place, or, more accurately, everything is where and how it was when I started the evening.
Two people sprout up next to me, one on each side, and they both take an arm. They can’t have them. The paramedic asks me politely to sit. The cop is less friendly with her invitation.
I sit and tell them that I’m fine, that I black out all the time and I keep score at home. The paramedic gives me his best professional voice: low, soothing, but insistent. I cooperate with him long enough to have my blood pressure checked and a light flashed in my eyes. I pass.
I give the cop my IDs. She writes everything down. I’m convincing enough that they let me stand again, and the paramedic says I’m okay, but gives me a list of go-to-the-hospital follow-up directions should I experience any severe symptoms of smoke inhalation. I guess it’d be a bad time to take out a cigarette. He leaves.
I ask the cop, “Is the kid okay?” I’m asking about the little boy who was in my hands. She doesn’t say anything right away, and now I’m afraid I didn’t make it into the building, and I didn’t save anybody.
“I don’t know. A neighbor found him at the bottom of the stairs, hiding behind an old coat rack, and pulled him out.” The cop nods her head at the corner behind me. An older, bald, pink-skinned man draped in one of those tinfoil emergency blankets has a microphone and a camera in his face. She says, “They sent the boy right to Mass General.” She clicks her pen twice on the notepad and tells me that, according to eyewitnesses, I went into the building and came stumbling out a short time later. My stumble carried me across the street, where I puked and then dropped to the sidewalk. She finishes with “That was admirable of you to run into the building. Tell me what happened in there.”
I’m stuck and can’t talk. I don’t remember the kid hiding behind the coat rack. I don’t remember a coat rack. Was the whole scene a dream? No, that doesn’t feel right. I was up on that second floor. Or at the very least, the narcoleptic me was up there. I helped that kid. I had to have helped him.
I try to stick to the facts, even if I’m missing some. I say, “I was on my way home, saw the fire. There was a woman screaming about a kid on the second floor. I ran inside, upstairs, found the kid in his blue PJs in his bedroom.” I pause, waiting to see if she’ll verify that the kid was actually wearing blue pajamas. She doesn’t give me anything. I add, “I got him out of his apartment, helped him down the stairs before succumbing to the smoke and everything else.”
“Everything else?”
“Yeah, everything else. Severe stress tends to goose my narcoleptic symptoms into action. Or inaction as the case may be.”
“What are those symptoms?”
I hesitate. Which means I’m lost. “Hypnagogic hallucinations. Cataplexy.” Might as well tell her lycanthropy with the looks I’m getting.
She writes something down in her notebook and doesn’t ask how to spell anything. “So you left the boy by the coat rack? Right near the front door?”
“I got down the stairs with him, and then it all kind of goes black. Look I did what I could, all right?”
“Okay, Mr. Genevich. Please remain calm.” She says it like she has proof that what I told her didn’t happen. Maybe the kid’s pajamas weren’t blue. The smoke was thick and the flames were bright, so the narcoleptic me got a color wrong. So fucking what? How else would the kid have gotten to the bottom of the stairs, if I didn’t help him? I don’t need a hero’s badge or the camera in my face. A one-on-one acknowledgment of what I did would suffice.
She asks, “Why were you at the scene, Mr. Genevich?”
Her tone has gone from dismissive to accusatory. Can’t say I’m shocked. The South Boston police don’t like or respect me. To them, I’m a sad clown relegated to children’s birthday parties compared to their big-top, big-show clowns. A pretend cop
Two people sprout up next to me, one on each side, and they both take an arm. They can’t have them. The paramedic asks me politely to sit. The cop is less friendly with her invitation.
I sit and tell them that I’m fine, that I black out all the time and I keep score at home. The paramedic gives me his best professional voice: low, soothing, but insistent. I cooperate with him long enough to have my blood pressure checked and a light flashed in my eyes. I pass.
I give the cop my IDs. She writes everything down. I’m convincing enough that they let me stand again, and the paramedic says I’m okay, but gives me a list of go-to-the-hospital follow-up directions should I experience any severe symptoms of smoke inhalation. I guess it’d be a bad time to take out a cigarette. He leaves.
I ask the cop, “Is the kid okay?” I’m asking about the little boy who was in my hands. She doesn’t say anything right away, and now I’m afraid I didn’t make it into the building, and I didn’t save anybody.
“I don’t know. A neighbor found him at the bottom of the stairs, hiding behind an old coat rack, and pulled him out.” The cop nods her head at the corner behind me. An older, bald, pink-skinned man draped in one of those tinfoil emergency blankets has a microphone and a camera in his face. She says, “They sent the boy right to Mass General.” She clicks her pen twice on the notepad and tells me that, according to eyewitnesses, I went into the building and came stumbling out a short time later. My stumble carried me across the street, where I puked and then dropped to the sidewalk. She finishes with “That was admirable of you to run into the building. Tell me what happened in there.”
I’m stuck and can’t talk. I don’t remember the kid hiding behind the coat rack. I don’t remember a coat rack. Was the whole scene a dream? No, that doesn’t feel right. I was up on that second floor. Or at the very least, the narcoleptic me was up there. I helped that kid. I had to have helped him.
I try to stick to the facts, even if I’m missing some. I say, “I was on my way home, saw the fire. There was a woman screaming about a kid on the second floor. I ran inside, upstairs, found the kid in his blue PJs in his bedroom.” I pause, waiting to see if she’ll verify that the kid was actually wearing blue pajamas. She doesn’t give me anything. I add, “I got him out of his apartment, helped him down the stairs before succumbing to the smoke and everything else.”
“Everything else?”
“Yeah, everything else. Severe stress tends to goose my narcoleptic symptoms into action. Or inaction as the case may be.”
“What are those symptoms?”
I hesitate. Which means I’m lost. “Hypnagogic hallucinations. Cataplexy.” Might as well tell her lycanthropy with the looks I’m getting.
She writes something down in her notebook and doesn’t ask how to spell anything. “So you left the boy by the coat rack? Right near the front door?”
“I got down the stairs with him, and then it all kind of goes black. Look I did what I could, all right?”
“Okay, Mr. Genevich. Please remain calm.” She says it like she has proof that what I told her didn’t happen. Maybe the kid’s pajamas weren’t blue. The smoke was thick and the flames were bright, so the narcoleptic me got a color wrong. So fucking what? How else would the kid have gotten to the bottom of the stairs, if I didn’t help him? I don’t need a hero’s badge or the camera in my face. A one-on-one acknowledgment of what I did would suffice.
She asks, “Why were you at the scene, Mr. Genevich?”
Her tone has gone from dismissive to accusatory. Can’t say I’m shocked. The South Boston police don’t like or respect me. To them, I’m a sad clown relegated to children’s birthday parties compared to their big-top, big-show clowns. A pretend cop
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