Chapter 1 - Mile Marker 246

CHAPTER 1 –Mile Marker 246

I am sitting at the kitchen table with the first cup of coffee for the day. I love the feeling of a hot cup of coffee in my hands and my bare feet on the tile of the cool kitchen floor. There is nothing like a new blanket of snow to make my poorly tended garden and lawn look pristine.

A snow day, it feels like a snow day, except school was not canceled. I have taken what I think is a well overdue vacation day. The kids are in school and both dogs are laying in front of the gas fireplace curled up next to each other and snoring.

The only things I have to do today is read the newspaper and finish the pot of coffee from this morning. I feel lazy and happy, I am in charge of absolutely nothing, and no one is counting on me. My razor is going to stay stuck to the bathroom sink where I left it yesterday morning. I want some toast but I am not going to get up and get any until my coffee cup is empty.  

It feels good to be this damn lazy.

Beep, Beep, Beep,

Engine 03, Paramedic 33, Respond I25 & Mile Marker 245 for multiple injury accident

I get a knot in my stomach every time I hear an auto accident dispatched close to home. Lives change in an instant. The speed and the permanence of those changes have never stopped being eye opening to me.

I am putting on my jeans and listening intently to the radio traffic to hear if this is a real call or another false alarm.

As I am driving down to the station, I take a minute to listen to the radio traffic and collect my thoughts. I am my mother’s son and a good catholic boy. I always believe in worse case scenario. It is always more people than they say it is, they are hurt worse than first reported, tools and equipment will break or be missing.  Radios go dead and the people there will respond to me and my crew in a way I cannot predict.

As I get near the station I am relieved to see Jim pull up at the same time. As a firefighter Jim is in his element. He is 29 years old and as far as I know he has always been an angry, paunchy, 45 year old man.  Perpetually grouchy but a damn good firefighter to have if things go to hell.

Engine 03 in route, status two

They know we are coming. Still no radio traffic and the silence looms large. A state patrol officer should be on scene now and if he is not saying anything it is bad. We will be the first engine on scene. I notice the low laying fog on the Interstate and feel another tug in the pit of my stomach.

Engine 03, 2291 on TAC 2

That is Roger, a Captain from Station 2,  he has arrived in a private vehicle. He is speaking in a slow measured way and his tone is unmistakable. It is bad, I just don’t know how or what is bad.  I acknowledge his request for us on the tactical channel. I am leaning forward in the seat trying to make out what is going on in the fog.

Roger is working too hard to sound calm and you can hear the tension in his voice. In every engine that is responding everyone is leaning forward to catch every nuance of his radio transmission. He is telling us on the radio to drive by the VW bug that is on fire and continue up the Interstate where he has people on the ground and a party who is heavily pinned. You can hear someone screaming in the background while he was on the radio

Engine 03 copies the radio traffic, we are 5 minutes out

We are on the overpass to the interstate and my window is down. There is an unmistakable smell of a car on fire but I cannot locate the fire by site. It looks like both lanes of the Interstate are stopped and I cannot tell how long the chain reaction accident is.

I can hear sirens coming in from the south and can hear a semi running.

As we come down the exit ramp I can see a VW bug that is burning from the engine compartment. There are three people standing around it, with a hopeless look on their faces. I lean out the window to talk to them.

“Hi guys, is this your car? I ask

“It is mine” a twenty something girl says as she raises her hand halfway.

“Listen, I have a patient is critically injured up the road, I need to get to her first. Your car is past being able to save, so I getting to her first. People before machines”

She nods back. “Sure”

“I need to make sure you guys stand over here way away from it so you do not become my next critical injured patients...OK? You cannot put that fire out, you can only get hurt”

All three nod but do not respond

From this vantage point there are 5-6 semi trucks and an undetermined number of cars at crazy angles as far as I can see. I can see the reflection of the reflective strip on a fire bunker coat and see Roger up ahead. He see's the lights and waves us over.

