Tears From A Stone Part 1

Dave walked down the city street, the dazzling night noisy with traffic and sirens and the voices of his fellow pedestrians. His date with the ER nurse was over— for him, anyway, since she had to go “meet with some friends at a bar”—and so Dave walked alone among the anonymous thousands along the streets of New York. It was summer and the city was only just beginning to cool after a long, hazy day of reeling shadows made warm by too many bodies. Too many warm bodies, and, more than likely, far too many cold bodies. It was Dave’s one and only day off from work that week. He felt tired. He had only been up for three hours, his graveyard routine habituating him to the hours of late-night party owls, but not the actual habits of partying. He wanted to go home and decompress. The date had been a disaster, but at least it was over now. Now he could return his mind to the ongoing disaster that was human civilization. Dave was the type that liked to wear a belt everywhere he went, even when he didn’t really need it for his jeans. He liked to have a belt just in case he should happen upon a dismemberment. This might sound strange, but Dave was very good at making tourniquets from belts, and so what would otherwise have been a superfluous accessory was always on Dave’s person. He liked to keep lots of things on his person to assist him in his job as a paramedic, even when in his off-hours. Dave also liked to keep a defibrillator with him, and an EpiPen, both in a suitcase full of medical supplies. Currently, he did not carry his suitcase with him, however, because he knew it would have been a turn-off for an ER nurse who was wanting to divide cleanly business from pleasure. Dave liked to be prepared for emergencies. He was a paramedic six days a week officially, but he considered himself a paramedic full-time, all the time. His job was his life, and he often dreamed of his job when he found that he could sleep in the middle of the day, after workhours. It was stressful caring for so many vulnerable people at the border between life and death, and often he was haunted by those he could not save. Even in his dreams the dead clambered after him, gnawing at his heart with guilt. Dave’s coworker, Cindy, had told him multiple times not to worry about the dead; not to tally the losses and let the job get to him. “You win some, you lose some,” she always said after a “zero patient outcome”. “You can’t keep score with the reaper, man. We all lose to him in the end. You gotta’ let it go and keep moving, otherwise you’re going to get burned out.” Cindy had the right attitude, and so did the ER nurse that left Dave for a night at an anonymous bar. Dave knew that he had the wrong attitude. He was not supposed to be Christ and he could not save everyone. That was why the ER nurse left him abruptly. He had talked only about work, and she did not want to hear it. When she attempted to talk about other things—his life beyond work, for instance—he revealed to her, candidly, that he really had no life beyond work. That was the death knell in the end and shortly afterward she went to “tidy up” in the bathroom. Upon her return she informed him that she had to go. Personal emergency. He volunteered to pay for the dinner, but she paid for her half to certify the fact that they would not be seeing each other in the future except in a professional capacity. She wished him a good night and then hurried down the street toward the places where twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings congregated. Dave knew that his inability to live beyond the job had cost him another potential romantic partner. He knew he needed to somehow nix the compulsive obsession if he was ever going to be happy. And yet, even now when he looked up at those towering skyscrapers full of people—and along the teeming streets that brimmed with motorists and pedestrians, and the restaurants and shops crammed with patrons—he knew they were all one fateful crack away from the whole city falling down upon their heads with its sharp glass and heavy steel and unfeeling concrete. The whole world was a death-trap, and he could not stop the instinctive need to care about those who upon which the trap sprung. As if on cue, an ambulance shrieked down the street, its lights flashing across the sidewalk, red and blue at a pace equal to Dave’s hastening heartbeat. He fought the urge to follow it— by taxi, or futilely by foot—and instead continued toward his apartment complex. The pedestrians thinned as he left the blocks of bars and restaurants behind. His apartment complex was not