by Marie Marini
Can you believe that Nigger Bitch next door told him my truck hasn’t been there overnight in a month? So much for keeping to yourself! Nosy cunt! I was so fucking mad, but I had to keep calm and finish this inquisition. I said my truck was getting work done for a couple of weeks and that I had a loaner car. Thank God he never asked what shop I used or what kind of car. I told him I met Darren at the gym and rambled on a little bit so he wouldn’t ask about me staying at the house. It worked. He moved on to ask why I didn’t come forward when the parents were begging on TV for the girlfriend or anyone who knew anything to call in. Again I could pretty much keep to the truth. I told him I didn’t know anything that would help, and that I didn’t want to deal with any gossip or rumors at work about me. If those guys knew I dated Darren or my photo got on the news it would be bad for me at work. He understood and related to that, cops and firefighters are really just two heads of the same beast. Besides we only had two dates. I had nothing to tell. Maybe the girlfriend he told his parents about was someone else. That’s when he told me Darren had told his Mother he was dating a Firefighter named Kris. DAMMIT DARREN! I laughed. “Like I said detective, we went out twice. I wouldn’t really call it dating. I’m really surprised he would even have mentioned me to his family. Detective, my neighbor mentioned something about my brother?” I tried to sound casual but I HAD to know if Sam was around.
“Oh that. Sorry about that. She was closing the door on me and I just made it up in the moment.” he laughed a little nervously. I wrapped up the conversation and hung up. He made it up! Very funny, cute little joke Detective. Asshole! The old phone we had in Georgia you could slam the receiver into the cradle. Dad did it all the time when the electricity company called. I wanted to slam my phone down. Instead, I went inside and slammed the bedside table lamp into Darren’s head.
Four hundred fifty-five, four hundred fifty-six, four hundred fifty-seven…I heard her muttering about a massage table and somewhere in what was left of my mind, I wondered what she wanted that for. I was lying in bed the morning the detective called. When I heard her say ‘detective’ I almost stopped breathing. Lately, I had been working really hard at trying to move my arms. It seemed like I could move my shoulders and maybe be able to throw my arm. This might be my last chance. I put everything I had into throwing my arm at the table and trying to knock the lamp off, just make some noise. SOME FUCKING NOISE that SOME FUCKING ONE could FUCKING HEAR!!!!
I missed.
I smiled when she brought the lamp down on my head.
Kris called me when I was having dinner with my parents. Dad is very old school and no one takes a phone call at the dinner table in his house. Dinner is a big production, too and we take hours over it. It was late by the time I left and checked my phone to see I had missed a call. The message was upbeat and a little tentative. She sounded nervous. I called her back in the morning in the car on my way to work. I asked as many detailed questions as I could think of. I didn’t have my notes in front of me, so I was winging it. She didn’t falter and everything she said made sense. I know I was inexperienced and trying to do this on my own time, even this phone call wasn’t sanctioned by the department. Something bad happened to that guy. Maybe Kris was involved or maybe she wasn’t, but something happened. I decided I would go back to the apartment building and see Mrs. Harrison. When the parents were all over the news, she had called in that she saw an ambulance loading someone in the back. Maybe she remembered something else. It was a long shot, but it was all I had left.
Meanwhile, I still had a job to do. Work was a slog; we were inundated with boxes and boxes of evidence and crime scene photographs from the recent gang activity. All of it had to be logged, tagged and processed into evidence. It was imperative that everything is done by the letter, especially with a big profile case. I wasn’t really on this case, they were merely using me to take care of the small stuff coming in every day. But there was so much work to be done that I could pick up as much overtime as I liked. I was working my regular eight hours and then putting in another four almost every night logging and tagging. You have to take the extra money when you can get it. The budget doesn’t always stretch to include this kind of OT. That wasn’t leaving much time for my little pet project.
