....in my mind I still need a place to go

     "You're doing great, a little deeper on the compressions and a little faster."  I hear my voice and I'm glad I sound calm. The scared, confused and near tears young man is kneeling next to his friend and I am trying to take it all in as fast as I can and as completely as I can.  Deadly cold swift water is lapping at my toes as I kneel down dropping gear all around me.
     "I'm going to need an airway, ambo-bag, defib, IO kit and the drug kit," is my mental mantra as I repeat it over and over so that when I climb back up the steep rocks to my truck I will remember.  I try to not look at the many pairs of eyes that are looking at me.  I know what those eyes are saying, and they are wrong.
     I appear to them as if an angel, come to pluck their friend's very life and soul back from the abyss.  It is a look I have seen before, so I try not to look back.

      The Devil's Punchbowl, or just the Punchbowl is about 8 miles east of town up in the very mountains innards.  The river has carved a round bowl out of solid granite as testament and witness to its power.  Not even rock itself can resist it.  It has been a lure for picnickers and daredevils since man first viewed it.  A siren call to leap in and feel its power for a moment, then swim out to a small rock ramp that leads back to the top for a return leap.
      How many have stood at the precipice and paused, goaded on by taunts and dares to make the leap into space is myriad.  Now, there is one less.
     I connect the defibrillator and the gallery whispers that I am going to shock their friend back to life, back to their side to laugh alongside them and recount how scary those long, long minutes were as he lay lifeless.  But, before I even see the monitors black face, the long green line laying flat on the bottom, I know that there will be no electricity coursing through the young man's body to restore his fibrillating heart back to a life giving rhythm.  But, I go through the motions anyway.
      Now it's my turn at compressing the heart muscle.  2 more paramedics have joined me along with firefighters and search and rescue personnel.  They are clanking and clomping away setting up hauling systems to eventually pull this form back to the waiting road.
      I stare up from my hands and lock eyes with another.  He sees in my eyes that what needs to happen is either going to happen in the next few minutes, or, if not, we will keep fighting to keep this young person's soul on this side of the eastern door for as long as we can.
     "30 and 2," is my new mantra as the first of 4 rounds of drug therapy are pumped into the shin bone through the IO port that has been drilled in. 
     Watching my hands, rocking back and forth, counting aloud to time the oxygen forced through his throat, I can feel his lungs fill, then fall back.
      I wonder if his mother is feeling something right now, this moment.  If she is far away, near or even in his life at this time.  Does she feel it just as she did 22 years ago when she "knew" she was carrying him?
     Does he have a sister, brother, lover?  Is that her staring at me so hard I can feel her eyes on the back of my skull when I switch sides to take over breathing for him.  I give another breath as the count hits 30.
     "We are going to do 1 more round of drug therapy, then package him and start the uphaul."  A slight tightening of breath is almost audible, but more felt as the finality of this pronouncement is made.  More atropine, more adrenaline, more of everything is poured through a syringe into the small port that no longer weeps blood.
     It's my turn again at compressions.  I am no longer surprised at the physical effort it takes to compress some one's chest 100 times a minute.  Sweat pours off of me as I am still in full uniform, gun belt, bullet proof vest and the rest.  The sweat drops land on his chest and neck as I rock to the inner pulse I feel in my mind almost chant-like.  He stares up at me as his head lolls to one side at my efforts.
     A raven squawks as it lands high in the spruce tree and looks down on us all.  The forest service ranger at my side would quickly tell us all that ravens are attracted to people as that usually means there will be scraps of food to be had.  My brother of the Mic Mac nation will tell you just as quickly that Raven is also charged with carrying souls east, through the door.
     I try to find a place to go in my mind to shut out the one thing that is final and real.  I find solace in reading the t-shirt of the person across from me.
     But, my mind being what it is wonders again if his mother is cursing me as I kneel there in the icy cold water, thankful that my knees have gone numb so I can no longer feel them.  I think that this wouldn't be such a bad thing for my thinking mind as well; numbness.
     Now is his mother feeling an icy grip on her heart?  Has her womb trembled as it loses the ultimate connection to him?
     The ropes are now strung, the carabiners connected and ready hands are waiting.  The backboard is positioned, his hands taped together to prevent them from getting tangled.
     But, now the frantic efforts have calmed a bit, smoothed out and we are ever so tender as he load him onto the litter for the steep ride.  A stop half way  for another 100 compressions.  There was the briefest hesitation by my brothers and sisters when this command went out as no one wishes to be the last one to try.  I bend over and count by 30's as I resume my rocking and compressing.  Much like a prayer in front of an icon it goes.

     The ambulance screams away with its cargo.  The crowd thins, names are collected along with phone numbers of family.  I volunteer to gather the last of the gear and do a sweep, picking up the detritus of the occasion.  I need a place to go for a bit, be alone, listen only to the water rushing by in its headlong obedience to gravity.
     My radio crackles to life and I hear that it has been "called". 
     I look up in time to see Raven take flight.