terrible, but it was not great either. He made fairly good money as a paramedic, especially since he worked so many hours a week, and he could have afforded a higher rental property. But he was saving money for retirement. He told himself he wanted to live somewhere away from people—maybe out West, near the mesas and other big stones that reminded him of skyscrapers, but without the potential casualties crammed within them. He had another thirty years before he could retire comfortably; and he did not know if even while living in isolation he would be able to shake the frets of New York city and its millions of people. “Somebody! Help! He needs help!” By instinct Dave ran along the sidewalk, shouldering his way past a circle of stupefied onlookers to find three people kneeling over a large man in a business suit. Surveying the man quickly, Dave saw that he was extremely large. He dwarfed the three people gathered around him, like a rhino would a trio of pygmies. His torso was the size of a trash bin, his business suit stretched to its limits. Meanwhile his head was so big and ugly, and his chin so blocky, and his neck so fat, hat he seemed to possess no neck at all. His skin was gray, and so Dave deduced that he was likely dead. Even so, Dave had to verify the death. The three people kneeling over the man were just as useless as the bystanders grouped around them. A man was checking the large man’s breath with his fingers while the two women were trying to listen to his heartbeat through that massive chest of his. Dave immediately took charge of the situation. “I am a paramedic,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “Back away from the victim.” Three would-be medics stood up and joined the other dumbfounded flock around the downed man. Dave pointed at someone random who had their phone out, videotaping the incident. “Call 911,” he commanded. He then assessed the large man, pressing a finger against where he presumed the carotid artery was. The bulging, muscular neck made this difficult. The man’s skin was as hard as leather, too, and the muscles were stones beneath it. Dave felt no pulse. The man’s skin was bluish-gray. A quick assessment told Dave that the man was in cardiac arrest. Angry with himself for not having his medical suitcase and its defibrillator, Dave prepared to give the man CPR. Dave was a tall man, and in good physical shape, and had done CPR hundreds, if not thousands of times. Yet, this was altogether an unequaled feat. The man was simply too big. It was like giving compressions to a walrus, the victim’s chest so thick with fat and muscle. Dave had to stand and stoop over the man rather than kneel for the routine. He did the compressions as fast as he could, but it was like doing pushups with weights on his shoulders. The sternum usually broke after several compressions, but this man’s never did. The bones were like rocks beneath the flab and muscle. After two minutes of compressions the large man stirred briefly. He did not breathe, however, though he did gasp breathlessly, and so Dave moved his compressions from the sternum to the solar plexus, thinking that perhaps the man had been choking on something, and the stress of the suffocation had caused the heart attack. The victim’s ribs were overlarge, and oddly shaped, but Dave did what he could with the compressions. At length, the man coughed, and then threw up. Something like a silver dollar erupted out from amidst the man’s half-digested food. It was not so sterling, however, as a silver dollar, but was rather darker and much less lustrous. The man coughed some more and Dave struggled to roll the man over on his side into the recovery position. “Help me turn him over!” he told the bystanders. Four men stooped and grunted, turning the man over on his right side with all the ease of turning over a Volkswagen Beetle. The large man was breathing raggedly, his eyes closed, drool dripping from his thin, simian lips. He had an underbite that jutted out like a rock shelf. His nostrils were more slits than actual extrusions from his face. Dave attended the man, checking his vitals and trying to speak to him until an ambulance arrived. The man, though seemingly cognizant, said nothing, and never opened his eyes. He seemed to be in a near-catatonic state. The paramedics could not put the man on a stretcher. He was too broad and bulky and heavy. It took Dave and several volunteers from the crowd to help the medics half-lift, half-drag the man into the back of the ambulance. Even so, he did not fit well, and there was no place for the paramedic to stay with him in the back