June 23, 2023—
We met a data scientist tonight who once found a stranger lying dead in his driveway. It was one of five deaths, or the immediate aftermaths of, she happened to witness in that particular year.
Rachel and I had walked to a rooftop event for a professional group I belong to, and ended up chatting with only one great couple. I was going to save this as a draft in case we end up friends, but I doubt we’ll ever see them again.
The first death was a cyclist hit by a car at Union and East Ave. The couple’s facetious energy swerved to earnest evangelism for bike helmets.
“If you drive by there, you can see the ghost bike,” the man said. “We saw that happen.”
A pickup truck had blocked the cyclist from a teen driver, who turned right too fast, to beat the light. The biker wasn’t wearing a helmet, and hit his head on one of the granite curbs across Rochester that routinely pop tires.
The couple witnessed the accident, and pulled over to wait with two nurses and a nurse practitioner who helplessly stood by on their phones. “They could have held his skull back together,” insisted the man, who had watched the victim’s blood run to the gutter.
The second death was of a man who had had a heart attack in his rural driveway. She’d pulled over for a minute to give delivery men directions, and noticed his body, face down. His Labrador retriever was “going nuts.”
She called 911, and led the dog into the house, away from a still-whirring snowblower. No one was inside, but the TV was on, and snacks nearby. She found a bill on a table with his wife’s name and a number, and called her to come home. There had been an accident, she said. The EMTs were there.
She didn’t say who the third stranger was that year, but the last two were her parents. It was an interesting evening on the roof with cups of free red wine.
New statue, “Process Art (An Eye for An Eye)” 2008 by Nathan Mabry, at the U of R Memorial Art Gallery,
as seen on Rachel and I on a walk.