I am Goodbye

Every once in a while, I pull a 3rd shift. It's not totally unpleasant. I worked nights for years in restaurants and bars.I'd stay up rambling until sunrise. I've been seen teetering down the street at daybreak, becoming damp with morning dew as I shiver my jean jacket-- wondering how it was only 10pm five minutes ago. Now, as a mother of twin five year olds, I can't hang like I used to. I even fantasize about taking a brief nap around 6pm. But, if my daughters feel I am in their vicinity, there will be no rest.


When working a 3rd, I usually leave as the rest of the house sleeps-- my children in their beds covered with stuffies and my husband on the couch in front of a baseball game. As I pull out of the driveway, I remember how much I love that time of night. After all the neighborhood bedtimes, yet before the drunks barrell home from the bars. My eyes adjust to catch the rustling in the bushes and the glow of all the other noctural eyes. I pick the CD or radio station necessary to force the blood to my fingertips for the rest of the evening. I stop by one of the only coffee joints still open, and double fist it. 


In spite of these chemical and environmental stimuli, I usually start to drift off around 5am. Doesn't matter if I am sitting or standing, I start to slip down that slippered slope of sleep. Where I work at the hospital, it is protocol to call a Code Blue if a non-patient hits the skids. So, after doing my 200th lap of the unit, I start to self talk,"Oh, damnit! They're gonna have to call a code on me! I can't... do...this." Yet, I make it. I stumble out into the dawn, eyes feeling as though they've been sandblasted. I see all the fresh, well-rested faces. I feel like an alien or a ghost.


I would like to say I then go home and go to sleep. But, I don't. Usually just as I slide out of my scrubs into a tank top and boxer shorts, I hear the first cough resonate from the girls' room. They feel me. I make the choice to brew a pot of coffee versus catch 28 1/2 winks. I then spend the rest of the day hoping I don't fall asleep at a redlight like a cat sitting in the sun-- with my kids in the car. Yeah, I have actually pulled the "I'm just gonna close one eye... just for a second."


I try not to work 3rds too often-- I try not to work them at all. 2nds are good. I get my day. I work my evening. I go home and stare to something (a book, a computer, a drawing, a Korean horror film) until approximately 1am. I go upstairs. I check on my children. I brush my teeth and empty my bladder once last time. I stumble to bed. I am alseep within two minutes of thanking the great beyond for my children. Fast forward six hours (sometimes with memoriable dreams of interplanetary structures, sometimes with a sufficating pillow knock out lapse)-- and I start all over again.


I live by my calendar. I don't have a schedule that is anywhere near routine or regular. It sometimes works to my advantage, because I can manipulate my days off and shifts with a certain degree of success. I also need to be aware of what I have planned for my children. I try to be cognitive of my husband's band commitments and other social pursuits. I have minimal social engagements. Every once in a while, I go to a friend's house in the middle of the afternoon and pretend I don't have any commitments. But, I usually end up moaning about my commitments, glorifying the "bad old days", and sucking down a handful of pre-mixed liquor store beverages. I am usually home by 9pm. And, those plans revolve around the plans of everyone else in my home. Those times are cherished. I usually show an uncomfortable amount of gratitude toward the hostess.


A couple of Tuesdays ago, the schedule said, "11p-7a". I anticipated it over a week before. I knew it was there almost a month before. There was a certain degree of dread involved. I started the routine. I left my silent home. I put Will Oldham's track "I am Goodbye" in the player. I got my coffee. I made note of the change in traffic flows throughout the day as opposed to the night. I got on the Bayfront Highway. There was a slight breeze coming off the Bay intensified by the air whipping through the windows at 40mph. I repeated the song.


You are hello
A glowing cry
heaven we go
Never say die
I'll likely never know
the answer why
You are Hello
I am goodbye...

It was like every other night. Every other day. I take that road daily. However that night, there was a Jeep overturned on its side in the middle of the street. I slammed on my breaks, I hit the hazards, and flew out the driver side door. The air had become still. Events were moving faster then time. Maybe time stopped. I took it all in like staring at a panoramic postcard. To my left, the Jeep. Beside the Jeep a young man and a woman crouched over him. And, to my right, a young man face down on the asphalt-- shining glass tossed around his head like cupcake sprinkles. There were no paramedics, no cops. Just me and three other individuals who happened to drive up on the scene seconds after the accident. Behind me a couple stood together as the man called 911. 


I walked over to the woman and the conscious man. "Don't move him. Try not to get him to move," I blurted out. "I am-- but, he is trying to move," she told me. We both knew he was craning to get a look at his friend, to assess the situation. I told the woman she was doing a good job. Then I looked at the Jeep. There was still a young woman inside, who I would later learn was the driver. Intoxicated. Somewhere along the line, I learned never move a body. She seemed okay. I left her. 


I was the only one moving freely through the scene. Beside the woman with the young man, no one else had approached. I walked over to the other young man in the street. He wasn't moving. I could see as I strode over, his eyes were open. I bent over. No blinking, no moving glances, no changing pupils. Not good. I leaned over him, being sure not to touch anything, looking side ways across his chest. No respiration. Nothing. I knew he was dead. I knew he was dead as I walked toward him. People just don't lay like that. Like a discarded toy thrown aside. I whispered something to him, I can't even remember what. Maybe,  "It's okay... just rest." Strangely I wanted to stroke him like you would a sick child. But, I also knew he was gone. Not "in" there. Empty. 


