I yearn for his smell.

His voice.

His touch.

Lights and sirens,

this is my paramedic cry.

My wishbone throbs. 

“I’m having chest pains”,

I reach for Falco’s eyes with mine.

“My chest hurts, it feels tight”.

It hurts. 

“You’re okay”

I lean forward.

he leans forward,

I look into his war torn eyes revealing the depth and origin of my pain.  

His face softens as he sees in me the demons he too battles.  

“it hurts” 

“you’re okay” 

His fingers conform to my leg.

His thumb grazes the denim of my pants,

comfort me. 

 I clench my left breast trying to keep my frantic heart from beating out of my chest. 

 Anxious tingling in my limbs edge toward my core. 

The budding heat and vitality of angst raises up to my throat creating an overwhelming bulge greater than the sum of all my parts. 

The room is glossy as salty wet pressure builds up behind my eyes.  

I rock back and forth to the hum of “you’re ok”.   

“You’re ok”.

“You’re ok”.

Pinching the soft of my skin this wild heart becomes a distant sensation. 

With every breath,

every breath,

I feel the ripping and tearing at my insides.

A hole miles deep forms beneath my ribs. 

Incapacitating devastation. 

Fire. 

With a gush no greater than the force of a thousand waterfalls,

my throbbing eyes set free bottomless tears.  

I collapse into his lap and weep.  

I wail.  

I scream.  

Agony making a gunshot wound to the upper right quadrant sweet.  

Agony.

Every bone in my body, 

every organ, 

every tissue, 

every cell rocked by the immensity of this pain.  

I heard the door of the locker room swoosh open.

I let out a deep howl,

harnessing the realization,

that is not my partner walking through that door. 

This is the paramedic cry.

I feel his hand lift off my back,

he shoos them away.  

Shoo.

Let the paramedic cry. 

He sings to me, 

“you’re ok, you’re ok”.

“I can’t” 

“You can”

You will. 

Swallow. 

I  taste the salt of uncontrollable sorrow.  

Swallow the P T S,

Damn it,

why you?

My eyes swell shut with the cement of despair.

The deep gnawing that grew from chest pain and restless legs passes.  

An empty tear soaked shell rests on the lap of a grieving medic. 

He sits with the patience of a saint,

 mercifully,

mercifully sweeping the hair back from my face,

as I,

I digest the enormity of our loss. 

My partner is gone. 

Light’s and sirens,

time of death,

crumple up in a heap of misery,

Andy is gone.