I worked seven days a week twelve sixteen hours a day for over a year with hardly a day off. It was easier that way. It wasn’t so much the money as feeling my days were full. Going to work wasn’t hard when work was my life.
I came in one Sunday morning at noon prepared to work till midnight when the supervisor, Brian Sajack, said, “What you doing here old man? Your name isn’t in the book.”
Sajack was a long standing medic who’d reluctantly left the road to take a supervisor position due to a chronic back injury. He still went out in the intercept Bronco to back up crews, but his days of regularly hauling stretchers had past. A large man with a sweeping mustache, he was well liked by all, and enjoyed putting people on.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Who do you have with me?”
“I told you your name isn’t in the book.”
“It was there yesterday.” I pointed to the spot, and saw it had been erased. “That’s not right. It was there.”
“I’ve never seen you bristle like that,” he said. “It’s okay, Troy and Pat booked you off.”
“They what?”
“They left this.” He gave me an envelope, which I opened to find a map with directions to a party at Dr. Eckstein’s house in the country. “And this,” Brian said. He handed me a small cooler, which I opened to find six longneck Buds on ice. No one knew it, but I hadn’t had a drink in the year I’d been there. “Just don’t start drinking till you’re off the premises,” he said. “Enjoy. You deserve the break. I’ll be there later myself when my shift ends. I expect the party will last into the early hours.”
The doctor had a huge spread out in Litchfield County, forty acres of land, a modern split-level house with a pool in the back and a horse stable on the lower grounds. It was a beautiful day in late September – Indian summer, the leaves just starting to turn color, the sky clear blue, the temperature in the 70’s. It reminded me of my youth in Maine, the kind of day where it was just too nice to go to school, so you and your pals drove to the cliffs over the ocean, drank beer and listened to the car stereo, while you kissed your girl and never thought anything bad could ever intrude on the fullness in your chest.
Dr. Eckstein draped green and yellow Hawaiian leis around my neck, gave me a warm hug, and called me “Lee.” Partiers played water volleyball in the large in-ground pool, threw horseshoes and soaked in the hot tub. A hired DJ played Hip-Hop on the sound system. I stood by Victor who manned the barbeque pit where a pig and a goat roasted on spits. He cut off large sections of meat, rich with fat, and served them to the partygoers, who also dined on a lavish spread of vegetables, fruits, salads, chips, cakes and sweets spread out on two picnic tables.
I’m not sentimental, but I found comfort in the camaraderie that day, the friendship between the people I worked with on the road and at the hospitals. I had come to know good souls, who I felt the same about me.
There was Kim Dylan, a cute curly-haired single mother of two in her mid-thirties. She had a quiet grace and a level-headness born out of trial. I could see the pride in her eyes as she watched her two sons, seven and nine, play football with Raul Martinez, an emergency department tech at Saint Francis, who after hard times of his own, had become a lay minister to the city’s homeless.
Andrew Melnick was there with his girlfriend Teresa, a sweet pale-complected clerk at Hartford Hospital. Andrew threw a Frisbee. Dr. Eckstien’s dog Astro, a golden retriever, chased the flying disc down, then leapt up into the air, catching it in his teeth, then ran back and eagerly gave it to Andrew, who threw it again.
In the hot tub, five of the night nurses from Saint Francis egged on two Hartford cops to down the Jell-O shots the nurses had made and were passing out to anyone who joined them. They looked younger in their bikinis than they ever did in their hospital scrubs. It was good to hear them laughing.
Pat Brothers and his girlfriend Alison had organized a group of children into a soccer game. Pat ran back and forth among the players, announcing the action, and occasionally helping out each team with a well placed pass. Whenever a goal was scored, he shouted “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALL!” and ran about high-fiving all the kids. They were crazy for him.
Ben Seurat came with his pregnant wife, Dana, and their four little girls, ages three to eleven. The two oldest eagerly joined in Pat’s soccer game. The younger girls got into the cake and had it on their mouths, fingers and dresses. Ben seemed less intimidating in the presence of his children than he did around the office.
His brother Don Seurat wore kaki pants and a green Lacoste shirt, had a Michelob in his hand and wandered about with Linda Sullivan in tow, shaking hands like a dutiful politician. On this day, no one was speaking ill of him. It was a timeout for everyone from complaints of any type. It was just too nice of a day. Blue sky and warm sun on your face, made you think the world was a better place than you remembered.
Don’s ex-wife Helen Seurat came alone arriving in her white convertible. Even Troy, who was playing horseshoes stopped to watch her move across the grass. People came up to her, paying their homage. She smiled and was quite friendly, but she left not much after she had arrived.
David Nestor was there too, sitting with Victor and me by the fire pit, gorging on the roasted meats, washing them down with beer from the pitcher he refilled from one of the two kegs. “This is like the old days again,” he said. “Remember when we used to go to Vermont every summer for Jackie’s annual party. Drinking, barbequing, only thing missing is folks running around naked, but it’s early yet.”
He saw me looking at him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I got the running around naked out of my system awhile back.”
