Leaves fall and so do cars

Today I went for a walk. I went for a walk on my lunch break in my favorite burnt yellow coat and favorite scarf. I had been having a good day at work and was stressed about some things I had to take care of before a meeting that evening. It is Autumn and the trees are beautiful and, though it had been a cold weekend and was about to get warm for a while, at that moment it was a most beautiful October day. And then a little pop sound and car was sideways on the side walk on the grass about a block and a half in front of me. I had just stopped to fix my shoe and looked up and there it was. Five or six people ran out of near by houses on phones and I saw an old car in the middle of the road. These things all happened before it really sunk in that a car accident had just happened. There had been no screeching or smashing metal, just a pop and someone's world had been turned completely upside down (both literally and figuratively). Can I just say that my first instinct really was, "Someone must have misplaced that car." But no really, I wondered (briefly) if one of those car-carrying big rigs had accidentally dropped something. No, that was not the case. Then, I couldn't get myself to walk any further. I had no phone on me, just my keys, and others had just made that call. I am also no longer CPR certified...these all went through my head. I also shouldn't go because if I did, then the ambulance that quickly got there would also have a shock case on their hands and I didn't want to detract from the matter at hand. In all honesty I was terrified of what I'd see. I then stood there for the next twenty minutes as three police cars, two ambulances, and a firetruck arrived and did things I couldn't see behind the car. I waited on the corner, first pondering why I didn't run toward it and then offering my prayers as my way of contributing. I wanted to see what was going on but didn't want to go further to goggle. I waited. I wanted to see stretchers move to the ambulance with people sitting upright or at least not covered completely in a white sheet. I did see one go out from behind the car but couldn't see details because of all of the emergency vehicles parked in front of it. Eventually a walker came by from that direction and I asked her what she had seen. The car in the middle of the road was a Cadillac. This then explained the older man just being wheeled into the ambulance sitting upright. A Cadillac can hold it's own and an old man would be the driver of this old car. I had seen that the other car had flown to the grass like a toy and was told that the Cadillac only had some damage in the front. The woman I talked to hadn't seen anybody coming out of the cars and walked on. I worried about the first stretcher I saw go out. They had taken a long time and yet, the ambulance didn't rush away with him/her. Why wasn't it moving? Were they in stable condition or...
Someone's life had been critically altered, or ended... people were out with their children, traffic was zooming by in importantly busy lunchtime traffic, going to meet business colleagues to discuss important matters or friends to relax with, the trees were changing and a light breeze moved them in and out of soft light, and a young woman staring from the corner about a block away just stopped worrying about "things."