Running with Jen

This post was written July 31st, but it wasn't time until today.
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I ran with a new friend on Saturday. In one sense I met her just over a year ago, when I began reading her blog Prior Fat Girl.  (Probably obvious what the draw is.)  I met her in person very briefly only a month ago to pick up one of her trademark PFG t-shirts, and thanks to a random Twitter check-in on Friday, arranged to meet her for an early Saturday run.

I've never been one to do anything athletic when it involves other people.  The idea of ever going to the gym horrifies me. I ran with my good friend Kim for the first time a couple months ago, and was surprised to find it a really supportive and motivating thing!  However I was still surprised to see myself suggesting this with a stranger - a stranger whom I kinda sorta "knew" from a year of reading her story, but a stranger nonetheless.  Not only that, but we were to run around Calhoun & Harriet, surrounded by "real" athletes.  (Someone's car even had a 140.6 sticker on it - Ironman?)  But, like me, she is training for the TC 10-mile.  She knows some longer, new (to me) routes, our paces match and we have similar stories in more ways than one.

Jen and I also share the story of traumatic loss.  We stopped for water around the halfway point, and I noticed as we caught our breath that she was wearing a pendant.  Knowing that the only piece of jewelry I ever wear running is the ring that is for me a sort of mantra and an inspiration, I asked her about it.  The details of her keepsake are only her own to share, but her pendant is tied to her mother, who was killed when struck by a car two years ago yesterday.  I learned that her mother died in the ambulance enroute to the hospital, and this struck me. 

Maybe it's because August is here.  I watched the clock turn to midnight last night with a sort of sad, knowing expectation.  Maybe it's because I've struggled so much this past year with whether or not to leave my career, and all the depth of emotion surrounding that decision.  Maybe I would have had these thoughts without my history, simply as a result of spending 10 years of my life working on an ambulance. 

Maybe this is simply my heart. 

As we continued, I thought about all the patients we fight for and how few we save.  In school, we practice IVs until we look like drug addicts.  We drill holes in raw eggs to learn a gentle hand at IO. We intubate Fred the Head until the rubber is falling off the mannequin.  We dream about algorithms and Registry stations (maybe "nightmares" would be a better term). We practice scenarios until our hands and minds are numb and can go through the motions of saving a life on auto-pilot: don't feel.  Just do.

We pass the extensive tests. We go when called, we get there without delay, and we do everything right.  Everything.  All the equipment works, the CPR is flawless, all the lines go in, and we use every drug in that damn truck.  And more often than not, people still die. It's the part they don't prepare you for, although I knew it coming in.

It became hard not to stop.  Turn.  Look her in the eye to say, "I was not there - that call, that day - but we who came for your mom did everything - everything - that we could.  We fought for her, fought past the point where we knew it would do any good. My hands and my spirit wanted to do more.  I am so sorry."

Because the ones who leave this world before our eyes, the innocent ones, get to us. They're not supposed to, but they do. We cleaned, restocked, and wanted to go home instead of back to the street, because we were reminded how truly powerless we are.  I would have been thinking of and praying for you, a family member who I didn't know and who didn't yet know what had happened.  It strikes me every time as so very wrong that I know before you do.  I would have gotten into my car at the end of my shift and waited for the tears to come.  Even though I know it's not my fault, how this fallen world works...I am so sorry.  We wanted you to have your mom back.

This feeling of paralysis, of stagnancy, of futility: maybe it comes from ten years of trying to pay it forward in honor of the many people who came to help me 12 years ago.  For the people who fought for him while he was trapped, and stayed with his body as the helicopter flew me away. Twelve years of trying to rescue him in a body isn't too broken to do so anymore. Twelve years of trying to go back and rescue myself.