A Night to Remember

I hit and killed a deer last night. A mule deer … not very large but very quick. It leaped out of nowhere. I saw it on the road and then it was one stride away from the front of my truck. And then it was gone. The hood flew up and all I saw was white. The deer must have flown some 15 feet when I found it a minute later. Dead … thank goodness! I don’t know what I would have done if the impact hadn’t killed it and it lay there suffering. Or if it landed on the other side of the road, and posed a danger to oncoming traffic.

The aftermath was a blur. A flurry of phone calls. Occasionally, I stepped into the road to direct vehicles away from the truck. All too often, I was rewarded with a shower of gravel and truck bits by cursed speeding motorists.

A woman from a road construction crew stopped to help, and help she did. She provided a warm, bug-free environment in her SUV. She offered a place to stay in Rapid City. She offered a ride back to Interior that very night with her teenage son. She gave me a hug and wished me luck when the police came and she hurried home to her family.

It was the first time I’ve sat in a cop car, though I didn’t get to sit in the cage; just the passenger seat. The senior state trooper was teaching the junior trooper how to file an accident report, so I sat through the “scroll down on your right” and “click on the second icon” lesson, and spelled out my name twice.

When the tow truck arrived, the ride was quick and easy, and a member of my crew was not too far behind, ready to whisk me back to my trailer home. Once back at camp, I sent photos and relevant information/contacts to Dean, before catching a little over two hours of sleep. Then 4 AM rolled along, and it was time for work.

It’s been hard to come to terms with the fact that this is my first accident. I haven’t had time to mull it over. To think about how lucky I am to escape unhurt. That I didn’t cause any injury (or worse) to my friend, colleague, and cohort, sitting next to me in the truck. On how things might have turned out differently if I was driving my own car. Still, now I have to contend with damages to the work vehicle and the possibility that it might impact our already too tight budget. And live with the possibility that I may single-handedly send my crew home early, all because I had the ill-fortune of hitting an ungulate.

There was a brief moment last night, while emailing photos of the damaged truck, when I almost lost it. A boo-hoo moment of feeling sorry for myself. Now I’m just exhausted. Spent. Lack of sleep, a full workday, and an afternoon spent filing reports and paperwork has tapped me out. And still, on every level, there’s that hoping, waiting, and wanting things to work out okay.

Maybe a good cry will help. Maybe sleep is all the healing I need.