of the ambulance. Another ambulance arrived, late to the scene, and a pair of familiar faces emerged from its cab. “Dave, are you ever off the job?” Bobby asked. He, and Dennis, eyed the other paramedics and shrugged as they drove away, their ambulance disappearing swiftly down the street. “Tonight was supposed to be my night off,” Dave said. “But the city never sleeps.” “It’s bad luck, seems to me,” Dennis said, grinning within his beard. “Speaking of bad luck, how’d that date go with Miss Wiggle-butt? She give you good bedside manner or what?” Dave only shook his head. “Bad luck all around for you,” Bobby remarked, not unkindly. “Well, try to get some RNR, man, even if you can’t get some of that RN. You look like shit.” “Yeah,” Dennis said. “Get out more or something. There’s more to life than saving everybody else’s life.” “That’s what Cindy’s been telling me,” Dave confessed. “That dyke know’s what’s what,” Bobby said. “I bet she parties all the time. Those rural dykes always go wild when they come to the city. That’s what happens when you’ve been cooped up in a small town and suddenly you got freedoms you’ve never had before. You go wild, man.” Bobby nodded in agreement with himself, giving Dave a sly smile. Dennis shook his head in faux-impatience. “You just wish she’d go wild on you,” Dennis said, knowingly. “But you are not her type. Definitively not her type.” “A man can dream,” Bobby said. “I’ve swayed a few in my time to act against type.” “Yeah, right,” Dennis scoffed. “You can’t even get the strictly-dickly ones to go steady.” “But I can get them in bed,” Bobby said, never losing his smile. “This city is nothing but a string of one-night-stands for people my age. It’s normal.” Dennis, being older than Bobby by about ten years and being married, rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but it’s not good for you. You stop caring about the women you’re sleeping with. That’s why they don’t stay with you. You just don’t care. It’s bad for them, and it’s bad for you.” “Seems pretty great to me,” Bobby said. “It doesn’t help to care, man. Whether in your professional life or your personal life, don’t give a fuck, or it will fuck you up. I’m telling you, Dave, caring too much is fucking pitfall.” “You’re a goddamn cynic,” Dennis remarked, lightly. “Nah,” Bobby said. “Cynics are people who get burnt out from caring. And then, after they’ve cared too much and have been disappointed too much, they feel betrayed, and they go all bitter from it. I ain’t like that at all. I know better.” “Yeah, you got it all figured out, Senor Suavo,” Dennis jested. “I’ve got enough figured out, yeah,” Bobby said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I know when to start drinking and when to stop. That’s fucking crucial, man.” Dennis’s radio squawked to life, reporting another accident down the street. Car wreck, it seemed. “Well, time to go, Senor Suavo,” Dennis said, heading to their ambulance. “Come on.” He nodded to Dave. “Take it easy, Dave.” “And go find yourself a one-night-stand!” Bobby said, heading to the ambulance. “Otherwise you might as well be another stiff in the morgue.” The siren wailed and the tires burned out as the ambulance sped down the road toward another incident in the city. Dave watched it disappear down the block and almost wished he worked tonight. Perhaps then he would not have had to think of something to do tonight with his free time. But that was the wrong attitude, wasn’t it? To dread the free time that was necessary to retain his sanity was self-defeating. Dave sighed. His heart felt like it might also go into cardiac arrest. The drama now done, the circle of bystanders dispersed around him. He lingered a while longer, reassessing how well he had performed his duty that night. The victim had survived, but he could have easily died. Dave should have known to check for an object blocking the airways. The spittle on the mouth was a tell-tale sign, as was the man’s bluish hue. It could have also been an allergic reaction, and had it have been, Dave did not have an EpiPen. The man could have died from Dave’s unpreparedness, too. His anxiety persisted. It was deadly, this anxiety. Caring too much was deadly. Concern that you might do something wrong could hinder your capacity to dom something at all. The Hippocratic Oath was standard, but if a patient was going to die because Dave’s nerves had rendered him incompetent, then that seemed a violation of the Oath also. Do no harm, they said, and yet not doing anything was also doing harm. Or so it seemed to Dave. Suddenly remembering the oddity that had been expelled