Waking Up In Vallejo
But I went to sleep in Pleasant Hill
I keep waking up in Vallejo. Each night as I drift off to sleep in my bed, my wife is on one side of me, and Harriet is on the other. But lately, when I wake up in the morning, I’m in Vallejo. (Vallejo is where I worked as a paramedic for 7 years in the 1990’s) I don’t know why it’s happening right now. This morning I woke up wearing my Solano Ambulance uniform carrying my paramedic equipment in the middle of the night. As I walked into an apartment, a cop standing at the front door said to me, “We just need you to pronounce her.” He points inside. My boots walk across black tile and then tan carpet. About five steps across the carpet, a woman wearing black pants and a blue sweater is lying face down on the floor. Her long black hair splayed into a tangled mess. Another cop says, “Her husband beat her with a fire poker…in front of their four-year-old…who is in the other room, so if you could keep your voices down.” I kneel down and gingerly lift the back of her sweater, trying keep intact any possible dignity that could be left. I begin to put EKG patches on her to confirm what we already know.
As I lay in bed, I am not sure if my eyes are closed or they are wide open and I’m staring at something, but my vision only can see inside of my head. My brain makes a jump because the next moment it’s daytime and I’m sitting in the front seat of the ambulance talking to dispatch on the radio. My partner and I had been sent on a wild goose chase. We’ve been sent to the wrong address three times so far for the same innocuous call. We’ve taken our gloves off and on three times. We’ve picked up, carried and then put away our equipment three times. The woman in dispatch comes back on the radio, “Well, ok, now they are saying it’s at such-n-such address. Good luck with that one.” We pull up to a huge, old, dilapidated Victorian with a wide and tall staircase that leads to the wrap around porch and front door. We are the only ones on scene; no police or fire. Sure that we won’t find anything here either, we don’t put on gloves or grab our equipment. We get out of the ambulance and walk up the steps. I am tempted to run my hand along the railing and feel the peeling paint crunch in my fingers. A high fog has settled over the city, but I’m not wearing a sweatshirt. I think about putting it on when I get back into the rig. My partner knocks on the door. As we wait, we look around at the yard, just passing the obligatory time until we can leave and say no one is here, either. My partner knocks harder, and just like in the movies, the door opens from the force of his knocks. I peek my head in. I look to the left, into the large living room with a single piece of furniture, a multicolored couch. I move my head a little closer and there’s something on that couch, and that something has the faintest breath coming from it. I push the door all the way open and as we take a step inside, in unison we say, “FUCK!!” A guy is laying on this couch and his head looks like a soccer ball that has been colored in with Sharpies by a bunch of little kids - but mostly red sharpies. He has been beaten to a pulp. We have NOTHING in our hands. While we run down the steep, hollow-sounding wooden steps, I tell dispatch what we’ve found, and please send fire and the cops! We grab our equipment and gloves and run back up the steps. As we get back to him, bubbles form and pop from different parts of his face with each shallow breath.
But I am actually in Pleasant Hill, in my bed. Why is this happening? Am I going to have to do this with every call I’ve been on? I have been on thousands of calls. This call has never been one that bothered me. Even the call with the woman lying on the floor of her apartment, as dreadful as it sounds, “it” hasn’t been on the list. But maybe she, the actual woman, is on the list. I think the guy on the couch is on the list because as I write this, tears bubble up around my eyes, and that stupid lump is forming in my throat.
Maybe my brain is trying to help me move on. I have been struggling lately with “retirement”. While at a book gig a few weeks ago, a Battalion Chief nearing retirement asked me, “So, is retirement all that they say it’s cracked up to be?” I am asked this question all the time. And I have not been able to come up with a real answer so I just say stupid shit like, “It sure is nice to sleep every night,” which isn’t even true because for me, sleep can be so elusive. I have yet to talk to a retired first responder who says they sleep well if hardly at all. For some reason, when that Battalion chief asked me that question and I struggled to answer, this time, I took notice. I actually stopped and asked myself why I cannot answer this question. I think it’s because in my head and my heart, I haven’t retired yet. I still ache for something fulfills me like that job did.
Maybe all this shit is coming back because now I have allowed the “feel” switch in my heart to be activated and I have to go back and feel all the stuff I never felt. Oh God, it’s going to be a while. I wonder if, then, I will be able to completely retire from the fire service.
I can’t imagine that anyone is still reading this—except maybe other first responders who are going through the same thing. I am a broken record. Like Christy, can you just be done with this and move on? I say, “Sure. I am pretty healed from my PTSD injury, and it’s time to let go and find that new door to open.” Then, out of the blue, I start waking up in Vallejo. It’s been five days in a row now and a new call is added each time.
I promise I am not saying “Oh woe is me and please feel sorry for me.” What I am saying is that if you are a first responder or were a first responder and this shit follows you everywhere, you are not alone. Even if you were never a first responder and some kind of trauma or shit wove it’s way throughout your brain and heart and that shit keeps seeping out, you are not alone. You aren’t crazy, well maybe a little crazy, but what you are feeling and seeing and hearing is real. You are real. You are worthy even with all this shit swirling around making you feel crazy or dramatic. The very last thing we want to be is dramatic. Find something that brings you joy and makes you feel a little less crazy. I usually sleep on my left side so when my brain finally releases my vision from deep inside my head, I see my dog Harriet, sleeping away in her bed, all cute as a button. And then I remember my wife is right next to me too. And it’s right then and there that I know everything is going to be ok. Yes the having to revisit these people and calls again and again sucks, but I have so much more than tough memories. I am so much more than tough memories.
Is there any more important message to put out there than "you are not alone"?
Neither are you. xo
Beautifully written, Christy. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me that most of my traumatic calls appear in a quick flash. I can never recall too much detail; enough to just recall a victim and then my brain shuts it off. Is this normal? Or is this like a finger in the dyke, and soon the dam will blow? I never sleep, and I almost never dream. I wish I would because I feel like that’s the brain’s way of processing it all. Thanks for sharing.