Why did Zimmerman Refuse to go to the Hospital after the Shooting ?

[Savannahmann]

50. Imagine this, you're in an auto accident

Nearly all of us have been. There is a loud crash, perhaps you saw it coming, perhaps it was a complete surprise. You are thrown against your seat belt, perhaps your airbag deploys violently into your face. Shock, fear, and confusion reign at this moment. How many times have we heard that someone who refused treatment at the scene actually suffered severe injuries? Spinal injuries are the norm here, but not strictly limited.

The reverse is also true. At that moment, you may well think you are moments from death. You may well think that the smoke coming from your airbag is the first sign of fire, and that impression is probably helped by the heat of the airbag, they get bloody hot. You smell heat, feel it, see the wisp of smoke. Fear propels you to tear out of the car, and if you have passengers you are shouting at them to get out now. Fire, you must get out of the car before the fire.

Fear is the thing. Fear is incidental, and once the incident is over, fear subsides, but the fear is real. When police make mistakes, we always hear how they are going to get additional training. The idea is that the training can teach them to better think through the fear, but for some it is a lost cause. The fear in such an incident as a fight, for your life, or a car crash can and does tend to operate on instinct. Your instinctive response is fight, or flight. Protect or flee. If you are a parent, and your children are in the car, you will ignore your own injuries while struggling against an airbag and everything else to get to your children, check on them, care for them.

At that moment, while your head is bouncing on the ground, the fear of death is quite possible. Because you don't know how bad you are hurt. You feel the impacts, but part of you knows that adrenaline is masking the injuries. That is what it does, and that is why we have it. To help give us an edge in a life or death situation. Make us stronger, faster, allow us to think just a bit more quickly.

Now, here we go. Is it entirely possible that Zimmerman while this single moment in time was going on felt for a moment that he would not live through this? Yes. Even though I think he was as wrong as a screen door on a submarine for following Martin, I also think at that moment in the incident he could well have imagined himself seconds, or even moments from serious injury, or death.

After the accident, you calm down, adrenaline starts to subside, you feel a couple aches and you check yourself out. No broken bones, no serious pain anywhere. You talk to people, you're shaken, but otherwise unharmed. After the fact, when you are better able to process the information coming at you, you make a decision, probably accurate, that you're really fine. You laugh about the fear, because thankfully nobody got hurt.

Assuming that you like most of us has been in a fairly minor accident, or some other situation. Remember the feeling of relief you had when you and those who you knew, your children, friends, co-workers were alive and uninjured. Remember that moment of dread, where you were keenly aware of the possibility that not everyone, especially yourself, or your children, would not be well.

After the fact, your brain is working better, processing information better. At that moment, the moment of the event, your mind may not be processing information accurately. The relief of being alive, and essentially uninjured. Does that relief diminish the reality of that moment, when you were in fear of being injured, or killed in the accident? Is your eventual understanding of being alive and unharmed increased, or minimized by the fear you felt for that moment?