15 July 2000 - Wellington Circle, Medford, Massachusetts
“McGregor’s lucky that ceiling didn’t cave in while he was sleeping in his bunk three nights ago,” Shawna commented while they waited for their coffee order.
She and Jeff were posting at Wellington Circle, a major intersection of state routes in Medford. Wellington was a favorite place for Brophy to have their ambulances cover multiple cities, or “post,” since it was convenient to three other municipal contracts; Paramedic Thirty-one was currently covering four cities: Medford, Melrose, Malden and Brophy’s newest contract, Everett. The crews didn’t mind posting at Wellington Circle because it boasted a twenty-four hour coffee shop with clean bathrooms.
“I know,” Jeff replied. “Being covered in drop-ceiling tiles and rainwater is not the way to wake up. We needed the rain but not that frog-strangler we got that night.”
“‘Frog-strangler?’”
“Um, gully-washer?”
“Oh, okay, I’ve heard that term.”
“Sorry, the locals near Benning and Bragg used to use that, so I must have picked it up when I was in the Army. On the bright side now we know what was causing your runny noses for the past year.”
A violent rainstorm on the Tuesday overnight shift dropped nearly three inches of rain on Medford and the other cities just north of Boston. The slow leak in Medford Station Five’s roof hadn’t held up to the increased water pressure; it allowed the rain to enter and soaked the ceiling of the Brophy EMS quarters built in the apparatus bay, causing its collapse. The previous slow leak hadn’t been enough to cause a collapse, but it did allow black mold to grow inside the walls of the EMS room.
“Well, they say it’ll only take a week or so to build us a new room,” Shawna commented. “It was cool of the guys at Station Five to let our overnight crews crash in the recliners until it’s complete.”
“The extra hour Brophy’s paying us to be based out of Malden and drive over to Medford for now is cool, too.”
The woman behind the counter handed them their ice coffees with her usual bright smile. “Thanks, Jasmine,” Jeff said, waving off Shawna’s offered payment. “I got this one,” he told his partner while handing Jasmine a ten dollar bill. Jeff dropped the coins and the dollar bill from the change in the tip cup while pocketing the five.
“Thanks, guys!” Jasmine said in response to the tip. The young mother’s smile always brightened people’s days when they came in.
“You have a good day, Jasmine,” Jeff smiled back.
Shawna and Jeff walked back to Thirty-one and unlocked it. Rolling down the front doors’ windows they reclined in their respective seats and propped their feet on the window frames.
“Can you imagine working in an office?” Shawna asked from the driver’s seat.
“Nope,” Jeff replied.
It is said that public safety work is ninety-five percent boredom mixed with five percent sheer terror; Jeff was content to be bored today. His eyes were closed as he felt the warmth of the sun on his face. Eighty-three degrees, crystal-clear blue skies, a light breeze and the calls all going to other units so far today. Perfect.
We found a parking spot under a tree, too, Jeff thought.
All of that should have been a clue that their day was about to go to shit.
“Operations to Paramedic Thirty-one?” Until they moved back into Station Five, Brophy’s dispatch center would assign the calls to Medford A-One.
Shawna picked up the microphone. “Thirty-one, Wellington Circle,” she answered, giving their current location.
“Thirty-one, in Medford, twenty-eight hundred Mystic Valley Parkway, apartment two-fifteen. Two-eight-zero-zero Mystic Valley Parkway, apartment two-one-five, Medford, for the pediatric altered mental status.”
“At least we’re close...” Jeff muttered while he pulled his legs into the truck and closed his door.
“Thirty-one has twenty-eight hundred Mystic Valley Parkway, apartment two-fifteen, Medford,” Shawna acknowledged. As her door closed she started the truck, cranking the a/c as the windows rolled up. Jeff hit the emergency master switch, activating the lights while he signed on with Medford Fire Alarm for the response. Three minutes later, Paramedic Thirty-one rocked as it entered the Mystic River Apartments complex. “Thirty-one, we’re going out,” Shawna said to dispatch when they pulled up to the building.
“Thirty-One. Apartment two-one-five.”
Jeff pulled on his gloves while they parked along the curb. He grabbed the portable radio and exited the cab of the truck; he switched it on and turned to the Medford Fire Alarm frequency. He piled their equipment onto the man-and-a-half stretcher before Shawna took it out of the truck. They made their way to the door of the building, wedging the door open for the fire department personnel responding behind them. The elevator was working today and they only waited two minutes for it to arrive. They had to wait another minute for the occupants to exit.
