The Old Man Told Me

Once upon a time, when I was still a paramedic and we’d just finished a particularly unusual call, I remarked to the E.R. doctor that someday I was going to write a book about what it’s like in that world.

“Honey, they’ll never believe it,” she said. And I know now that she was right.

Between my time on the streets and later when I worked in the emergency department, I spent sixteen years of my life, from age nineteen to my mid-thirties, seeing and dealing with the worst that humanity has to offer. Blood, brains, guts and more…

If I knew then what I know now, I’d go back to 1994 and stop nineteen year old me from walking in that door for an interview.

Then again, maybe not.

Because I also know that with the bad came some good. That every now and then someone got a second chance, some are still alive today, because I was there and told Death, “No.”

It’s what any medical provider can take pride in, and I do. But the job takes a mental toll, as you can well imagine. Things are changing now for the better, but there was still a time, not that long ago, that you didn’t talk about that. You sucked it up and kept going. That pressure needs a relief valve though, or it becomes dangerous. For some, it can even be deadly.

And though I didn’t realize it until much later, for me that relief valve was writing. So I began doing just that, writing down the good, bad, and ugly of those years with the intent of someday publishing them.

However a few years ago it occurred to me that, while the stories were mine to tell, they didn’t belong to just me. These are the stories of someone else’s life, their loss, etc. Who am I to reveal that to the world? And so I decided that they would remain untold.

However while going through them this morning, one stood out that I think is rather timely considering all that’s going on in the world. And a little part of me thinks that, if we were able to ask him, the old man would want me to.

********

The old man couldn’t talk. A previous stroke left him that way, and he was probably having another one now. Well into his seventies, time was taking its toll on him, and he was taking one more trip to the hospital.

First order of business was a blood pressure. As I pulled his arm out of his sleeve I saw it there on his forearm.

The tattoo.

Faded blue numbers told me what he couldn’t. He was a Holocaust survivor.

It stopped me dead in my tracks. After all, I’d heard about these but I’d never seen one before. Of course the old man watched me stop and stare at it. I looked at him, and as his eyes met mine a silent affirmation passed between us. He knew that I knew what I was looking at.

Sitting here now if I close my eyes I can see him looking back at me. If I were an artist I would draw him so well his own family would recognize him all these decades later. His gaze seemed to burn into my very soul.

Time had slowly robbed him of what the Nazis tried and failed to. He had seen and endured horrors I couldn’t begin to imagine, and a stroke left him unable to tell me. Yet in his eyes I could sense something pass between us, an unspoken message. Those eyes spoke a testimony and a message, if only in one word: “Remember.”

I’ve never understood how anyone can try and deny that the Holocaust ever happened. And, for as much as I believe in the right to free speech, it’s one of the rare conversational red lines I have. I simply won’t tolerate it.

Because I know better.

The old man told me everything I need to know.