It's chilly today, but that's not unusual for a Michigan afternoon. It's sunny though which is unusual. I'm standing in the bay of my station, just looking outside and enjoying the view. I’m part of a three-man crew today, which shows how manpower is an issue in the fire service. 

Today, there are three of us when there's supposed to be four. Everyone is tired of picking up that sweet sweet OT. The department is trying to hire but not enough people are applying. Because of that, our roles and how we do things shift. Usually, there are two trucks and two guys on each truck. Today, we have to choose which truck goes depending on which call. That also means that one unit has a three-man unit instead of the usual two. I'm that third guy today. I'm not writing or driving the ambulance. I get to sit in the back and get my hands on patients. I don't have to look at the big picture because that's someone else's job. I can focus on the patient's needs and nothing else. Little did I know that my being the third rider today would be the reason I have this story. It would be the reason I became aware of my own mental health and how to deal with trauma. Mind you, this call didn’t heal me. It broke me. It drove my head to places I was scared of. I found a way out and, funny enough, it was through a small piece of wood that never made it to the woodchipper. 

As I stand there peacefully enjoying the sun's rays through the open bay door, the tones drop. I’m annoyed. I JUST got out here and the sun is so nice. I don't have time for a call right now. I just want to sit on my phone and catch a few UV light while I'm at it. Not this time. 

Sometimes, as you listen to the dispatch of what the call will be, the list of units assigned is long. That is the first indication that a call may be intense. For most calls, which are medicals, it can be handled by only two units. A fire apparatus and an ambulance. We do that so there are four crew members on the scene to manage the medical and it keeps all of our gear with us in case we catch another call quickly.

Today, the list of units is long and my stomach drops before I even know what we’re going to be going on. As the words came out of the speaker, I knew one thing quickly: My unit was mentioned first. That means it's in our first due area. We are going to get there first and I am going to be smack dab in the middle of it. Whatever it is.

“Rescue 1, Engine 2, Engine 3, Rescue 2, and Battalion 1- Man stuck in woodchipper.”

My stomach drops for the second time in ten seconds. A woodchipper. This is “the call”. This type of call is the one that gives you experience. These are the types of calls that either tell you you aren't meant for this job or let you know you can make it through.

 I let myself feel the terror of knowing I’m going to be working on a man stuck in a woodchipper in just a few minutes. As I'm getting into the back of the ambulance, I begin to go through what we may need to do in my head. Priorities. Focus on priorities. I go through a list of them that I’ll have to check off when we get there. Make sure the scene is safe, then airway first. I’m gonna check if he's moving before I even get to him. Then I'm gonna see if he's conscious…My head is powering through these steps as we begin to pull out of the bay. 

I'm ready. I've gone through my priorities. I know what to do. When we get there, I'm gonna be hands-on with this guy, and the other, more experienced people will worry about getting him free. I'm imagining myself in some awkward position talking to the patient as my coworkers dismantle the woodchipper around him to get him free. This is going to be a technical rescue call and a part of me is excited to get there and get to work.

I have a lot of time to think this through. Too much time in fact. Maybe four minutes have passed since we pulled out of the fire station. I've been sitting in the back of the dark ambulance sitting with gloves on my hands. I can't see where we are going, but I feel the shifts and turns we’re taking. We're taking too long. Too many turns. Something isn't right. We should have been there by now. There are updates on the radio about this call, but it's background noise to me right now. Since the initial dispatch, the radio has buzzed with activity. Everyone seems to be waiting for a turn to talk. I should be aware of the radio and everything that's being said. I should be alert and not miss anything. I do though.

I'm focused on why we are taking so long to get there. I finally pull up GPS on my phone and realize we took a wrong turn. We are professionals, and we know our areas, but we still make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are at the worst times too.

I hear over the radio “Engine 2, Rescue 2 on scene” and in those six words, I know my experience is going to be dramatically different than what I just steeled myself for four minutes ago. Another ambulance got there first. That means they are going to have patient care for the entirety of this call, and I will no longer be the first guy to touch the patient. Our coworkers beat us to this call, and I'm honestly not that mad about it. A touch of pressure disappears from my shoulders and I feel like I can breathe just a little easier.