The only thing Mrs. Jane Harrison remembered was an ambulance. No idea if it was a county EMS truck or private transportation company like Medics or AMR. No idea if it was a three-man crew or two-man crew. All she saw was one truck, one medic loading a stretcher into the back of the ambulance. There might have been a driver in the cab, she wasn’t sure. She was just getting home from visiting a dear friend in hospital and desperately needed a martini. Me cago en la mierda! Hopeless! People really don’t pay attention to detail. It always amazes me. EMS or Police, it’s the same.. They see the lights, the tape but if you asked them later to describe the people they wouldn’t be able to tell you hair color, skin color, glasses, height, build, nothing. I never got the chance to stop by Kris’s house, I would try again when everything died down at work.
I picked up the massage table and the mail at the house. Nothing exciting, a few bills. Good news. There were no little business cards from cops! I hadn’t heard anything else, so I was feeling pretty good about all that. Police and Fire consider each other one of their own. That would make it hard for Police to believe a firefighter would be involved in something like this. I was counting on that first responder culture and a little of my own smarts to divert any attention away from me.
I had some packages in addition to the table, so I threw them into the truck on the passenger side. Darren was deteriorating fast; he was pretty much skin and bone. It had been two months since the accident. I had to go grocery shopping before I went back to the cabin. It was no longer the love shack. It was a second job now, and I had work to do. I wanted to learn as much as possible from Darren before he had to go. I had been researching at work about spinal cord injuries and studying on my own. The human body really is fascinating.
Back at the cabin, I set up the massage table in the living room. It took up most of the room but that was okay. I went through my usual routine of cleaning Darren up, but I didn’t get him dressed this time. I put his dog muzzle on. I know how that sounds but it was necessary. The biting was getting out of control. He was becoming feral. I carried him to the living room and laid him face down on the massage table with his face peeping through the hole. I got the sheets from the bed and covered him up, I really didn’t want to look at his scrawny ass.
I was in a great mood. I had my books ready, all my supplies laid out on a tray that I had to put on the coffee table. I wish I could have had a real surgery table. That would have been cool. But I had thought to lay thick plastic sheets under the table and I bought blue scrubs just in case it got messy. I could always burn them in the fire pit out back.
Darren was whimpering again and crying. God, he could be such a distraction sometimes. He was begging me to kill him now. He no longer asked about his parents or begged me to just leave him somewhere he could be found. As if that had ever been a real option. We both knew he would die eventually, but meanwhile, I had an opportunity to learn.
“Sorry Babe but I got work to do, I don’t have time for no blubbering baby.” I cranked up my Dolly Parton CD and sang along.
There had been a call in the Emergency Room just a few nights earlier where a guy was pressure cleaning his driveway when the hose blew a tiny hole right where his hand was holding the hose. The pressure blew a hole right through his hand and out the other side. When a person has air trapped under the skin layers it is called crepitus, we learned about it in paramedic school, but it was rare to see in real life. This guy had crepitus all the way up his forearm. The Doctor had to cut two parallel lines up his forearm to release the air. We happened to be dropping off a patient when the doctor had just finished the cuts. While everyone was talking to the doctor and looking at this guy’s arm fileted open, I took the still bl
oody scalpel blade from the tray and carefully slid it into the side pocket of my cargo pants. As soon as I could I went to the restroom and wrapped the blade in paper towels. I hid it in the case with the Toughbook laptop the lieutenant carries until I could get it to the station and safely tuck it into my gear bag.
I had the scalpel at the trailer. I also had swabs and clamps I had gotten on the internet. I had peroxide and alcohol although there really wasn’t any point in worrying about Darren getting an infection, but I could get an infection from him. I had my scrubs and my crocs on, I imagine all Darren could see was my feet walking around. I decided to be nice and I put my earbuds in his ears and let him listen to music so he wouldn’t hear any noises. He was dying, but this was a real opportunity for me. Never turn your back on an opportunity for education. Tricia was always hammering that home. She couldn’t argue with the fact I was learning and seeing things most people don’t get to see. You only get so far with books.
During the first cut my hand was shaking pretty bad. I felt his neck to find the C5 break and was careful to cut below that so he wouldn’t feel it. Theoretically.
