Forgetting and Remembering

Coming back from the brink

I’m always forgetting and remembering important things. Over and over, I forget, then remember again.

I find myself standing in silver grass, the entire scene around me shades of gray and silver. A large commercial flatbed truck carrying several tons of graphite lost control at high speed and rolled several times. Now it’s resting, mangled, at the edge of the woods, everything rendered in silver tones like an Ansel Adams photograph. The bushes, the ground, our boots, everything is slick, metallic, shimmering.

A firefighter closer to the half-flattened cab of the truck catches my eye and shakes his head grimly. It’s just then that we see a silver hand waving from the smashed, compacted driver’s side window.

Into this scene of silver grays and blacks, like a splash of color arriving in a black & white film, we haul a bright yellow backboard, the firefighters operating day-glo orange hydraulic jacks, creating enough space for us to slide this silver man out and onto the stretcher, then into the ambulance.

The medic carefully pours bottled sterile water over the driver’s silver face, graphite rivulets running into surrounding towels, the patient now emerging in full color, his eyes clear and blinking.

A few minutes’ drive away, an awaiting medevac helicopter lifts off with this patient, circling north toward the Level 1 trauma center, 22 minutes by air.

Later, we learn the man was discharged, walking out of the hospital that very evening. Only then did I wonder who he went home to, who might have been missing him if he hadn’t made it back.

There’s been a string of lucky outcomes lately. I don’t actually believe in luck, but there’s no other way to describe it. After a car hits a utility pole at over 100mph, we arrive to find a vehicle that looks like wadded up aluminum foil, the driver out of the vehicle and walking around, with nothing but a few lacerations. It’s straight-up miraculous.

“How am I alive?” he asks us, over and over in the ambulance, en route to the trauma center.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but I’m glad you are.”

The patient shakes his head. “But how?” he asks. “How am I still alive, after that?” He begins to sob, his head bowed, his torso shaking.

“Maybe life isn’t done with you yet,” the medic riding with us tells him. “What do you think of that?”

This quiets our patient, and I’m grateful for this medic, the same one from the call with the graphite truck. He’s a long-time veteran, someone I used to think of as permanently grouchy, always annoyed with all of us, no matter what we did on calls.

We are all still learning, all volunteers, and this medic always used to have something to say about what we weren’t doing right. He’d tell us off right in front of patients. He’d complain about our patient care, about the bumpy roads en route to the hospital. Everything was wrong, even things we couldn’t control. I always felt on edge around him as a new EMT.

And now, it’s like something’s shifted. He’s different around us on calls. He seems completely changed, as a medic, maybe even as a person. I like this guy, and am always relieved to see him when I show up to a call. I want to ask him what happened, but I don’t.

I took nearly two years off from our volunteer fire department, as my parents declined with dementia, then died, back to back. I couldn’t bear to be on the ambulance, around all the injuries, illness, and death. After a while, feeling something was missing, I wanted to come back, but I didn’t know how.

I felt underconfident, unsure if I still knew what I was doing. Maybe, I thought, I’ll just stop altogether. The longer I waited, the worse I felt.

There are two firefighter/EMTs from my volunteer department, people I’ve known for many years, both of whom survived cancer in the past couple years. Now they’re both in remission, back in service after pausing for treatment. I was having coffee with them one morning, just down the street from our fire station.

“Whenever I’m worrying about myself, or what’s going to happen next,” one of them said, “going on calls helps me remember.”

It’s strange, but there are times I forget that my folks are both gone. It comes back to me suddenly, sometimes on a call, maybe the way a Parkinson’s patient moves with that little shuffle, just like my mom did. Other times, it arrives out of nowhere, in the midst of washing the dishes or walking. In the immediate aftermath of loss, these waves hit me with an overwhelming sadness. Now, it feels different. It’s still a sadness, but an oddly welcome one. There’s almost a sense that I’ve found something I’d been missing.

I arrive at another auto accident, a teen boy who’s driven into a stone wall, complaining of head pain. This formerly grouchy medic is already on scene in his flycar when our ambulance arrives.

The medic gives me a quick report, and says he’s handing the patient over to me. We help the young driver up and out of his car together, holding him under his arms, steadying him.

I’ve wondered about the shift in this medic, something that seemed to happen when I was away from the department for those two years. Was the transformation sudden or gradual? Maybe he lost someone close to him, or maybe he found new love. Or perhaps it’s just an accumulation, all these patients, all the loss and the near misses, illuminating something.

We all survive such unbelievable things. I haven’t been able to make sense of so much of it, but the more loss I encounter, the more I see how it connects all of us. And also: maybe life isn’t done with us yet.

The medic helps me get the patient onto our stretcher, then folds his EMS tablet into its cover and tucks it under his arm, ready to leave. I can’t be sure, but it’s possible that there’s almost a hint of a smile on his face. He thwacks the back of his hand against my chest.

“Tag—you’re it,” he says.