You'll never forget your first dead body.

It's a phrase more suited to war, or even science fiction, than what I do.

It sure as hell still applies, though.

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Here's the story:

You're checking off medication in the crash bag in the back of the ambulance when a call comes through. At first you don't even process what it is- just a horrifyingly loud beeping noise, and it's too early in the morning to think anything except "oh god make it stop please."

But the paramedics in the front are a little more with-it than you are. They accelerate the truck out of the station so fast your safety glasses go flying off into who-knows-where. You hear the call repeat over the radio: "FULL ARREST."

Damn.

And it just so happens that this guy lives on the tiniest, most impossible-to-find back road in the city. So it takes the truck a full fifteen minutes to find his house. And when you get there, it turns out he died sometime the previous night.

You've never seen a dead person before. I mean, yeah, you technically had at funerals, but there's a difference between Aunt Virgina, plastered in makeup and neatly arranged, and this guy, all laid out on his armchair with beer bottles all over the floor.

So, you had to get a cardiac monitor on him to make ABSOLUTELY sure there was no pulse.

Monica, the in charge paramedic, hands you the electrodes. "Go on, attach them at his wrists and ankles." So you grab his hand and your hair stands on end when his skin is cold and doesn't have the give to it that living skin does. And there's no "grab" reflex either. You know the one- where when your hand is touched by someone's, your fingers sort of curl around theirs automatically. There was no life in that body.

It throws you off for a day or two after. It was just so odd- your logical and emotional brains were at war with each other. Half of you saw it as an opportunity to learn. The other half was furious that you weren't more upset.

But it's alright now. Because it's part of the job. Some people you can't help. But most people you can.

---

End rant.

So.

My dead person, in the orange, is seated on a throne of animal crackers. I thought that would be fitting, because (although I'm a proper adult now, I suppose) this really did feel like the end of my childhood. Now I've seen something I never saw as a kid. New phase of life has been reached. Not that this means I'm giving up on being a kid- no way. I'm too immature to grow up just now. But I'm marking this as the official end.


And I made myself a nifty paperclip stethoscope. The blood pressure cuff didn't quite work out.

Death is a sort of purplish word for me, and it hung around that man like a cloud. Whereas I'm still alive (life is green and yellow, cliche cliche).