I’m a lucky guy. I really am. In the last week I’ve had my
Worker’s Comp case shot down, had my oldest daughter wreck my car and got into
an email battle with my ex that became so heated that her current dude
threatened to come over to my house and assault me.
So why do I consider myself lucky? Me, the dude that deals
with chronic pain on a daily basis, needs a cane to get around and lives paycheck
to paycheck, never sure exactly when my next writing assignment is coming or
what that royalty statement is going to say.
This morning put everything into very clear perspective. I
had just cleaned the house and myself, clearing out all of the negative energy
that’s built up over the last few months, and believe me it was substantial. A
moment of brief meditation and I was good to go. I felt open and positive for
the first time in… I can’t remember when.
Then I heard it. Coming down the highway near my home was a
siren. It was coming at high speed too. This happens from time to time. We’re
out in the county but we live close to one of the primary corridors out to the
true boonies.
If anything happens in this part of the world, the cops have
to come by here to get to there. We don’t live on the main road itself, but on
a road off of it, only about fifty or so yards so if a siren is screaming, we
hear it.
I didn’t think much of it. Until less than five minutes
later when I saw the helicopter flying in the same direction. I couldn’t tell
from my viewpoint and the trees whether it was Pegasus or LifeFlight but it
didn’t really matter. It all meant the same. Someone was gravely injured.
A lifetime ago I worked volunteer fire and rescue. Four of
the best years of my life. I saw some of the most horrifying, painful things you
can possibly imagine.
I remember vividly running my first code, walking in on a
person who was clinically dead and desperately performing CPR. I remember doing
a final walkthrough after loading two victims of a car that had flipped over
and the cold chill that ran through me when I saw crayons and a coloring book.
The relief that followed when they told me that their child
was at home, and not beneath the car, only tempered it.
I remember helping to extricate the body of a truck driver
who had fallen asleep behind the wheel and drove into a ravine. I remember
clearly the wedding band on his finger. Needing his name, I pulled his wallet
to look at his license. I can still remember the pictures of his kids.
Once I was driving home from a small, local grocery store
when my pager went off. A car exiting the interstate had been broadsided by a
state truck doing highway construction. I was less than a mile away.
When I got there a road crew from a local correctional
facility was working nearby. The girl in the car was in VERY bad condition. I
approached the closest guard and told him that I needed help. He responded that
he had prisoners to watch.
Fuck that.
I pointed to the closest inmates. Two I assigned to traffic
control, one became a runner back and forth to my still running car for
supplies and my jump bag and another I pulled into the car with me to help with
the girl.
The guards did a great job watching.
After a lifetime fire and rescue arrived and eventually so
did a medevac helicopter. Several months later I saw the girl working in a
store. She said that she was doing well and that while she was in the hospital the
inmates had sent her a card. That made me happy.
I know that if I hadn’t been there she may very well have
not survived that day. But I also had the opportunity to make a difference in
several other people’s lives. People that otherwise would have gone back to
jail that day and continued counting down the days until they got out.
Every day we have chances to make a difference, sometimes
big and sometimes small. Don’t pass them up. Life is too damn short. You never
know what’s going to happen. That helicopter flying past my house today is
proof positive of that.
