November 17th, 2022

It has taken me a while to come around to posting this...

Surreal, it was. Multi-line road, clear and cold morning. Dark. I think he must have not heard the cars. All three of the cars coming off that light were electrics. Two Teslas and a Kia. They were racing I think. Not sure. I was behind them by a few cars, though not so far back I couldn't see what happened.

Some guy, maybe homeless - I don't know - just ran out into the road from the left and the center turn lane... From my side of things... He clearly was intending to get to the other side; his body language and the impetus of his gait made that certain.  He never even looked up. He never seemed to acknowledge the cars. They never seemed to acknowledge him.

Next thing I see is white tennis shoes. Shoes and dust blossoming up and out beneath them. They were Adidas, those shoes. Mother of God, I can't not see them even now. Plain as day. The right one was untied, or had come untied on its way off and up.

Up, over the scene. Up, over to the sidewalk from where the guy had stepped only moments before. It landed upright. I straddled it as I pulled off to the side.
The car in the middle lane was folded in on itself. The driver was locked upright and staring straight ahead. A young guy. He was catatonic with his eyes open. Shock.

The guy he hit was forty or fifty feet in front of him, the line of jetsom trailing behind from the point of unity with the frunk of the Tesla. I followed that line in a sprint and in slow motion all at once. I passed a coffee cup, off-brand plastic job with an absent broken handle, contents steaming in a tan puddle that transcribed the mug's final loping arc to where it rested now. I passed what looked to be a tangle of cables - maybe wired headphones balled up in a pocket. I passed a out-turned backpack; an old-looking Jansport job in Burgundy, though I don't know whether the wear had been there or had been deposited in the events that had just unfolded.

I got to him and instantly, innately, knew he was gone. Eyes wide open, face far too serene for the pain his bent form would be in otherwise. No steam at his mouth and nose. No sounds there either.

The paramedics were on him like lightning. An ambulance was a couple of cars behind me and in the lane on the opposite side of things when it all went down. They were out so fast they didn't even turn on their lights. I moved to the side to let them work. I had forgotten how much like the movies it all was... They were still unwilling to give up when I walked back to my car and left, straddling that white Adidas on my way out.