“What’s going on?” an exiting resident asked while they steered the stretcher into the small space.
“Ambulance call,” Jeff replied in a disinterested voice.
“I know that,” the man answered. “What’s the emergency?”
“Sorry, sir. We can’t tell you,” Jeff said as they finished fitting the stretcher in the elevator.
“Huh?” the man asked, confused. “Hey, I live here!” he declared. “I have a right to know!”
“No, sir, actually you don’t.” Jeff replied. “Your neighbors all have a right to privacy.” He was pushing the “door close” button over and over.
“What? So you’re not going to tell me?”
“Exactly,” Jeff stated while the doors closed.
“What a Richard...” Shawna muttered, shaking her head as the elevator rose.
On the second floor they maneuvered the stretcher out of the elevator and down the hall to apartment two-fifteen; they shared a chuckle about the man in the lobby. A man opened the door to the apartment for them and they entered, still shaking their heads. They stopped laughing when they crossed into the apartment and took in the scene in the front room.
They didn’t have a pediatric patient, they had two. Both children were young girls under five years-old, both were unconscious, both had visible marks on their faces. Shawna and Jeff moved, now all business. Kneeling next to the older girl, Jeff keyed the microphone of the portable radio.
“A-One to Fire Alarm? Who’s coming to twenty-eight hundred Mystic Valley, apartment two-fifteen?”
“A-One, this is Engine Five.” Jeff recognized the voice from the radio as Captain Nick DeCosta of Engine Five, someone he’d known since he started working in Medford. Thank God, he thought.
“Engine Five, expedite. We have two pediatric patients, both are unconscious.”
“Engine Five, roger.”
In reality a fifteen- to twenty-ton fire engine is not going to start driving faster when you tell them to “step it up.” They’re already driving as fast as they safely can; there are too many reasons why they can’t just floor the accelerator. What they will do is move quicker than normal once they arrive on-scene.
“What happened?” Jeff asked the man who’d let them in.
“I dunno,” he replied. “They fell while they were playing a little while ago; I think they hit their heads. They were acting funny after that, tired, so I called 9-1-1. Then they both collapsed just before you got here. I called their mother.”
People in EMS can be suspicious people thanks to the nature of their job. They are trained to look for problems, and to keep looking if they don’t find any; they can also tell when they are being given a false story. This was one such time. Jeff kept his suspicions to himself; glancing at Shawna, she gave him a look that told him she was thinking along the same lines.
Jeff checked his patient’s pulse - or he tried to. As soon as he touched the girl, her back arched, her arms extended, her wrists curled outward and her toes pointed; this was a reaction called ‘decerebrate posturing.’
Oh, shit.
Posturing is a sign of a brain injury; it indicates that the brain is trying to squeeze itself through the hole at the bottom of the skull as it swells. When a person postures the way Jeff’s patient was it’s a late sign of injury. Outcomes in cases with those signs are often not good. Finding the pulse in her wrist, Jeff noted it was slow, thready. Her breathing was becoming irregular. When he checked, her pupils were unequal and sluggish.
Ohshitohshitohshit.
“Cuff!” he called to Shawna and she tossed the pediatric blood pressure cuff to him; his patient’s pressure was elevated. They needed to go. NOW.
“Level One, decerebrate posturing. What do you have?” he asked his partner.
“Level Two, stable,” Shawna answered.
“Does yours need O2?”
“Sat’s fine and her breathing is regular,” Shawna answered, indicating that her patient’s oxygen level was within normal limits. “I can wait till we’re in the truck, take it.” Hearing her answer, Jeff grabbed the oxygen bag. With practiced moves he placed his patient on one hundred percent oxygen via face mask.
Jeff spoke to the man again. “You Dad?”
“No, I’m Jasmine’s boyfriend. Their Mom’s boyfriend.”
Jasmine? Please no!
“Where’s she?”
“At work. The coffee shop in Wellington Circle.”
Shit! These are Jasmine’s girls! No, no, NO!
“Do you know their names, ages, dates of birth? Stuff like that?”
“Some of it.”
“Write down what you know, please?”