from the large businessman’s throat, Dave glanced about the sidewalk, looking for the glint of the silver dollar beneath the glow of the streetlight. He did not see it. Only the man’s half-digested food remained behind, shimmering wetly like mud and dirt clods on the concrete. Dave wondered if a bystander took it, or, perhaps, Dennis. Dennis collected coins, didn’t he? Dave could not remember. Feeling exhausted now— like a man twice his actual age—Dave walked home. Once home, he took a shower, dried off, and brushed his teeth. With little else to do, he turned on the tv, but found nothing on that he wanted to watch. He rarely watched anything anymore, even though he paid a premium for internet tv programs. The street quieted down some beyond his apartment and he gradually relaxed. He thought about the rotund man, and how gargantuan he was, and his bluish-gray skin, and neckless proportions. The man had tested Dave’s CPR skills, and though Dave saved the man, he felt his skills wanting. Guilt accompanied this realization; guilt and a thousand imagined scenarios wherein people died because of his ineptitude. Next time, he thought, he would not be so lucky. Dave did not wait to watch the sunrise as he sometimes did on his day off. With the rising sun came the rising hustle and bustle. He went to bed to hurry the coming night along. *** It was a rough night. Three OD’s and a suicide by rooftop. The third OD overdosed an hour after Dave and Cindy had resuscitated him, while they were busy talking to the cops about the suicide. The OD did not recover from his second death. Afterwards, Cindy wanted to stop at a burger place and get something to eat. She pulled into McDougall’s parking lot and parked. Dave refused to get out. “You coming?” she asked. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “You’re going to make me eat in there by myself?” Cindy said, frowning. “Like a loser? C’mon, man. That’s no way to treat a coworker.” “I’m not hungry,” he insisted. “Then I’ll buy us both a cheeseburger and you can pretend like you’re going to eat it, then let me eat it when we come back out here. Win-win for both of us.” “I don’t want to be in there right now,” Dave said. “Not with all those people and bright lights. Just…just give me a few minutes alone. Please.” “Is this about that suicide or the needle-dipper? Jesus, Dave, you can’t save everybody. Buddy, you gotta’ let this shit go or it’s going to kill you, too.” “I know, I know,” he said. “I just need some silence for a minute.” “In the middle of the city?” she said, incredulously. “Good luck.” Cindy opened her door and got out, leaving Dave to the half-dark of the ambulance cab, slashed with the slanting light from the street and the passing traffic. His mind was a tumult of rushing images. The bloody mess of the young man that had thrown himself from the rooftop. The way the young man tried to speak to Dave as Dave knelt beside him. The bubbles of blood that burst at his lips. The tears streaming down his cheeks, and the regret in his eyes. Dave’s head echoed with inchoate noises, too. Screaming sirens and the charging-thumps of the defibrillator. It was all overwhelming. He felt like he was having a panic attack. Maybe he was. He hung his head over his knees, breathing between his legs and trying to calm the rapid beating of his heart. *** There were two more deaths that night. They were the elderly, which was expected. Even so, the two were added to the pile of failures Dave was keeping track of in his head. He did not think of the four people he helped save, nor the three others without life-threatening illnesses and injuries. All that mattered to him were the deaths. When he went to bad that morning he felt like an OD patient himself. He had not drank any coffee and the weight of the workshift was a boulder on his chest. He did not bother to brush his teeth. He did not bother to eat. He arrived home at eight in the morning and just crashed on the couch. He woke up late in the day, around dinnertime. Eating a bowl of cereal, he turned on the television and tried to “zombie out” until his shift came. Unfortunately, the only thing on tv were either reality tv shows with their endless prattle, the News with its endless catastrophes, and medical dramas with their endless glorification of the job. Dave could not tolerate any of these things, so he flipped through the channels several times, searching for anything to distract him from his job. He came upon a sitcom about several nerds living together in an apartment and let the tv idle on it. Either he could not laugh because he was too depressed