Breathe

by Bamboozlepig

I can't breathe, I am drowning. They keep calling Angel's survival a miracle and claiming Roy & I are her saviors & heroes. But I don't believe in miracles, I don't believe in saviors, and I sure as hell ain't her hero because heroes don't break and heroes don't fail. At least not like I did tonight. [sequel to "Angel's Miracle", Brice's POV]

AUTHOR NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: "Emergency!" is the property of MarkVII/Universal and no copyright infringement is intended with the publication of this piece. Snippet of "teeth that bite and the claws that catch" from "The Jabberwocky" is copyright Lewis Carroll, 1871, no infringement intended. "Nowhere Man" reference (no song lyrics used) taken from the 1966 Beatles song, no infringement intended. The lyrics from "Hark the Herald, Angels Sing!" are in public domain. Cover photo is a still-shot taken from the "Rules of Order" episode. ALL ORIGINAL CONTENT OF THIS STORY, INCLUDING MY OWN CREATED FANON, CHARACTERS OR OTHER SPECIFIC DETAILS UNIQUE TO MY WORK IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF BAMBOOZLEPIG AND MAY NOT BE USED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. *This story may contain graphic language or depictions of potentially upsetting situations, therefore reader discretion is advised.* For plot purposes, intentional liberties may be taken with the depiction of any real life protocols and creative license taken with the portrayals of canon elements, including characters.

***PLEASE DO NOT BORROW ANY OF THE BRICE FANON I HAVE CREATED FOR BRICE'S CHARACTER. IF THE DETAILS ARE NOT VERIFIED CANON FROM THE SHOW IN REGARDS TO HIS CHARACTER, THEN IT'S NOT YOURS TO USE. PLEASE RESPECT THAT.***

UPDATE 2/22/16: Removed very brief suicide bit from this chapter in order to shift it to a later chapter/scene where it will fit better.

Some of the general background information about Brice comes from the character and actor info found on ToddF's Brice site, along with info I've culled from some newspaper articles I've found about Jim Richardson. I will cite those sources and any other source I use in this story at the end of it. I'm warning on the occasional bouts of OOC-ness both Brice and Chet will display, including some extreme instances in which rules are broken, procedures are disregarded, and tempers flare. I'm also warning on the dark nature of the story, including aspects of suicide. If the rating needs to change from a T to an M, I will duly note that change as soon as possible. Some of the formatting in this story is intentionally trippy in order to indicate the scattered nature of Brice's thought-processes at times. Feedback is always welcomed and thanks for reading!

BREATHE

CHAPTER ONE

BREATHE

"Hark! the herald angels sing"

Doe eyes, brown eyes, line it up in the sights and pull the trigger—can you tell me your name and if you're hurt anywhere else?—my name is Angel an' it's my tummy that's hurtin', it feels like it's on fire…can you tell me where my daddy is? He dinnit get ta see me in the church play so Mommy brung me by the store so he could see me in my costume an' then there was some firecrackers that went off an' everyone started runnin' and screamin' an' I'm scared an' want my daddy—say Angel, how'd you like to hear about the time I saved a little girl's parakeet from a fire? We brought him out of all that smoke and flame and the poor little thing was just lyin' on the bottom of his cage, his little feet stickin' straight up in the air, and the girl was cryin' that Mr. Cheepers wasn't movin', so I took the oxygen mask and put it over him and would you believe that in a few minutes he stood right up and started singin' like nothin' had ever happened?

IN

"Glory to the newborn King!"

Look, just line it up in the sights and pull the trigger so we can get out of here—but I don't want to—sure you do, you want to be a man, don't you? So line it up in the goddamned sights and pull the trigger on it already—what were you doing out there with her, you two tryin' to pull somethin' over on me?—we were just talking, that's all—yeah, I just bet—don't hurt her, she didn't do anything!—fingers digging with harsh grips—don't touch me!—plunged beneath crystal clear claustrophobia—I said, don't touch me!—hyena voices howling with waterlogged laughter—I told you not to fucking touch me!—oh Jesus, what have you done, what have you done?—doe eyes, brown eyes accusing, beseeching, clouding over—it was an accident, oh God, it was an accident, you saw what happened and it was an accident, wasn't it, it was an accident, please tell me it was just an accident!

