Milly.

I am completely traumatized and never want to leave the house again.

I left this morning to catch the train to school. As I got to the station, I could see a train just pulling away, but it was going the opposite direction that I needed to go. So I went through the station, up the stairs over the bridge and down to the other side of the tracks to wait for my train. As I sat down to wait I could hear a dog yelping. I looked around and saw her. A big black lab crawling around on the tracks. Not so much crawling. She was pulling herself along on her front legs as both her back legs were clearly broken. She must have got down onto the tracks and had been hit by the train that had just left. She was crying and yelping and finally gave up trying to move and lay down on the tracks. Anyone who knows me would know how I reacted. Not well. I ran back up over the bridge into the station, where the man who works behind the desk was already on the phone to the Gards (the police...like the mounties). People on the platform started yelling that there was another train coming. I was among some people screaming at the man behind the desk to tell the train to stop before it got to the platform. He couldn't. I paniced. I couldn't breathe. I stepped outside the station because I couldn't bear to be there if the train couldn't stop. Some people ran down to the very end of the platform and somehow got the driver to stop the train. The train stopped about 6 or 7 feet from the dog. I went back to the platform, and the train driver got out, and the man behind the desk came out onto the platform and we talked about what we should do. We decided we had to move her. So the man who worked in the station went inside, rooted through the lost and found and came out with a big hoodie to put over the dog's head in case she tried to bite when they touched her, because she was obviously in pain. They didn't need the hoodie after all. She was very calm and probably just happy to be off the tracks. They lifted her up and then I pulled her onto the platform. Her nose and mouth were bleeding, but I checked her and her pulse was a little fast, but her breathing was very good, so I don't think any internal organs had been damaged, and she wasn't going into shock. We covered her with the hoodie to keep her warm, and we looked at her collar to see if there was a tag. Luckily there was. It said her name was Milly and had a phone number. I rang the number. The woman who answered sounded so relieved to hear that I had her dog and asked where she was. I had to tell her. I had the job of telling her that I was at the train station and her dog had been hit by the train and needed to go to the vet right away. She said she would be there right away. By the time I was off the phone, the Gards had arrived. I sat with Milly and talked to her and pet her. She was whimpering a little bit but not really crying anymore. The woman who owned Milly must live very close to the station because she was there within about three minutes. We moved Milly on top of the hoodie, and her owner backed the car up by the door to the station, then the two Gards, the train driver, and the man from the station each took a corner of the hoodie and carried her like on a stretcher into the woman's car. They took off for the vet.

I'm sure she'll probably be okay. Vets can do that these days. But it was completely traumatizing. I didn't stop shaking until some time in the afternoon. Claire showed up to get the train a few minutes after Milly and her owner had left, so I had to explain to her what had happened and why I was in such rough shape. I had contemplated just going home after all that and not going to school at all. I'm glad I ended up going to school though. If I had gone home, I would have been thinking about it all day and probably would have made myself more upset than I already was. After school, Claire didn't think I should go home by myself right away so she brought me to her house for tea and then we took her dog for a walk in Sorrento Park, which was nice.

But I still don't feel terribly confident about leaving the house to take the train tomorrow morning.