or the sitcom simply wasn’t funny— or both—and so he gave up and turned off the tv. The anticipation was a killer at times. Tonight was one such time. He checked his phone every two minutes, waiting for his time to leave. He felt nervous and already a little panicky. The sun had gone down, plunging New York into the clash of shadow and artificial lights. The latter glared balefully like angry fairies through Dave’s windows. It was nearly time for Dave to leave his apartment that he heard a knock at the door. Never expecting anyone to come to call— since he had no social life—Dave hesitated, thinking the stranger had knocked on his neighbor’s door across the hall. But the knocking came again, and was louder, as if to break the door down with its big-knuckled blows, and so Dave went to the door to answer it. When Dave opened the door he found, much to his dismay, the gigantic businessman whose life he had recently saved. “Yes, it is you,” the large man said in a deep guttural growl not unlike stones grinding together in a dark, echoing cave. He ducked down and stepped into Dave’s small apartment, never asking liberty to do so, and Dave could only step aside, lest he had been bowled over by the man’s unwieldy size. He stood in the middle of Dave’s kitchen and Dave had to stand by the refrigerator. “It is to you that I owe my life,” the man said. “A dubious honor, and so a dubious gift. Ask what you will and I will grant it insomuch as my powers allow.” Dave blinked in confusion. Was the man offering him money for saving his life? Dave had known enough businessmen to be aware that they saw everything as a transaction. He wondered what kind of dollar figure this man would offer for his own life. “I was just doing my job…” Dave began to say. “I am a man of proportions,” the large man said. His breath smelled earthy, and his squinty eyes were white; almost as if he was blind. But there was no doubt that the man could see. “Though I have been billed for your services, what was rendered by your actions was not listed among the charges. And so I will render unto you an equal gift. So choose what you desire.” Dave looked the large man up and down. When unconscious on the ground the man had been big and nearly immovable with his dead weight. Now, standing in front of Dave— and looming over Dave with what could only be described as “hefty height”—the man was just as immovable, but that immobility had been granted a certain menacing aspect of intelligence, and willpower, that was not to be trifled with. Not unlike a giant red cedar tree tottering above some awe-inert hikers. The man was still grayish-blue of tint around his face and the flesh that bulged out from his business suit collar. “What is it you desire?” he repeated impatiently. “I don’t understand,” Dave said. “Are you offering me a tip for saving your life?” “You did not save my life,” the giant man said. “You saved my Death. The iron coin was a poisonous addition to my meal rendered by my enemy. This enemy knew I would not chew my food, for I scarcely ever do when hungry, and so planted the bane of my people deep in my falafel wrap.” Maybe, Dave thought, this man had suffered a stroke along with his heart attack. He hoped the hospital had thought to run a brainscan on him, too, but they may not have. Regardless, Dave thought himself a grossly incompetent paramedic. After all, he should have known the man’s immense size would put strain on his heart and, subsequently, blood flow to his brain, the pressure being abnormal at best. Additionally, the stress of his size would further exacerbate cardiovascular disease. He could even be diabetic, and therefore either low on insulin or suffering low blood-sugar levels. Sometimes paranoid schizophrenia could result from all such conditions. Then again, if he was a businessman he might really have enemies aplenty who wished him dead. But why would any of them try to choke him to death with a coin? It was delusional at best. “Hurry, you fool, and make your wish,” the large man insisted in his gravelly voice. “Simply speak your heart’s desire and I will make it so.” The large man took half a step forward, leaving Dave with little room at all. “I know what it is you desire,” the man said, “but until you speak the words I cannot act. Tell me, now. Tell me you wish to be as unfeeling as stone! Speak and become of my kin, as you so desire!” Dave searched the man’s bluish-gray face; his granite-like features. Dave saw no signs of a medical condition, or drug use. The man’s porcine eyes were not dilated, nor was he sweating or slurring his words. He was just stone-cold