It's an unsettling story, or how should I put it... You know how sometimes in car accidents, someone gets pinned, and even though they should technically die from hemorrhagic shock, they're kept alive precisely because they're pinned? Right up until the end, they'll be talking cheerfully like, "I don't hurt at all. A crane is coming to rescue me right now. Let's hang out later," but the very second the car is moved, massive bleeding starts and they die instantly... Maybe there are better ways to handle situations like this nowadays, but I thought it was a pretty unsettling story.
I saw something like that on a TV show, maybe Unbelievable. It happened to a wife in the US—she got into a crash in the woods, and a tree impaled her body, causing a fatal wound but also acting as a tourniquet. Normally she would have died instantly, but she stayed alive for several hours, talking about the future with her husband who had rushed to the scene, before weakening and passing away.
I'm pretty sure there are proper protocols for dealing with that kind of accident nowadays, though. I've completely blanked on the details, so I forgot how they actually handle it.
A while ago, Ijuin had a radio project where he interviewed all sorts of people. This is a story told by an emergency responder, or someone like that, from that show.
A call came in around 3:00 AM. Apparently, there was an accident on the highway. Rushing to the scene, they found a man pinned inside a car with his lower body severed. However, fortune or misfortune, the severed area was compressed so bleeding was minimal, and he was conscious. The man asked, "How much longer do I have?" Even with little bleeding, his lower body was severed. Moving him to effect a rescue would mean instant death. Drawing from experience, the responder answered, "About five minutes," and asked if he had any final wishes. "I want to talk to my family," the man replied. His nearby cell phone was still working, so they tried calling his home. However, it was the middle of the night. No matter how many times they called, nobody picked up. "Never mind. Thank you." With those words, the man breathed his last. A few minutes later, the man's phone rang back with a call from his home. The emergency responder told them that the man had been in an accident and died instantly. He did it because he figured that if the surviving family members knew the man had been alive for a few more minutes and wanted to talk to them, they would regret missing that call for the rest of their lives. Even so, to this day, he still finds himself wondering what the right thing to do in that moment was.
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