Jeff turned back to his patient and performed a head-to-toe exam, looking for more injuries. He cataloged the injuries he found: tenderness of the scalp, facial fractures and bruising, marks on her face and chest, broken ribs, rigid abdomen. On the outside he was calm and controlled; deep inside of him a part of him seethed.
The man handed him a piece of paper with the information Jeff asked him for. Though his patient was his focus, Jeff noted something out of the norm on the hands of the man: there were scrapes on the man’s knuckles; the man also wore a ring on one hand which matched many marks on his patient’s face and torso. Goddammit! Jeff nodded as he took the paper and keyed his radio mic again. “A-One to Engine Five?”
“Go, A-One. We’re about three out.”
“Cap, on arrival we’ll need the pedi board, the KED and our collar bag. Call Blue and invite him to the party. One-and-one, minimum. The folks from the back hall here and at the General, too. We’ll need a driver.”
“On it, A-One. Less than two.” Jeff didn’t acknowledge; Nick would know what his message meant and that he’d be busy. Jeff found a vein on the inside of his patient’s right arm that he could thread an IV catheter into. Once that IV was secure, he moved to her left side to repeat the procedure. Jeff heard a welcome call over the radio while starting the second IV.
“Engine Five’s arriving, Fire Alarm.”
“What do you need, Jeff?” Nick DeCosta asked, stepping into the scene two minutes later followed by his crew.
“Pedi board and collar. Give the KED and a collar to Shawna. Load the bags onto our stretcher and take everything to the ambulance? We’ll carry the girls down the stairs; we’re out of here as soon as they’re immobilized and I don’t want to wait for an elevator. Who’s gonna be driving our truck?”
“Stan.” Stan Williams was Nick’s most experienced firefighter; Jeff nodded in acknowledgment. Both members of Paramedic Thirty-one finished readying their respective patients for transport. A sergeant and two officers from the Medford Police Department appeared in the doorway; “Blue” had arrived at the party.
Jeff felt the boyfriend, who was standing behind him and who’d been told multiple times to step back, stiffen when he saw law enforcement. “Um, maybe you should wait for Jasmine to get back before you leave?” he stammered. Jeff and Shawna ignored him, as did everyone else in the room. “Hey!” the man exclaimed, trying to get Jeff’s attention. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” He got that attention, and a lot more, when he grabbed Jeff’s shoulder.
People routinely exposed to emergency situations often assume a calm, detached, dispassionate demeanor to shield themselves from the horrors of those moments while in the middle of them. Everyone, however, has their breaking point. When the man touched him, the locked door inside Jeff containing his rage gave way; with a growl he drove his elbow back into the man’s genitals. The man fell into the wall behind them retching and gasping for breath.
“Nick, bags?” Jeff asked while slinging the oxygen bag across his back.
“Already outside,” the captain replied.
Scooping up his patient, Jeff moved towards the door. Jeff looked at the MPD sergeant while pausing in the doorway. “What?” the sergeant asked in response. “What are you looking at me for? I saw you defend yourself against a violent suspect, one who assaulted you in the course of your duties as an EMT.”
Jeff nodded at the man. “Have the detectives take pictures of his hands and meet us at Mass General; they’ll need to compare those pictures to some marks on the girls.” Jeff stepped out of the apartment and turned down the hall; Shawna was right behind him. One of the officers followed as well, to open doors if needed.
“Right,” the sergeant called after them.
Jeff and Shawna moved for the stairs; they were careful not to trip with the precious cargo in their arms as they sped down them. He and Shawna reached the ground floor and crossed the building’s lobby. The man from the elevator made a reappearance.
“Hey! I want to talk to you!”
“Sir, not now,” Jeff said, his voice tight, clipped.
“Yes, dammit, right now!” the man stated, stepping between Jeff and the door.
“Sir, move out of the way!” The MPD officer started to move towards the front of the small group.
“Not until I talk to you!”
Jeff growled, dropped his free shoulder and sent the man flying with a solid body check.
“Keep going!” the officer called as he stopped next to the man and took out his handcuffs.
Jeff crashed into the bar to open the door, never slowing while leaving the building. At the ambulance, Engine Five’s crew helped secure the sisters - one on the stretcher, one on the bench seat in the back of the truck. Jeff checked that their equipment was accounted for.
“Thanks, guys,” he called to the firefighters when they exited. They waved as Jeff pulled the back doors of the ambulance closed. “Stan?”
