Capitol Ambulance was sold to a national corporation. Shortly after the state made them give up the South side of the city to Champion Ambulance in a deal brokered by politicians. The fire department has started going to all EMS calls as first responders, and may eventually go paramedic themselves.
Helen Seurat now runs Champion Ambulance, and continues to be active in the community. Her company has trained over fifteen Hartford residents to become EMTs, four are now paramedics. She remains close with the Ruiz family. Hector’s youngest boy is a top student in one of the public school system’s magnet schools.
Kim and I were married that fall. She works as a nurse now. I am still out in the street, though not working nearly as much as I used too. Last summer we went up to Maine and I showed her the town where I grew up. I was surprised people still remembered me. In the town square thirty years after his death, they had erected a small monument to the town’s sons who died in the war. I ran my fingers over Billy’s name and as I wept I felt I could again see his face and hear his words as we laughed and imagined about all the great things we would do.
Two months after Hector’s funeral, Troy Johnson was critically injured in a car accident. He spent the next ten years in a convalescent home by the Connecticut River. Linda Sullivan used to visit twice a week until she married and moved to California. I visited him once a year. The last time I saw him he sat erect in his wheelchair. His eyes gazed hard at me, but I never knew if he recognized me or even knew I was there or what I was saying. I told him that Linda had written to say his son had hit a home run in his first Little League game. She said he won a track race at his school, beating even the fifth and six graders, and that though he struggled at times with his studies, the girls seemed to all adore him. A picture of the boy was taped to his mirror. Troy Patrick Johnson Sullivan. He had his father’s mischievous sparkle.
Troy died last year. His father and I took his ashes and spread some of them over the playing fields at Thorton High and then took the rest up to Zion Hill and let the wind carry them out over the city of Hartford. He and Pat are together again – I like to think of them looking out for the people of the city, and looking out for the rest of us who still work the streets. It may not have been where they dreamed of ending up as boys, but it is who they became. It was their place in the world.
On Friday nights we still raise a beer at the mention of their names.
-the end-
