The Red Dress

The water ran hotly my skin was turning pink under the streaks of red staining it. It seemed my world was covered in reds and pinks tonight; red dress, pink water, red grotesquely streaking up and down my arms and legs, and pinking skin as I washed the mark of death from my body. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, but this time it is different, this time it was personal in a way I had never known. Lightning lit up the shower ominously and thunder rolled as if nature itself cried out at the violence that had taken place. As I scrubbed away the night from my body, my mind wandered back up the hill and to the dead body lying alone on a porch in the rain.

I was out smoking on my father’s front porch enjoying the quiet stillness of the evening when my head snapped up at the sound of shouting, the glowing tip of my cigarette the only light in the darkness. Cocking my head to the side, I tried to discern where the disembodied voices were coming from but with the open desert in front of me, all I could make out were echoes, as if the voices were all around me but nowhere all at once. Finally, two words rang out as loud and clear as a gunshot, “Fuckin faggot!” a man yelled followed by more words that were incoherent and the sound of a woman crying, begging for the men to stop.

I stood quickly from my seat on the front porch and went into my father’s house to get him to come outside and see if he could figure out where the voices were coming from. I didn’t want to be one of those people who hears someone getting hurt and does nothing because they don’t want to get involved.

“Hey Dad, come here for a minute,” I whispered as I opened the door just wide enough for him to squeeze through. I motioned for him to stay quiet and listen. He stared at me confused for only a moment and then he too heard the voices floating through the desert all around us. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”

Shaking his head my Dad listened for a moment longer then motioned for us to go inside. “It is probably just the neighbors down the road they get into drunken fights all the time but they are always harmless.” He did not seem entirely convinced.

Nodding, I headed into the backroom to retrieve my phone just in case calling the police became necessary. Something inside me told me whatever was going on out there was far from harmless. As if my fears manifested themselves, I heard my father head out the back door and up the hill as I headed out of the backroom, I heard him yell down to his wife telling her to call 911. As I picked up my pace, heading toward the open back door his next words caused me to freeze, “Tell them to send an ambulance!” My father’s stern and insistent voice floated down the hill toward us and without thought, I ran out the door toward the hill leading to the two apartments my father rented out.

I started up the hill in pursuit of my dad with the intent of making sure he was safe as well as helping whoever had been hurt. My father and I were both trained, he as a paramedic, and myself as an EMT. We didn’t have an ambulance in our back pocket but we could still render aid if needed.

As I stumbled in the dark, nearly falling several times, I quickly realized that a red sundress and flip-flops were not the best attire to be hiking in and promptly turned around heading back to the house. I ran past my stricken stepmother who was trying to explain the situation to the dispatcher on the phone. Grabbing my car keys from the hook by the door I got in my car and drove up the hill parking alongside the apartments at the top.

As I got out of my car, something caught my attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a hunched-over figure on the side of the road. I turned and saw a woman on her knees, curled in around herself, leaning against the fence of the graveyard. I stood there torn should I go to her or keep on in the pursuit of finding my dad. A man suddenly seemed to materialize out of the darkness and started walking toward her. I could see blood on his hands and instantly I knew I could be in a lot of danger. He stopped a few feet in front of her as I stood there almost dumbly. “We have to get out here.” He said urgently. The sound of his voice snapped me out of whatever trance I seemed to be in, spurring me back into action. Leaving the headlights of my car on I ran in the direction of the apartments with one mission, find my dad and make sure he is all right.

As I rounded the corner to the smaller efficiency apartment, I collected myself, shutting off my emotions and taking in the scene. If I were to lose my situational awareness, it could cost me dearly. I started up the steps to the first apartment blood trickled down the wooden steps as I climbed up; it covered the small porch as well. Too much, far too much blood for whomever it came from to be anywhere close to ok. It was everywhere. I called out for my dad and got no response. As I got to the top of the stairs and onto the porch, the amount of blood shocked me. Whomever this came from was in a lot of trouble. I reached for the door and turned the knob to find it locked. Had my dad drug in whoever was hurt and locked the door to protect them both? Banging on the door, I called out again for my father with yet again no response. The panic that was trying to shove its way out of me almost won. Injured strangers I can handle, it is what I do for a living for Christ’s sake, but if any of that blood was my father’s…

As I stepped off the porch and rounded the corner to the second apartment set slightly behind the first one I saw my dad. Relief washed through me almost making my next steps falter it was so great. Then the whole scene came into view and while yes my dad was ok the man he was kneeling over was most definitely not. As I climbed the steps to that second porch I realized the amount of blood I had seen at the first apartment was nothing compared to what I saw here. My father was holding a towel over the man’s torso applying pressure and as I kneeled onto the hard unforgiving wood next to my father, I knew that this man was dead. He may still be breathing and his eyes still open but no matter what we did, he was going to die, glancing at my father our eyes met, and in them, I saw the same conclusion I had just come to.