Engine 03 arrival

I can hear her screaming before the engine has come to a complete stop. The fog seems to carry the screaming and I cannot tell which car or truck it is coming from. I am walking towards Roger and the screaming is getting louder. He starts walking towards me.

“Hey, Cap – what do you have?” I ask

“There is a car underneath that flatbed where all the screaming is coming from. I got no idea who or what is in there but that is the first place I need you to look”. He is pointing to a low lying flatbed that is hauling steel beams. Underneath you can see a red tail light and and head light pointing out at a 90 degree angle.

“I'll take a look at let you know,” I tell Roger and trying to focus on access to the car and not the screaming which is hard to ignore. Jim is pulling the extrication equipment off of the engine and I am walking towards the sound of the screaming.

Just before I get to the car, there is a small compact car next to the screaming that is in 3 distinct pieces. Next to the largest piece of the care there are two blood soaked blankets covering different parts of the road. There are arms and legs sticking out at odd angles and it is impossible to tell how many people are under the blankets. There is a state patrolman standing in front of the blankets. As I approach him, he does not say a word just shakes his head slowly. I am scanning the road and it becomes apparent that we are working in a debris field.

I choose my steps carefully and radio a message back to Roger that recovery efforts will include the section of road I am currently on.

I am at at the semi and I have found an opening just large enough for me to crawl into. The screaming is loudest here. Like a lot of my peers, I have developed a certain kind of tunnel vision that allows me to focus on the assignment and not the overall accident scene. I am a piece of a larger rescue effort and it is critical that my part is flawless. I get on my hands and knees and even through my gear , I can already feel the cold making my knee's ache. I can't see much and my ear's are starting to ring from the screaming.

“Fire Department!” I yell into the screaming hole and the screaming stops as I crawl forward on my knee's.

I am like most of the guys in our department. We are a solid crew because most everyone has a over a decade of experience working the toughest and most demanding calls that our department runs. We are good because we understand it is about the crew not the person. I am always prepared because I have that unique brand of obsessive compulsive disorder that is bred in the fire service. I carry two of everything because one will fail or be lost and I check everything 3 times.

You could send anyone of us into the screaming hole. Today is my turn, not because I possess any more skills than the next guy, it is simply the luck of the draw.

When I first crawled into the hole, the trauma inside that space is daunting. I am not sure if the confined space, snow, and all of the blood makes it looks far worse than it is. It is cold and I can see and her her breathing heavily. She is heavily pinned, the only thing I can see is the side of her face and one arm that is free. She is lying flat on her back with the both legs elevated over her head. The leg is flat and attached to her because of the fabric of the jeans she is wearing. She is pinned in the perfect shock position and with the metal acting as a tourniquet.

As I am crawling towards her in the cold, and she is following me with one eye. Her eye looks abnormally large but it is the space and the way that she is pinned that makes it look that way. Her single free arm is hanging down and her hand is opening and closing in a pile in a pile of red snow. She is following my movements with a very wide eye and her lips are moving but she is not speaking.

Her injuries look extensive to me and I am trying to determine what I can do to take care of her most basic needs. Plain and simple ABC, airway, breathing and circulation. I want to touch her hand so that she gets it out of the snow and she feels a warm touch of hand. She is in an unimaginable hell hole. It is important to me that she does not die before I can touch her hand.

Normally in a pinned accident you would not spend more than 20 minutes with a patient you were working to extricate. Having tools in your hands, moving metal, or providing patient care make this time fly. It is easier to provide that calm reassurance comes easy when you are at the end of a tool or providing basic life support. Here in the screaming hole, I am unable to move metal or provide meaningful medical care because of how she is pinned.

Nothing in my training and experience has prepared me for this. Without tools and medical equipment I am down to just being able to talk to her. I am the gunfighter who came to the gunfight with a plastic spoon.

As I get within arms reach of her I tell her once again

“ I am Mike, I am with the Fire Department”.

