I was down between the brooklyn and manhattan bridges where I found a nice quiet place along the waterfront to snap off some pictures of the bridges. There wasn’t a soul around except some Chinese fisherman a hundred or so meters away.
 
Out of nowhere, I hear a minor crashing sound, like a pallet tipping over or being dropped from a forklift. I look behind to see what it was, but there’s nothing, nothing at all out of the ordinary.
 
I go back to framing a picture but couldn’t find a logical answer to the sound. Where’s the sound of the forklift? Where’s the sound of the people examining the dropped pallet? There was no sound at all, not even that of a single passing vehicle. I turn around again to look for an explaination.
 
I typically stay out of other people’s business but I suddenly had this sensation come over me that something was very wrong, so started walking in the direction of the noise. A big empty tourist bus was parked up near the backside of an empty white delivery truck; Both obstructing my view when trying to see where the noise came from. Thats when I noticed they weren’t just parked close to one another, but actually touching. Maybe the bus’s break came undone and rolled up against the truck? but no, it’s flat ground. 
 
As I headed toward the bus I discovered the driver, slouching against the window. Apparently asleep or passed out and his foot came off the brake. I ran around to the drivers side of the bus and he was slowly slumping downward with his head against the glass. I pounded on the glass, “Hey, wake up? Hey, are you alriight?”  no reaction, he just slowly kept sliding down at the speed of erosion. I tried calling 911 but my battery died just as I connected, I started yelling for help and for someone to call 911, I didn’t know if the Chinese fisherman could hear me or not and I didn’t want to risk running all the way down to them as they probably wouldn’t have mobile phones in their tackle kit. I was banging on the window trying to wake up the bus driver and praying a car would come by. It was one of the most helpless, hopeless feelings I’ve had.

We broke in the locked door of the bus and pulled the bus driver up, he was still breathing but with all this drool and mucous coming out of his mouth. The other guy was outside the bus on the phone with 911. I remember thinking, God, I hope he doesn’t tell me I have to give him mouth to mouth. Yes, I’d hesitate, but if nobody else did it, I was prepared to do so.
 

We had contact with the 911 operator whose only instructions seemed to be to leave him alone and hold him up to keep his air passageway clear. I later regretted having not taken the phone myself and explained things more clearly as I would have instructed the operator that I didn’t think inaction was the best course of action.
 
But my attention was turned to frantically looking for the engine off switch, because the bus was still in drive and putting a lot of pressure up against the truck in front of us. While nobody verbalized it, we feared it might give way and send us coasting forward in drive out of control.
 
By this time, a small crowd of mostly Chinese fisherman had arrived.. “put on emergency brake” they start yelling.. fucking duhh! We couldn’t find an emergency brake, or the gears to put it in neutral for that matter, I had physically lifted the bus drivers foot off the gas, then found what looked like a neutral gear button, but the other guy on the bus was afraid it might not be and yelled no, no, don’t press it.
 
We held up the Bus driver, ready to pull him down off down on to the street, but the other guy on the phone with the 911 operator yells no, no, don’t move him. Well tell us what to do, what do we do damnit?

I then I found the ignition button and showed it to the other guy on the bus in a manner that meant I was going to push it. He didn’t yell not to so I did, and the engine immediately shut down and the lack of forward force pushed the whole bus back in one big strong recoil.
 
The people outside started panicking and making all kinds of commotion, thinking I had accidentally hit reverse. Shit, I panicked myself thinking the same thing. But we came to a rest and the other guy on the bus gave me a one armed power bear hug, “great!, great! well done!”, and I thought.. shit, and YOU were afraid to get out of the car to help ME? You probably just broke some ribs with the one armed bear hug.
 
And then the fisherman outside again start shouting to put on the emergency brake. And I remember stepping out to the door entrance with all the countanence of Keanu Reeves in Speed and saying in a clear and calm tone, “people, we are on flat ground here, weren’t not going anywhere… plus… I can’t find the damn emergency brake”.

There was both miscommunication and lack of communication between the guy on the phone, the 911 operator and me and the other guy on the bus. Our only instruction was to not do anything, and in restrospect of the event, it remains the only thing that doesn’t sit well with me. Did the guy on the phone make it clear that the bus wasn’t actually moving fast when it collided with the truck? I can understand not moving him if there was the possibility of broken bones, but there wasn’t a hard collision. I don’t know what was made clear and what wasn’t, I only wish I had cleared things with the operator in my Keanu Reeves voice of clarity.
 