I was surprised how tough skin and muscle tissue could be. I had done my research and I stayed clear of any major arteries. I made 2 deep cuts down each side of the spine and peeled back the outer muscle layer. That first day I managed to open up his spine from the bottom of his neck down to his sacral. That was a lot of work for one day. I exposed the muscle tissue first then cut that away to expose his spine. The muscle strip kind of looked like a piece of bacon; that’s all that meat is after all, just muscle tissue cooked up, not any different from a cow or a pig. I cut away some of those pesky nerves coming out of the spinal cord so that I could get a good look at the spinal column itself. I put some hearing protectors on to muffle the screams, I needed to stay focused.
I was seriously considering nursing school. This stuff was amazing! I grabbed my phone and took a quick photo. We had a tuition reimbursement plan at work, they would pay for my classes, so I’d just have to pay for books. I knew a couple of people who did the paramedic to nursing program at Broward College and Palm Beach State College. I decided to look into that.
I made dinner and studied, I didn’t feed Darren. That would be a waste of food at this point. I was raised that you NEVER waste food. It was really hard at the station; those guys can be really wasteful. I would see them throw out all kinds of stuff and I had to pretend THAT was normal, that there was nothing wrong with that. But there is. There are so many spoiled little bitches that don’t know what hunger is in South Florida.
Daddy always said to appreciate something you have to go without it. If Daddy thought we were whining or complaining and not appreciating food or heat in winter or air conditioning in summer, he would take it away until we learned our lessons. We would have to say the rosary every night on our knees until we learned. If we were really bad, he would get gravel from the road and make us kneel on that in the kitchen. Then we would clean the floors afterwards.
We had these cheap plastic rosary beads. Mine were pink and Sam’s were blue. We prayed so many Our Fathers and Hail Marys on that kitchen floor. Dad would tell us about the early Christians being fed to lions just for being Christians. Daddy helped me understand just how easy my life was.
I talked to Darren while I worked.
“I stole some chicken from the convenience store on the way home from school. Daddy had asked me to pick it up but he didn’t give me no money. I should have gone to the supermarket, but I was thirteen and too lazy to walk the extra two miles. I couldn’t get the rice Daddy wanted and I knew he would be mad as a wet hen but I barely made it out with the chicken.” I chuckled at the memory. “Usually when I got home Daddy was in the recliner and I would climb up into his lap for a li’l cuddle before I would start fixing dinner. I knew he were gonna be be mad about the rice and he would probably punish me so I was a bit nervous when I walked in. Strange thing was he wasn’t there. He stayed in bed when I went to school in the morning, but I didn’t think not for one minute that man would still be in bed. I went to his room to look anyhow.” I sighed and stopped working. This was a hard story to tell and I had never talked about it before. I went to the kitchen and got a drink of water. Returning to work I started up where I left off. “I found him. He were right there laying in his bed. He didn’t answer when I called him. I put my hand on his arm to give him a li’l shake.. He was ice cold. You’ve heard the expression ‘stone cold’ right?” I asked Darren. Not waiting on a response, I continued. “Well that ain’t quite right. Not like a stone. More like a frozen chicken that been thawing out for a while.. The skin moves around but it’s still frozen underneath. I was devastated, Darren. My Daddy was dead.” I wiped a tear from my eyes and stopped working for a few minutes. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Sam was out running with a rough crowd. He didn’t come home much so it was just me.”
Darren groaned a little. “I know Sweetheart. It were horrible! I was all alone in this big ol’ world. And only a chil’ myself. We didn’t have no money for a funeral and the cops would just spirit me away to foster care. I did the only thing I could; I went out back and started to dig. There was a little tiny yard behind the trailer, the overgrown hedges hid our patch of dirt from the neighbors. When you live in a trailer park people don’t get in your business anyway.”
