Fifty

I turned 50 this weekend.

It was a profound experience for unexpected reasons. A Friday evening celebration with dear friends had just wound down. Dishes were washed and the clean-up was complete. Older daughter Elizabeth was off in downtown Rochester with college friends celebrating a mini-reunion as they were home for Thanksgiving. As seniors, they were able to enjoy themselves as adults. All had returned from schools across the country. Younger daughter Christina arrived at home with a few carloads of friends just in time to re-open all the containers of leftover Chinese food from my birthday party. Frying pans were produced, plates were piled high and kids were gathering around the kitchen island. Laura and I smiled at each other knowing that the third major meal of two days was about to be served. We loved the chance to play host again, even at midnight. Christina was just six months from finishing high school and the days of hosting carloads of friends were numbered. All good.

The phone rang and suddenly everything changed in the buzz of the kitchen. Christina checked the caller ID and saw that it was Elizabeth’s cell phone. Christina picked up, listened for a second and then spun toward Laura—

“It’s something really bad”

She thrust the phone to my wife. The kitchen began to quiet as Laura tried to make sense of the screaming she was hearing from Elizabeth on the phone.

It was that phone call no parent ever wants to get.

Laura ran to the room adjoining the kitchen to try to hear better. Elizabeth was hysterical. Laura’s voice was instantly panicked. Elizabeth was screaming, I could hear it from where I was standing a few feet away, trying to search my wife’s eyes. There was something about an accident and some fragmentary phrases about Chris being hit and Austin being hit. We knew these were names of two of Elizabeth’s friends but Laura was trying to make sense of the hysteria. Within 10 seconds it was clear that there had been a terrible car accident and her friends were hurt, and that Elizabeth was near a familiar storefront along Broadway in downtown Rochester.

“Dad will come find you- he’ll be right there. He’ll find you!”

My coat was on and I was in my car before I could think. As I sped down the street I was praying and I was telling myself to drive carefully to avoid creating some other disaster. Within five minutes I was rounding the turn onto South Broadway. Something caught in my throat as I saw the flashing lights along the street ahead, vehicles converging from all directions even as I pulled into a nearby lot and jumped out of the car. I ran the block along Broadway as ambulances pulled up beside me.

A war zone. As I approached the corner, rescue vehicles with flashing lights were screeching into position. Sirens were screaming. It was a cold crisp midnight. The sidewalk was lit by streetlights. I ran to the curb and the hysteria of the scene was unavoidable—bystanders and young women were literally screaming and crying. There was debris on the pavement. A body lay motionless on the sidewalk ahead, thrown unimaginably far from the street. Another lay against the curb, bent unnaturally.

I got to the corner and saw Elizabeth running toward me in anguish. She screamed to me just one word

“Dad!!!??”

Her scream echoed in the street. It was a single word carrying a thousand emotions, part desperate cry for help, and part questioning plea. I ran right to her and took her in my arms, holding her tight. She was sobbing and frantic and shivering and crying. My tears began to flow. Even in the midst of this chaotic hell in a street in a small Minnesota city my mind flashed to the gospel passage where Jesus cried in anguish as he watched the hopeless sorrow of those who mourned for Lazarus. Humans suffer. Christ knew all about it. He knows all about it. Still, he cried as he experienced it.

A war zone. Elizabeth dragged me to the edge of the curb where she had just been holding the hand of her friend, Chris, where he lay on the cold pavement. A coat had been placed across his body. A small pool of blood was in the gutter. I had met Chris two days before as he stood laughing with Elizabeth in our front entry. Chris was now conscious but in great pain, crying out for help, trying to find a way to stay warm, and moaning about how much it hurt. His cries were haunting. The sound of his voice and the anguish rose above the noises in the street, mixed with the screams and sobs of the girls gathered nearby. Elizabeth was still frantic—wanting to help her friend, wanting to run away, wanting to comfort the girls with her. She turned to me and screamed that she had heard everything, that they had been hit in the crosswalk right behind her, just after she reached the curb.

“Dad I heard the sound! I can’t get it out of my head!”

A war zone. I kept trying to come to terms with the contradiction of college kids celebrating the Friday night after Thanksgiving in a quiet town where not enough usually happens, now in the midst of a kind of hell.

I held Elizabeth and looked around me. I began to realize that I knew all these faces. The women crying and anxiously running along the sidewalk were Elizabeth’s childhood friends, girls I had known for years, girls whose elementary school field trips I had chaperoned, girls who had been in our home many times. They were all now beautiful young women in a nightmare. Stephanie had witnessed the entire accident ahead of her in the crosswalk. She was finishing her description to a police officer and she was trying to be brave. Kristine was screaming and throwing up, helped by another crying girl. Lydia was in tears pointing down the sidewalk to where Austin’s body lay, surrounded by a growing team of paramedics. Michelle dashed up, just alerted by a cell phone call. Their friend Luke paced back and forth between the two bodies on the ground.

