When Sweetness Turned Bitter

It was half past eleven in the morning.

I carried my belongings and stepped up the back of a small lorry that had been modified to take people. I thought, "So... I can finally leave this training camp and go home and do my stuff." Feeling good, I sat down on the back of that truck together with my friends, turning back to see a second small lorry that also took people. The camp site was at a higher ground, inaccessible to buses. With only those two lorries as transport, I had no choice but to endure the searing heat under the bright sun as we travelled down the area. The lorries would have to go back up later to fetch other students down.

At the lower ground, buses were ready. I quickly got off the lorry and walked towards one of them. The cool air in the bus hit my face as I stood in front of the door, setting my foot in. "Ahh... I'm here again," I thought, looking for a seat. Somehow, my friends and I chose the same seats as the ones we sat on when we were on our way to the camp. Now that we were going to go back, everyone was happy, excitedly discussing the experience during the camp and what they would do after the trip.

Then came the fateful moment... of chaos.

"Look! What are they doing?" The chit chat was completely disrupted by a sudden, out-of-topic question. Another friend asked, "Why are they running back up the hill?" Curious, I turned my head to see a group of guys dashing back on the path we came from. "Huh? What's happening?" I thought. Before I even tried to ask that question, someone answered it, "They said one of the lorries has flipped!" "HAH?!" I uttered in surprise. The news spread faster than I knew it did, and everyone in every bus hurried out and ran back up the hill.

So I ran, ran, ran, and ran, silently wishing that this was just a hoax. Looking around, I saw everyone wearing different expressions, from serious to shocked to... well, excited. Not knowing where the site of the accident was, I just followed everyone else and kept running. In a minute or two, I finally arrived.

Cries. Screams. Blood. Tears. What I saw was a scene of fear, pain, and confusion. It was a mess. My sight first landed on a male student who was sitting on the ground with a bleeding forehead and arms. Then I saw a girl sitting in the middle of the path, crying, screaming in pain as her friends tried to move her left leg. From the intensity of her cries, anyone could easily guess there was a fracture in her. Her friends then immediately stopped moving her. She also had a bleeding forehead and arms. I then saw another girl sitting at the side, soundless and expressionless, responding only with screams of pain when her wound on her right arm was washed with water by her friends. "She must be in shock," I said to myself. There were several other injured students sitting on the ground around the place while being tended to by helpers and their friends. Other people were trying hard to call the ambulance.

Seeing all this, some other uninvolved students began taking pictures. I also did reach for my phone in my pocket, but I withdrew my hand without the phone. I felt it was inappropriate.

Scanning around the area, I saw drips of blood on the ground and the grass. A few of the small plants were already covered in blood. Then my sight shifted to the flipped truck. The lorry was off the very steep path and was on its right side in a very shallow river with some small rocks protruding out of it. But wait... Looking more closely, I realized that the lorry was exactly the one I got on when I came down! According to others, this was its third round coming down. I went for the first round. If I were to wait any longer to get on the lorry, I could be there among the victims!!

Anyway, at this point, without my intentional attempt, I was already trying to reconstruct every stage of the accident in my mind. I concluded that the victims must had had a painful hit on the back of the main metal box in front of the lorry that housed the driver. Another probable conclusion was that they were thrown out of the back of the lorry and hit something else as the lorry flipped. Both, or other events, could have happened. No one knew how the accident unfolded except the victims themselves.

All of a sudden, I heard someone scolding very loudly. It was one of the students, but I did not think he was involved in the accident as he was totally uninjured. I saw him looking up the steep slope and fiercely shouting at someone whom I could not see, until his friends calmed him down and pulled him aside. It could be the driver he was shouting at. What happened to the driver and whether the driver acted irresponsibly during and after the accident, I did not and do not know. What the driver did and how the accident occurred are still unclear so far, as I've heard several versions of the story. After the harsh chiding stopped, I turned around and continued to digest the situation for a quick while before one of the trainers asked everyone who was not involved to go back down and wait. I went away with the crowd.

While waiting, everyone discussed with each other, exchanging bits and pieces of information about the accident. I looked around, and saw a male student with a bleeding nose. It was at this time that I was told that it was he who jumped off the truck immediately after the accident and ran all the way down, with injuries. He had a bloody head, bleeding nose, and injured hips. The guys in the group that I mentioned before instantly noticed his injuries and was told about the accident. If it wasn't for him, no one would have known that one of the lorries had flipped. Next, I was told that the girl with fractured legs also suffered relatively serious injuries of the arms and the head. She was drifting in and out of consciousness while her friends kept calling her name and talking to her to try to keep her conscious. She was one of the most seriously injured victims.

A pang of bitterness struck me while I was waiting below. I wished I could offer some help, but I had no idea how to go about it and what I could do, if there was anything I could do at all. I was deeply pained by the fact that the victims had to suffer in this way. After a while, an ambulance arrived. My heavy mood was more relieved with the sight of the ambulance. After another 10 minutes or so, a second ambulance came.

The wait took about 2 hours in total. At that point, all injured students were already on their way to the hospital. Only then was everyone told to get into the buses and be ready to leave. On the bus, everyone was quiet. The previous happy, relaxed atmosphere was lost completely and was replaced by heavy silence. No one spoke. Those who wanted to speak with friends only whispered. Everything sweet... had turned bitter.

By half past four, the buses arrived at the college campus. I had finally returned. Then, shortly after I stepped out of the bus, I received the news that all injured students were now stable in the hospital. "That's wonderful to hear," I thought.

Isn't life so fragile?

The more one understands this, the less time in life one wastes on useless things.