Finally, I feel the ambulance lurch to a stop, and I take a half-second to look out the side window to make sure we're on scene. We are. I don't want to jump out of the back if we're just at a stop sign or something. I open the back doors and I don't even have to grab any equipment when I come out. Another ambulance is there already and we probably won't need to use any equipment off this particular rig.

As I step out, My eyes are drawn to the large orange industrial woodchipper just a few feet away. It’s not running, and the only sounds I hear are several diesel engines, distant sirens that are getting closer…and nothing else. It’s eerily quiet. 

There are people everywhere. Neighbors are standing on the lawns of almost every house, watching. Police officers managing some bystanders, and some arborists huddled a few hundred feet away. I can't hear anyone though. The loud diesel engines drown out any sound from the scene and it almost makes the entire scene quiet. Strange. It’s strange  I’m thinking about what I’m hearing right now.

I spend two seconds focusing on how quiet it is then my eyes are pulled to what I have to do. They are pulled to the patient. To the right of the orange woodchipper is a man lying on the black street. He's wearing blue jeans and a dark green jacket. He looks to be in his late fifties and has a gut like I’ll probably have when I’m fifty. He has dark brown skin and black hair. My eyes sit on his hair for one second. 

The hair. Something is wrong with his hair. It's a dark red and his head is a mixture of black  and blood. I also see a touch of white and gray. I see gray on his head. Why is there gray on his head? It’s gone in a flash as a massive bandage in my coworker's hand obscures my view. Oh my god. I know what the white and gray were. It takes a long second for me to understand what I just saw. The white was the skull. And the gray was his brain. I just saw this man's brain.

He's groaning and making noises. Now my ears have caught up to the scene and different sounds rush in. I no longer hear the engines. They might as well have all been turned off. I don't hear any sirens anymore either. His groaning drowns out anything else around me. My attention is now 100% on him and I let myself fall back on my training. I let my subconscious go through that mental list I made on the way here and it, thankfully, is helping me almost go on autopilot. Before I know it, I'm on my knees beside him and I hear myself say “Can you squeeze my hand?” I look down and I'm holding his left hand. He squeezes it quickly. 

I've learned a lot in that squeeze and I almost did it on autopilot. I now know he's alert. He can understand and follow commands. That little squeeze is a quick little systems check. I know that he can process hearing, process language, and send signals to the left hand. and his arm can respond. His brain is exposed, but it's still functioning. Incredible.

My coworker is working to control the surprisingly small amount of blood continuing to seep from under the bandage. I'm relieved I don't have to work on his brain. It sounds cold and a little mechanical, but I'm glad this other senior medic had done the right thing- go directly to the worst injury and control it. He's doing his job well and he's been here ninety seconds. It's my job to find and control the second-worst injury. 

I go to assess his right arm, and all I see is a stark contrast of red against the black road. It’s blood. Everywhere. This gory scene is in the exact spot where his right arm should be. What remains of his arm is a mixture of jacket, shirt, flesh, and bone.

All of the colors jumble together in a gory tapestry mixing blood, senue, and cloth. So many colors and different textures contrasting the rough black road. Surprisingly, I mostly see the green jacket and what remains of it. A black strap is wrapped tightly around the stub of his right arm and I’m thankful for the cops who got on scene first.

Police officers are trained in first aid and often get to scenes before we fire/medics do. They are usually on patrol, sitting in their cars when they get the call. We are in a fire station. They have very fast vehicles, and we have to lumber down the road in massively heavy fire trucks. Not exactly a fair race. The cops who got here first also knew they had to go for the worst injury first. A police officer had used what was on his person, a tourniquet, and applied it tightly to this man's arm. Good job brother.

The tourniquet has slowed the blood to a trickle, but it can't continue to flow like that. I’ll need to figure out how to stop it completely.

A voice snaps me out of my quick assessments. 

“Greely. Move.” 

I’m starting to stand when I realize how many people are around me. It seems half the shift is here. I was so focused on the patient's injuries that I didn't realize several of my coworkers were behind me waiting for me to move so they could put him on a backboard. I'm “the guy” slowing things down and I thought I was helping. Damn it. I have to be more aware of my surroundings. My coworkers had been invisibly working around me and doing everything I didn’t have to worry about. Because I got tunnel vision, I impeded patient care. For three seconds.

It won't happen again.

