Being scared

I was driving home today from work and stopped at the 2nd stop sign at a busy intersection. From the corner of my eye, I saw someone was on the ground hurt. I grabbed my cell phone and jumped out of the car to see what had happened. A few feet away I saw his mangled bike and knew he had been hit by a car. I was one of 3 people who first approached the scene. Someone else dialed 911 and started explaining what was wrong with the guy. It's hard to describe the scene because there were so many things going on at once. Someone was yelling "where's the driver who hit this guy? the driver left?" and a middle aged woman rushing to us yelling back "i'm the driver. The driver is here!" She looked at him and was immediately shaken and upset. Someone tried to console her, "This stuff happens all the time" and she tried to console herself "He just came out of no where." There were two or three cars stuck behind me at the stop sign. I wasn't sure whether to move my car or not. Then someone starts yelling that we need clean cloth to stop the bleeding from his head. I had a clean 3X3 square piece of gauze I use to wipe my fingers after testing. Should I offer that? It seemed so very unsuited for the task and I felt the same way about myself in this scene. Within seconds there was a big pool of blood on the asphalt and that made me spin my head in the other direction. Offering my piece of gauze would have been a comical gesture at this point. This is worst accident I've ever encountered this closely. I felt emotionally invested in staying to make sure everything was alright, but decided there was greater value in me moving my car to unblock this lane in case the ambulance was going to come this way. I continued to drive home. I didn't witness anything of value to contribute to the police report and there were a handful of people there who may have actually seen something. There wasn't anything I could do for this guy but hope that he's eventually going to be fine. I don't know how the people (police, EMT, etc.) who deal with this level of intensity do their jobs for a living. I don't know that I could ever become desensitized by these situations.

Right now, I feel emotionally ill-equipped to deal with crisis. A crisis to me is Lucy taking a leak on the rug. Right now I just want to stay in one place. I don't want to move. I don't want to go outside where there are cars, buses and many imperfect people - drivers with slow reflexes, tired commuters, impatient and careless drivers, distracted parents. This is what it's like to be scared.