a fine balance.

It’s sobering to write about a second car accident in a single month.

Today I drove to a small grocery store fifteen minutes from our house.  It’s on a corner of a busy intersection.  I pass through the green light and pause on the other side, turn signal on, waiting to cross traffic into a parking space.

As one opens, I look behind me, and just begin to turn the wheel when – WHAM!  I see a flash of a sari and hear a woman scream.  She had tried to speed around me to the right, clipped my car, and went sprawling onto the pavement.

I quickly park to the side and come running to see her.  A crowd already forms, brewing with a blend of helpfulness, curiosity, and anger.  Several fingers are pointing at me as the culprit.

Crowds in this situation in South Asia, as in many other areas of the world, can be very dangerous and volatile.  There are no police present and my innocence or her fault in the accident is inconsequential.  Julie and I witnessed a truck driver dragged from his vehicle and beaten to death for hitting and killing a young boy.

I see the woman is bleeding and shaken up, but at least conscious and speaking.  A man pulls me aside and says, “Do not stay here.  This crowd will get out of control quickly.  Take this woman to the hospital as fast as you can or you will get hurt.”  I ask him to help me but he says he’s afraid to.

I push through the crowd, help the woman up, and lead her to my car.  We speed away to a nearby clinic.  There she receives stitches in her mouth and leg.  I am praising the Lord she is okay.

Outside Cartee (who rushed out to meet me) and I deal with her father and brother who have come.  They scream at me and threaten to take me to the police if I don’t pay for her care.  It doesn’t matter that the accident was her fault.  I am a foreigner faced with the prospect of pleading my case before corrupt police who don’t speak my language.  I have no recourse.

I pay her hospital bill but don’t give my contact information.  My South Asian friend advised me I would be milked for a long time afterward if I did.

Still shaking, I drive home.  A million scenarios swirl through my mind.  What if she had no helmet?  What if it was a family with young children on a scooter that I’ve seen so often?  What if a kind stranger hadn’t urged me to run?

I recently read a powerful novel, A Fine Balance.  That title has stuck with me.  It’s a fine balance between stitches and a morgue; between sitting here at home with my wife and sitting in a dank, South Asia jail.

Indeed, we tread this fine balance here as everywhere, so helplessly dependent on a loving Father to protect us, we can hardly see it for what it is.