I quickly stand up and move out of the way. Time to shift focus. Again. We continue to follow protocol and log roll him to the side while someone holds his head to keep it in line with his back. We assess his back while he's on his side, and someone mumbles “Nothin” meaning they don't see any injuries.

We get him on the backboard and strap him down. We quickly lift him onto the awaiting stretcher and in a few seconds, I’m working on more straps to secure him. So many straps. We need to get this guy in the rig and I stop myself from skipping securing him to the stretcher. Twenty extra seconds are sacrificed to make sure he won’t fall off during the trip to the hospital. We finish quickly and begin to roll toward the ambulance, I make a split-second decision that I can confidently say changed my life. It was a decision that would ultimately lead me to that small piece of wood. I decided to “jump in” with this crew. With this dying man. I knew they would need help and I was in the perfect position to do it. I was the third rider and was able to throw myself onto another unit if they needed me.

I quickly asked the senior medic, who was already sitting at the head of the patient, “ I'm third on rescue one. Do you want me to jump in?”

I feel he is already starting to speak before the end of my sentence.

“Yes. Get in.”

As I slam the ambulance doors close behind me, all sound disappears. No sound whatsoever. It's like I just slammed the door to a tomb, killing all audio sensory being sent to my brain. It's dark like a tomb too. Too dark.

The senior medic, sitting next to the ambulance's control panel, quickly turns on every light. The lights not only throw everything back into focus, but they also bring along a rush of sounds that are eerily quiet yet so loud. I hear the shuffle of the other two medics, who are beginning to pull equipment out of compartments, and the tearing of sterile packaging. Again, I am acutely aware of the absence of a sound.

The patient. He's not groaning anymore. The silence of his not groaning in the back of that ambulance was the loudest thing I heard that day. As I stare at the man I'm now standing over, I hear, “You good?”

It’s the driver peeking his head through the hole to the front of the rig. He is sitting in the driver's seat awaiting an “all good” from us so he can start driving. I think he's the funniest guy in the department and I find it strange that I'm going to be linking him to this moment. A part of me completes that thought and sets it aside to think about later.

“All Good,” the writer says.

I expect a lurch when the funny guy throws it into drive, but I don't. It’s a smooth start to a very, very long journey. The journey to the level one trauma center that is about twenty-five minutes away. We’re going to make it in twelve.

Back to priorities. 

Is he breathing? I ask myself.

The few seconds it takes for me to watch for a breath gives me time to continue to wrap my head around what’s happening. It gives me a second to breathe and I’m thankful for it. I'm also thankful he's still breathing. I see his chest slowly rise and fall.

I can, again, focus on his arm. Or the absence thereof. It's still dripping too much. I need to control that, but theres a problem. The green jacket he’s wearing is covering most of his injured arm, but it just ends in shreds. I know some of those shreds aren’t cloth either. The tourniquet is placed in a way that there's room for another one, right under it. But I don’t know if adding a second one to his arm will help. Should I remove the first tourniquet and tear the fabric covering his injury, in order to expose his arm? I know without a doubt that I can stop the bleeding that way, but it’s against protocol. Per county protocols, we medics cannot remove a tourniquet once one has been placed. It’s a whole thing. You can look it up.

I struggle with the two decisions before me. Break protocol and allow him to profusely bleed while I secure a perfectly placed tourniquet  guaranteeing a stop to the torrent? Or do I place an additional tourniquet  under that one in hopes another, tighter one will finally stop the drip?

I choose somewhere in the middle. I grab my trauma shears and begin to cut through the jacket. I need to expose the skin as much as I can if I'm going to remove this tourniquet. As I cut his clothes off, I realize it’s futile. There's too much fabric and too much chaos around his injury for me to cleanly cut away the jacket. 

Decision made. I’ll be putting a second one under the first. The fabric can’t be quickly removed so the thoughts of breaking protocol go out the window. I grab an additional tourniquet out of a compartment a few inches from my head, and before I know it, I’m sinching as hard as I can. I’m determined for this second one to be tighter than the first. I have to have it tighter than that cop. As I tighten, I look to see how bad the dripping is. It’s slowing from under the shreds of the green jacket. The floor to the patient's right glistens with blood. It's on the floor and starting to shift with the turns that the funny guy is expertly navigating. It’s on the wall and now inside a compartment. This is going to be a tough cleanup.

Back to priorities.

