do no harm

I was descending one of the great Fairfax hills this morning and noticed a woman a couple blocks in front of me standing in the street. As a approached, I realized she wasn't flagging down the mail truck but jerkedly weeping. She was a little girl in a grown woman's body, with confused and blurry eyes, spasming with fits of tears.

I neared to see that she was staring at a lump in the road - an animal, possibly her cat - that lay in a sorry state. It was a squirrel, whose leg twitched in writhing agony as I passed, and all the emotion coming from this woman lept forcibly into my body. She glanced up at me for a moment with a look of desperation, telling me with her eyes that it was up to me to do something.

So I backed up and swerved the two tons of steel over the tortured, miserable state of squirrel. It wasn't your typical Disney scene with happy deer and rodents singing in the forest as I felt the body crush beneath my 5-speed killing machine. The woman had stopped crying and hiccuped into a disbelieved silence. I rolled down my window, looked the woman in her tear-worn eyes, and said, "Your welcome."

Ok, so the second part of that didn't actually happen, but I played a version of its scenario on repeat behind my eyes all day. On my way back that night the squirrel, and consequently the woman, were both gone, but the haunting memory remains and forever burned cortex of my mind. I will always wonder, should I have just put it out of its misery?