“Those were fun times,” Victor said. “I got a letter from Jackie a month ago. She’s still with Aerosmith. She promised me free tickets when they come to the Meadows.” He said to me, “Jackie is a Medic who worked here for ten years. She hooked up as a roadie for Aerosmith, travels the world with them. Crazy hippie chick. She’s lots of fun, not a bad medic either. We all partied more then we do now. That’s why this is nice.”
“Are you going to drink that beer or just cool your hand with it?” Nestor said.
I looked down at the Bud I held. I hadn’t had a drink in a year, but I held that bottle as comfortable as I had in high school. I was a drinker -- at times in my past, a hard one -- but I had been trying to change. I hoped that I could drink the beer and stop at the enjoyment of it, and not let it lead me back down a wrong path.
“I’m just enjoying holding it right now,” I said, “Thank you. I’m just enjoying the feel in my hand and being a part of this nice day. I expect to drink it eventually.”
“Gotcha,” Nestor said. “I can respect that.”
“Me, too,” Victor said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Later, I was looking for a bathroom, when I accidentally opened the door to a bedroom. Before I could shut the door, I saw a man’s strong back, a pair of long legs around him, and a glimpse of red hair. I heard the heavy thumping of the headboard against the wall, and a woman’s pleasured cries. I closed the door quickly.
“Have you seen Troy?” Pat asked.
“I think he’s in there,” I said, pointing to the door I’d just closed, “with company.”
“Not the doc?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“That dog. Hey will you give me five bucks if I open the door and shout ‘Gooooooaaaaaal!’”
“Five bucks?”
“I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do that. Are you having a good time?”
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“I’m glad. You’re a good man, Lee.” He slapped me on the back, and went back out to the party, where he got a cold beer from the keg, then joined his girlfriend Allison sunning on the back lawn.
I sat on the couch looking out over the pool and countryside.
“Hi, Lee, Nice to see you out. May I sit?”
“Of course, by all means.” It was Kim Dylan. “Nice to see you, too.”
“While the kids are being entertained, I’d thought I’d put me feet up. It’s great all the games they have for them. There’s a magician out there now.”
“I saw. That’s great.” Out on the lawn, all the kids had been rounded up, and now sat enthralled as a tall thin young man made animal balloons and pulled endless ribbons out of his mouth.
“Nice place, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll marry a rich man someday, or win the lottery – I’ll probably have better odds.”
“I don’t know. I think you’d make a rich man very happy, or any man for that matter.”
“You’re too kind. How much have you had to drink?”
“Nothing really. I’m just holding this beer.”
“I was kidding.” She gave me a playful tap on the shoulder that thrilled me.
And we sat there and talked, talked like old friends, chatting away about everything from work to the weather. I was sorry when after a half an hour, she had to leave.
“I hate to interrupt the kids’ fun out there, but I need to be going. I have an early shift tomorrow morning. It’s been nice to see you out,” Kim said. “I guess you work so much, it’s hard for you.”
“I’ve had a good time,” I said. “I probably should get out more.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s hard with the kids. I get my sister to take them sometimes. That helps. Life can’t be all work.”
“True,” I said.
There are times in your life when you meet someone and you feel a connection, but the time just isn’t right. By no means had I been alone in my years away, but I hadn’t found anyone who reached me in a way that mattered. I was tired of disappointing people, and I didn’t care for partings. So I had found myself sitting there on the couch next to a nice woman I found attractive, and while I had imagined her flesh next to mine, I had also imagined another tearful goodbye months later as I packed and left, with little explanation more than it’s not your fault. If she had known what I was thinking, she would have wanted to avoid me. I was a dead end.
We stood together and she gave me a friendly hug. I tried not to hold it as long as I wanted.
“You should come out with us to the Brickyard some night after work,” she said. “It’s a good place to unwind. Some people like me just pop in for a beer, some close the place down.”
“Maybe I will some night.”
“You’ll have a good time. I’ll look for you.”
Suddenly there was a commotion by the pool.
“My goodness,” Kim said. “He doesn’t have anything on.”
There was Troy stark naked on the diving board. He stood completely still like an Olympic diver, then took a couple studied steps, bounced high once, then executed an Olympic one and a half, neatly ripping the landing. He came up, and people applauded and shouted “Ten. Ten.”
Before a growing and enthusiastic crowd, he executed a number of dives and assorted cannonballs and jackknifes. But it was only when he sauntered through the house still in his birthday suit and stood dipping nachos in the cheese sauce muttering about being robbed by the Russian judges that Pat got him some orange juice. He made him eat a peanut butter sandwich and found some surgical scrubs for him to wear.
Just before I left, Scott Dykema, one of our paramedics, and Scott Cummings, his EMT partner, took their bagpipes and played. Evidently they had been horrendous when they’d started a few years back, but they were actually very good. There was something ancient and soulful about the sound of the pipes, that may have been the reason everyone stopped their conversation and listened, and looked about at all who were there, as if the occasion were being marked and remembered for all time.