I had stopped working on Darren at this point and just concentrated on finishing the story. When I take myself back to that time my old southern cracker accent comes right back despite all the years of trying to change. I could hear it as I told him the rest. “Tears blinded me, but I just kept right on digging until I could barely climb out of that hole. By that time it was dark. I was filthy and just plain bone tired. I knew if I didn’t show up to school next day they would call Daddy, and he couldn’t talk to them no more. I tried to drag him out of bed but he was so darn heavy. I cried so much that day. Eventually, I pulled the sheets out from under the mattress and pulled on the sheets to drag him off that bed and out that house.”
I picked up the scalpel again and started back to work. I smiled as I realized that all those years later it was that very technique that paramedics sometimes used to get people out of homes. “It took me a couple hours to get him outside and into that hole. I was crying the whole time and my throat felt like it were clamming shut. Before I covered him with dirt I ran back into the trailer and got my pink plastic rosary beads. I climbed down into the hole with him. I kissed the l’il cross and lifted up his head and hung the beads around his neck. When I finally got done, I stuffed those old stained bed sheets into the fire pit and said a prayer by the flames. I didn’t know how I was going to pay the electric or heat the place in winter. I had no way of reaching Sam. I would just have to wait until he came home. I was scared and feeling sorry for myself when I fell into bed thinking I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.””
As I finished the story I heard Darren saying so very quietly, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”
Darren was praying. He was saying the Our Father. I was so relieved to know that he might go to heaven after all. I would get him some rosary beads on my way home from my shift.
When I got to work, we were assigned to class for four hours to renew our ACLS cert. It was an advanced cardiology class. We had to renew every two years and the department put the class on for us. All we had to do was show up and pass the little thirty question test. It was easy for me. Some of the guys are not that smart and struggle with it a little. They rotated us through the class making sure the stations were still covered. I ended up in the same rotation as three of the other female firefighters. Dawn, Irena, and Ashley were hired together, went through probation together, so they were tight. They were also funny as shit and always made me feel part of it. Sometimes the guys would make you feel excluded from the jokes but these three were great. Dawn was telling me how they pranked one of the rookies. It was coming up to H
alloween and at Station Two there is a huge AC air handler in the kitchen. It is about five feet long, two and a half feet tall and three feet deep. The front covers are screwed on. Ashley got this Halloween mask of an old man’s face with long gray hair and put it on before she hid inside the handler. The other guys screwed the cover back in place and then they went looking for the rookies. They told the rookies that they had to change the air filter in the handler and handed him a screwdriver. When the poor kid took the cover off and old man face with long hair jumped out at him he screamed like a girlie, stumbled backwards and ended up under the kitchen table! We all howled with laughter at Irena telling the story. I would have a lot more fun if I worked with these girls. On the flip side, then people start getting close to you and I was afraid of that. We had lunch together after class and I was disappointed when it was time to get back to work.
When I got back to the cabin the next day, it was about nine a.m. I had forgotten to put a diaper on him so the pee had run off the table and there was a puddle on the floor. Pee is easy to clean up. Darren didn’t weigh much anymore so he was much easier to move around. I was in a great mood and eager to get back to work. First I wrapped the blue plastic rosary beads around his wrist. I didn’t want to move him too much though because his spine was exposed. I done the best I could to clean and dry him. I gave him Gatorade this time instead of just water, I knew he was getting dehydrated. I wanted to cut through the bone and see the inside of the spinal cord. Cutting through bone is hard work. I found some really helpful dissection videos on YouTube. Amazing what you can find online. How did people learn anything without the internet? I sawed through the lamina of the vertebrae on each side and removed the bone. I could see the Dura Mater covering the spinal cord, it looked like clear sausage skin. When I carefully peeled that back I saw the arachnoid mater, it just looked like plastic wrap. Under that the Pia mater and my pot of gold: the actual spinal cord. It was incredible! I snapped another couple of pics with my cell. I had no idea the spinal cord ends in the lower lumbar area, I always thought it went all the way down to the tailbone. It is actually kind of like a rope that has unraveled at the end. The rope is the spinal cord and then these strings extend all the way down to the sacrum and then tiny skinny little threads go on into the legs through the pelvis.