“Here, Jeff!” Stan Williams called from the front seat.
“We’re ready! Mass General!”
“Got it!” Stan notified Brophy and Fire Alarm of their destination while he pulled away from the curb.
Jeff’s patient was getting worse. Her breathing pattern was slower, more irregular, her pupils more unequal and her heart rate slower than when in the apartment. He opened the pediatrics bag and measured his patient with a color-coded tape. He prepared the appropriate laryngoscope and endotracheal tube from the indicated colored pouch to secure his patient’s airway.
His left hand manipulated the ‘scope, lifting his patient’s tongue while his right hand slipped the uncuffed tube in. He watched as the tube passed over the tongue and through the vocal cords. A device detected the presence of exhaled carbon dioxide from the girl’s lungs and turned from purple to yellow. While Shawna squeezed air into the girl’s lungs Jeff used his stethoscope to listen to her chest. Hearing all the right things and none of the wrong things, Jeff wrapped tape around the tube, behind the patient’s neck and then around the tube from the other side; this was to secure the tube and prevent it from coming loose.
“How’s yours?” Jeff asked Shawna.
“More stable than yours: unconscious and a bruise to the cheek,” she replied as she slipped an oxygen mask onto the girl’s face. “She won’t need a tube from us.”
Jeff pulled the paper with the girls’ names from his pocket. Hang on, Liliana...
Jeff picked up the microphone next to him. “Boston CMED, Boston CMED, Brophy Paramedic Thirty-one from the Medford/Somerville line.”
“Brophy P-Thirty-one?”
“CMED, Thirty-one. Two patients, one Priority One and one Priority Two, Mass General. Trauma Alerts on both, please.” Jeff switched to the channel specified when CMED responded; he heard the warbling tone requesting medical control from the receiving hospital.
“Uh, this is Mass General Hospital,” came the response. The doctor at the other end didn’t give their last name; Jeff didn’t recognize the voice, either. This wasn’t starting well.
“Mass General, Brophy Paramedic Thirty-one, Paramedic Knox calling. Please identify yourself, Doctor.”
“Uh, this is, uh, Dr. Friedreichson.” A new, uncertain voice and an unfamiliar name at a teaching hospital in the month of July meant one thing: a new intern. Interns weren’t supposed to be anywhere near the radio yet.
“Mass General, get your Attending please.”
“Uh, the Attending’s tied up.”
“A senior resident?” This was taking too long.
“Um, everyone is kind of busy,” was the reply he got.
“Mass General, you have two pediatric traumas inbound, ETA under ten minutes. One Level One Trauma, three years-old, intubated, multi-trauma including a head injury with decerebrate posturing and signs of Cushing’s Triad. One Level Two, two years-old, unconscious, non-intubated, probable concussion, vital signs stable. More on arrival. Tell your Attending right away, copy?”
“ ... uh...”
“We will see you in the trauma bay in seven minutes, Mass General. CMED, Thirty-one’s clear.”
“Brophy, you’re clear. Good luck, sir.”
Jeff tossed the microphone onto the work shelf below the radio. Intubation improved his patient’s oxygen saturation, but little else. He twisted around to see where they were; Stan saw him look.
“Just getting off the Lower Deck and onto Storrow,” he told Jeff. They were turning off of Interstate 93 South, curling around the FleetCenter and about to get onto Storrow Drive in Boston. Less than five minutes to go.
“Thanks,” Jeff called in reply while he prepared for arrival at the hospital. “Stan? When we get there, can you help Shawna carry her patient inside while I wheel the stretcher in with mine?”
“Right!”
There was no problem in finding an open spot in the ambulance bay, which was not always the case. Stan threw the truck in park, shut it down and raced to the back to help unload the patients. A Boston EMS crew heard Jeff’s radio call while they were inside the ER; they were waiting in the bay and volunteered their stretcher to help Shawna move the younger girl. Stan helped steer Thirty-one’s stretcher with Jeff’s patient. Other EMS folks saw their serious looks, their purposeful strides, and cleared a path in the hallway. They turned into the triage area and bypassed the line of EMS crews waiting for bed assignments.
“Trauma bay!” called the triage nurse while she pressed the button to open the doors to the treatment areas.
“Thanks, Christi!” Jeff called to her as his group passed.
