So little I can say... yet. Next week more.
So instead, I'll talk about the ambulance.
It's been to our neighbor's house three times in the last few days. Our neighbor has been battling the bottle for a long time. I was the first to call 911 on him when I found him one day close to meeting his end a year or two ago. He has done his best since--the best he can do. He's done rehab. It works for a while. But so far, it hasn't stuck.
It's not so much a shock to see the ambulance come anymore. I wrote a while back how when the air conditioner repairman came to his house one day, Jenna looked out the window and said, "Oh no! An ambulance again!"
Every time we hear the firetruck, see the ambulance, the police, we can't help but take a look out the window. And every time, he comes walking solidly down the front steps, sometimes with a duffle bag of clothes over his shoulder, smoking his last cigarette before making the ride to the hospital for detox.
The last two times it came for him, he wouldn't go. He'd come outside and declare his sobriety. We could tell he wouldn't be going with them. He'd convinced them he'd be fine. Besides, not much can be done when someone is resolved to stay at home and drink himself into oblivion.
But today was different. Today was for real. Today he couldn't walk out.
Today they came and brought him out on a stretcher. While his teenage daughter looked on. Today he wasn't smoking a cigarette. His head lolled this way and that as they bump-bump-bumped him down the front step, up the walk, and into the back of the ambulance. The paramedics stood talking to his father and his daughter, who'd been this route a dozen times before, but had never seen him carried out. Today, he didn't look so good.
Today his family looked tired but unphased--even smiling some. Repeated trauma has a way of doing that to you.
And did I mention?
The man who they carried away on the stretcher today, the one who was trying to drink himself to death, works here.
