a very bad thing

This is not my trauma, I feel strange talking about it, but it happened right in front of us, so here it is. I might pare this down later, but dumping it out is helpful.

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Yesterday, after school, the library was busy with families and children when a little girl came running in, panicked and screaming, "Someone was just hit by a car! A kid! A kid was run over right outside! It went right over him!" My co-worker ran outside, I ran for the phone. People froze, parents with young children picked them up and stayed inside, afraid of what they'd see in the road. I fumbled the buttons, and it was nightmarishly slow to get the phone to work, but it must have only been a few seconds. While talking to the dispatcher, one of the kids yelled, "It was P.*!" Our student worker was standing beside me, sorting books, looking confused. "P. who?" Her 9 year-old brother's name is P., but it was too terrible to connect. I told her to run. She dropped the books and ran.

P. was lying in the road, conscious and making noise, with bloody scrapes all down his arms and legs. The woman who had witnessed the accident had her hand on his arm and was talking on the phone with the police. I looked at his eyes, because head injury is the only thing I know really well. He had that wild, unfocused look of someone only seeing pain, and my memory held him up against my daughter with her pupils blown, blue and rigid and not breathing. He didn't seem to have a life-threatening head injury, at least. His hands were on his stomach, his lips were losing color. His sister was bent over him, murmuring in his ear and shaking.

"The tire went over his middle," the woman who had witnessed the accident said.
"Is the driver still here?"
"I'm here," said the beardy old man standing behind us. He used his shirt to wipe his face, he was crying, too. He had been backing up his vehicle after eating Thai food at the food truck across the street, and didn't see the small boy walk out from between parked cars.

An off-duty paramedic dropped in beside us and took charge. She checked his eyes and hips and stomach while the sirens approached. As the EMTs descended on him, we moved back, called their parents, rounded up the other siblings out of the crowd of crying kids and told them what was happening. The parents arrived just as our student worker was ready to climb into the ambulance, and their mother was able to go with him, instead. One of the siblings was still missing. I spotted the tween near the convenience store as it started to rain, and ran to get her. She took a look at the ambulances, the police cars, her family car, the librarian running toward her in the rain, and she threw her soda down and ran with me. As the ambulance pulled away, their dad was too upset to think or speak or drive. He used to be a police officer, but your own kid is something different. My co-worker took his keys, we piled the kids into the minivan and made dad sit in the back seat, and she drove them to the hospital.

P. is still alive, but he has internal bleeding. He's going in for surgery. We are all really shaken and worried. And, frustratingly, I'm doing paperwork because the news reported that it happened at the library, but it technically did not, and the higher-ups need an account of exactly where the accident took place. The road and parking lot belong to the shopping center, the driver was a food stand customer and not a library patron, and we rendered aid because it was a horrific accident and we know all the kids. My co-worker took vacation leave to assist the family. We didn't poke him or move him or otherwise aggravate his injuries. It's just a terrible, terrible thing.

Teach your kids to be vigilant in parking lots and hold them tight tonight, you guys. I'll post updates and a fundraiser page as they're available.

*Name changed for privacy