Entering the trauma bay, Jeff saw two teams waiting for them, one for each patient; at least the new intern paid attention. His patient went to Bay One, Shawna’s Bay Two. Jeff gave his report while he watched the trauma team descend on the patient, working to save her life. He backed out of their way once finished and, from where he wound up, he could see both patients.
Jeff’s world widened to a normal view now that his patient was under the hospital’s care. He noted it was just after two in the afternoon; the call took all of thirty-five minutes from start to finish. While he was watching the teams work, his vision shifted to a scene of all three of his kids lying on the stretchers - broken - in place of the two they’d just brought in, and then shifted back.
Bile rose in the back of his throat. The smell and taste of his half-digested lunch mixed with coffee and stomach acid registered with his brain. His hand shot to cover his mouth as his stomach lurched again. He dove for a nearby trash can and emptied his stomach into it.
Frantic, he clawed at his belt trying to grasp his cell phone while he straightened up. He pulled it from its holster to discover he had no signal. He bolted for the door; every head in the trauma bay swiveled to follow his sudden movement. He charged past the crews he’d just passed and sprinted for the door to the outside. He scrolled through his contacts as he ran and selected the one he needed when he had a signal. The phone rang for an eternity while he paced behind his truck.
“Hello?”
“Tell me the kids are okay!” he barked as soon as he heard the voice answer.
“Jeffrey?”
“TELL ME THEY’RE OKAY, KEIKO! PLEASE!“ he pleaded, near panic. Heads turned again, this time at the urgency and volume of his voice.
“Jeffrey, they are fine,” Keiko assured him. “They are playing on the floor in front of me. What is wrong?”
The breath Jeff held exploded from his lungs while his legs gave out, his strength fading. His empty hand shook as he dropped onto the back step of his ambulance. On the other end of the phone Keiko could hear him take deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. “Jeffrey, please, what is wrong?” she asked him again, urgency rising in her own voice. “What is the matter?”
“It’s bad, Keiko,” he whispered in a weak, weary voice. “It’s bad.” Shawna and Stan sat down on either side of him, concerned looks on their faces. “I gotta go, Keiko. I’ll explain tonight.” Jeff hung up and put his phone down; his now-empty hand began to shake, too. He covered his face with his hands, but closing his eyes brought the image of the two girls in their apartment. His whole body began to shake.
“Jeff?” Shawna asked from his left.
“My kids,” he answered in a whisper. “We were standing in there and I had a vision of my kids on those tables,” he explained further; the twins and Sabrina were the same ages as their patients. Shawna, a parent herself, put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him towards her in a protective hug. Stan, a grandfather, closed his eyes against the image in his mind.
The dam broke. The shock, anger, fear and relief Jeff experienced over the past hour came spilling out. Tears flowed free for uncounted minutes. Crews coming out of the ER knew what his crew just brought in and thanked the heavens they weren’t on that call. One crew coming down from a transfer to a unit upstairs didn’t know about their call, however.
“Can’t handle life in the big city?” one of the other EMTs from that crew asked while walking back to his own truck. A new dent appeared in the side of that EMT’s ambulance when Jeff grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him into it.
“You’d best shut your mouth, asshole,” he growled, his nose pressed into the other EMT’s face. “Otherwise, you might end up in the trauma bay sucking on a tube like one of our two patients; they’re two and three years-old. Their mama’s boyfriend just beat the living shit out of them. Maybe you’d like to receive a similar beating?” The man shook his head so hard Jeff could hear his eyeballs rattle. “Then maybe you should get in your goddamn truck and shut the hell up?” The man couldn’t comply fast enough. Shawna and Stan pulled Jeff back to the step of his ambulance. He felt like vomiting again, but there was nothing left in his stomach.
Jeff heard the doors to the ER open a moment later. Dr. Jason Atherton and Dr. Isaac Bennington approached him and his crew; Dr. Atherton was today’s ER Attending Physician, Dr. Bennington the Trauma Attending. Jeff looked at them, the two men he hoped could save his patient’s life, pleading with his eyes for good news. Dr. Atherton saw the look and shook his head. Jeff put his head back in his hands.
“You guys did everything you could, Jeff,” Dr. Atherton offered. “You got her here alive, and that was all anyone could have asked for. The damage was done long before you even got the 9-1-1 call.”
