Into the Black

Today is cloudy and quiet, a calm after the storm. Please be forewarned that this post is not for the faint of heart, and that it contains graphic violence and imagery.

       Vivi and I are in Recife, on vacation, and yesterday was my birthday. It began as most birthdays do with smiles and well wishes. We are staying with Vivi’s half sister Suzana in a small off-white house on a quiet dirt road. It is a quaint little neighborhood in the middle of the city and just the kind of place we were looking for to relax and get away from things. At seven in the morning, the house was already a stir with relatives heating up bread, drinking their morning coffee, and getting ready for work. Her half brother, Pedrinho, chatted for a bit then left the house on his motorcycle. I had just gotten to know the guy a day before. He seemed to be a laid back twenty-two year old, the kind of person that enjoys simple things like playing videos, hanging out with his girlfriend, and who needs some time before he can really warm up to you.
       Suzana and her husband Anderson head out the house a few minutes after Pedrinho, leaving Vivi and I to chat about how we should spend the rest of the day. As I stood in the kitchen barefoot getting ready to heat up a sandwich, Vivi’s cell phone rings. She picks up the receiver and cringes, furrowing her brow at the hysteric screams of her sister on the other end of the line.
       “Get your things” she says tensely running out the door. “My brother crashed his bike.”
       “Grab a clean towel”, I reply, realizing how serious the accident might be by the chilling sound of her sisters voice.
       We run out the door in a flash. Vivi starts barreling down the street as fast as her legs can carry her. She turns the corner onto the main road and I stop. The crash site is probably a lot farther than she thinks, I mumble to myself. Looking around, I see one of her neighbors pulling out of a driveway and I flag her down. I ask her if she knows Pedrinho and she nods. I tell her about the crash and she agrees to give us a ride. We pick up Vivi a quarter mile down the road and proceed toward the accident.
       “What horrible traffic”, her neighbors says her knuckles turning white as she wraps her hands tightly around the wheel. “My god, my god, oh dear god. I’ve known Pedro since he was a kid. Oh Jesus help him.”
       We inch forward in the car behind honking lines of vehicles and eventually make it to the site. Vivi and I bolt out of the car and cross the street. Anderson is there, his face a ghostly white as he desperately tries wave on traffic and free a space for the ambulance that is on its way. I walk forward and time seems to slow. On my left is a large green pickup truck with Pedro’s moto sticking out the front end. It looks like a petrified sculpture of metal, toy-like, joined together by an artist playing god.
       Suzana’s voice suddenly rises above the noise of the crowd. “My god, my god, my god”, she screams hysterically. I walk towards here voice and see Pedro lying contorted on the ground. His body is a mass of blood. I place the towel around his head to try and secure his spine and survey the damage. There are large scrapes and cuts over his entire body. I can see deep lacerations on his legs, broken toes, and an ear severed almost in two.
       “My back, my back” he screams.
       “Pedrinho, Pedrinho, look at me”, Vivi says calmly. “Spit out the blood. Pedro, breath through your mouth. Look at me. You’re going to be ok.”
       As she calms him down, I look around nervously. A large crowd has gathered, and people continue to drive by slowly trying to get a glimpse of the damage. A gray car behind the truck is also smashed up, and must have been involved in the crash. Suddenly, an ambulance pulls in beside us and two medics hop out. They tell the crowd to make room, and begin dressing Pedro’s wounds. The hysteria around us seems to grow. Suzana is pacing the sidewalk screaming, clearly in a state of shock. Blood from Pedro’s wounds runs on the cold concrete of the street. My stomach tightens as I try earnestly to keep a grip on my emotions. I feel helpless and lost.
       “Get in the ambulance,” Vivi says grabbing my hand. The medics seem to be in an argument trying to decide which hospital to take him to. In seems like years before they reach a decision, but eventually stuff both of us in the back of the van and shut the door. The ambulance begins to race down the street, darting in between cars and around intersections like the lance point of a spear. My hands grip tightly to the body board shifting around the car, as I try vainly to keep Pedro’s body from moving around. Eventually we hit a traffic jam and no one wants to let us by.
       “Get out of the way!” screams the driver honking his horn. “There is a guy dying here!”
       Vivi tells me later that ambulances often use their sirens to get through traffic, even without patients, and that nowadays few respect their right of way. We sit behind a delivery truck for what seems like hours. Pedro is dipping in and out of consciousness, mumbling weakly for water. One of the medics turns to me and says, “Ahh, meu deus, eu não gosto de moto.” (Oh lord, I don’t like motorcycles). I hear her wrong and think she says, “Eu não gosto de morte.” (I don’t like death). The words sound remarkably similar, and I think to myself man, this kid is a goner. (I can laugh about this little vocabulary mishap now, but it was far from amusing at the time. I kept thinking, how unprofessional! How could this medic in her right mind imply such an outcome under the circumstances).
       Eventually we make it to the public hospital, and Pedro is rushed inside. Waiting on the ER entryway ramp for word of his condition, we find out how the accident had occurred. Various witnesses on the scene of the crash would recount how Pedro, being the young bull headed Paulistano that he is, was passing the green truck when he was cut off. In São Paulo there is an unwritten code about keeping the corridor open for passing bikes. Generally riders band together and sometimes damage cars that invade their space. After being cut off, Pedro rode up beside the truck, took off his helmet, and slammed it into the driver’s side mirror of the vehicle. It broke off. The driver, unaware of having cut him off, thought that Pedro was assaulting his vehicle, slams on the gas, and tries to run him over. In the process, the truck crashes into another car and eventually takes Pedro down. His salvation was that the bike lodged up into the front bumper of the truck and stopped the vehicle. If it hadn’t, he would have been run over completely.
       At the hospital, family members gather in response to the tragedy. Anderson’s brother slips folded bills of cash into the hands of doctors, nurses, and hospital staff, hoping to bribe his way towards preferential treatment (this is common in Brazil). One of the family members knows a guy who knows a guy, who just happens to be the director of the hospital. He makes the call, and one of the director’s personal staff comes down to visit Pedro in the ER. When it comes to surviving in a public hospital in the developing world, who you know and how much you pay makes all the difference.
       We find out hours later that Pedro will likely survive. He has suffered loss of skin over his entire body, deep lacerations on his head, back, and leg. He has three broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken collar bone, and his ear will need to be surgically reconstructed. Everyone is mad at him for his machismo and stupidity, knowing full well that the accident could have been prevented. There has been a wave of motorcycle shootings in Recife lately, and it is no wonder that the driver reacted as he did. In a world where violence is common, when and how it strikes unpredictable—where the smallest action can have dire consequences, stupidity is not something that is easily forgiven.
       For me, this will be a birthday worth remembering, not so much for the horror, and the stress, and the tragedy of Pedro’s actions, but for the clear and unadulterated reminder that life is short and worth living. The more violence and injustice I see in the world, the more confused I become about the possibility of a just God, who looks down benevolently on his perfect micro mess of a world. It’s hard to know what to think about the innate savagery of existence without being confused. But what is clear is that, this is all I have, my life, Pedro’s life, Vivi’s life, and if anything, emergent from the greatest threshold of simplicity, I must capture the present here and now, and live the life worth living.