After about an hour of sleep tonight, I was awakened by an enormously-loud crashing sound on the street below, followed by horrific screaming. I knew immediately that this wasn’t some of the ordinary drunken Friday night yelling I often hear from the street or from the open-air hallways of my building. I tried to shake the confusion out of my head as I reached for my cel phone to call 911. It was a woman, and her shrill screams came in through my closed back windows. “Help me! Please! God, somebody HELP!”
I live on Aurora Avenue. Aurora is Seattle’s name for Highway 99, part of a system that ran from Mexico to Canada until Interstate 5 took its place in the late 1960s. In Seattle it is known as a pretty seedy street that forms a significant part of the red-light district. Shadier parts of Aurora are home to drug dealers, all-weather hoes in tight pants and parkas, and motels with hourly rates. I usually feel insulated from all that mess in my apartment. We are on the fourth floor of a nice, modern building, with gorgeous views of Lake Union, downtown, and Mount Rainier. We exit at the back, on a quieter residential street where the neighbors say hello and goo-goo over the baby. Our neighborhood borders one of the nicest neighborhoods in Seattle, Wallingford, which is chockablock with kids and dogs and cute coffee shops. My part of Aurora doesn’t see a lot of action; it’s just a divided highway that can zip you from here to there quickly if traffic’s moving.
However, this is a part of Aurora with a higher speed limit, so the one thing we do see is accidents. I knew something horrible had happened on the street below. Between the haze of early sleep and the effect of the bone-chilling screams, I could barely get my words out correctly when the 911 operator answered. “Something’s happened on the street. A woman is screaming on the street. I think there’s been an accident,” I managed. He took my address and asked what I could see. I can’t even see Aurora from my windows as there is an open-air walkway at that end of the building. The operator promised someone would come right away and asked me to call back if things changed.
I hung up and went back into the bedroom. My cel phone read 12:45. My teeth were chattering and I was shaking. My companion moaned and mumbled a few words to me. I suspect he didn’t even wake up. He slept through a wicked altercation that my neighbors had in my old building a few months ago as well. The screams continued and the street was otherwise eerily silent. I couldn’t stand it anymore so I got dressed and went out barefoot to the open hallway overlooking the street, leaving him in the apartment with the baby.
Some of my other building neighbors had gathered and were watching the street. Others had called 911 too. I looked straight down over the edge to see what happened, but the woman in the apartment across from me pointed across the street. I could see a man sprawled out on his back, in light-colored clothing, not moving. My neighbor told me he was a pedestrian hit-and-run and speculated that the man and the screaming woman were trying to cross the divided highway, which is sadly a common way to get killed in Seattle. The woman had stopped screaming and my neighbor told me that she had run down the street. A minute later the police came, followed by fire trucks and an ambulance, and the police cars blocked off the street. The EMTs loaded the man into the ambulance, but did not turn the sirens on or drive off once they had secured the man in the ambulance. The screaming woman returned and I could see a couple of police officers talking to her.
“That was a loud crash,” I said to my neighbor. “Someone has a messed-up car now.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll bet his windscreen’s messed up. It’s all too bad. It’s not the driver’s fault if someone’s crossing the road at a place like this. If they would have stopped it would be okay. As it is, it’s a hit-and-run felony.”
I don’t know if the man’s alive. I hope so. It’s sad–there’s a safe place to cross Aurora about a block up from where they got hit. I hope I can sleep now. I have been woken up by trucks taking out trees and telephone poles on the street, as well as fender-benders, but I have never woken up to the sound of a person screaming at the top of their lungs like that.
It struck me when you mentioned that there was a safe place to cross a block up. That is sad. I see it all the time around here, in the burbs, where the ped xing-friendly intersections are so random.
I was hit by a car as a child, and years later, I got in an argument with my MOM, of all people, because I insisted on walking over to the crosswalk and waiting for the Running Man to tell me I could walk. My own mom. She and my sister jaywalked and waited like they were doing me a favor, and I was on the verge of tears because she made me feel so silly when I knew I was right. It makes me cringe when I see people, especially kids, jay-walk or -run so close to a safe place, or worse, in a safe place but against the signal. I want to scream at the whole world when I see that.
Ahem. Comment-jacking aside, I love your blog, and have been lurking for a few months, after reading the archives. I am a That Poor Woman, except that my husband bears no resemblance to SeaFed, physically or mentally. I like seeing the other side. As to TPW’s use of the word “we” in the previous entry, she may be your best resource. Losing battle or not, she may be trying to light a fire under his ass as concerns his responsibility to Frannie, esp. since she has a stake in how he treats a kid of his own.
That’s awful! I’ve seen my share of accidents on 99 and every one of them could have been prevented. In addition to the jaywalking problem is the total disregard of speed limits on that street. They range between 25 and 40, depending on which stretch you’re on, but people regularly go much faster. A little boy was hit up here in Shoreline, leaving him in a coma with little chance of pulling through. This kid was in a legit crosswalk, but a speeder ran him down.
I’m sorry you had to experience this, but I’m glad you were there to call for help. You never know if people will pitch in and call, or just gawk.
Dear SJ, I’m a bit behind the times; I’ve only just discovered you’re back! As a long-time reader of previous incarnations of I, Asshole, I’m so happy. I remember pictures of Frannie when she was just a toddler; what a beautiful little girl she’s become! And Strudel is simply scrumptious. I’ll say it again, I’m so glad you’re back! Ginger x
Might not have turned out so well for the driver if he was drunk, or his insurance just expired or something. I’m sure it’s easy to panic if you cream someone on I-5 and you’re not 100% street legal.
By the way, I’m back from Burning Ma’am.