Jeff looked back up at the doctor’s words. The world around Jeff seemed dull, the colors washed out. Who the hell does that to kids? To anyone? he wondered. Whatever his little patient was going to be was now gone. A little piece of his soul went with her.
“Thank you, Dr. Atherton,” Jeff replied, exhausted.
“The other little girl will recover, physically,” Dr. Bennington said. Jeff nodded; he wondered what kind of emotional trauma would haunt the poor girl through her life. “Remember that you didn’t fail. The failure would have come had you not given your all in the attempt.” With that Drs. Atherton and Bennington walked back into the hospital.
Jeff felt numb while he wrote his report. His paperwork was a dry, clinical recitation of the facts and his treatment, nothing more. Shawna brought him something to eat and drink while he was writing; he couldn’t taste any of it when he ate it. He answered the questions Medford’s detectives had for him in a monotone. Shawna and Jeff delivered their reports to the staff and left the hospital two hours after they’d arrived.
Jason Atherton and Isaac Bennington watched while Brophy Paramedic Thirty-one left Mass General.
“I can’t imagine the horrors those crews see on a daily basis, Jason,” the trauma surgeon muttered while standing next to his colleague. “We see the end results of those horrors in the operating rooms, but those cases have been sanitized and neatly packaged. Police, Fire and EMS, they see the raw footage.”
“I know, Isaac. Even in the ER I don’t think we get it as bad as they do.” Jason sighed. “I hope Jeff can find a way to ... not ‘get over it, ‘ because I don’t think you ‘get over’ something like that ... I guess ‘handle’ it, for lack of a better term.”
Shawna and Jeff dropped Stan off at Station Five upon returning to Medford. Nick DeCosta saw the look on Jeff’s face and patted his friend on the shoulder through the open window of the ambulance.
“Operations, Thirty-one. Firefighter returned to Medford Fire Station Number Five. Thirty-one is returning to Malden, out of service.”
“Thirty-one, negative. We need you back at Mystic River Apartments; we need you to cover a dialysis run.”
Shawna stared at the radio in disbelief. Looking over at her partner, he was still pale. He saw her look and shook his head. Shawna lifted the mic again. “Thirty-one, negative on the dialysis. We are out of service,” she emphasized.
“Thirty-one, do the call,” ordered a different voice. Jeff turned off the radio.
When the truck’s pager started going off a minute later he threw it out the window; it skittered across the street before being crushed by a car. Jeff ignored his cell phone when it started ringing, letting it vibrate while he placed it on the floor. He leaned back into his seat, a blank stare on his face as he looked out the windshield. Shawna turned the truck towards Malden.
Ten minutes later they entered their station’s parking lot. Without being asked, Shawna parked near Jeff’s car. He got out of the truck and started unloading his things from the ambulance and placing them in the car. The dispatch manager exited the building while he finished.
“You have a call!” he yelled. Jeff ignored him as he crossed back to the truck to check that he hadn’t missed anything of his. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”
“I’m done for today,” Jeff said in a quiet voice.
“You’re doing the call!” the man repeated. “You’re on until eleven!”
“Not today.” Jeff unclipped the portable radio from his belt; he’d forgotten he still wore it. He turned to put it in the truck.
“Get on the air!” the manager bellowed. The portable radio shattered when it struck the cinderblocks of the station twenty feet away. The dispatch manager turned in shock and stared at the radio. Turning back to Jeff the manager cringed when he saw Jeff’s angry glare.
“Up yours, asshole.” Jeff walked away.
Jeff’s tires left a patch of rubber behind when he left the parking lot.
It was a miracle Jeff didn’t collide with anyone when he sped away from the station. He slowed to a stop for the first red light; there he forced himself to take deep breaths. He tried not to close his eyes for too long because closing them gave the images a chance to appear. He saw Liliana and her little sister staring at him with accusing eyes, blaming him for not doing enough to save the older girl. The images mixed with images of Ken’s shattered and burned body, half-incinerated inside his Bradley; his best friend died inside an armored vehicle deep in the middle of a worthless stretch of Iraqi desert seven thousand miles from home.
Jeff fled down the highway, running for home, trying to escape memories of the horror behind him. Numerous times he had to slow when his speedometer reached eighty; the speed limit was fifty-five where he was. His cell phone buzzed a few times while he drove but he ignored it. He cleared the one town he had to drive through, Concord, and watched the needle climb as his speed increased again.