His head and arm are taken care of for now. The other two medics are working on airway equipment, starting IV lines, and hooking up the heart monitor. The lead medic is sitting in a chair, holding the bandage tightly against the patient's head.

He looks up at me and his face is calm. He can’t be that calm. Theres no fuckin way he’s as relaxed as his face is showing. He starts to speak, but it's very quiet. Too quiet. What did he say? I feel myself freeze and take a breath so that I can hear what he said.

“What?” I say. Me, the writer, and the probationary firefighter all pause to hear what he said. There are sirens blaring outside with horns constantly going. I’m suddenly aware that we have a police escort. There are cop cars flying past us stopping traffic ahead of us. Like a first responder moses, splitting the sea of cars before us.

This intense scene is unfolding, and this idiot senior medic is mumbling under his breath.

“This is going to be a K.” he whispers again.

I'm holding my breath so that I can hear him and then I suddenly realize what he's doing. He's not an idiot. He's a genius. This senior medic has effectively calmed three professionals going through the call of their careers. He whispered knowing we would have to stop and listen. He forced us to take a breath. He whispered to calm the ambulance without telling us to calm down. Much more effective than yelling.

“This is gonna be a K” he says a little louder, now that he has the attention of the whole ambulance, I have another realization. He knows this man is not going to make it. He’s not telling us to stop, but he’s telling us so that we're ready. Wow. I'll need to talk to him about that later.

He, quietly, says “Hey- I need to make the radio report. Can you take over his head so I can do it?” Of course I will. But there's a problem. He's in the perfect spot to hold the patient's head. I'm straddling the patient and stretcher with my right hand holding onto the bar above my head. I don’t have the leverage I would need to hold pressure. Before I reach to take over, I mention this to this lead medic and he agrees. He agrees that he's the head guy right now because he's the closest. That means I'm next up to make the radio report. This may be the most intense radio report I have ever given.

I grab the radio while I squeeze the metal of the stretcher with my legs. It allows me to work with both hands and still stay upright in this shifting moving world I’m in. I find the hospital radio channel I need to send this report to, and press the call button. I have a few seconds now. The hospital has a radio in the middle of their ER with staff standing by to answer incoming radio traffic. My tones are a mundane reminder alerting this very big hospital that it’s getting another patient.

“Hospital, Hospital, this is West Bloomfield Fire Rescue one with priority one traffic. How do you copy?” Now the hospital knows this isn’t a regular call and they are much more interested in what I have to say. They also have to go find a doctor to listen to this report.

“Loud and clear. Priority one. Standby for a physician to the radio”

Now I have several seconds. My heart is racing and my throat is dry. Ten minutes ago I was about to maybe take a nap under the sun, but now I’m about to say something that will be recorded, and listened to again and again. I'm about to give a radio report to a major hospital about our man who was stuck in a woodchipper.

The radio crackles “This is a physician, go ahead with your priority traffic.”

My moment is here. I press the button to begin talking, and I allow a few seconds of silence, just to make sure my voice isn’t shaky. One more breath before I start speaking.

I speak with ridiculous pronunciation. I don’t want to have to repeat this so I speak slowly. “Hospital Hospital, we’re enroute to your facility priority one with an approximately 50 year old male who was extricated from a wood chipper.” 

Breathe. Just breathe. I lift my finger off the button and take a second. I need a second and I'm sure the hospital staff need a second to process what I just said too. My three coworkers are working efficiently, but intently listening to my report as well.

“He is currently unconscious but breathing. He was conscious on scene. We have a right arm amputation and partial head removal with visible brain matter. Current vitals are as follows- I stare at the cardiac monitor and some notes that the senior medic is holding up and quickly recite the important numbers. “Our ETA is eight minutes. Do you require anything further?”

“Did you say woodchipper?” the radio asks.

“Yes. Woodchipper.” Dammit I have to say it twice anyways.

“Copy. ETA eight minutes. See you in trauma bay one”

“Copy. Fire out”

My report is done. I throw the radio on the action area of the ambulance and let my training tell me what I need to focus on now.

Back to priorities. Airway. Is he breathing? I watch his chest for that rise and fall, but I don’t see anything. I put my gloved finger on his Carotid artery (neck) and feel for a pulse. No pulse.

