Look Around

I went to a funeral last week.  The son of one of my old hospice patient's died.  He was young.  The funeral was in a little, country church in the woods.  The preacher wore a blue plaid button-up shirt, not tucked in.  He was pretty country and when he spoke, I fell in love with him.  That's unusual for me, by the way.  I don't, as a rule even like preachers.  But there were two of them there that day and I liked them both quite a bit.  I liked the way they talked to the...sort of... "rough" crowd packed inside the tiny church that day.  Not like others I've seen, not
condescending.  Anyway.

At one point, one of the young man's friends got up and spoke about the deceased.  He kept saying, "Look around the room.  You never know who may not be here next week."  He said it more than once.

Skip to today.  It was my day off.  About 4:30 this evening the hospital called and said they had a big wreck with pediatric injuries flooding in and could I come and help out for a while.

It's been a long time since I got called in on a trauma.  Used to happen all the time.  In fact, I remember back before I was burned out, I'd be in a restaurant and hear a bunch of ambulances and just go on in to the ER when I got through eating to get in on it.  Now, not so much.

So I got dressed and went in.  Long story short, the guy who was speaking at his friend's funeral last week?  He was the driver of one of the vehicles.  He had his 3 kids with him.  They all had broken bones.  The middle one herniated his brainstem and died in the ER.  He was 14.