Hit me
Going, going, gone
Now I dialed 911 a long time ago
Don't you see how late they're reactin'
That fucking kid's eyes, man. They shook something loose. The
Sadist was
eyeballing me while we sat and talked to Officer
Fingers. I could feel the
machinegun
twitter of my eyelid rev higher and higher. I was burning up all the
extra
psychotic shit wasn't letting into my memory, pumping the
toxic sights and
sounds of the night out into the dimly lit breakroom. The
holding pen for cops and
ambulance drivers is a
Limbo, the siding in the railroad of human misery we ride
every night. You can sit for a few minutes and cool your screeching brakes before
you get shot out of the
cannon again. Our nap earlier had us in the
hot seat.
Dispatch rides your ass on principle after a stunt like that. Lead though
intimidation. Very
passive aggressive. 10 minutes is 10 seconds and a lifetime in
that room, with all your nerves screaming to stop or start, not to sit and wait.
Objects at rest or in motion
hate half measures. The radio is calling for blood as
soon as we open the door. The
dynamo fires itself for
destruction.
You better wake up and smell the real flavor
Cause 911 is a fake life saver
Uzbeki. Sonya, from
Uzbekistan. I don't know why I was thinking about it on the
way there. We had been to call on Mrs. Rashidova before. She is pushing 86,
widowed for more than half of her life, a classic
babushka. I wonder about her a
lot, and my heart sinks when ever we get a call. Mrs. R is getting a touch
demented in her
isolation. She buried her last son a year ago and the gray has
spread from her royal
mane of hair to her tired old eyes. She is giving up,
despite herself. And she hurts herself now, subconsciously I think. We got her
when she broke her
hip six months ago. The day crew got her when she burned
herself with hot oil. She's done something again. Dispatch says trauma. Details
would be nice. The night blurs past. My watch says 2:45. I played the million
conversations we had in my head. How her son was a good boy but
lazy, how her
husband saved her from
Stalin but got himself killed in
Korea fighting for
Uncle
Sam. How her cat
Chernozhopyi was the smartest cat she had ever seen. It was a
joke, you see. Cherno was a Russian insult, black-assed southerner it meant, a
term they lavished on Uzbeks like her. "They are all
bastards. Govn'uk" she told
me. What a life she's lived.
You better wake up and smell the real flavor
Cause 911 is a fake life saver
I dash up the stairs and pound on the door. I call coyly and hear her old grey
Persian hiss like a
demon. She is
deaf as a post. Her old weathered door is
peeling like blistered skin. Third degree burns, bubbled to the grey
wood
underneath. The shuffle is there. The brass monster of a knob turns slowly,
glacier strength tweezing it open. She is pale and squinting and alive. I breathe
a sigh of relief before I see the dishtowel wrapped around her hand.
Arterial red. Dammit.
"I know you. You late. Sit."
I smell
onions and ammonia.
The cat is burning a hole in my skull with his eyes.
So get up, get, get get down
911 is a joke in yo town
She sits in her bathrobe, crook legged in her chair. Her bloody
rag is held with
disdain as she works the
thick black coffee from a chipped china teacup in her
good hand. Pale and pissed off. I start to unwrap it to have a look. The kitchen
knife wrests on a scrap of wood that could have once been called a
cutting board.
Blood has been cleaned off the floor. She probably tidied up before she called.
Looking back, I shouldn't have listened to her. We should have been miles away
belting down the blacktop toward salvation. Instead, she pinned me with her cool
widow's will and told me to look.
"It not bad. You stitch."
The rag was dripping. She was ashen and reedy. The last fold slid free of it's own
accord. Her heart gave a hefty pump. The wall caught the
spray.
"Oh." said Mrs. Sonya Rashidova, bleeding out
patient.
"Oh." said Sydney Baumann, idiot
paramedic.
We made a hasty dash for the ambulance. Mrs. R had nothing to say. Her eyes welled
up with tears. "
Forgive me, Ja soshiol s uma, am crazy". I wanted to say it was
ok, but I couldn't.
No lies for Sonya. I lay her down on the stretcher and spurred
the Sadist into action.
Fly you motherfucker. I went into
full automatic. SAVE
SAVE SAVE blinked in my vision.
We met the
train at the crossing.
She smiled when she heard the crossing bells chime. "Ni za khuy sobachy" she said.
"For nothing we go". Tired icy blue eyes searched my face. Then she smiled and
went
under. I worked the
paddles with tears in my eyes. The
blood clot nestled deep in
her
brain. It was hopeless. 3:05 am cross-country freight-train was 3 miles long.
Get up, get, get, get down
Late 911 wears the late crown
continued in Standin' in a pool of cop blood with a shotgun you can't stop
In which the mountains are old and I am the ghost on the battlements - Kid Eternity - Do svidanya, Rodina! -
Standin' in a pool of cop blood with a shotgun you can't stop - Street Meat -
Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar