It was a cold morning a few days before Christmas. The six inches of snow we’d received the week before had been washed away by a steady cold rain. The only remnants were the now dirt encrusted mounds on the roadside where the plows had piled the snow. Troy and I were covering the town of Newington when we got called to a street off Willard Avenue. They wouldn’t tell us what it was for. “No lights, no sirens. Report to PD on scene."
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Troy said.
“How’s that?”
“It’s Nestor’s place.”
Nestor hadn’t been to work for three days. He’d called in on Tuesday, saying he wasn’t feeling well. Wednesday he hadn’t answered his phone.
The sky was gray. The roads were slippery with patches of black ice.
Neither of us said anything as we drove there.
Nestor hadn’t been doing well at all lately. He’d stopped hanging out in the crew room a couple months before, retiring to his cubicle in the billing department. Some mornings he had alcohol on his breath. He’d stopped joking with people. Even stopped wearing his uniform. It was like he didn’t even want to be seen.
They led us though the house and down into the basement. The house looked like so many others we went into -- dishes in the sink, piles of newspapers, empty liquor bottles, full ashtrays, curtains pulled against the light, a carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed for months. The basement steps were in need of repair. You wondered how they could have supported Nestor’s weight as he made his way down to the cellar.
He lay on his side on the cement floor, the rifle still in his hands, a pool of caked muddy blood formed a semi-circle around the body, the back half of his head was gone. You could still see the look in his eyes like he’d seen something no man should face, a fear, a panic, a disbelief that it all had come to this.
Troy’s looked down at the body. I saw no emotion in his eyes. He looked at his watch. “Two-thirty-one. P.M.,” he said, then walked out.
Ben Seurat arrived in his Bronco. Troy was writing his paperwork against the hood of the ambulance. Ben glanced at him, but didn’t come over to talk. He nodded to the cops who let him in the house.
He came out a few minutes later. He had put on sunglasses.
A couple days later, when I was without a partner, and doing chores about the office, I brought a box of new training manuals up to Ben’s office. He was sitting with his feet up on his desk He’d just gotten back from the funeral services. He seemed to be staring at a picture on the wall. I made a little cough so he’d know I was there. He invited me in.
“How was the service?” I asked.
“Good, good. A lot of people came out, not as many as he deserved, but a decent showing. Too bad we couldn’t have sent all the crews, but someone had to work. People said nice things about him, things that had been forgotten and needed to be said.”
“He worked here for many years,” I said.
“Yes, he did. He put in his time. No matter what he’d become in the end, he deserved the respect of a decent funeral. And he got that.”
I looked at the picture. It appeared to be of a graduating class -- young people in their twenties to early thirties.
“First paramedic class in the city,” Ben said. He pointed to each photo. “Dan Turner -- he’s a doctor now. He came up today all the way from New York City. Fred Capezzi, another suicide -- about four years ago. Julio Ramos -- he’s an East Hartford firefighter now. No longer works as a medic. He was there. You recognize Brian Sajack. That’s me -- had a full head of hair then. Rob Matros, died in a car wreck. Mary Beth Fowler, a physician assistant in Massachusetts. Thomas Gallimore, working out in New Mexico for Albuquerque EMS. Lenny Lown, a junkie, or was when I last heard from him, living down on the streets of Willimantic. And that -- that’s Davey.”
I looked at the picture. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred and seventy-five pounds with a trimmed mustache and a lady killer smile.
“Being a paramedic was his life,” Ben said. “Brian and I were talking about how people used to always gather around to listen to him tell his stories. Too bad he never wrote his book.” He was quiet a moment. “He had a lot of good years, but it destroyed him in the end.” I saw Ben’s eyes look at the other pictures on his wall – Ben’s wife and his daughters. “He didn’t have anything else.”
“A lesson for us all,” I said.
“Amen.”
