First, the crushed victim who will live just long enough to say goodbye to a loved one is an old
urban legend. In addition to
Signs and
Homocide, it shows up in an episode of
3rd Watch (car accident combined with a bridge collapse) and at least one other show I can't place right now, with a man crushed between a delivery truck and a loading dock.
I'm not saying that's what this is, and it certainly doesn't hurt to accept the story as true for the sake of discussion, so assuming that it is . . .
I ask myself what I would have wanted had I been conscious and about to die at the bottom of that ditch. I'd want the chance to say goodbye to Grace and Sissy. Not to have them there to see it, but to talk to her and say goodbye. As it was, Sissy was there most of the first day and both of them the day following when I was still in a coma.
I ran it by Grace, a former EMT, and her response was, paraphrased:
"The job is to treat the patient, get him stable for transport if further treatment is required, and get him to the nearest appropriate treatment facility as soon as possible. Having a spouse there during critical treatment usually causes problems rather than helping in most situations. I've never been in that specific situation, so I have no way of knowing exactly what I'd have done, but contacting family is generally the the job of the police, hospital, or dispatch. I might have given him a chance to say goodbye, but waiting for the wife to get there so she could see her husband die a violent and messy death? Nope."