crazy. Slowly, Dave stepped around the man, squeezing between him and the refrigerator. He edged his way toward the kitchen counter, where his cellphone was still charging. He knew he was in danger. As tall as Dave was, the man had at least a foot on him, and three hundred pounds. The larger man could have easily smashed Dave just by falling on him. Still, he was a medical professional. “Very well,” the man said. He took a step back and turned, slow-as-a-planet, and headed toward the door. “You may ask for your gift any time you so desire it. I will hear it. And it will come to you. I was once like you, Dave Crenshaw. Unable to handle the burdens of Life, and the consequences of Life’s imperfections. Emotions interfered with my happiness for a long time. And then I helped someone, and they gave me a gift, the same gift I offer to you now.” “Who are you?” Dave asked. “Your benefactor,” the large man said. “Just as you have been my benefactor.” “I…I need time to think on it,” Dave said. “As you wish,” the man said, reaching for the door with sausage-thick fingers. He had to shift his weight left and right to fit his rotund bulk through the door. “When you are ready, your gift is yours. Just give the word.” The large man made a noise, then—a long, guttural sound from deep within his cavernous chest— and then slammed the door behind him. The apartment complex rattled to its bones at the man’s ponderous gait as he descended the stairs to the bottom floor, and then seemingly deeper, as if beneath the apartment itself; beneath the very foundation. It was only as Dave left for work that he realized that the sound the man made had been his empty, hollow laughter. *** It had been another rough shift at work. Dave came home feeling as dead as the OD they found slumped in his bean-bag in a narrow alleyway. He took a hot shower to wash off the memory of the OD. However, he could not wash off the memory of the little boy who had lost his hand to a pitbull while playing in the park. The poor kid was a fan of baseball, and now he would never be able to play again. The sun was still blocked by the skyscrapers by the time Dave climbed into bed. He sighed and tried to push the image of the kid’s stumpy wrist out of his head. Cindy had a condition that was called “aphantasia” where she had zero visual imagery in her head. She knew what things looked like, and could recognize people, but could not voluntarily conjure up images in her mind’s eye. She, therefore, could not see things in her head, even after having seen them with her eyes. It made things easier for her, especially as a paramedic. No PTSD. She was not haunted so easily by the job and its caravan of grotesque tragedies, though she said she sometimes dreamed about the job and could see the dreams vividly. Dave dreamed about the job and was swarmed by the memories while awake. They ate him up like a school of piranhas. He went to bed. Though he had trouble falling asleep, once he fell asleep he remained asleep for hours. It was a deep sleep with deeper dreams. He dreamed of an underground cavern. Within the cavern was a forest of standing stones, dolmens, and menhirs, all arrayed in a strange pattern. Large, stony creatures gathered in the dark depths of the cavern. They were moon-eyed and chanted a song of stones. Their voices were like tectonic plates sliding slowly and grinding together. There was luminescent lichen that glowed coolly upon the stones and the skin of the large, lumbering creatures, and an oculus in the subterranean dome wherein the moon loomed, glowing, shining a milky pillar of light to penetrate the deep, chthonic darkness. One among the large creatures stepped toward Dave. His bluish-gray granite face looked familiar. “Choose your wish, mortal,” the large humanoid creature said. “Say your desire and it shall be yours.” Dave was too frightened to speak. His tongue felt like a cold rock in his mouth and would not move. When he tried to turn to run he saw the little boy holding his bloody wrist. Behind him were other ghosts in the darkness. The dead and the dying had gathered and there was nowhere to go but toward the oculus and its pillar of moonlight. The stone creatures waited for him, watching him with their moon-eyes, and as he approached he felt his body harden, slow, his limbs growing heavy and louder like stones grinding together. Yet, he was at peace with the change. He did not feel duress or pain. He did not feel sadness or guilt. He glanced back at the ghosts— the turning of his head taking, it seemed, ages— and he felt nothing as he looked upon them. He felt nothing at all.