BREATHE

"Peace on earth and mercy mild"

Mister Chet, I wish I could have a parakeet like the one in your story, I could teach it to fly out of its cage an' land on my shoulder 'cuz I think flyin's neat. I feel like I'm flyin' when I'm swingin' on the swingset on the playground, an' maybe if I 'magine hard enough, my wings would lemme fly like a parakeet does, 'an that would be really cool, I could swoop around the rooftops an' soar high into the sky to play with the clouds. Do you think I could fly if I 'magine hard enough?—sure you can, honey, don't you know that angels always fly?—but I'm not a real angel—of course you are, you've got the name, along with the wings and the halo, don'tcha? So doesn't that make you a real angel, at least for tonight?

OUT

"God and sinners reconcile!"

I'm sorry, so sorry, but 'sorry' is just a meaningless word uttered in muted mourning whispers by clumps of black crows who think they know the truth when all they really know is the lies—ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we all return to nothingness when we die because at heart we are nothing, even when we are alive—cold, biting metal and crimson beading upon alabaster—doe eyes, brown eyes, this will stop their staring, this will stop their accusations, this will make them go away—oh my God, what have you done?—what have I done? I have tried to make the pain stop, make it go away, this was the only way I can do it, this is the only way I can save myself—but you're beyond saving—broken to the soul, broken to the bone, drowning on the shattered bits inside because we're all damaged sinners in the end—oh Jesus, Jesus—do you think He hears your prayers right now? —it still hurts, make it stop hurting, make it go away—it will never stop hurting, it will never go away because someone lined it up in the sights and then they pulled the trigger…

BREATHE

"Joyful all ye nations rise"

We're going to have to remove her wings and halo before we move her to the cot, they're going to get in the way of treating her during transport—aw, please Mister Roy an' Mister Craig, don't cut off my wings an' halo, my daddy said they were my good luck charms an' I don't wanna have bad luck if you take them off—look, Angel, they've got to take your wings and halo off, but I'll tell you what, I'll let you borrow my St. Florian medal and you can hang onto it until you get to the hospital because it's been a good luck charm for me and I'm sure it'll be a good luck charm for you, too…

OHFUCKBREATHE

"Join the triumph of the skies"

I don't want you forgetting me—I'm not going to forget you, you're my brother, after all, and brothers don't forget brothers—hell, don'tcha know, forgetting's one of the easiest things in the world to do, you just gotta put your mind to it and get away from all the goddamned remembering and all the goddamned pain, otherwise it'll for sure kill you dead inside, just like Mom and Dad are, just like me. And trust me, being dead inside is the worst feeling ever, you trade yourself for that blackness that swallows up all your hopes and dreams and leaves you an empty shell that has nothing to live for in the end, nothing at all. Then it's about that time that you start hunting for the courage to die because living that way is sheer fucking hell, man, sheer fucking hell, so promise me you won't let that happen to you, promise me—if I promise you that, then I want you to make a promise to me as well, I want you to take care of her while I'm gone—why does it always come back to her?—because she's the only person who can save you from yourself—maybe you want her to save you from yourself as well, huh?—don't be foolish, she has never cared for me, it's always been you she's loved…

OHGODICANT

"With the angelic host proclaim"

Mister Craig, can I please hold your badge for good luck? Mister Chet gave me his St. Floor Shiner medal to hold for good luck—I'm sorry, but it's against the regulat…—oh, for God's sake, Brice, let the little girl hold your badge if she wants to, I swear I won't tell anyone that the great Walking Rulebook allowed himself to disobey a regulation—very well, just be careful and don't lose it, Angel—thank you, Mister Craig, I promise I won't lose it and I'll give back to you—ooh, Mister Craig I don't feel very well all of a sudden, my tummy hurts worse than ever an' my heart feels all weird like it's got angel wings of its own an' it's tryin' to fly out of my chest—Brice, she's crashing on us, start CPR! Brice!—doe eyes, brown eyes accusing, beseeching, clouding over, blood spreading everywhere—oh Jesus, what have you done, it was an accident—Brice? What the hell is wrong with you?—doe eyes, brown eyes, who pulled the fucking trigger—broken, broken, broken, drowning on the shattered bits inside—but it was an accident!—Brice? Brice! Damn it, if you're not going to do anything to save her, get the hell outta and let me work on her!—oh Jesus, brown eyes accusing, brown eyes pleading, crimson everywhere, an ocean of it to dive into and drown in…

BREATHE

"Christ is born in Bethlehem!

