Holding on and Letting Go

The sparkling flow of water drew Bill like a magnet. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles to the scent of freshly cut grass, wet earth and the slightly fishy tang of the water. His set his pack behind him and laid against it and let his mind wander.

Today was a gorgeous day. The temperature was perfect and the sun was shining without beating down on him. There were just enough big puffy while clouds sailing across bright blue oceans of sky. It was a good day.

Bill stood and hefted the pack onto his shoulders and set off again. The stream was his halfway point. Every Saturday that he was able he hiked out to the stream, sat for a while, then hiked back to the logging road where he parked his car. Today Bill watched his feet while he walked, sighed, and marched on through the woods.

At the sight of the logging road Bill sighed, almost with dread. Just seeing the road, knowing his car wasn't far away -- he could feel real life settling itself back onto his shoulders. It was disappointing. Some weekends it was enough to keep him from not even attempting to relax with a hike.

When he wasn't hiking or climbing or camping with his buddies Bill worked as a paramedic for a private ambulance company. He had decided to go to paramedic school, well, because he needed the money and coming from a family full of medical personnel it didn't seem like it would be that difficult. He also wanted to help. He had been the first one on the scene of a couple of accidents and couldn't do much other than keep the victims still and check for bleeding. His heart was big enough that he wished that he had the training (if not the ambulance) to be a real use in those circumstances.

So, he became a paramedic. He was great on calls: he knew his stuff, he was compassionate, he was friendly to both the patients and their families and he was there for a couple of elderly patients who died on their way to the emergency room. It was sad, but he felt good knowing they hadn't died alone, and knowing he could tell their families just that. Of all the patients he'd had on all the calls he'd been on it was the elderly women who got to him. He had lost his grandmother a couple of years ago, suddenly and unexpectedly.

Earlier this week he'd been on a call involving an elderly woman who clearly wasn't going to last long. She hadn't died in transport so his hopes went up slightly. She made it through treatment in the ER, and was admitted upstairs where she later slipped into a coma. Bill was checking on her whenever he and his partner were back at the hospital and had a few moments to spare.

Yesterday he went to check on her and found her family gathered around her bed in her darkened room, holding hands and crying. Her son was sitting hear her head and was saying "Mom, you've done so much for us. We love you. You've taught us so many things. You've done a great job. It's okay for you to go. We'll be all right. We love you. Goodbye, Mom."

Bill felt the tears running down his cheeks before he knew he was crying. He hadn't gotten to tell his grandmother thank you or goodbye. His heart ached and turned to stone. He had a large painful lump in his throat that caught when he tried to swallow it away.

Bill slept little that night and could only imagine himself sitting next to his stream. It was the only place where the noise and activity of life stopped long enough for him to hear his inner voice telling him what to do.

As he rounded the bend in the road that was his final destination that Saturday, he saw another hiker bent down near his car, one hand on the hood, the other fiddling with a shoe.

"Hi there", Bill said, and opened the back of his SUV and tossed in his pack. Her voice was like velvet.

"Hi. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just walking back to my car. I had to adjust my shoe." She put her foot down and turned to look at him. Their eyes met in the late afternoon sunshine. Bill noticed how clear her eyes seemed. How blue.

"No problem. Are you ok?" He said looking at her shoe.

"Actually. No." She glanced down at her foot and back up into Bill's deep brown eyes. She grinned slightly and admitted, "What I really did was hurt my ankle and I was leaning on your car and trying to look cool."

Bill laughed. "Can you put any weight on it?"

"Not really," she said, and her laughter was mixed with pain.

Bill asked, "May I?" and picked her up, walked with her to the other side of his car and buckled her in. He put her pack in the back with his and opened his pack and rooted around in it then sat next to her in the driver's seat and handed her a baggie of cold water to put on her ankle.

Bill breathed easily for the first time in hours and informed her, "Well, luckily for you not only do I have a car, but I'm also a paramedic."

She smiled her reply as they drove into the sunset.