She reaches out to me and grabs the collar of my bunker coat and with superhuman strength pulls me closer where she can look into my face with that one large eye. In the cold of the space you I can see her heavy breath and feel it on my face. She has a firm grip on my collar is looking at me.

This is the start of the both the longest and shortest day of my Fire Service career. I will spend the next 3 hours in the screaming hole. It would have been too much if it lasted 10 minutes. That is lasted 3 hours has left me with the need to periodically try and reconcile a day that really cannot be reconciled well.

Out of an abundance of respect for her and with a great deal of humility for my overall role in the rescue, I realize it what followed for the next 3 hours just will never translate well. It is the 3 hours I recall in startling detail that still I cannot put into words. It was a 3 hour long roller coaster ride with progressively higher peaks and steeper downhills and turns. It stands to this day as the most intimate time I have spent with another human being.

Time on inside the screaming hole comes to a complete stop while teams of brave firefighters on the outside are racing the clock on the outside to extract her. They are working to create a small opening to extract her from the car and the semi from the opposite side that I am on. The noise from the outside of the screaming hole at first faint is now getting progressively louder. There sound of groaning metal is getting progressively louder. While she is still heavily pinned, both arms and are free and I have been able get a Cspine collar on her. It was dark for so long but now there are rays of light coming in at odd angles.

“You see the light now?” I ask her

“Mike?” huge tears are rolling down her cheeks.

“I am going to make it out here aren't I?”

“Yea, you are, it is not going to be long now. Hey, there are a couple of flight medics out there, they are going to cut your clothes away, and you are going to have a seriously cold ass for a minute. There is going to be a lot of noise and light and a lot of hands. But your warm ride is out there, you ever ride in a helicopter?

“I am not doing to die am I? She says in a wavering voice

“Not today” even as I say it out loud, I am not sure that she is not going to die today.

I can see the blue flight suits to the flight medics in an opening just behind her. Hands are starting to reach in and touch her.

“Mike, wh...” she stops in mid sentence and closes her eyes.

I am stunned, suddenly out of breath and trying to collect myself. I let go of her hand and key up my handheld radio. I don't trust my voice and put my forehead down in the snow for a minute to clear my head. As soon as I key up my mike the flight medic's head reappears in the hole.

“She is down, she just went down”

“Is she breathing? Conscious?” the medic is asking me. He turns to motion his partner over.

“She is breathing, stopped talking to me in midsentence, airway is still good” I cringe, I should have checked that before saying she was down.

“We got her, she is ok”

I push her hands up on her stomach as they are lifting her out and she is gone. Light streams into the screaming hole. The space looks more daunting in the light of the morning. The two firefighters who have been passing me gear have pulled me feet first out of the now quiet screaming hole. It is over and it does not feel like it is over. My back, legs, and arms all ache. The adrenaline that I was running on is gone.

Roger starts speaking on the radio when I am pulled out and lifts a finger for me to stop, while he finishes.

“Mike, you good?'

“I am good”

News helicopters circle overhead, and there is an army of firefighters everywhere. On the other side of Interstate the helicopter is starting up. I recognize Tim who was directing recovery efforts on the other side. On his team there are smiles all around, I wave at him and he smiles back. In the coming days, Tim will receive almost no outside acknowledgment for his efforts and he was most instrumental in saving her life.

The fog has lifted and it already seems like a different day than when I arrived. It makes the time I spent in the screaming hole seem longer.

I am walking back to the engine to find a minute to collect myself.

“Mike, Mike, Mike” Tim is motioning me over to where she is being put on a backboard .

“She wants to see you before she flies”

She is small on the board and the two medics are getting her prepped for the flight. The firefighters part to let me through and that feels weird.  These are the men who worked hardest to save her life.  I do not need dramatic right now. I need matter of fact and I need a minute to collect myself.

Her neck is in a Cspine collar and she can only look up. I hold her hands and and lean over so she can see my face. I have to make this short, she has shaken me down to my core and in this is not the place to break down. 