Look at what you've done, you've betrayed me!—I've done no such thing!—you think I don't realize what you're trying to do, that I don't know what a conniving little sonofabitch you can be, especially when you want something?—the only thing I want is for you to grow up and start acting like a goddamned man, start accepting your responsibility instead of running away all the time—oh, you're a good one to preach about not running away, what the hell do you think you've done all your life?—I haven't run from anything—oh yeah? What do you call going to New York City? What do you call coming here to Los Angeles? And you think I don't know what happened that night in New York, you don't think she hasn't told me about it?—NOTHING happened that night and besides, that's all ancient history, why are you bringing it up now?—because that's just it, it's ancient history and like all the rest of our ancient history, you've run from it instead of facing it…you tell me I'm running from my responsibilities, well, you're running from the past and someday you're gonna have to face it and that's what scares you the most, isn't it? Facing up to the past and realizing you're not the perfect little choirboy you want everyone to think you are…

IAMDROWNING

"Hark! the herald angels sing"

Doe eyes, brown eyes, begging, pleading, you line it up in the sights and then you lay it down because you can't be a man and pull the goddamned trigger—she's stabilized for now, let's get her up to surgery, the OR's waiting—gotta get out of there, gotta get away, get away, get away from all the blood and the guilt—fists pounding hard against gritty cinderblock, skin breaking open in stinging pain that feels like freedom—oaktag wings crumpled and torn, gold-garlanded halo twisted and fluttering, tossed in the trash because they are too damaged to save—silence on the ride back to the station, Kelly's fingers wrapped around that silver St. Florian medallion that glints on a chain, his lips moving in soundless prayer like a rosary recitation as if that's going to help—DeSoto's fingers locked white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his mouth moving in silent prayer as well, like God is going to really hear the two of them and grant them what they wish—my fingers locked around that silver badge of mine, but like those oaktag wings and that halo, I'm too damaged to pray, too damaged to save…

ICANNOT…IAM…

OHGOD…

save…

save…

me

"Glory to the newborn King!"

How is little Angel doing?—she's in critical condition, Cap, she crashed on us in the rig on the way in—poor kid, we've been pulling and praying for her to make it ever since we got back—hey, it's comin' up on my favorite part—look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings!—the black inscription on the white flyleaf of the book Clarence gave George: "Remember, George: No man is a failure who has friends"—that was Dix. She was calling to let us know that Angel made it through the surgery okay, they were able to get the bleeding stopped and pull the bullet out, and they don't think there's going to be any lasting damage, that she should recover completely—it's a Christmas miracle!—but is it really?—doe eyes, brown eyes, you line it up in the sights and then you pull the trigger, diving into that welcoming pool of death and drowning because you're broken inside and cannot bear to live another moment…

ICANTBREATHEICANTBREATHEICANTBREATHE!

I am fucking drowning!

(stopitstopitstopitgetaholdofyourselfstopitstopitSTOPITgetaholdofyourself!)

DROWN.

(stop)

It's a very simple word for an extremely frightening way to die.

(it!)

I should know.

(think of something else, think of anything, think of birds, okay, birds…no wait, birds are what Chet and Angel were talking about and birds are too much like angels so don't think of birds, thinkthinkthinkofsomethingelse)

I have drowned before.

(STOP!STOPITSTOPITSTOPITGODDAMNITSTOPITGETAHOLDOFYOURSELF!)

And I have died before as well.

(a meaningless, mindless little death for a meaningless, mindless little man)

(because Death only has meaning if you are someone to somebody and I am no one to anyone, I'm just stone-faced Cold as Ice Brice in perfectly ironed regulation blues, ready to quote perfectly ironed rules at those who don't worship the rulebook with the same avidly pious devotion that I do. There is no heart beating hard behind my ribcage because tin men don't have hearts. There is no soul swirling within me because the darkness has no soul. There is nothing but the nowhere man residing behind that gleaming silver badge I wear upon my chest)

DROWN.