“Hey guys. He just arrested.” I announce to the crew. Time to shift priorities. Again. All four of us begin to turn our efforts toward starting CPR. I’m hovering over the patient so I’m the compression guy. Again. I Interlock my left and right hands, position them on the correct spot on his chest, and begin pushing. I’m going to be exhausted after this. As I’m pushing, it almost becomes easy. 

Mentally easy that is. I can let my head explore what needs to be done next. I'm always trying to think through the next steps. I look around and see my crew is doing everything that needs to be done.

The hospital needs to know about this. I realize the compression machine will free me soon so I wait until the crew gets it on and starts it up. As the whir begins, I grab the radio again and skip sending an alert tone to the hospital. I cue the mic and immediately begin speaking

“West Bloomfield Fire Rescue one with an update on that wood chipper priority patient.”

I’ve had to say woodchipper three times over the radio now and I hate it. 

“Standby for a physician”

I don't have to wait very long this time. I envision the buzz of activity that is this ER right now. Specialists and a plethora of ER staff are amassing in trauma bay one. They are amassing for us. For our patient. Nurses, trauma surgeons, x-ray techs, anesthesiologists, and support staff will all be waiting for us when we walk through that door. Probably about fifteen people I guess.

“This is a physician, go ahead” the radio squawks

“We have a traumatic arrest and have started CPR. ETA is three minutes.”

“Copy. Traumatic arrest. ETA three minutes.”

Did I really have to tell the hospital this? I doubt myself again. They probably knew a wood chipper call with visible brain matter would end up in a traumatic arrest. They all know this was going to happen, and I said it anyway. My internal monologue screams “Goddammit stop doubting yourself”.

“Hold on!” I hear the funny guy yell. My subconscious knows what that means, and my body reacts to it before my brain does. In about one second G forces are going to hit me and I don’t know from which direction they are going to come. I grab the bar above my head just in time to feel my world lurch forward. Someone has pulled out in front of us and funny guy is laying on the horn. The four of us hold on and time freezes as we all fight the G forces, Struggling to stay upright. As we jerk to a stop, everyone is still with us. The generously timed 1.5 second warning was enough for all of us to brace and take the force of us screeching to a halt.

“Sorry!” He yells through the hole at the front of the ambulance. I'm good. My crew is good. The patient didn’t fall off the stretcher. I’m glad that we spent an extra 20 seconds securing him earlier. If we hadn’t, the patient would be in the lap of the senior medic right now. Everything is good.

“We’re good back here!” I yell.

“One minute!” He calls back.

Time to shift priorities again. We have to start packaging the patient to get him out of our ambulance.

Priority patients are chaotic and that chaos is displayed when you look at how many cords and things are connected to them.  It'll take awhile to disconnect everything and get him ready to be delivered into an ERs hands.

As we work on getting him ready to move, shade falls over the back windows of the ambulance and I know we're here. We’re under the ER overhang for ambulances. We come to a smooth stop and open the back doors. The sound of diesel engines rushes in and the scene becomes silent once again. I’m in a different world now. When I closed these coffin doors, the world was sunny with a cool crisp in the air. It was nice. This world though. It’s nothing but shade and the smell of exhaust fumes. And a lot of white coats. There's an ER team standing outside our doors, ready to start working the second he's clear of our rig. The “writer” of this call starts to talk to them, but I don’t hear her. The remaining three of us are working on getting the patient out of the ambulance and it requires all of our attention. We finally got him free and turn to walk toward the ER doors. 

As the doors open, I take a few dozen steps toward trauma bay one, where all the people are waiting. I turn the corner and want to cower. There are a lot more than 15 people here. It's got to be thirty. Maybe more. They all heard my shaky voice over the radio and they are all staring at us. There are so many years of experience looking at us right now. So many years of schooling. All waiting for us lowly medics to start talking. I'm glad that, at this moment, the “writer” needs to do the talking.

She begins speaking in a loud authoritative voice. “Wow” I think. Impressive to project so well in such an intimidating room. I’ll have to complement her on her in-person report later. Another thought to be filed away and played with later.

As she's speaking, me and my other two coworkers are working on moving him onto the hospital bed. The stretcher is a mess of cords, equipment, bloody bandages, and a whirring CPR machine still faithfully doing its job. It takes us three and a few nurses awhile to clear everything and get him over. As soon as he's moved, a hush falls over the room. 

