Raindogblue

Red Light

 

Per the American Automobile Foundation, in the last decade, 12.9 percent of all deaths caused by red light runners were pedestrians and cyclists in the state. It's the third highest in the nation.

 

 

Quote of the Night

 

 

Per Decibel: 

 

"Tonight, it was far more traumatizing

to see the rats eat the dead guy's puke,

then seeing the dead guy."

 

 

 

 

 

Lies of the Dead

Doug was dead,

needle stuck in his arm.

The EMTs brought

him back with narcan.

When he roused, I said,

You OD'd. You're going

 to the hospital, So you

don't die again.

He replied, "But

I don't do heroin."

 

 

 

 

Lingering

"7David4. "

7David4.

"Welfare check at Kal and Breakers. Elderly neighbor with COPD and diabetes has not been seen in three and a half weeks. Mail is piling up."

7David4. Copy. 

I know what I will find. The potential is thin.

I punch the address in the box. It's clear. There are no P.I.'s on the address. Fire and medical haven't attended to him.

On scene, the house is shut up. The shades are down. The drapes are dawn. The lights are off.

His neighbors wait with hope on their faces. They buy his groceries and cash his checks. They tell me he's seventy-five and a shut in, a hermit who keeps to himself.

They point to his full mailbox, mention a full voicemail.

They don't have key or know his kin.

I knock hard on the doors, windows, listen, then call the sergeant. 

I'm gonna call Fire to help me break in.

They use an axe to pop a small window. One crawls in and opens the front door.

Inside, the man is dead, lying down in a makeshift bed on the living room floor. He been watching SyFy, and died in his sleep. 

I look around to determine the time of death. 

The walls areyellow. The floor is black. The carpet is sticky. Mold tops his mug of black coffee.  I sift through his bills set out in piles on the couch. The last one is scheduled to be sent out on November 20th. 

As I gather the items, the M.E. needs, his medicine, his wallet, his keys, the smells creeps in, the smell of death, the rot and decay. It lingers in my nose, on my hair, and an in my clothes, long after the call, in the prowler, in the precinct, back at home, hours later.

The Message

 

Yesterday, on a gravel avenue in the South Village,

I made a death notification for another agency. 

 

The woman answered the door

before I walked up her steps.

She smiled, hoping I was asking directions,

but knew my arrival was an ill portent. 

 

 

Dead

 

He was dead: drank himself dead.

Four decades of a bottle a day

caused his organs to shut down,

one by one, until he shat out

the contents of his stomach,

on the can, on the carpet,

on his couch where he died,

alone in his own fecal matter,

and stewed there for days.

 

I helped pick him up, 

put him in the body bag

and carried him away.

 

Mike

 

Mike died in his driveway.

He had heart attack while taking out the trash.

Two students called it in.

And though he lay

under a blanket in the rain

for the ME to take him,

I am thankful he died outside.

Mike was seventy.

He lived alone.

If he had died in his home,

it could have been days

before anyone would have found him.

 

Mourning Bands

 

The last Commander

of South died Saturday.

He had brain cancer.

He was fair

and flexible and forty.

 

All officers are authorized, 

and expected, to wear

mourning bands.

 

 

Looking for Meat

Some days I can't talk.

I don't know what to say.

You don't want

to know about my day.

How I spent an hour

on the train track

south of Breaker Yard

looking for meat

off missing legs

by the raising steam

between the train wheels 

and gaps in the tracks

after a train hit a car

and killed a man

by severing his legs,

shattering his bones

until the body shrinks,

twisting the head out place,

looking up, mouth agape,

filled and spilling over in blood.

How back at the  barn,
after shift, in the locker room,
my fellow officers joke, ask,
"Why, didn't you do CPR?
You never know.
You could get the Life Saving Metal."

"Hey, anybody up for spaghetti?"

How I struggle to sleep sober.
How I all I want to do
is to go to sleep, hit the gym,
and go back to work
all over again.

Dead

 

One of the frequent flyers, one I've written about in the past, did not make it through the winter. He beat the odds living through the winters past. Between ice, alcohol, and illness, he was too fragile.

At the end of shift, in the locker room, Hull said, "Hey, did you know..."

It happened a few weeks ago.

The last time I took him into custody, he wished he had the money to make Thanksgiving Dinner. He would invite me, the cops and the medics, those who look out for him when he cannot take care of himself.

Only a few cops, EMTs, and detox will remember him, all raindogs in life.