Rashaverak posted:

I'm not quite sure what you mean - easier emotionally? Not much bothers me anymore, and the stuff that does isn't trauma, it's sexually abused children... and now that I work in a pediatric hospital I'm even becoming enured to that. People always want stories of blood, guts, and gore - but that's the mundane, boring reality of EMS.

The things that get to you, that reach you on a deeper, human level, well... It's the full arrest toned out at 0630, just before shift change, where you're cursing your bad luck, cursing your partner for always being late, and trying to find a reason why some other truck is closer to the call than you are. Where you walk to the house and hope it's an easy call and there's obvious signs incompatible with life, so you can get the hell out of there and back to your bottle at home.

Where you're greeted at the door by an old man who looks like he's at death's door himself, dressed in his sad little boxers clearly a decade old and his stained white nightshirt that his wife was too polite and too deeply in love to complain about... his shoulders stooped by age and the knowledge of what's to come. Where you walk through the entrance hallway, past pictures of children and grandchildren long since grown, past an aged and yellowing photo of a young couple deeply in love, she beaming in her wedding dress and he standing proud in his Army uniform - and into the bedroom of a couple who've been married to each other through poo poo and sunshine, for 60 years.

Her perfume and makeup is neatly arranged on the dresser below the flag they were given when their son never came back from Vietnam. He'd lined up her medication bottles in the order she'd take them every day, and his glasses sat nearby so he could read the large print on the labels. She didn't always remember to take them all, and for that matter neither did he, but every night before bed they'd tell each other "I love you" because it might be the last time they did... and today, it was.

You see all this, and you hardly notice the still, silent shape beneath the sheets.

He didn't bother to uncover her, because he knew.

He woke up, and he just knew. He knew in the same way I'd known when I opened the door and saw him standing there. He'd known this day would come but hoped it'd be him we saw in that bed. Hoped he wouldn't have to go through this but known it was coming. Not that it helped, of course. The man who'd charged that hill in Korea, who'd been shot and stabbed and goddamnit just got back up and kept loving going, was standing by the doorway to the bedroom they'd shared for half a century softly weeping.

You go through the motions, of course. You look for breathing and feel for a pulse, her skin already cold and pale, her neck already stiffening a bit. You see the the dependent lividity - the blood pooling in her skin and discoloring - but the coldly clinical words are little comfort. You say the words he knew were coming but that doesn't make it any easier. He's already stopped listening anyways. His eyes and his mind are far away, probably recalling what it felt like when he flipped that veil over and kissed her, or the secret night they'd shared six months before they were married by shotgun.

Thinking back to the walls of smiling children, you ask if there's anyone you can call for him. Surely, the kids they spent their life raising are going to descend upon him, taking away the heavy burden that now sits upon his shoulders.

They don't call anymore. They don't visit.

He gives you the number of her physician and the number of the funeral home where they picked out a plot a few years back when her health started to go downhill. You stay around as long as you can, standing by him as that van comes to take his wife away from their home for the last time, and eventually there's nothing left to do but leave.

You know.

A week after the funeral, when you get the call from an annoyed neighbor complaining about a bad smell, you know.

You go inside, because that's what you have to do, but you already know. Past the wall of children who no longer cared about anything except who was in the will, past the flag, past her perfume and makeup still sitting there in the same place, and find a still shape, laying in the other side of the bed.

You don't bother to uncover him, because you already know.

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I'm sitting in a bar right now as I write this, trying to study for my calculus midterm so I can get the hell out of this profession, and I'm having to stop writing because I'm crying so hard. You get lots of strange looks, but they're par for the course. Some calls you forget before you even clear the hospital, and others will stay with you until you draw your last breath.