Several quiet conversations are going on right now, but the room settles for a long second. The lead ER surgeon is waiting for a nurse to expose what’s under that deeply dark bandage on the patients head. The entire room knows what's under there and there's a sense of anticipation as the layers of bandaging are pulled away. He steps closer, and he blocks my view of the patient. 

I don’t look for a way to see what the surgeon is seeing right now. I saw a flash of it when I arrived on scene, and I don't need to see anymore. This, I can choose to not see again and I choose not to.

I can feel the wheels in the surgeons head turning as he looks at the vitals on the screen.

“Turn the Lucas off” he says, pointing to the compression machine.

The last bit of noise filling the room falls away and a new noise arises. The heart monitor is showing a solid line and blaring an alarm. A nurse pushes a button to turn it off. The sudden silence is interrupted by the surgeon announcing his decision. 

“Call it” he proclaims as he starts to take his gloves off.

“Does anyone have any objections?”

This question is directed to every individual in the room. Every person in this room has a brief right to say why we should keep going. Anyone can present a case to continue working for this man, and it'll be honestly considered. As medical professionals we don’t just bring years of training to the table, we bring perspective. The good surgeons understand this, and will listen to a logical case to keep going on with a patient. This guy is a good surgeon, and I know his question is genuine. 

In the fire service, this question is implanted into the way we do things. We call it “smallest voice". Any professional voice in the room can speak up, even the least trained or qualified. While we are managing emergencies, anyone can speak up and say we need to stop and reevaluate what we're doing. It gives every crew member the power to tell anyone to stop if they are walking into a dangerous situation. Yes, the guy with six weeks on can tell the chief to stop, and the chief will. That new guy will just have to have a damn good reason he told the chief what to do.

I silently agree with the surgeon. We need to stop. I look around the room and no ones wheels are turning. No one is running through ways to save this mans life. Everyone is just waiting for the surgeon to make the final decision. His five seconds of waiting is done and he starts to turn. “Ok then” he says and begins to talk to his assistant.

I stand among the sea of white coats and scrubs, and let my priorities shift toward cleaning up. Oh god. Cleanup. That’s gonna suck.

Time to switch priorities. Again. This call is long from over. As I glaze over the sea of medical personnel, my eyes catch a familiar blue and white uniform. A familiar face in the crowd of unknowns. He’s standing in the doorway to the ED. It’s my fire departments chief. 

  I am so confused. Why is the chief here? Did we do something wrong? Are we in trouble? Again, my brain takes several seconds to catch up to why he’s here. He had been listening to all the radio traffic and knew how intense this call was. He was here for us. He wasn't here to see how the patient was. He already knew he was dead. He heard my “We have a traumatic arrest” radio traffic and he knew the patient wasn't going to make it before he got here.

I feel this is a good time in the story to take a step out and consider my mental health in all of this. I had just experienced an extremely traumatic call, but I didn’t see it. My mind was so entrenched in what I had to do next that I didn’t realize what this call meant.

The chief standing in that doorway released the gravity of the situation. It was at that moment I felt the weight of what I had just seen. It's strange how our minds release trauma in certain ways. My brain was filtering information and not letting me see things. It was forcing my senses to “shut down” at certain times. It was forcing me to let myself take in it in small little takes. The view of my chief released all of that trauma in one dump into my subconscious.

  As the severity of it all came crashing in, all my inner monologue could come up with in that moment was “oh my god. That was serious.”

But again. I had a job to do and I had priorities. Clean up. I, somehow, put on a “normal” face and interacted with the chief for a few minutes. I know he was concerned about the crews involved, but all I could do in that moment was dissociate, and crack dark jokes. Very dark jokes. 

“Dude, the blood is in the track for the sliding door! It’s like a pool sloshing back and forth when you were driving.” I say to the funny guy who is helping me clean up. I can’t believe I just said that. What’s wrong with me? He chuckles and agrees. 

“We're gonna have to use bleach back at the station” as he tries to dig some cleaning clothes into the crack. It’s too narrow and can't reach all of the blood.

“Glad I’m not on this rig today then.” I chuckle. He has to deep clean when he gets back to the station. Because I had jumped in with this crew, they would have to drop me off at my station before they could return to service.

