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Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 24
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Red Flashing Lights
On that night, I was awakened by red flashing lights that circled about my bedroom in the attic. A sound was coming from outside, like the constant whine of an engine when a vehicle is running. Still half asleep, I stumbled over to the window to see what was going on. An orange and white ambulance was parked in front of my neighbor’s driveway, with the numbers 911 written on the side panel. Oh no, someone next door had been hurt? I squint my eyes as the flashing lights blinded me, trying to get a better view. Two paramedics wheeling a stretcher along the edge of the neighbor’s driveway had lifted it onto my lawn. Whose house were they taking that stretcher to? Just then I heard voices coming from downstairs. I turned and headed for the bedroom door, feeling a little dizzy as the red flashing lights spun around the room. Yellow light faintly seeped through the cracks of my bedroom door. I opened the door and there stood my mother, at the bottom of the stairs. What was she doing up so late at night? She heard my door as it opened, and looked up at me. “What’s going on mom? Is everything ok? I asked, as I walked down the stairs anxiously. I heard people coming in the front door. “Go back up to your room Lisa, you don’t need to see this.” She said, as she turned her head toward the front door again. I didn’t want to listen to her. It was about 2 a.m. in the morning, she had turned the lights on...people were coming through the door...How could I go back upstairs with this going on? I continued down the stairs anyway. “Mom, I want to know what’s wrong. I have a right to...” Just then I was astonished at what I saw. Three or four paramedics were in my living room with a stretcher in the middle of the floor. A woman paramedic was rattling off symptoms as she held a walkie talkie up to her mouth. “Yea black tarry stools, bleeding, short of breath...” I reached the bottom of the steps and saw another paramedic in the hallway, kneeling down by my father as he sat on the floor. My father was leaning his back against the wall, and his eyes were rolling back in their sockets. Oh God, what was wrong with my father? “I can’t breath.” My father gasped. “My back is killing me too. Can you get a pillow?” He asked the paramedic. “Okay” The paramedic said, as he stood up and turned to get the pillow in my father’s bedroom. He returned to my father in the hallway and put the pillow behind his back. My dad sighed with relief. “Thank you”, he said. Suddenly, he cried out, “I can’t feel my legs!” The paramedics rushed the stretcher into the hallway, and lifted my father onto it. They wheeled him to the front door. I heard one of the paramedics say that they were taking him to the intensive care unit at the hospital. My father lifted his head up off the stretcher, trying to find my mother. “Are you going to be there Joan?” He asked. My mother immediately replied. “Yes, I’ll be there Al, don’t worry.” My father must have been really out of it, it was as though he didn’t hear her. “Well, if I don’t see you Joan, take care.” He said. At that moment, I had a gut feeling he wasn’t going to make it. “I’ll be there, Al.” She said, as she rushed to the bedroom to change out of her pajamas. I hurried upstairs to change into my clothes too. I wasn’t going to stay home. I had all intentions to drive my mother to the hospital. I was worried that she’d be too nervous to drive herself, and she’d wind up in a car accident. I finished getting dressed and rushed down the stairs. My mother was walking out the door. “Mom wait, let me drive you.” I said. “No.” she replied. “I can drive myself. Just stay home.” She said. Stay home? How could she want me to stay home at a time like this? “No mom let me drive you.” I took the keys from her hand. “Its ok mom, it’s ok. I’ll drive to the hospital. You just sit back and let me worry about the driving.” I felt the need to take care of my mother now. My father was very sick, and my mother needed me now more than ever. We got into the car and took off. I weaved around trees and branches that had been knocked down from a storm that we had the day before. As we went through a traffic light, I immediately remembered a dream that I had when I was a kid. My mother and I were in her car. It was night time and she was driving. No one else was on the road. I sat in the passenger’s seat thinking “It’s just you and me mom.” For some reason, I felt the need to be with her more than ever in that dream. As bizarre as this may sound, what I had dreamed years ago was actually a premonition of the future. The same exact feelings of closeness that I felt for my mother in that dream had come back at the very moment when we crossed through that traffic light. When we finally reached the hospital, a preacher told us that my father was not going to make it. My gut instinct was right. We sat in the waiting room for a while, either crying or just staring in disbelief. The nurses finally called us in to see my father. We were led into a room and he was lying on a table. His eyes were off to the side. He was dead. I quickly looked at my mother, afraid she was going to lose it. “Oh it’s a damn shame, it’s a damn shame.” She cried, as she shook her head. She started to fall but I caught her. I walked her out of the room. She sobbed on my shoulder. I don’t remember my mother ever getting that close to me in my life, but I know she needed me now more than ever. My dad was gone forever. The moment after he died, was the moment that I had grown up. It was the moment of a whole new beginning in my life.
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