On the nights that change you forever

Disclaimer: This is a very hard mensaje to write. It documents the toughest night of my life, including a motor vehicle accident and the subsequent death of three young men. Don’t feel obliged to read if you’re of the weak stomach, don’t like sad tales or don’t want to read about blood. While this may not be the perfect medium to express my grief and sorrow, I want to let you, dear readers, in to a melancholy corner of my life: the dark hole I’ve found myself in this week. I hope that if I can just get it all down in words this one time, it’ll help me move forward and prevent me from having to rehash details over and over again, so thank you in advance for your support. However, if you read no further, at the very least, I remind each of you of the fleeting and precious moments that make up this one truly special life. Today, make someone happy, give someone a hug, tell someone you love them, eat cookies, and remember how much you are loved right back.

Here goes:

This is the kind of night that changes a person forever. It started out like any other Saturday night in Manzanillo, but soon became more raucous than most because we had patron saint celebrations in town and some no-name dembow artist with Barbie-like proportions took the stage while a crowd of drunk onlookers grinded with each other in groups around bottles of rum. Milka left the stage around midnight and the masses made their way to the local bar to dance.  I was dancing to a nice Romeo song when the music turned down suddenly. The crowd erupted – “TURN UP THE MUSIC” and for a brief second it did and my partner and I went back to dancing. Then suddenly, the music shut off and the DJ announced over the microphone that he was closing for the night, and told the men to "take their ladies home". The whole place was confused and in uproar, it was 2am. My friend Anny grabbed me by the hand and yelled to me to follow her. With the rest of the crowd and optics of a flowing river, went hundreds of people running in unison toward the street. I asked what was going on and someone mentioned “accident, dead, kids, motorcycle” but I couldn’t piece it all together, I just followed the crowd. I arrived to the hospital with over 500 Dominicans crowding the emergency room door. As in all confusing situations, people we crying, speculating, screaming, rushing the door and trying to get in. It was utter chaos - terrifying, terrible and heartbreaking. Two days later, we’re still trying to piece it all together, but from my best guess, this is what happened:

Two boys were at the Patronales festival and left in their motorcycle heading the 9km home when they crashed into an unlit semi-truck stopped on the side of the road. The first to the scene were trained paramedics in the town ambulance. They loaded the boys into the back and jetted off the hospital. Upon arrival, someone yelled to them to go back, that an accident happened. “We know, we know, we’re bringing the patients here,” said Alexis. “No,” said the onlooker, “Another two just crashed, hurry!” Apparently, the culprit semi-truck backed up to make room for the ambulance and that’s when another motorcycle with two boys from Montecristi also crashed into the same unlit semi-truck.Two identical accidents within a span of 45 minutes. Of the four, two were dead on impact. One of the boys died in the ambulance in the hands of our trained paramedic Alexis (in his words, “I felt when the soul was taken out of him, he was just gone.”) The final victim is still in critical condition in the city of Santiago. Alexis said when he got to the hospital with the second two, he could barely work because so many people were crowding the ambulance and tapping the window to see in. “Savages,” he kept saying over and over.

In the chaos of the crowd and frenzy at the hospital, I ran right away back to the house and put my “leader” shirt on and ran back to the hospital to do crowd control. I knew trained first responders were in the emergency room with the critical patients and would need a space to get the stretcher into the ambulance parked outside, but there were at least 100 people standing in the ten feet between the door and the ambulance. As best I could, with the help of another paramedic, Anny, we got the crowd back and the stretcher into the hospital and the jet off. Then it was up to us to deal with the screaming, crying, yelling, fainting and crazed onlookers. I was trying so hard to keep it all together, to prevent people from blocking the hospital door, prevent footage from being recorded, help screaming friends of the victims, control the rumors already spreading like wildfire. I’m not sure I did a very effective job, but I was doing what I could.  

And then a moment changed all that. A friend from Copey approached me to say, “Bea, you know it was Enmanuel and Yunior who died, right?” I couldn’t breathe, it couldn’t be. My students? The boys who just helped me build a chimney for the stove in his mother’s house? No! No! No! And then, a tear slipped out, but before I could completely break down, another friend came up to me and yelled, “YOU CANNOT ACT NERVOUS, GET IT TOGETHER,” and I had to regain my composure and put it all back together inside and out with the burden of knowing the victims well. I had hours to go before I could walk home, crash in bed, break down and cry.

Eventually, I decided it was time to go inside the emergency room and piece together what information I could from the doctors. Never before have I seen such ugliness. The two boys...my students...laying face up in hospital stretchers with sheets over their faces...they’re really dead? No! No! No! I watched as the fathers of the boys came to confirm their sons’ identities. “Si,” they wailed, “es mi’jo, mi’jo...mi’jo.” I approached the hospital director who just said with a blank face, “Oh Bea, oh Bea, you’re here, thank you.” I felt paralyzed. 

This night was hard for me to varying degrees and on multiple levels. First, I have never seen dead bodies, let alone those of my students, and two of them, faces up, bodies destroyed and faces indistinguishable. Beyond that, I was in the emergency room with them for more than an hour, so to see the two corpses for so many hours of the night, and then more vile images from friends who sent me photos afterward was more blood and guts then I bargained for. 

Secondly, I had to search deep and summon all my courage and motivation to lead in a situation like this. I don’t have a medical background, Spanish is my second language, and a part of me kept nagging my subconscious, wtf am I doing here? The only answer I can come up with is that someone had to do it. And in emergencies, it’s not those in charge that tend to lead, it’s those who are there. But let me tell you, when I finally dragged my ass into bed at 4am, I let loose and cried harder than I’ve cried in recent memory. Life is unfair.

Finally, I was very affected on an emotional level (better word might be crushed) because it was Enmanuel and Yunior up on those stretchers. Two boys who I’ve taught and learned from, cared about and motivated. Sending condolences, my best friend and fellow teacher, Emily, texted me to say, “I believe (in all my 24 years of wisdom) that the closest approximation to the loss of your own child is the loss of your student. Maybe I’m naïve, but all I know is that for a period of time, they are your children. I am so sorry.” It hit me so hard when she texted, it made perfect sense, of course that’s why I feel like I just got crushed with a cinderblock, because they were my loving, living, learning students.

Reeling from aftermath of this accident, I have seen a strange combination of reactions from townsfolk. Some people are sad and although they didn’t know the families, they grieve as if they did. Tragedy struck, let’s all shed tears together. But then there are some that just want to get pictures of the accident and have been going around town in a perverted hunt for images of the night. Then they WhatsApp then en masse to others. The fact that a someone from New York, a cousin of a Manzanillo friend knew about the accident before she did, is proof (sometimes social media is too effective). And then there are those who act like I’m losing it for being upset two days later. But Bea, it wasn’t your fault, get over it already. Well of course it wasn’t my fault, but it is still an awful burden to bear. “Let me feel what I need to feel,” I want to yell, “Let me be alone when I need to, or with you when I don’t. Let me eat ice cream and dance in your kitchen to take my mind off it. Let me clean my house from top to bottom just to not have to think about it all. Let me nap at 4pm. Let me cry. But please, just hug me when I tell you to.”  

Yes, today was better, every day it's getting better, it’s been three days. I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but I’ll be okay, humans are resilient, especially in the face of tragedy, we all just need our time, there's no one right way to grieve. We were a community before, but we’ve come together now, and will emerge stronger. We have to, for Enmanuel and Yunior, we will. I hope the visions and nightmares of that night go away, but there are some sights that cannot be unseen. Instead I’ll try to remember their smiling faces, tiguere spirits and raucous laughter because that’s what they deserve. May they rest in peace.