Pointless Ambulance Stories

This is a bit of a pointless story, I think.  I'm not sure where it's going.  But I was down here looking at my old yearbooks from junior high and high school, and along with all the frightful hairdos and cryptic messages from my old friends, I came across some pictures that reminded me of this.

My mom was an EMT while I was in high school.  Now, we lived in a very small town (pop:  277) in southern New Mexico at the time.  There were 150 kids, roughly, in the junior high and high school combined and only about 14 kids in my class.  My stepdad also drove the ambulance, so between the two of them, they were always going out on calls.  When you live in such a small town, you know everybody that you're called to help.  Even when they didn't go on the call, we heard about the tragedies over the scanner before anyone else knew.  A lot of the people they got called to help were my friends, kids out doing something stupid, kids killing themselves. 

I found pictures tonight of my old friend Tim.  Tim was your basic headbanger type, except he was also a gifted athlete and a truly kind-hearted young man.  Sure, he tried to act all tough, with all his black clothes and the earring and the loud music, but inside, he was a big old lovey-dovey marshmallow, and he was a good friend.

One night, very late, my parents went out on a call.  Or maybe only my mom went--I'm not sure now.  When she got back, despite the hour, we had to talk.  She had been called out to the scene of a single-vehicle, probable drunk-driving (or, definite drunk-driving, but you can't say that until tests have been done) accident.  Tim had been the passenger in the vehicle.  He was not wearing a seat belt.  He went through the windshield and flew head first into the cliff by the side of the road.  Head first into a rock cliff.  They found him lying in the bushes below, conscious but in a lot of pain, of course.  When Tim recognized my mom, he said, "Oh, hello, Mrs. Newton."  As she and the other EMT were hauling him out of the bushes to the ambulance, I understand Tim cursed rather a lot, and then he would remember my mom was there and apologize for it.  Silly bugger.  She didn't care if he cursed.  Tim had a lot of broken bones and a concussion and god knows what else and was stuck in the hospital for quite a while.  I remember he said one of the nurses was cute, so the next time I went to see him, my friends and I took him a box of condoms.  The sad thing is I don't think he ever used them.  Oh, Tim--too sweet to sexually harass the nurses.

Another picture, this one of a Hungarian dude named Attila.  Cool name, right?  Well, Attila's family were very odd and had very odd living situations, and Attila himself was a very unusual and reticent guy, and so he wasn't very popular.  His dad owned the gas station and also had a gas delivery service, for people who lived too far out of town to come in just to get gas.  I always kind of liked Attila.  During English class, we would play paper, rock, scissors, and the penalty for losing was getting smacked on the wrist really hard.  One time our English teacher made us stand in opposite corners of the room when she caught us, but we were both laughing so hard that it distracted everyone even worse than if we were just smacking each other in the back of the class.

Anyway, so Attila.  Makes me so sad just thinking about it.  One day, Attila was driving a truck, with his younger brother as passenger, following their dad who was driving the gas truck to make a delivery.  I don't know exactly what happened, some kind of accident with the gas truck.  My mom went on the call.  She got to the scene to find their father decapitated, his head just sort of lying there in the middle of the dirt road, with both of the boys just staring at it, deep in shock.  When she told me, I was in shock.  I have no idea how you get over something like that.  I know Attila was never the same.  He turned quieter and gentler.  There was no more smacking, no more fooling around.  I missed him.  He was one person I wished there was something I could do to help. 

And then there's Bear.  That was his nickname, Bear.  He was a friend's younger brother.  It was during the fair, and we were supposed to be meeting him to watch the rodeo together, but he wasn't there.  Neither were his brothers.  When I got home, I heard the call on the scanner.  Twelve-year-old white male, at the Roberts residence, gunshot wound to the head.  He was dead before the ambulance even got there.  What makes a 12-year-old want to kill himself? 

It was really a relief when we moved to Montana, even though we moved the summer before my senior year.  We moved to a big(gish) city where I went to a big school and my mom stopped being an EMT, and even if she had been, we most likely wouldn't have known the patients.  Yeah, it was really a relief to get away from that.

Fucking yearbooks.  I'm putting them somewhere where I can't see them.