Without any words exchanged, my dad, lifted the towel briefly so I could see the extent of the man’s injuries. If I hadn’t known before I knew then. There was nothing we could do, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to try. It’s what we did, what we were trained for. This man would die but he would not die alone and not without us doing our damnest to save him.

I did a quick assessment from head to toe; all the wounds were centralized on his torso, two on his right side and two on his left. They were penetrating stab wounds, although one was so large it looked like the exit wound of a gunshot. The amount of violence and aggression it would take to inflict a wound like that was not something I wanted to think about. Doing a quick inventory of my anatomy lessons, I realized that both lungs were punctured, his liver, his left kidney, and possibly his spleen. I could hear the bubbling sound on every inhalation telling me what I already knew; he was drowning in his own blood. His injuries were all fatal, even if we had a trauma surgeon right next door with a fully equipped operating room this man would still die.

I looked up to see the woman who lived in the apartment standing there looking white as a ghost. She was shaking and I could tell she was well on her way to being in shock.

“I need another towel and some saran wrap if you have it,” I said looking directly at her and speaking in a calm voice. She blinked a couple of times and seemed to snap out of it.

“I-uh-I don’t have any saran wrap,” She stated still not moving.

“Plastic bags, anything close will work. I need you to go get what you can and that towel right now.” I said, my voice taking on a slightly more commanding tone to get the response I needed from her.

Looking back down at the man we were kneeling over I tried to get his attention. His eyes were glazed over and unfocused, darting back and forth in panic. “Can you look at me? Help is coming just hang in there. I need you to stay with us ok, just stay with us.” As I said this, his breathing changed. He was in agonal respirations, like a fish trying to breathe out of water. I glanced at my dad to see if he had noticed. Silently he nodded his head answering my unspoken question.

The tenant came back out and silently handed me the towel and plastic bags I had requested. I was about to open my mouth to ask for one more thing when I heard a gasp come from the bottom of the porch. My head snapped in that direction and I saw my stepmom standing there at the bottom of the steps looking ashen. The sight before her had to be terrifying, a dying man lying in a giant pool of his own blood and her husband and stepdaughter kneeling in it, hands covered in blood. She started up the steps toward us and I quickly looked to my dad.

“She doesn’t need to see this,” I whispered sternly applying pressure to the wounds on the man’s left side with the newly acquired towel.

“Don’t baby her,” he whispered back just as sternly and with more authority than I could argue with.

She walked up the steps toward us and I knew she needed something to do, some way to contribute, to help. Dad beat me to it asking her to go find us some tape. She immediately went off on the mission we had assigned her and was back quicker than it took to blink. Seemingly materializing beside us she handed me the tape as I finished tearing the plastic bags into squares. Taking the tape she pulled off in strips for me, I fastened the plastic squares over the two wounds on his upper torso, keeping air from filling his chest cavity and collapsing his lungs, but allowing air out on exhalation by leaving one corner open like a one-way valve.

I turned my attention back to the man, trying vainly to get him to focus, hyper-aware of the tenant and my stepmom standing behind us witnessing something no one should have to. I felt for a radial pulse and feeling none I moved to his carotid, finding it weak, and thready I knew time was quickly running out.

“He has no radial pulse and his carotid is barely there,” I told my dad. He nodded not surprised, and I turned back to the man wishing more than anything that I knew his name, that I could give him some kind of personal connection before he died. Leaning over I placed my face right in front of his and locked my eyes on his drifting unfocused ones. “Hey, you’re not alone ok, help is coming we just need you to stay with us. Focus on my voice, grab onto it and fight for me.” As the words left my mouth, I watched the light dim behind his eyes. They stopped glancing around wildly and stared into nothingness. I grabbed his hand and whispered one more time that he wasn’t alone as the light faded to nothing and he took one last shuddering breath.

