Deep inside every EMS professional is a storage bank. A file of faces, sounds, scene’s, and stories. A nightmare bank, you might call it. Imagery is my life. Before I wanted to be a medic, or a doctor, or a tank driver I wanted to be a photographer(I opted out because I wanted to make money! What was I thinking!!). I remember things by color, shape, texture and style.

I remember people by faces. Soft, pale, wrinkled, weathered, gray, bloated. Faces are my connection to the past.

Week two of my internship. I’m very unsure of who I am. Of what I’m doing. I feel like every call I am doing something wrong. Everyone keeps dying. I know, I know. People die. Everyone dies. But up until this point I had never had someone die in my hands. I’m not sure I’m capable of doing this. I’ve just run back to back arrests and we’re en route to… my first ped’s code.

I am trying to stay calm. I’m looking down at little hands. At tiny feet. I’m looking down but trying not to look. I’m trying to not look his face. 18 months old. EIGHTEEN FUCKING MONTHS OLD. I look up.

I can’t figure out what is worse. Feeling such a tiny person squeeze in my hands, hearing the sound of BVM ventilations into tiny lungs, or looking up and seeing the man responsible for it all. We knew from the minute we walked in that this didn’t just happen. This baby boy didn’t just die. Healthy baby boy’s don’t just die. He was shaken. Violently. The back of his head had been pulverized like crab legs in a Pacific Northwest diner.

I walked to the truck. My gear half gone, my heart missing, my soul crying. I sat there. Just waiting. My preceptor says to me… “sometimes it isn’t about them. Sometimes it is about us.” But this isn’t about me. This is about a little boy who will never see another birthday. Who didn’t get to see the fireworks, or the Christmas trees, or the fucking Easter Bunny. This is about a man so sick that he took the life of his own son.

The nightmares come. The nightmares go. I remember very little about my patients. But a few of them have found a way deep into my soul. They keep me going. They make me work harder, think harder, try harder. The nightmare bank eats at you as time goes on. The only thing you can do is fight to push the nightmares out, and good days in.

Now I sit here. I look at my boy. How sweet, how pure, how innocent. I have a hard time not putting the face of a little boy I met a little over a year ago. I didn’t know that boy’s name–and that saddens me. All he is to me is a face. I’ve found my peace, but he is still there. Do they ever go away?