Inspired by character from Mid-Term Break, by Seamus Heaney.

Date: 26-2-2020

As an on-call paramedic, I've been through a lot of shit in my life.

Held the paper-thin figure of a bruised young woman who'd cried himself to sleep and never woken up, while her seething husband grunts from the couch.

Tasted my own copper blood flowing from a bitten tongue as the elderly woman twitched and shook below me, the frail arm that struck falling limply to her sides as those baby blue irises became slivers against her shark-like pupils.

Felt the sticky slickness of vomit coating my scrubs as everyone in the ER stared at the teenage boy, fingers still twitching around the neck of the bronze bottle of contaminated booze.

I've been through shit, but the children were always the worst part. He was only 4 years old when they'd brought him into Emergency. 4 years old with the most handsome curl of brunette hair falling over his short forehead just like Kaelan's, and cerulean eyes that would never kiss the sun again; that's what the blood leaking from his peach skin told me. I was the only one sane enough to call him by his name. A wonderful name.

Christopher.

I never forget the looks the dead children give me as I stitch them up, round lifeless eyes begging me why this had to happen to them, even now that his are hidden beneath a swathe of bandages I can feel them staring from the curtained off area. He looks nothing like what he did at first glance, we did a good job patching him up all handsome for his parents. Dressing him. Pressing teddies into his lifeless arms as if that would do anything to hide the fact that the boy's chest was not moving.

The road out the front of the house still flutters with yellow police tape and the ugly wreckage of the black Toyota that served as the scythe of Death, so I park a ways back to avoid any trouble. As I approach the back, vision swimming into a blur, I realise the comforting knowledge that I'll have time to stem the tears before I reach the doorstep.