#Middlebury #Veterans
The retired sergeant, the one with the 6-foot foldout measuring stick, wasn’t there when I headed for the order window at the coffee shop. The rest of the veterans were uncharacteristically quiet, arrayed around the sidewalk in folding chairs and blankets against the cold, listening to an emergency scanner.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“There was an accident out on the highway. We suspect he was involved somehow,” one said. A pause, then: “He was a career Army combat medic, E-6. Tried to sign up with the EMTs here. Wouldn’t take him. Too old, they said. Policy.”
It was an hour before Sarge pulled up in his truck and climbed slowly out, blood on his coat. He snapped open his lawn chair and dropped into it.
The story came out in a tired voice: He was three cars behind a nasty wreck, multiple crushed vehicles, one a pickup truck that had rolled, ejecting a toddler onto the pavement.
“I grabbed my medical bag,” he said. “Injured baby, blood everywhere, but thank God, still strapped in her car seat.”
One of the other vets pushed up out of his lawn chair. “You’re a bit shock-y,” he said and handed Sarge his blanket.
The story kept coming out: Sarge had wrapped the baby’s leg that had the worst of the damage and kept pressure on it with one hand while washing the blood off her face with the other, singing to her for distraction, and managed not to kill on sight the drunk father who stumbled over and demanded to know what he was doing to his daughter. The EMTs eventually showed up, bouncing down the median.
His phone rang and he pulled it out, listened and grunted “I’ll be there.” He snapped the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. “The baby will be fine eventually.”
We saw a tiny smile, and then: “The EMTs want me. Said maybe I’m not too old after all.”
© 2020 King Features Synd., Inc.
You must be logged in to post a comment.