Summer, a season for water slides, skinny dipping, snowballs, and flying kites just to name a few. All of which spells fun for kids of all ages, even the kids at heart who now wear bifocals and muse themselves in times long past. One chases her older brother through the spray of a wet willy, the other sheds tears at church in loving memory. The laughter of children echoes through the blades of grass, the crickets orchestrate a symphony, and the sun emblazons the silhouette of a ancient live oak bearded in grey shaded moss. The Southern sky invigorated by a distant storm casting bolts of lightening, a omen, the kiss of a Summer soon to be lost.
Mama comes out with ice cold pops prompting a "all for one" scream and a trouncing stampede of bare feet across the grassy carpet. The hot sea of asphalt made from the black blood of the earth separated them from cold rhapsody of frozen sweetness. Its purpose to tempt, to lead astray, and convey death by way of destruction. "Mommy!" screamed the joyous and giggling three year old making her way across the demonic roadway. Her little legs unable to keep up with her two older brothers who innocently race ahead. Their wet bathing suits dripping prints in the sizzling and falsely quiet roadway. A ways away an Oldsmobile turns for home with a mournful old woman still remembering Summer's of old. A distant thunder gives warning without being heard. The innocent one makes her way across the road defying what seems fated. She's usurped by grandma opening her door to check on the weather from across the street. The pistoned beast picks up speed headed for home seeing that the roadway is now clear but isn't.
Ah, but what was that?! A thump and scraping growl, a hollow pumpkin bounce with a gravel sounding slide. The lady at the wheel, now white knuckled grip and trembling hands, pale as the dead she said goodbye to understands with rapid abandon. Simultaneous screams of utter dread echo between the trailered homes and the meaning of the approaching darkness made apparent. A bare chested and tattooed muscular man bursts forth from the door nearly slipping on the now dropped and forgotten frozen treats, his countenance of furious vengeance raining down on the ghostly driver. "YOU KILLED MY BABY!" was barreled like a small army of charging vikings and one would swear the glass windows vibrated as if enduring a small earthquake and even the distant storm sensed an equal. The heavy man with thundering footsteps closed the distance to his little girl, a tiny body shattered and sheared, her blood a'mix with the blackness of tar and pebble. The stuff of life pumping out like so much spilled milk. A unrequited howl tones a now weakened father. The horror siphoning every bit of him away as quickly as the bloody tributaries traced their way to the ditches. Her small heart beating its way to the land of the dead.
Trembling fingers touched numbers in a glassy face, three numbers in all, 911 they say, but might as well be a twenty digit launch code of infinite complexity to one under the influence of the mighty hormone adrenaline. In a metal clad station half a town away came the familiar tones beckoning us to the life saving chariot. Getting the dreaded news across the radio we made haste while daring those who failed to yield to us to make them a crash test dummy. A small heart was waiting for salvation, and a vigil in spirit dying in lieu. Arriving when surely her spirit rode the final tunnel to undying light, and our promise of hope flickering in red and white strobes, we at her side watching father cradle and rock flesh and blood. A flash of gorgeous blond hair covered in thick rivets of blood was draped down across her back as head and scalp lay unfolded. Her left eye smashed deeply, skull depressed, and spittle's of gasping breath between glossy white baby teeth. A frame too delicate to touch but must. It seemed such a front to open the mouth and insert a steely bladed scope; peering deep inside, sliding tube to trachea. Blood and a deathly brew clouded what I aimed to see. Breath, that enduring necessity of life, once again filled her lungs. Father could look no more and the killing ghost sobbed endlessly behind her locked car doors. Brothers a grim stood disbelievingly, mother to phone trying to speak between the flood of tears, and grandma buried to palm. Deliberate action was trusted to us as we rushed her wrecked body to the unit, her heart still beating under the Summer sun. Inside our little operating room on wheels, a mini ICU, a mobile CCU, we further assessed her injuries under a flood of artificial lights. Oh dreaded be! Air bubbles under chest and flesh! The heavy car having run entirely over head AND chest! The realization already being felt with each squeeze of the ventilation bag, a terrible firmness that increased with each breath. A lung cannot expand when entrapped by air and blood. Mercy! When was the last time I decompressed the chest of a three year old? Never comes the realization, but never would do. A dear friend and coworker brought drill to bone plugging in an intraosseous line near the little girls left knee. Saline infusion filling in through the rich vessels of the tibial bone. I being stuck with task at uncapping a fiercely sharp decompressing needle and welding it above her dying body as though conducting a macob necromantic ceremony. A pensive piercing of flesh as the dagger like needle drove dreadfully deep, its appearance and sound not resting well in nearby thoughts. The gloved catheter sticking grossly out of her chest bobbing with each breath. Its task having faired well despite our doubts, breathing air into her grew easier. Time was short being measured in blood dripping steady like sand through an hourglass.
A fierce race did we wage as her small heart galloped and bleeped on our monitors, her small limp body a angel in repose. Like a relay for life we gave up our baby to a team of flight nurses and medics. The rest of her journey would be up in the clouds with a Summer undone.
To this she took flight with body and soul, gone from us. She died high in the clouds.
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