Once again I looked at my father, communicating silently, he immediately started chest compressions as I sat there still gripping the man’s hand. As my dad did compressions, I concentrated on putting more pressure on the man’s wounds trying to keep as much blood in his body as I could while my father forced it through his veins.

Finally, help arrived it had seemed like hours. In reality, couldn’t have been more than eight to ten minutes from the time I got in my car to now. Time seems to move in another dimension in situations like these. A pocket mask appeared before me out of some first responder's hand and I immediately sealed it over his mouth and nose, forcing air from my lungs into his.

One by one units responded, I took over chest compressions as more and more police, fire and EMS arrived. Every time I pressed down on his chest blood would arch out of the largest wound like a macabre water fountain. The plastic bandages we had applied long gone, the blood causing the tape to slip off. I struggled to keep my bare hands on his chest as I did compressions, the amount of blood spurting out every time I compressed down making my hands slide off to the side. The ambulance crew finally got on scene and I remained on compressions the whole time. The paramedic from the ambulance seemed to disappear as we all frantically worked to try to revive this man. We worked the man for more than forty minutes; trying everything we could, inside knowing it was a fruitless attempt. There was more blood on the porch beneath my bare legs than there was in his body.

My body ached from the hard wood under my knees and the strain of the compressions on my upper body. The paramedic returned from wherever he had gone off to and I turned to him. “We have been working this for over forty minutes, do you want to call it or keep going?” I asked.

The medic turned to the monitor and confirmed asystole in three continuous leads. He told us to go ahead and call it. I ceased compressions and slowly got to my feet. As I looked down, I realized the man’s eyes were still open. I leaned down once more and softly pulled his eyelids closed. As I looked up and glanced around I took in how many agencies and vehicles had actually responded the amount of activity was astounding.

Turning and walking down the steps of the porch toward my stepmom I was intercepted by a sheriff deputy. She rattled off questions that I answered without really processing what I was saying. When handed me a witness statement I reached out then pulled my hand back slowly, it was absolutely covered in blood. I glanced down noticing for the first time the amount of blood I had on me. My hands were soaked in it. Red ran in streaks up to my elbows. Grabbing the hem of my dress, I felt that it was wet with blood as well but it being red it didn’t show. Allowing my gaze to continue down my body my pale legs stood out in stark contrast to the deep red streaks running up and down them, red even stained my feet.

“Can I run down the hill to my dad’s house to clean up before I fill that out? I will be back in fifteen minutes tops.” I asked the deputy hopefully. I really didn’t want to answer an endless barrage of questions covered in someone else’s blood. I was pretty sure I didn’t have any open cuts, but the longer the blood stayed on my bare skin the higher the risk of contracting a blood-borne pathogen. At work, we had all manner of body substance isolation but here all I had was a small flimsy bit of red cloth. My eyes drifted up toward the sky just as a flash of lightning tore through it. The wind picked up whipping my red dress around my blood-stained legs the sky tore open and rain fell as if the sky itself was weeping…

Thunder cracked and I jumped back, a chill ran up my spine and I realized the shower had grown cold, hot water long used up in my musings. Turning off the tap I checked my body for any signs of remaining bloodstains, finding none I reached for a towel. Looking down at the last remnants of water swirling down the drain I realized it would take a lot more than some soap and hot water to wash this night away. This was personal in ways I wish I could forget. Shaking away the thoughts and the emotions that begin to trickle back in I started to dry myself off. My muscles screamed in protest, not many people realize how physically taxing five minutes of CPR can be let alone over forty minutes. Bruises had already begun to form on my knees and I knew I would be feeling this night for days to come, and not just physically.

Climbing into bed I settled my body into the most comfortable position I could find but my mind once again wandered up to the dead body lying alone on that porch in the rain waiting for the coroner to pick him up. I tried to find words if only in my mind, to process any of this and came up blank. Then as another flash of lightning lit up my room they came to me, two small words that could mean nothing or everything depending on the intent behind them. As I closed my eyes for the night I saw his staring wildly at me, scared, confused, alone and I knew what I had to say. The words poured out of my heart with more sincerity than I had ever said before. With those glazed over unfocused eyes still looking at me, I quietly whispered those words into the dark as sleep came to claim me.

“I’m sorry.”