Jeff was in Littleton when he began having trouble breathing; his chest also began to tighten. Trying to calm himself he took deep breaths, but he hyperventilated instead. His vision started to sparkle; his visual field began to narrow like a camera lens irising shut. What was left of his vision blurred while his eyes filled with fresh tears. He was able to pull into the breakdown lane without causing an accident. He threw the car in park, leaned back in the driver’s seat and covered his face with his hands. He continued trying to take deep breaths.
Pain welled up in Jeff’s chest. A deep, anguished cry tore from his lips and echoed through the car for long seconds, unheard by the passing, oblivious motorists. When his lungs emptied, Jeff began beating on his dashboard as hard as he could while the tears flowed. He collapsed with his forehead on the steering wheel as he stared blankly at the instrument panel. A hauntingly appropriate song played on his radio:
I’ll swallow poison, until I grow immune.
I will scream my lungs out till it fills this room.
How much difference?
How much difference does it make?
He’d lost track of how long he’d been sitting there when he heard a voice to his left.
“Sir? Are you alright?”
Jeff picked his head up and looked out his window. Standing next to his car was a Massachusetts State Police trooper, his face shielded from the sun by the wide, blue campaign cover that agency wore in the summer. A deeper look of concern crossed the trooper’s face when he saw Jeff’s own face. “Sir, what’s wrong?”
Jeff closed his eyes and shook his head, unable to explain what he’d seen. Unwilling to explain. The trooper took in Jeff’s condition, his uniform and put that together with what he’d just heard at roll call. “You were there, weren’t you?”
Jeff nodded.
“Do you need a ride home from here?” The trooper ran Jeff’s plate on his in-car computer when he’d pulled up behind him; Lancaster wasn’t far.
Jeff nodded again. “Would you follow me to the parking lot at the commuter rail stop at the next exit?” he croaked.
“Sure,” replied the trooper, nodding himself. “I’ll follow you with my lights on until we get off Route 2.”
Jeff nodded in understanding. The lights would keep people from rear-ending them while they merged back onto the highway, or they would attract someone who would hit them. Jeff found that he didn’t care either way.
The trooper called his sergeant as they drove and explained the situation. “Sarge, I’ve got one of the medics here from that call in Medford you told us about.”
“Is he hurt?” the sergeant asked.
“No, Sarge, but he does need a ride to Lancaster. I found him in the breakdown lane of Route 2 westbound in Littleton, sitting in his car. He’s in no shape to drive, Sarge; that call hit him pretty hard.”
“Approved,” his sergeant said without hesitation. “Get him home. Where’s his car going to be?”
“The T’s commuter rail station in Littleton.”
“I’ll call the MBTA Police and Littleton PD to ask for parking consideration.”
“Thanks, Sarge.”
At the rail station the trooper cleared the front seat of the cruiser for him while Jeff emptied and locked his car. The pair drove to Lancaster in silence; Keiko stepped onto the porch at the sound of tires on gravel.
“Go upstairs to bed, Jeffrey,” she whispered while she hugged her husband, kissing him softly. He nodded, turned to the trooper and extended his hand; a wordless handshake expressed Jeff’s thanks for the man’s concern. Jeff pulled open his front door and climbed the stairs.
“I have never seen him like this,” Keiko said in a whisper to the trooper, “not even when he came to express his condolences to my parents over my brother’s death.” Keiko explained in answer to his silent look. “They served together in the 82nd Airborne; they were roommates. Ken saved his life in Panama and they became like brothers. Ken was killed in action during the Gulf War.”
“He had a horrific call at work today,” the trooper said. “I heard about it during roll call, just before I found him stopped on the side of Route 2.”
“I was afraid of that,” Keiko sighed. “He called me in a panic three hours ago; he begged me to tell him our children were okay.”
“How old are they, Mrs. Knox?”
“Our twin boys are three, our daughter is two.”
Trooper Manahan nodded, a grim look on his face. “That’s how old your husband’s patients were today: a three-year-old and a two-year-old.”
“I do not want to know, do I?”
“No, ma’am, you surely don’t,” the trooper said. “I know for a fact you don’t. Your husband doesn’t want to know either but he’ll never be able to forget it, not till the day he dies.”
