Darkness will Hide Me Soon

I wondered where the family lived, that family whose child, the coroner said, had died of accidental electrocution; laying no blame, he ruled it was a domestic miss-adventure. The child that the same official didn't know I helped kill.

I think of the darkness that the death of the child brought, not just the darkness of the little grave, nor even that dark depth of the despair and torture of the old man, but dangerously wonder if there is relief in the same darkness for me.

Even with its dangers from long ago, I still daydream. More positive now, it is often about the way the little jewels of our family are becoming individuals, the differences and similarities are fascinating. More time to watch and observe these changes than when my own children were at the same stage. More time to plan for their future.

Time also to remember, more often, more keenly that other man, then this age I am now; had he those same daydreams? Thrown into his face in just a few seconds, crushed, driven deep into his broken heart, so deeply that he drove those violent words into my own wildly beating chest.

Daggers of shame come in the night, shafts that make me study like hell to be the best paramedic in the world; shafts which make me know that even if the gates of hell open up I will not budge from my duty. For I have stood in that gateway already.

That home must be nearby I thought; could I find out the family name from the surgery? Could I ask see the grandfather, tell him I tried, I cared; that I had devoted much of my life to both make amends and to secretly punish myself.

Beg him to take back the words that he, in the darkness outside the casualty ward, yelled, "Bastard, useless bastard, you've let him die". Condemning me to life imprisonment inside my own head.

Tell him that I had never, ever forgotten. Repeat the words of the doctor, those words of release, "He's gone". But, even I don't and cannot accept them as my excuse and salvation from guilt. What chance he?

Could he, perhaps accept that, the death of his little one was meant to be the thing that made me. Made me the man I have become, guilty and sinful that I feel; yet a man who has worked long and hard to help others.

Would he understand that the way I live my life was the purpose of his grand child's birth. Causing me to believe in a duty to help others. Not through any personal goodness or for credit, but in remorse and reparation.

I'm lying again, lying to the most receptive audience possible, me. But I have the most compelling of reasons, and that should make it all right. For the older I get, the more dark thoughts crowd me.