I stood back up. I quickly made my way over to the couple with the phone. "Please let me use that," I requested. I called the hospital. Why wait for the paramedics and cops to get it together, when I could wave to my co-workers in the break room on the second floor less than a block away? I turned away from the accident. I walked up into some trees, because I didn't want anyone to hear me. A smaller crowd had collected. One woman was wailing, she knew the victims.


A: ICU East.
M: Hey, it's Melissa. I am on my way in for work. But, there has been an accident down here on State and Bayfront. A car is overturned. There are two hurt... and one is already gone.
A: What? 
M: I am right down here on the Bayfront. Look out the window. Nobody's here yet. I am going to be late. (Right here shows a bit of my shock over it. Like I would really be able to work after witnessing this!?)
A: Oh my god. But, what do you mean you're on your way in? You're not scheduled.
M: I am on my way in to work 3rd. Please check the schedule now. 
A:(pause)No. No, you're not scheduled. Go home.
M: Man, okay... I gotta go.


There it is. That tiny little part of this that makes no sense. Sounds selfish, huh? But, why was I there? There was NO reason. I accidentally wrote it wrong on the calendar almost a month ago. It's like I got in my car, witnessed one of the most terrible things I have ever seen in my life, and then went home. 


I understand death. I know it happens. It happens every day at my job. I see violent deaths and labored passings. Yet it is clinical and clean. Somehow expected. Death itself never bothered me. It has to happen. If anything, the sorrow and grief of the survivors is curious and heartbreaking. This was different. When I stood so close over that man, there was a force involved like I have never recognized. Something so massive. Something that made me feel so small.


I waited for the paramedics and the cops. I explained to the officer what I could. What I saw, which I felt was little. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the paramedic check  the ragdoll  for a pulse with his blue gloved hand. "We have one casualty," he reported into the radio strapped to his vest. Someone screamed as he walked away from the body. I finished with the police. He was going to clear a path for me to go home. I asked the couple with the cell phone if they were okay. They shrugged. 


I got back in my car. Time had started to speed up again. Back to the rest of the world. I flipped my hazards off. I drove slowly, trying to avoid the shoes in the street. I headed back West. I started to sob. I clenched the steering wheel so hard, I ended up with blood blisters along the bottom row of my knuckles.


I am goodbye
like the end of something wonderful sometimes
like the way that a wound-up toy unwinds
I am goodbye
I am goodbye...


When I got home, still sobbing, my husband was sitting out in the garage. In a blur, I tried to explain what had happened while still gasping and nauseous. And, that I didn't have to work. I made a drink. And, another. I smoked cigarettes-- I don't really smoke. It was almost like I wanted to feel tactile things. Like smoke filling in my lungs. Like alcohol changing my lucidity. I talked to my husband. I cried on and off. He eventually went to bed. I called one of my best friends in California (by now it was past 1am EST). I told her what happened. I told her I loved her. She was thankful I hadn't arrived at the scene moments earlier-- that I wasn't involved in the accident itself.  I didn't even think of that.


Finally, I went to bed. Only after writing a few notes to a couple other people, expressing my gratitude for them. I slept. I had the next day off. So, I was able to attend to my children and my home without too much thought of it. However, in a strange way, my mind kept forcing the image of the dead man back into view. I wasn't sure how to feel. I am still not sure how one is SUPPOSED to feel when something like that happens. I know it is carried deep within you. One of my favorite authors, William Marsh, suffered from hysterical blindness after his time in the war. I have lost six pounds since that accident. I have no appetite. But, that could just be heat and summer.


It all happened on a Tuesday night. Wednesday, I had off. I had to head back to work on Thursday. I mindlessly got in the car. I mindlessly pulled out onto my usual route with the same CD in the player. It wasn't until I was about 50ft from the scene that I had realized what I had done.  I started to cry. How stupid of me! I cried all the rest of the five minutes into work. I pulled it together to make it through the lobby, up the stairs, but once in my unit I started to tear up a bit. But, I kept pushing through it. Only a couple of people in a unit of over 75 people knew what had happened or bothered to extend themselves to me. I don't ask for sympathy. I definitely don't court hugs and pats on the shoulder. But, is this how much we don't want to be bothered by each other's trials? Does it stop and make us think for too long? 


More than a couple people close to me, friends and family, want to believe or want me to believe it happened for a reason. I am not sure about that. What blows my mind more than anything is perhaps it happened for NO reason. We, as humans, rationalize too much. I believe in the forces of entropy. And, the deterioration into chaos has never been so palpable.  


I do wonder how those tragic minutes played out into the loss suffered by his family and  friends. I wish them strength. I will never be able to listen to that song again, a favorite of mine, without thinking of the man I never officially met.


I am goodbye
like the end of something wonderful sometimes
like the absence that more and more crowds into my mind
I am goodbye
I am goodbye