Again. Let's step out and consider my mental health. There is something that I didn't realize until I started to write this story. I don't remember the ride back to my station, and I don't remember what I did when I got there. I have tried and tried to remember details, but they are gone. Like a black portion in my memory. A portion cut out of my stream of consciousness. 

I mean, I’m thankful that my brain was trying to protect me and make me dissociate, but the ride back to the station? Really? It missed the show by like 20 minutes. Like an airbag that goes off 30 seconds after you've been in an accident. Cool that it's there, but kind of useless in this instance. Thanks but no thanks. Next time, maybe make me forget the brain matter alright? Sheesh. The next thing I remember is standing next to the closed bay door, looking out at the view again. Enjoying the sun.

“Engine 1, respond to this address for a cleanup. Details are in the dispatch notes.” referencing the messages dispatch can send to our ipads, avoiding personal details going over the airwaves. I didn’t recognize the address and was confused.

I check my phone to see what dispatch was talking about. I stare at the map around the address, and it looks familiar. There's a distinct curve that I've seen earlier today. Oh god. The woodchipper.

PD requesting fire to the scene for a washdown, the note says. This call is long from over. Because I had switched rigs, I was now on the crew that had to clean up. I don't want to clean up. I don't want to go back there and see the scene. But it's my job. I grab my gear off the ambulance and start to carry it to the Fire Engine. My other two crewmates do the same. We don't have to “light it up” this time. Meaning we won't be going lights and sirens. No rush. We can take our time.

Once on scene, I step out of the engine, ready to hook up hoses so we can start to wash down the street, the wider scene becomes more real to me. Like a cone of sight has been expanded and I can see everything around me. I take in the entire scene. The houses across the street. The amount of Police. I see the house that the woodchipper is in front of. I notice the driveway and all the branches that are laying on the ground. It's the tree arborists' work. Frozen in time. Every branch in the same spot that each man dropped it. They had dropped all these branches because of the screams. The screams that I'm certain lives on in each one of their memories until they die.

Time to look down and get focused on my work. We need to get access to water. Luckily, there's a fire hydrant close by and we hook up our hose directly to the fire hydrant, skipping the engine entirely. Although we are ready, we have to wait for the police. They had been working on taking pictures and cleaning up. There were several officers around the woodchipper grabbing the patient's remains. A third of the patient's arm and a portion of his head had been chewed up and thrown into the back of the truck holding the wood chips. The result was a strangely red sheen on everything. I thought there would be gore everywhere, but it was more like a red spray paint can had exploded. There were obvious chucks of blue, his jacket, and not much else. His flesh blended in with the wood so well it didn't look like anything was there. It also helped that, by the time I had seen this, an officer had been working on picking pieces of flesh out, and the biohazard bag in his hand was already weighed down with his findings.

“Hey Greely, over here.” My Sergeant calls.

He had been talking to the police officer currently in charge of the scene and they came up with a different job for me. “Go clean up all those branches so the arborists don’t have to.” he almost whispers. Careful to not let the arborist crew who is still standing near hear him.

“Absolutely Sarg” I say, happy to know he’s considering the men who just saw their coworker die.

A truck has arrived with a large cargo area, so we start piling branches in. Trip after trip, I pass the woodchipper. Hands full of branches one way, and empty arms on the way back. Each way, the orange chipper pulls my gaze in. I watch those blood covered blades on every pass. Like they are going to start up at any moment. Trip after trip I have smaller and smaller branches as the yard begins to look normal.

I begin to slow my pace. Avoiding finishing cleaning the yard because the next thing I have to do is clean the chipper out. I begin to let myself wander around the yard, pretending to stay busy for just a little longer. My eyes catch a small chunk of wood. A piece of a branch that was maybe two inches wide. It's cut on both sides at slight angles. 

As I pick it up to include in the trailer, I stop. Staring at it. Feeling the roughness of the edges and the smoothness of the freshly cut edges. The smell hits my nose and I breathe it in. Something tells me to put it in my pocket. It tells me to take what I have just seen and bottle it up. It whispers in my ear “Take this experience and put it in this piece of wood. Put it in your pocket and set it there so you can continue.”

I listened to this mysterious voice and thrust the piece of wood into my pocket. Out of sight and out of mind. Except for the weight I feel in my right pocket. The piece of wood presses against my thigh everytime I bend, and I’m acutely aware of it for the rest of the day. To this day, I can point to the spot on my right leg where it rested.