suicide by auto find bridge abutments, burly trees, or brick walls (the least reliable of the three). These were sad but not angering. To kill in order to die seemed particularly evil.

I had seen death interrupt lives before but this was the first time I was invited to the slow dance of its recognition. I felt remorse for the dead stranger. His invitation came with clarity that had to be surprising while he steered frantically to avoid it, to wave off the invitation with a few incredulous curse words, maybe throw him the middle finger while damning his mother for carrying him to term. He did not want to die. He wanted to go home. Sip some Jack, kiss the wife and spank the kids. Now he laid outstretch on a blood soaked gurney waiting for the iceman to pack him in with the others who were  no more.