“We made it” she said and tears roll down her face.

“Never doubted it for a minute” I lied

“Let these guys take care of you, gonna be a quick ride, you are going to be warm again it just a minute”

“ I will see you soon” I wink and give her hands one last squeeze. I pull back so the medics can work on her.

Roger comes over and walks to me the engine. I don’t want to talk to anyone or answer any questions. I want to get my gear straightened around and get back to normal. He hands me a warm cup of coffee in a paper cup. I feel sick to my stomach and want to sit down for a minute.

“You good?” Roger asks again

“I am good, need to sit for a minute and drink this warm coffee tho”

“You sure you are good?”

“Cap, all due respect, let me sit for a minute and warm up, I am good to go”

He looks like he is going to say something else and then nods his head and heads down to talk to the TV crews that are setting up camera's. I recognize the reporter from channel 9 and I am watching her talk to our Public Information Officers. The Battalion Chief is standing just off camera and listening to her talk. My hands just will not get warm and they are starting to shake a little now. I have my hand over the top of the paper cup trying to warm my hand.

When I look back up the Battalion Chief, PIO, and reporter are looking over to where I am standing. The Chief is pointing at me and motions me over

“Here is the guy you want to talk to, he was with her the whole time she was trapped” the chief says.

“Can we talk to you?” the reporter asks and my heart sinks.  I am the wrong guy to be talking to right now.

“Sure”

The cameraman is repositioning himself and she is adjusting her clothing.

“Ready?' she asks

“Sure”

“We are here today with the brave firefighter who kept the woman talking throughout the ordeal and saved her life” I cringe at this, the guys who actually saved her life are picking up their gear now.  Not one of them will receive the credit that is due outside of the firehouse. Sound bites for TV are the flavor of the day. Camera or picture time also means I owe the station ice cream. .

“What was it like in there?” the reporter asks

“That is a real brave kid, she is as tough as they come. There were a lot of firefighters working to get her out and stabilizes her. She did her part and hung in there with us for an extended extrication. We will all be looking forward to a speedy recovery for her.”

“What did you say to her to keep her spirits up”

“She is a real tough kid, she hung in there and knew our guys were going to get her out”

The reporter turns to the Chief and asks him more detailed questions about the whole Fire Department response and recovery efforts. I have stepped back out of camera range and wait for the live TV report to end. The cameraman takes the camera off of his shoulder.

“We done?” the Chief asks

“Thanks Chief, I appreciate it” she says

“Chief, I got to head back and help pick up” I say

“You good?”

“I will be when I can finish my coffee”

“Thanks Mike”

I walk back to the other side of the engine and throw up on my boots. I am in the call that is never ending. Our engine is released early and we are finally headed back to the station.

At the station the nightmare continues. We have a full house, people who have been watching the drama unfold are all coming down to check on us. Hot food, hot coffee, and clean uniforms are waiting for everyone. The chaplain is there and is taking a minute with each of us. He puts his arm around me and I have to resist an urge to punch him in the mouth.

What we need is time to debrief with each other. Nothing will ever take the place of being with people who have done what you have. Your peers understand the pace of how these things get diffused. It always depends on the person and incident. The best intentions of chaplains, friends, and family often fall painfully short.

I excuse myself, get cleaned up and manage to dodge the Chaplin and other well meaning people until my shift is over.

At home, I take another long hot shower before I try to think through what just happened. Over a hot chicken dinner only parts and pieces of the story can be told. I believe that this is as much of the story as I will be able to tell. This amazing tribute to the human spirit will stay in my head until I can find a way to put it on paper.

