Those Weekends In New England

Chapter Eighteen

A dirge may be depressing yet when over, the silence consumes everything.

Exhausted, limping with heavy pain, and his face as pale as a murky sea fog, Denny accompanied the stretcher as it was carted outside the motel room. Moisture rolled with freedom down his cheeks and dampened his dirty, disarrayed clothing. His shirt hung half out of his pants. There were many tears in the material on his knees. Some buttons on his shirt were missing.

Was he participating in a funeral march? Nobody looked to the right or to the left; not a word was spoken. Moments before, when the labored words and breath stopped coming from Hannah's bloodied, dry lips, Denny felt his heart pound with an intensity he knew was capable of killing him.

All over again, as if happening all over again, in his mind he could see the electricity lines awaiting him. He could feel his body fly into the hungry arms of a gravel bed. And all over again, he felt his head explode.

But this time, there were crucial differences. This time, when his head finished vomiting, he was still conscious. There were no literal flames heating his extremities from a dangerous, close proximity. He hadn't a single thought for Elaine. And as had also happened the first time, he was amazingly still alive.

Knowing he'd witnessed a God-sent gift, so was Hannah. She was alive. Precariously so.

Denny recalled how, sprawled on the floor, he'd watched the anxious, grimacing face of the paramedic who had roughly shoved him out of the way. The man stood over Hannah's lifeless form, and the scene which ensued took on the feeling of a power switch being thrown, over and over, and over again....

Down went the muscular arms, so hard Denny feared they'd crush her already-broken bones. Then pressure was lifted. Down went the force again. Up and off. Down, up and off. Down, up and off. With the kiss of life on her lips from one of the other men at the ready, Hannah gasped and gurgled, then sighed, giving in to their succor. Her life came out of the nether world and back into human hands.

Thanks be to God.

Denny was bodily and mentally numb. He edged on emotional as well as physical oblivion but he did not care. Nothing mattered except knowing Hannah was alive. She had not died. He'd done his part. "Please be careful with her," he told the medics as they prepared to leave to leave the motel grounds with her.

Another paramedic, climbing into the back of the vehicle with Hannah, noted the resignation evidenced in Denny's sloping shoulders. He told him, "Hold on, Mr. Lorenzo. She'll need you soon, when the immediate danger is over. Don't let this scene get to you. Let the man there," he pointed to a paramedic to Denny's left, "see to you. We'll meet you at the hospital. You need an ambulance yourself."

Denny ignored the instructions he was being given, to instead concentrate on one of the medic's comments. "If this is ever over." The medic's expression narrowed at the wild look in the singer's eyes. Denny saw him gesture to the other man coming toward him.

He turned and heavily limped away, not caring where he went. He needed some sort of out, fresh air, air not yet breathed by the sickness of the human mind, his or anyone else's.

Georgi. He didn't understand. He couldn't accept that it was her, or comprehend how helpful, thoughtful, sweet, caring Georgi, someone who'd also become his good friend, could go so far over the edge, and no one had noticed until it was too late. She and Hannah had been soulmates.

As he moved beyond the medic who watched him while letting him have space, Denny talked to himself. "I don't wanna be needed. Leave me alone. I don't want people to care for me, or me to care for them. I've done this too many times already; everything always ends up in shit."