We sudenly started thinking the the bus driver was drunk and passed out, because he was still breathing and making a snoring-esque sound. So we slapped him a few times yelling wake up, wake up. He didn’t. 

After about a total of 10 minutes since first hearing the crashing sound, the first police car came to the scene and then many firetrucks and ambulances behind. I took out my camera and snapped a shot of the bus driver. The guy on the bus with me says, “hey, why are you doing that?” I said, “I don’t know, that’s what I do”. And thenmore fire trucks, ambulance and police cars… about 25 guys in all arrived at the scene and closed it off. I have to give it up to the NYFD and police force, they were remarkably fast and well prepared. 
 
I wanted to believe the bus driver was just drunk and sleeping like the one guy kept speculating, but I knew that wasn’t the case, it was most likely a stroke. The paremedics put him on a stretcher and administered steady CPR and had him in the ambulance within 12 minutes from when I first heard the crashing sound. A wave of anger engulfed me as I realized the 911 operator never asked us to take a pulse or administer CPR, and the question looms with me today, can a person be breathing but still need CPR? Why? How?
 
Either way, I thought to myself, if I wasn’t there at that exact spot at that exact time, there would be absolutely no chance at all that this guy would survive. It would probably have been 12 to 24 hours before he was ever found. There’s just no way he could have been so lucky to have had me there and such quick turnaround time, and not pull through or recover fully. So, I don’t know if he made it through and if so, the extent of his recovery, but by my book, if the universe works as it should, then I was there for a reason, and it’s simply not his time yet.

I left just as the rescue team arrived because there was nothing for me to do, and then about a block up the road, I looked back and reflected on the scene for a while, took another photo. It bothered me that I didn’t know what the problem was or what his prognosis would be, I eventually and reluctantly walked back to try get some answers. Ask a cop if they had seen a case like this, what the outcome usually is. The 2 guys that pulled over to help me were gone, they had left the scene also right when the paramedics arrived. Maybe they also worried about an unknown outstanding warrant for their arrest.  
 
There were 3 different cops talking to 3 different Chinese fisherman, each giving 3 different accounts of the story in broken English. I went up to the first cop, trying to politely get close enough between them so that I could ask what he thought the proognisis was, but I was apparently invisible. I did the same to the second cop and third cop, but they had their notepads out and were in way too deep of fiction to be bothered with me.
After getting whatever’ed three times straight, it occured to me that the cops viewed me as someone who showed up after the event just wanting to get in on the action, so I don’t fault them for ignoring me. Frankly, if I thought it would at all have benefited the Bus Driver to have my side of the story told, then I would have insisted they hear it. But nothing I could have said would have helped him so I didn’t bother.
 
But what bothered me was the fact that not one of the three Chinese fisherman being questioned ever pointed me out and told the cops who I was. I guess this their moment of glory, yearning to prove their worth to society and walk around with a glowing badge of faux honor. 
  
As I start to walk away again, there was a kind and quiet looking officer who was just hanging around looking over things. I approached him and asked what the problem was with the bus driver and his prognosis opionion. His kindness turned to smug arrogance as he looks at me with the pause of 2 or 3 chews of his bubblegum and snaps, “And just whoa you?” in a thick New York accent.
 
Reluctant to have all my drivers license info taken down, I say, well, I was here earlier before the paramedics arrived, I just wanted to know if he’s going to be… ”When, when you was haya?”. “Well, umm, right when it happened”. “You’s mean, you’s was the one who called 911?”, “Well, uhm, yes, but you see, my phone battery…”.. “Hey Joey, Joey… we’s got the one haya hoowaz first on the scene!” He gets all excited, “wait haya, wait haya a second”.. and then walks over to get the big police boss Joey’s attention. 
 
Now I’m thinking… shit.. what did I just get myself into… what if I have a warrant for my arrest for unpaid parking tickets or failure to leash my dog? Out of the corner of my eye, I see the cop talking to Joey and then both going seperate ways. I wait, and wait, and wait a bit longer, but nobody ever shows up to talk with me. I can only guess what Joey must have told the eager cop… “Listen you dumbass, that guy drifted in out of nowhere and has been wandering around here trying to steal the fisherman’s glory”.
 
Click Here to see photos of the Bus Driver Rescue

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 2:01 amand is filed under Life Styles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.