EPILOG 1

After countless surgeries, she has defied the experts and has kept the leg. She has asked to come to the station to thank us all. It is going to be an extravaganza with the local Denver TV stations. She arrives and takes her place at the table. I have forgotten how small she is. Even in a wheelchair she looks tiny. She looks around for me at the table. She whispers into her mom's ear and her mom makes her way over to me. She asks if I can meet with them alone in the woman's bathroom after TV camera's are off. The camera lights come on and she has an amazing grace and composure. She is simple and elegant in her praise and wins everyone's heart all over again. Everyone is beaming.

We are in the bathroom with her mother. Her mom hands me a box of rolled mints, blue foil wrappers. “Lifesavers” he mom says and they are both beaming at me. She leans forward in her wheel chair and motions for me to come down to eye level with her.

“I will always remember your voice, but I could not remember what you looked like until they showed me a picture of you”

“That is normal stuff, your brain protects you and lets you remember what you need to remember” I say.

“I don't remember what I said or did but I will always remember your voice” “

“What did I say to you? Did I say anything crazy or out of line?” she asked

“They say you are the reason I made it”

“You made it because of who you are. In that place when everything but the most basic instincts are left, you make decisions based on how you are wired. No one can really override that. It makes great TV to say that I did something extraordinary but nothing could be further from the truth.”

“It was all you” I tell her

“Do I owe you an apology for anything I said?” she asked

“No, not at all, I wanted to thank you tho”

“Why?”

“For reminding me why I became a Firefighter in the first place”

“Really?” She is looking at her mom now

“Yea, really”

“Do you want to see my leg?'

She pulls back the blanket and shows her tiny muscled leg. It is indented, flat, and cross stitched extensively. A broad smile is on both of our faces. I reach out to touch it and stop myself.

“Its okay, go ahead”

I rest my palm on her leg and it jumps. Another broad smile crosses both of our faces.

“That is the one the best legs I have every seen”

I am recounting it to Chris later and he smiles. “You spent the most intimate time of your life with a woman half your age and she cannot remember what you look like”.

“It is hard to be me” I tell him and we both laugh.

EPILOG 2

An entire year has passed. She is graduating from college with honors. I have kept track of her in newspaper articles, in particular her struggles with post traumatic stress disorder. have spent a lot of time letting everyone know I was OK but when I read about the specifics about her struggles, I realized I have struggled the past year with some of the same things she has.

I am reading about her graduation over coffee with Chris.

“You should go see her graduate, you know you want to?”

“That is not creepy? It sounds creepy to me?” I said

“You are an idiot tough guy. Really you do not know what creepy is by now? Go.

I am in the cheap seats with my best black suit on enjoying the anonymity of a huge public ceremony. She is introduced to thunderous applause. I decide I will try to walk over to where she is after so I can say hello and good luck. I wait until the crowd clears, so I can be low key. I misjudged how long it took me to make it over the student section is and by the time I am walking down the concrete steps she is gone. I am relieved and disappointed. Most of my last minute inspirations are not very well rehearsed. I turn to walk up the stairs with my head down.

“Mike?” She is standing on the stair right in front of me. I must have walked past her.

“You came” she said

“Hey, I came to wish you luck and say congratulations”

“What is next?”

“I am going to be a teacher” she says

“I have been reading about you in the paper, they say your leg is in good shape”

“They still think I am going to keep it, I have been really working to keep it”

She is much smaller that I remember her. She is standing on the step above me and I am still a little taller than her. She hugs me hard and long and whispers thank you in my ear. For a second time, I get to tell her we made it.

FINAL EPILOG

It is 5 years past and her memory will always remain with me. Time and distance takes the edges off of everything. I am sure she has made it, it never occurs to me to think differently.

I am returning from a Paris to Denver and taking the underground train to get my bags. As I get on the train to go to baggage claim I look up and see she is right on the train behind me. Still smaller than I remember, she has on a backpack and is leaning on a great looking young guy who looks like he is on top of the world. She smiles at me and I smile back.

I wait and watch her get off the train and while the escalator takes here up she turns back to flash me one more of those brilliant broad smiles of hers. No words just a huge smile.

For the last time, she gets to tell me we made it.