Amid the blood, a dad asks, why?
Trevor Grant
January 13 2007
IT started as one of those stress-relieving nights eagerly anticipated by the parents of teenage kids. There's just the two of us and a movie, a Lebanese meal on Lygon St, a tableside show from a belly dancer and a hand-in-hand stroll amid the crowds of pavement diners before heading home feeling good about life again.
Then came the phone call. A car accident? Ben? Is he OK? Oh, my god . Ten minutes later I am standing amid a scene of bloody carnage. I have seen this sort of thing so often on the TV, but it's of Baghdad, not quiet, safe, suburban Wheelers Hill.
The strobe lights of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks light up the devastation. Bodies are trapped in mangled, compressed cars or lying on the ground.
Frantic friends and relatives are running into their worst nightmare while paramedics, police and firemen calmly work to try to pick up the pieces of another tragedy. The professionals do not bother to try to make sense of it. They do not have time.
It looks like a battlefield. Ben, our boy, is flat on the ground. His face is covered with blood and he's in shock. One of his mates, Liam, is next to him in much the same state. The third member of their night-clubbing trio, Alastair, is trapped in the front passenger seat of the taxi. Blood oozes down his face and from his mouth.
He has bitten clean through his tongue. He has no idea where he is. Later, in hospital, he says he thought he was driving. The driver of their taxi is a mess, sitting on the ground and slumped against the twisted wreck of his Yellow Cab, taking air from an oxygen mask.
We are told to keep talking to the boys on the ground to ensure they stay awake. A couple of good Samaritans, including a nurse, help keep up the flow of questions. I try some humour. I ask Ben if he can remember where his team, Carlton, finished on the ladder last year. As a Collingwood man, it's a question I ask him often. Despite the pain in his neck, there is a trace of a smile as he answers softly: "Last." It's the best sign yet he's OK.
A crowd gathers behind the blue-and-white police tape hastily wound around the crash site. I look up and wonder why humans are so keen to stand and watch this sort of thing? They watch intently, at least 30 or 40 of them only metres away, as paramedics work to free two people from the other car.
When one is finally taken from the back seat, his legs and arms, which were like jelly, suddenly, and crazily, start to convulse as he is taken to the ambulance.
Nearby, they work feverishly on a boy. His name is Mitch. I know that because his friends in the other car have been yelling it out after they realise just how badly he's been hurt.
Suddenly all activity stops. A couple of paramedics drop their heads. One wheels the trolley to an ambulance. The face of the victim is covered by a sheet.
Mitch is dead at 15. I turn away and only just manage to control the urge to vomit. I look at the kids on the ground, the distraught taxi driver gasping for breath, at the convoy of ambulances ready to depart; the whole damn scene makes me nauseous.
The lives of seven youngsters, four in one car and three in another, have tragically intersected at 9.30pm on Saturday, the fun night of the week. Ben and his mates were celebrating one of their last nights together before heading off to different universities.
Those in the other car were obviously out for a bit of dash and dare in a new machine. Just a bit of fun, you know. Now, though, the laughter has stopped. Suddenly, painfully, it's not fun any more.
The youngest is dead, at least one is critically injured and others have serious injuries that could affect them for the rest of their lives. Even those who aren't badly hurt, including Ben, may have emotional scars.
At 4am on Sunday, I walk away from Monash Medical Centre in Clayton, the same question still in my head: "Why?" So many parents are asking the same thing today. But, really, we all know there is no answer to such senselessness.
Source: © 2007 Herald and Weekly Times.
