Abducted by aliens

In case any of you were wondering, I am still alive and well and have not been abducted by aliens.

The reason for the lack of updates is that I was involved with a railway incident on the day before my previous entry. It was only my fifth solo driving turn and a day given over entirely to Stansted Express services and, surprisingly for me, started without incident. Unfortunately, it didn't last. As I was driving through Clapton station on my way back down the the airport, a person ran out from behind the steps to the ticket office and jumped off the edge of the platform directly in front of my train. Even though I sounded the warning horn and applied the brakes, there was no way that I could avoid running the person over.

I had thought that my reaction to having a fatality would be very different and that I would be more emotional than I was. Apart from the expected rush of adrenalin and the shock of the event, I managed to stay quite calm about the situation. In fact, even while sitting there waiting for the emergency services the whole thing seemed most surreal that I wondered for a moment whether or not I had just imagined the whole thing and was stopping the job for no reason. This impression was reinforced by the other people on the platform who must have seen the incident still just standing there impassively as if they were waiting for their train. However, I had already decided that I would not go back and look if I was ever involved with a fatality, and I wasn't about to change my mind on that. I could quite happily live with someone else doing the checking for me.

When they arrived, the emergency services were brilliant. They took control of the situation and made sure that I was OK. They really couldn't do enough for me and even made sure that I didn't see the recovery process or the body itself. The same goes for the managers and colleagues at work who showed great concern for my welfare and helped me through all the necessary paperwork required after an incident such as this.

Naturally, such an incident triggers the "Chain of Care" procedure, which is intended to assist me back to work. Consequently, I have been booked off work since the incident and taking counselling sessions to help me deal with the memories of the incident and the emotions that they generate. Fortunately, there hasn't been any emotional reaction yet. I guess that this is partly down to the fact that railway fatalities were never shied away from throughout training and it is a subject that I had already devoted an amount of time to think about. I pretty quickly went through the rational process of thinking that "it wasn't me that killed this person, it was the train", "if it hadn't have been me it would have been the bloke behind me" and "if they hadn't jumped under a train they would have found some other means". If anything, the counsellor is happy that I'm dealing with events well but is concerned that I am perhaps a little too rational about it.

I think that my lack of reaction probably stems also from the way in which the incident happened. While no fatality is good, it was for me at least quite "soft". If it had been more gruesome or appeared not to be that person's deliberate action I'm certain that I would have been more affected by it.

Of course, this all means that it is almost a month since I last drove a train, which is going to affect my progress a little. However, I am going back to work tomorrow and have agreed a staged return to work so that I have the opportunity to get back into a good cab routine and buid my confidence back up. If anything, I'm feeling more nervous about how rusty I've become than I am about going back over the route where it happened. However, none of this has dampened my feelings towards driving as a job and I'm looking forward to getting back into the seat again.