Thursday afternoon, right after I posted my first hand account of my utter disgust in the system (about quarter till 5), I witnessed an honest-to-God miracle. So for those of you who messaged me and didn’t get an immediate response, here’s what I was doing:

I’d just crossed the bridge at the Dollar General on Chapman Highway at White School Road & I see something large laying close to the side of the road. I thought it was a contractor sized garbage bag, it was the right shape. Then I see a pickup truck ahead pulling over and I looked again and the garbage bag had FEET!! And it wasn’t a garbage bag at ALL, it was black pants on a husky body. But that couldn’t be right, a patrol car was less than a quarter mile in front of me. Surely he’d seen it. Is this a joke? A training exercise?? So I whip it over in front of the truck and am watching traffic for a safe opportunity to get out, and digging my phone out to call 911, because the other guy wasn’t out of his truck yet. I start running back down the side of the road to the victim, who’s laying flat on his back, feet close to the white line of the road. When I say close, I mean less than 12″. There are no cars or anybody around him. Other guy gets out of his truck and starts running too. I’m hollering, “didja call 911??” all while traffic whizzes by. Nobody else is stopping. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. You hear about these things in other places, never here.

The body is motionless. It’s like he just laid down, the legs are both straight and arms straight by his sides. I didn’t think he was breathing at first, but then I saw movement in his throat. The man relays this to 911, then he asks me if I have an AED. Um, no. I don’t even have a pair of gloves and I wasn’t real keen on touching him, to be perfectly honest. You hear all this about fentanyl and just having skin contact on money or clothes is enough to knock you dead. I had to assume the worst here. Judge me all you want. He’s totally alone on the side of Chapman. Nobody else around, no cars abandoned like he’d jumped out to flag down help. The coherent man asks me to stay with the downed man and runs over to the little building behind us to inquire about an AED. (I remember back in the day, the only two places in the county that had one were Walmart and Dixie Stampede, due to sheer volume of visitors, plus allergic reactions prevail at Dixie.) Victim has now begun agonal respirations. If you’ve never heard them, they’re comparable to someone snoring loudly that desperately needs a sleep machine. He’s wearing a hooded hi-vis sweatshirt, black pants, and Crocs with thick socks. One shoe had come off. He was bald and was bleeding from the back of his head. I am literally standing there doing nothing while this guy is on the phone with dispatch. Guy’s arm comes up in like a victory fist and his eyes are rolling back in his head. He is in the correct position for CPR, but the longer this goes on, the more I feel like it’s drug related. Traffic is still whizzing by, and still no one has stopped. He shakes the guys shoulder and asks him if he can hear him. I’m ready to bolt, bc I can just imagine him jumping up, ready to kill us. The man tells dispatch he’s had CPR training. Thank the Lord for that, all I could still do was just stand there with my teeth in my mouth. That’s all I did, stand there while this guy struggles for his life. I just stopped out of basic humanity! The least I could do was keep the hero company. I couldn’t even pray. But I knew a living breathing stranger is good company when you’re with another dying stranger on the side of a busy highway. He puts 911 on speaker and begins compressions. He was textbook and I was so thankful.

And in this moment, I can’t help but to still be completely discomfited by the lack of respect of passing motorists. There is someone less than a foot from the highway receiving CPR and they can’t be bothered to at least move over?!?!

Finally, an F250 diesel pulls up with two youngish, capable looking guys. They looked like City employees if I had to take a guess. Like electric system guys. I was very glad to see them. Original dude, who is probably approaching sixty, with Dad bod, is still doing great compressions. All I could think was, there have been at least 100 cars pass by, on THIS SIDE OF THE ROAD, they see a man laying here and one person doing chest compressions, and they don’t feel led to stop? Not another human? I get it if you’re not trained. You can’t tell me there wasn’t a nurse or some sort of civil servant in all that. The guys in the truck said they’d went by, tried to flag down an officer without success, and turned around to see if they could lend aid. About this time, another guy with a busted windshield pulls in between us and the first guy’s truck. He’s young too. Meanwhile, dying man starts trying to move his arm and is sort of coming around. He acts like he’s trying to get up and the guys start holding him down. I’m like, “he may need to vomit, get him on his side.” This is common after CPR, if you live. They didn’t listen to me (or probably couldn’t hear me) and kept pushing him down. They were worried about the gash on the back of his head. Dude keeps fighting them. I said again, “let him get on his side, he probably needs to puke and he could choke.” Dude on the phone starts asking him his name. He knew it. He knew this was the USA, and he knew he was cold. So I ran and got him a blanket out of the back of his truck (windshield guy had to help me). Then they start asking for rags for his head. Then he pukes, just like I said. I go to get rags from the trunk of my car and the ambulance and two deputies pulled up, all together. I don’t know why one of the other ones didn’t come back. Especially if they had suspicions it was drug related. I didn’t think anything trumped cardiac arrest. But the last I saw of this were paramedics supporting him on unsteady feet and trying to get the stretcher under him. I thanked the dude for doing excellent CPR and everybody for stopping. Life is less scary when you’re not facing it alone.

I saw a miracle Thursday afternoon: a life saved by a stranger on the side of the highway.