I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to write about this. Maybe I didn’t know what to say about it. Maybe I didn’t like what it said about me at the time.
Several years ago I was not doing very well.
I was drinking too much, using drugs, making a lot of poor decisions, and mostly trying to get through the week without thinking too far ahead. Work had already been wearing me down for a long time and I was pretty burned out, whether I admitted that to anyone or not. An important relationship had ended and I handled that about as poorly as a person can while still technically going to work and occasionally answering their phone. I was tired all the time and didn’t really care about much of anything. I think I knew I was slipping long before that night.
The call came in late. Overtime. I remember being annoyed when the tones went off. That part is still embarrassing to admit.
Then the dispatch information came over the radio and the whole tone of the truck changed. It was for a very young girl involved in a farm accident. The drive was tough after that. Not much talking. Just long roads through farm country and an aggressively ignored speed limit.
When we got there it was quiet in a way that didn’t feel right. Usually on calls like that there’s noise. Crying, yelling, people talking too fast, someone trying to explain what happened. Here there was just a dog barking somewhere outside and nobody telling it to be quiet.
The dog was the only thing making any noise at all.
There was nothing for us to do for her. It didn’t matter how fast we drove.
I checked once because you always check, even when you already know. Training makes you do that. Hope probably does too. But I knew.
I put a blanket over her and then went outside to talk to the others so they didn’t have to come in and see. It was a Mennonite family. There was no yelling or screaming. People stood close together and didn’t say very much. The father barely spoke. He looked like someone who had already gone somewhere else and just left his body behind.
We stayed on scene for a while even though there was nothing left for us to do. A lot was happening outside. People talking. Police arriving. Paperwork. All the things that start happening after something terrible has already happened.
Inside the barn it was just long and empty and cold.
I remember feeling like I should have stayed with her instead of walking outside with everyone else. Like she shouldn’t have been left alone in that big cold building. I know that’s not really how it works. I know she wasn’t there anymore in any way that would have known the difference.
It still felt wrong.
Eventually we left. That part always feels strange on calls where there was never anything you could do. You just get back in the truck and drive away. The place gets smaller behind you and then it’s just another road again.
For a while afterward I kept thinking, why did that have to be my call? Why did I have to see that?
I hated that thought.
A little girl had died and somehow I was thinking about what it had done to me.
It took me a long time to understand that I just didn’t want to carry it. I was already carrying enough badly.
That call wasn’t the beginning of everything that came afterward. There had already been years of other calls, bad habits, drinking, things I hadn’t dealt with and things I had convinced myself weren’t affecting me. That night was just one of the moments where pretending became a little harder.
I did not get better after it.
I got worse for a while.
I drank more. Slept less. Avoided people and avoided thinking about anything that mattered. Eventually I went off work and started trying to fix parts of my life, but that took a long time and most of it was slow and unimpressive.
I still have trouble with the way that night sits inside that part of my life.
I don’t want to say something that terrible pushed me in a better direction. That gives it a purpose it never had. There is nothing useful or necessary about what happened to that girl or her family.
I think I just reached a point where I could no longer ignore the person walking into these calls.
I wish I had changed earlier. I wish I had done it for my own sake, or for the people who cared about me, or because I had simply noticed how far I was going before something so terrible became tangled up in the noticing.
Sometimes now I’ll drive past a farm at night or hear a dog barking in the cold and I’m back in that barn for a minute.
Not the whole night.
Just pieces.
The long building. The cold concrete. The blanket. The quiet.
Walking outside.
I don’t remember everything anymore. I couldn’t tell you every conversation or how long we were there. There are probably things I would remember differently if someone else who was there told the story.
But I remember leaving her in that barn.
I remember thinking I should have stayed.
I don’t think about it every day, but I don’t think I’ll ever completely forget that night either.
Sometimes I still find myself drifting toward the person I was back then. The isolation. The drinking getting easier. Not answering people. Letting small things pile up until they stop being small.
When I notice that happening, sometimes I think about the farm.
The barn.
The dog.
That little girl.
I don’t like the idea of using her death as some kind of lesson. I don’t think that’s what it is.
The memory is just there.
And sometimes it makes me turn around a little earlier than I might have.
I don’t know exactly why.
It just feels like I should.
