Short Story / Her story
It started as a normal night. My partner and I ate, and talked, drove around, nothing big. Then a call goes out in an area we normally don’t cover. We respond, lights, siren, the whole nine yards. As my partner throws the rig into park, I jump out and open the back doors. A Paramedic rounds the corner of my ambulance and climbs in, a blue toddler in his arms. He lays her on the gurney and I see a thin red welt snaking its way across her neck, from one tiny studded ear to the other. I see the thin trail of blood seeping from her right nostril down to her pale blue lips. I take in the vomit covering her shirt and I pull gloves on, rummage for a pediatric mask in my cupboard, and hook her up to the heart monitor. But I can’t take my eyes off of her. The medic and I work perfectly in sync, the child on my gurney demanding the best I can offer. Which is nothing. She is too small to start an IV, or give drugs, or intubate.
I wrap her hand up in mine, murmuring words my mother would say when I was sick or lonely. I brush the dark curls off her forehead and look into her unseeing chocolate eyes. The injury to her brain is causing swelling and her body starts to react. Her hands curl and her muscles stiffen and I can do nothing but murmur words that disappear into the night and silently beg my partner to drive faster.
We finally arrive, and I know that now she is in a place that can do something, a place with the right equipment, people and protocols to take care of her. We wheel her in and place her on the hospital bed, the paramedic clipping out a report as fast as his tongue can manage. As I back away from her bed, there is a tap at my shoulder and I finally tear my eyes away from her face. It is a sheriffs deputy. He asks me questions that I don’t know the answer to and from him I learned what happened. She was left in a car and tried to climb out, putting her foot on the window button inadvertently. No one knows just how long she struggled with her neck caught between the window and the doorframe. I thank the officer and leave but she stays with me the rest of the night and though I knew I shouldn’t, I found myself in the pediatric ICU after shift, rubbing her foot and talking o her doctor.
“Brain dead”, he says. “Just one of those things.”
I want to scream at him, ‘one of what things?’ instead I thank him and walk away.
Everyday I work I go visit her, talk to her parents. I bring her a pink care bear. There are small victories, here and there. She breathes on her own, she trackes movement. One day she is finally well enough to be moved out of the ICU into a regular pediatric bed. Her extended family is happy about this, the waiting room is bigger. The days drag on and the is steady improvement, but she still cannot speak, or sit up, or respond to her name. Her parents have aged a hundred years since I met them and we have nothing in common but the little girl with the dark curls and the huge chocolate eyes. It was another normal day, like any other, and when I got off work I went to see her. I walk into her room and there is a little boy in her bed. She’s gone.
“Went home” the nurse says “Doin’ real good.”
I walk away. My demons come with me.
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A powerful, moving story, that works well for being succinct. The sparse dialogue works well, and the fact that the description is minimal means there’s little to impinge upon the contents. Really good stuff.
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July 30, 2006
Deleted User
Haha not bad. Not bad at all. Very nicely written in my opinion. Very easy and simple to understand and perfectly descriptive without being too descriptive. And also surprisingly the story somewhat intrigued me as well. I actually felt for that girl. Nicely done : )
Interesting content. Nice descriptions. The only thing I would recomend would be to flesh it out a bit.
Take out the last two sentences. Everything else in this piece is well written. Those two lines just kills it.
Oh wow that’s heart breaking initially. I like that you told it in such a straight forward manner; it didn’t need any additional language.
I am so happy it ended the way it did.
I liked the topic a lot too; as a paramedic I’m sure it’s almost required to turn off emotions while on the job, and it’s interesting that this one case stuck so much with you. That theme was made much more interesting by the last line.
i like the narrative flow of this story, and it has amazing imagery that compells the reader to finish reading. the end is appropriate, and well handled. overall, nicely done.
Wow, riveting, this had me on the edge of my seat, i’m in class right now so I couldn’t scream out “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENS!” but i’m sure if I was at home, people would have heard me a block away!
This whole story has poetic lines tapered in and it adds to the feel of the story, I love storytellers who can create lyric out of their own experiences.
I take it this is your own experience, if not, bravo, but to know all that medical jargon, wow.
Maybe you’ll see her again one day, I mean you basically saved her life, visiting a person is always a blessing to the sick or handicapped.
You did great evoking emotion from the reader.
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