Somewhere in the middle of the movie, I got up off the couch to make coffee before my midnight shift. There was a lump forming in my throat and its seemed as good a time as any to excuse myself. Then, without warning, I stood in the kitchen and started bawling my eyes out. I couldn’t stop crying — sobbing really — while I leaned on the edge of the kitchen counter, head bowed, and supported my trembling body with by both my arms. I was inconsolable.
The death of a character in the movie my wife and I had been watching cracked my emotional dam just so, and no little Dutch boy would be holding it back. Normally, I wasn’t a cryer, and definitely not at movies. My confused wife did her best to comfort me while likely wondering if I had lost my mind or if she had lost hers for marrying me.
What The Heck Happened?
A call from three months earlier had bubbled its way back to the surface. I had handled the call, I had dealt with it, and had put it behind me, or so I thought. In reality, it had been brewing and fermenting inside of me for the past 90 days.
During that time at my former PD, we went to all medical calls; it didn’t really matter what it was. In most cases we never had to do a thing, because, like most of us, I only had basic first aid, CPR, and some common sense. Also, I practiced the ABC’s (like I’m sure most of you do): Ambulance Before Cruiser.
The Call
This particular call came in around six in the morning, if I remember correctly, and it was the same call I had gone to a hundred times before. The radio code was for a cardiac issue and I didn’t think much of it. Our town had lots of old people, and they all had cardiac issues. Which in my experience tended to be more likely heartburn than anything else. When I pulled up to the house I was the first to arrive. No ambulance or fire truck yet. So much for ABCs. (They were probably at the grocery store early to beat the lines). I walked to the front door, announced my presence, and let myself in. The sound of a panicked woman’s voice echoed somewhere upstairs. I followed the sound of her voice and made my way up toward the bedrooms.
As I stepped into a dimly lit child’s bedroom, I saw the boy’s mother on the cordless phone. She was bent over her son as he lay on his back unresponsive in his bed. I gathered from what she had been saying to the 911 operator that she had found him this way when it was time to get up for school.
He was twelve years old and the same age as my daughter.
Do Something
His two younger brothers came and stood side by side in the bedroom doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light. They stood silently looking on as their mom handed me the phone and pleaded with me to do something. The strain of sheer desperation in her voice was one only a mother could have. She locked her teary eyes on mine. “Do something!” she pleaded. It shook me.
I had her bring the other two boys to an adjacent bedroom as I began my assessment. The boy was dressed in his pajamas, his eyes were half open, and there was some fluid coming from his mouth. I checked for a pulse but was met with cold, waxy skin, and immediately noticed that rigor had already set in. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his mother’s silhouette return to the doorway as the 911 operator tried to walk me through CPR. I whispered to the operator that CPR would be useless, but the voice on the other end of the line told me to do something, anything, for this boy’s family. What could I possibly do? It was hopeless.
After setting the phone down, I scooped the boy in my arms, and set his rigid body on the floor next to the bed and began CPR. To be honest, it just felt wrong to me at the time. I felt like a fraud. After what seemed like an eternity, the fire department arrived and entered the bedroom. I rattled off a quick summary to the firefighter/EMTs and they soon pronounced the boy dead. (It was later learned he had died in his sleep of an undiagnosed heart defect).
Please Let It Be Over
Now it was my job to go tell the mother that her son was dead. Oh, and tell his two little brothers who sat huddled around their mom. And tell his father, who had raced home from work and collapsed in my arms as I tried to explain. And later, both sets of grandparents. The sounds of the deepest grief echoed within the walls of that house. I cannot describe it.
I grieved for that young family who happened to be about the same age as my wife, myself, and our kids, and grieve for them now as I type this. And though I did what I could do at the time, and tried to be strong and hold it together in front of them, I had never wanted to leave a place so bad in all my life as I did that morning. All I wanted to do was end my shift and go home. Selfishly, I wanted it to be over.
My shift did end, I finished my paperwork, I went home, and that was it…until three months later. I was suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed as I sat on my couch watching a movie.
No Hero
I hadn’t saved anyone, protected anyone, or eased anyone’s pain. I was as helpless and powerless as any member of that family. They had called for help, and they got me. I was no hero.
But it’s not what I did, it’s what I didn’t do that led to a break down. I didn’t get help for myself. It had never been dealt with it. I needed to do something about it. I had buried that experience somewhere in my psyche, but it had come back to bite me.
Boxes And Windows
Why do I tell you this?
Like most men, I’m fairly good at compartmentalizing things. We men have all these neat little boxes stacked in the confines of our mind where we store things like antiques in Mikey’s attic in the movie The Goonies. Our minds tend to have a one-track mind with the ability to switch from one thing to the next. It’s almost like we’re opening and closing one box at a time.
Ladies, I’ve heard that your minds tend to function more like Microsoft Windows rather than an attic full of boxes. Unlike men who only have one window (or box) open at a time, you can have a ton of windows open at once. This is one reason why you’re such great multi-taskers. Your challenge lies not in having too many things stored away and building up, but rather in having so many windows open at once that if never closed, they will slow your processor down to the point it can crash.
Do Something
I think to be effective in this job, we need to be able to compartmentalize traumatic things so that we can power through and handle the calls we are sent to. But we ought not to leave them there stored away and taking up space.
So, if you’ve been through some stuff at home or at work, give it the time and attention it deserves and get yourself well. Get help. Talk to someone. You can’t help anybody if you don’t help yourself first.
Clean out that attic, close those windows, and avoid a crash.
- What have you experienced that is still taking up space in the attic of your mind or cluttering your mental desktop?
- Is there something preventing you from confronting it?
- What steps can you take to sort out the clutter?
- Who can you go to for help or support?
Do you have a story that you think we could learn from that you’d like to share with the Johnny Tactical tribe? Include your name, rank, and department and send it to [email protected] and follow these guidelines:
- It must be a first-hand account
- True
- Have a lesson, principle, or tactic to apply
- Cleaned of names, dates, and places
- Include your call sign
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