The paramedics moved quickly to get Austin onto a body board. He was strapped down and stabilized as I saw them lift him gently into the ambulance. His body was still, eyes closed. He had been intubated but not ventilated. I prayed that he was breathing on his own. I also felt that terrible ambivalence, knowing that his silence was ominous but easier to bear than the sound of Chris suffering and calling out from the pavement.

A war zone. Stephanie had been brave. Finishing with the officer in the cold light of the storefront, she turned to us and locked eyes with Elizabeth. In a second her face melted into sobs as the two girls rushed together in an anguished embrace, crying uncontrollably even as the air was filled with sirens and wails and the calls of pain.

It was horrific.

I threw my coat to Kristine who was sobbing nearby, her jacket having been placed across Chris’ body in the street. I reached my arms around both Elizabeth and Stephanie wanting in all the world to hug them so tightly that it would all just go away. I was crying. Before I knew it I was praying out loud, calling out to God for help amidst the chaos. I prayed for mercy and protection for Chris and Austin, and that the doctors would be able to help them quickly. I prayed that somehow God would be honored on this terrible night.

The ambulance sped off with Austin. Chris moaned as a body board was slipped beneath him. Stephanie looked at me and sobbed that she couldn’t believe what she had seen—that the boys’ bodies had been tossed as if they were weightless. Michelle and I exchanged glances.

“Chris is talking—it’s a good sign”

We tried to comfort each other with his consciousness. I was so afraid that he might have internal injuries.

A war zone. Kristine’s coat and cell phone were left in the street near the puddle of blood. More squad cars arrived and crime scene tape was stretched between light poles and debris circled with spray paint. A few blocks up Broadway another array of flashing lights betrayed that further carnage had been wrought just seconds after this hit-and-run. We later learned that the same driver had collided with two more pedestrians, critically injuring both, dragging one on the car.

As Chris was loaded into the second ambulance, Kristine’s mom arrived. Kristine’s face captured the frantic torturous reality as she ran in tears to her mother. The entire scene could not have been more heartbreaking.

These are the sounds and images that moms and dads would die to prevent from reaching the ears and eyes of sons and daughters.

Elizabeth and I ran to our car. She was shivering and crying. We sped off to the emergency room along with the ambulances. Groups of friends were assembling. One of the guys had called to make sure the parents of Chris and Austin were reached. Within a few minutes Austin’s family members began to arrive, and were taken immediately back to the ER treatment area. Chris’ family members waited with us in the lobby. I felt sick knowing that Austin’s situation appeared much worse. As the minutes turned to hours, I caught the eye of a familiar ER doc and we learned that Chris’ vital signs were stable. The doctor also winced, saying that it was a bad night in the ER, with six critical cases, four resulting from the same hit-and-run driver. That was the first we had learned of the extent of the accidents.

I met Pat and Peggy, Chris’ parents. They were amazingly calm. When they were finally called back to see their son, they thoughtfully returned to the ER lobby, frequently updating the circle of friends that waited. Chris had broken bones in the leg and arm, but he was stable. It was 2 AM. Elizabeth looked at me and I could tell that she wasn’t leaving the hospital until she had seen and spoken to her friend. When it got to 3 AM we were allowed to wait upstairs as Chris was prepared to move to intensive care. The small group of friends followed me as my key card got us through interior doors and to the elevator. The conversation was lightening.

As it approached 4 AM we got word that we would soon be able to see Chris. I instinctively checked the internet using my phone, wondering if the world of the media had yet picked up this story. The screams were still echoing in my mind, just as the sounds and sights of impact would keep running like an endless tape loop in the minds of Elizabeth and Stephanie.

I gulped as I realized that the local newspaper website already had the breaking story posted online. I read and my heart stopped. I called Elizabeth quietly and handed her the phone.

“Oh my God.”

She read the story out loud, her voice shaking in the dark waiting room. Four had been hit, three were critical, and one of the first two men had died.

“Oh my God.”

The room fell completely silent. For the next 20 minutes each friend sat silently, looking in a different direction, eyes filled with tears, stricken.

We agreed quietly that Chris didn’t need to know. Somehow everyone would stay upbeat. And they did. Chris was in pain, but lay in the ICU as his friends gathered around the bed. They didn’t say that they loved him, but I’m sure that is what he heard. I stood quietly in the dark just outside the room, watching my beautiful daughter at Chris’ bedside, exhausted, her makeup still staining her cheeks.

We drove home together at 4:30 AM, just Elizabeth and me. She shuddered and sat silently and then looked across the car at me.

“Dad, the sound was so terrible. This is the worst day of my life.”

As we pulled into the driveway, I touched her hand. We both knew that the accident could easily have involved Stephanie and Elizabeth rather than Chris and Austin. I made a comment about angels.

She looked back and me.

“Dad, I don’t think this is about angels at all. I don’t think there were any angels there.”

Two days passed. Elizabeth twice visited Chris in the hospital. We drove her back to college in Minneapolis.

The more I think about it, the more I think that there were angels there that night in that war zone. I can’t prove it and we can’t know for now, but we will know someday. I think there were angels there that night, and they weren’t alone.

They were fighting.

I turned 50 this weekend.




respectfully dedicated to the memory of Austin Melville