Keeping Pieces (Short Story)

HIPPA demands that we don’t talk about our calls, except in a very generalized fashion, and I adhere to this rule strongly enough to have tweaked the call that this story is based upon very nearly into the arena of unreality. So, here’s what is real and true – the spirit of the child, the sorrow and shock, and finally, the redemption.

For me, this is a springtime story, and no matter how many springs go by, my mind still worries the memory; and I still see this boy when the air begins to gentle into long warm days. Every EMT carries a few pieces around with them – these are mine.

 

Keeping Pieces

I took a boy on the ambulance once, and he left a piece of himself there with me. I’ve been carrying it around ever since, and sometimes in the black early morning when I am on my way to work, he morphs out of that piece and sits beside me whole. On those days, the scent of spring in the air is only a trick of the mind, lilacs and pussy willows as far away as tomorrow.
            He shimmers in death, fresh from another world that my soul knew in infancy. A place that the cold and practical adult, the professional, has forgotten, and wants no part of now.
            But anyway.
 When I knew him, he was just one of us; on the last day that I saw him, the blood seeping through his wrist bandages was tangible and real - the only color in an otherwise gray day.  I knew him, I guess, in the way that most adults know their children’s friends. He was a familiar face, a bright redhead in my yard on beautiful blue football mornings, an easy grin and a maturity that set him a little apart from the other boys.
The kid on my cot that day bore no relation whatsoever to that other bright child. My boys – the boys who decorated my furniture with their lanky forms, ate my food, made me laugh - were at that age where they were as immortal as Huckleberry Finn, and they hadn’t cried in years. If the Jabberwocky lived under their beds, he did so unacknowledged.
            But I can tell you now that two weeks later, the monsters won, and this boy was dead. His mother found him curled in the tub like half formed reality, bled out, already gone.  And in my profession, helplessness is something that seeps beneath your skin; it lays there like lividity, a large black bruise that won’t go away. And so. The pieces.
            You carry them around with you, and you work at them a little, rubbing them the way that a worried thumb will smooth a lucky stone. Sometimes you take them out and look at them, turn them in your palm, and they still look the same. Your failure mocks you.
 I should have been able to save that one.

                                                                  * * *

            Spring.
If not this spring, then the next.
It will come when you are able to let it, and everything will smell so sweet that you have to stop crying. You can’t throw those pieces away, but they seem to weigh less now. Go outside, and look at the branches of the trees against a smooth dove colored sky. Take your little girl on a bike ride, and watch the magical play of sunlight in her hair. Listen and remember. Where you came from, to whom you belong.
            Understand that it’s all right to carry those pieces around; you couldn’t get rid of them now if you tried. They soaked into your skin and they course through your veins, and they live. In you.

            We carry each other until we get to the other side.

"June Already?" -An Update-

June already? The magnolia has lost its tentative lacy green, branches already laden with large, waxy leaves and the lawn beneath plush as cat fur.

            Spring went by in a blur of rain and work. Fire trainings, Mother’s Day gifts, prom tuxes and our last high school graduation. All the stuff of life, bundled and tossed at us – sorted out, soaked in, and hurried past.

            Slow down, life!

            May and June are big fire training months. Possibly because we finally feel like moving again, lol! We will come to your house fire in the winter, but, given our preference, we would rather not turn into animated ice cubes while operating the hose lines. This spring, we’ve covered auto extrication and l.p. burns – yours truly got to be nozzle man, raising her blood pressure to an amazing level (I’ve been eating garlic and drinking apple cider vinegar ever since.) Also, we have not one, but two, abandoned houses to use for practice burns. Youngest son has joined the department, and brought buddies with him, so we are thrilled to death.

        Mother’s Day saw me with not only my mother, but all three of my kids, and I am so blessed to realize that this is always the case. Sunshine and lilacs and the slow awareness of utter peace. Mother’s Day, to me, feels like the easy Sundays of my childhood – simple, unfettered happiness.

This is a picture of all of us together – Rachel is the oldest and a university student, which still sounds so important that I secretly marvel every time I say it, lol. She’ll be home for much of the summer, yay!. Philip is the boy in the cap, already brown as can be, although I would swear the sun has hardly been out this summer. He lives just down the road from us, and is currently wearing himself out building pools and attending bonfires. This boy works and plays harder than anyone else I know. Johnny is the youngest and the tallest – just graduated high school and tells me that nobody calls him Johnny anymore. He makes movies – you can find him on youtube if you go to Jones Shorts and then Jones Productions, he’s got the pic of the horse - but he doesn’t know what he wants to do with the rest of his life. Lately, it’s become a prevalent question. He’s only eighteen, people!

I sometimes think of these guys as the rudder, the sails and the anchor in my life ship.


Prom was especially awesome this year because Johnny was king! He insisted on a white tux, and even though dinner was spaghetti, the garment seems to have survived. We had a lot of fun with the crown, and even made Kitty-Boy pose for a picture in it. Lol!

And graduation, whew! Our high school – which we never think of as “ours” since it is not in our town – is especially snobby and stuffy, and insists on silence during the ceremony. Lol! Philip brought an airhorn, and we made a resounding racket as Johnny walked up for his
diploma. This is long-standing tradition in my family, but truly, we outdid ourselves. Probably a good thing that this is our last-ever high school graduation.     

Our party was at the fire station, and my daughter, party planner extraordinaire, had it well in hand. She makes cakes! Beautiful, awesome cakes with butter cream frosting as thick as two finger widths – yay! And she decorated – streamers, balloons, photos strung from silver wire and live flowers for centerpieces. The flowers were of a variety I had never seen before, long cones tipped in pink, yellow and orange. So appropriate, they looked like little candles, and if ever there is a time to light a candle for the future, now is it.         

Today is my first anniversary! I love, love my husband.

            Happy summer, all!