Extrication Day

It is easy to forget your own body with a patient under your hands. In training we learned how to call the air ambulance—how to say the right words on the radio, hand off our patient to the flight crew, and keep our heads beneath the spinning helicopter blades. But people forget to protect themselves. Once I was hurt badly enough to take an air ambulance. The medic missed my vein twice, and when he pushed the fentanyl, I said what a strange experience it was to be on this side of the stretcher. He ducked as he slid me into the helicopter, and I remembered in that moment one of the flight medics that had trained me on extrication day. She was tall and beautiful and laughed easily. I saw her months later playing the piano in a dark hospital lobby. It was the dead of night, and I watched her fingers curl slowly and gently into the keys, precise and delicate enough to stitch, when we’re lucky, the rough seams of life back together.