Russell's Struggle

I had a dream that shook me.

I woke up scared and wondering what demons I had unleashed in me, ready to rip a chunk from my soul.
The walls I had built in my mind were no protection last night as I laid inches from my beautiful wife, that small distance an endless abyss as I struggled to touch her, to feel her, use her as my anchor to drag myself back from the horror that tormented me.

Again, I was crawling into that twisted and torn car lying on its roof on the freeway. The cold driving rain was washing down over my body, insistently dripping down from my helmet into my face.

The sounds of responding fire trucks, their engines and sirens screaming around me into the black night. Flashing lights adding to the cacophony of confusion as there strobes cause an eerie shadow to the nightmare before me.

I drag myself through the tight spaces, the broken glass crunching beneath my body, all my focus on her contorted face as she screams out for help. Her tortured wails ripping into my ears causing my heart to race and the adrenaline to surge through my veins making time slow down as if I was in a slow motion movie.

Finally I see her broken and twisted body, knowing even then I will be the last face she will see on this earth. I automatically go into a practiced routine as the protocols cycle through my mind trying to keep her alive for the next few critical minutes.

My crew starts to rip into the car shredding and cutting metal, the machines they use causing the metal beneath me to heave and vibrate as it is torn away, trying to make room in the crumpled wreck.

Some days even our best efforts will not be enough.

Some day’s technology and advanced medicine can’t put them back together again.

All I can do is hold her cold hand and whisper comforting words into her ear as her life drains away and the sound of her silence deafens me. A silence that shakes me to my soul leaving me numb.

I lay my head against my arm and close my eyes to block out the sight of her blood flowing down and mixing with the water that has pooled around us. Her blood soaking into my clothing staining them.

Every time I look into my locker I see those stains and I can taste the bile bubbling up into my throat, burning and making me remember that night and many others.

I ask myself once again “Why do I subject myself to the never ending torment?”
I hide all of this behind a tough façade; make crude jokes to deflect away when these feelings threaten to surface.

There were no jokes last night as I trembled and remembered, the sheets beneath me soaked from my nightmare …I wonder how many other nightmares may still be there, lingering under the surface…. waiting for me to be weak.