(Okay, class, your assignment is to deconstruct the word and dissect it with cool analysis. Feel that single hard-soft syllable made up of four consonants and one vowel ticking innocuously along your tongue, your mouth drawling it into a round little 'O' like a fish gulping beneath the water. What does it mean, that word 'DROWN'? Try to use examples of its various definitions in sentences to illustrate you understand its meaning.)

DROWN (verb): to engage oneself deeply in something;

(Icannottthink, cannot think, cannot think, sinking softly beneath that beautiful, crystal-clear claustrophobia, the cold shock of it not enough to erase those ghostly, fiery fingerprints that sear harsh and demanding into my sodden skin, shrill hyena laughter replaced by the sultry siren call of silver grief and golden guilt and red-black shame that whispers oh so hot and inviting in my ear, wantonly beckoning to me like a trio of long-lost lovers—come to us, we will love you, we will cherish you, we will make the nowhere man be someone somewhere someday somehow)

To suffocate, usually by submersion in water;

(Icannotbreathe, cannot breathe, cannot breathe, suffocating beneath the spectral wraiths whose haunting wails clog my throat and steal the air from my lungs—they wish to be heard, they wish to be acknowledged, they wish to be given the chance to live—their revenant memories escaping through the steel fortress walls with which I have tried to confine them, but then again, ghosts can pass through anything, even mile-thick metal)

To drive out as a sensation or idea, EX: to drown one's sorrows in liquor; to overwhelm;

(Icannottspeak, cannot speak, cannot speak, stifled into silence by the phantom acridness of ice cold water and warm blood upon my tongue, my mouth open in a soundless scream that bleeds crimson into indigo into inky welcoming darkness, a blank oblivion of soft forgiveness and easy forgetness that offers even the most damned of souls complete absolution and oh, how I long to dive into it!—letting it swallow me up and wash me clean and make me whole again and full of black bitter anger and white-hot hatred and…)

oh god

I am sinking softly

(I will NOT do this—not tonight on the very shift I have purposely jumped ship from my home station of 16's to cover here at 51's for John Gage in hopes that the change of pace and scenery would distract me from all that haunts me every year at this time)

and…

I cannot

(No, I will NOT do this—not in front of the five men whose celebration over the miracle that is Angel Rodriguez should be wrapping a warmly encircling wreath of goodwill towards men around me instead of dropping a hangman's noose to strangle tight about my throat)

oh god…

Icannotfuckingbreathe!

(Goddamnit, I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS!—not here in the middle of this brick and mortar stationhouse, my blood-spattered boots and flesh and bone body planted firmly upon that white-tiled floor that is meant to be my lifeboat, not the damned Titanic)

no…

(cool crystal claustrophobia, searing fingerprints upon skin, doe eyes, brown eyes, you line it up in the sights and then you pull the trigger, just to be a man)

ohgodpleasedontletmedrownherenotherepleasegodnotherenotherenothere!

save…

save me

please…

(you're not anybody, you never will be anybody, doe eyes, brown eyes, oh what have you done, I have made the pain go away, but it will never go away because the nowhere man cannot feel pain, he is nothing)

please…someone…

save me

And then, just like that, my plea is heard and I am suddenly saved.

By Chet Kelly.

Wielding a candy cane.

I am abruptly yanked out of that crashing, violent ocean of the way back when and dumped back into the peaceful, placid pond of the here and the now as Chet grabs my hand and crisply slaps the candy cane into it, his cheerful face swimming in front of mine as he babbles something about making a Christmas toast with the candy because there's not enough hot cocoa to go around before whirling away. Swallowing hard against that sickening skirl of emotions still tilt-a-whirling inside of me, I suck in a ragged breath that tastes of salty popcorn and sweet hot cocoa and sharp diesel exhaust, blinking in dazed surprise at the cellophane-wrapped stick of peppermint that lies like a red-and-white smirk on the bed of my sweating palm—

My hero.

(some hero)

My life-preserver.

(some life-preserver)

A bubble of laughter that feels like it wouldn't take too much to turn into loon-raving hysteria escaping from my throat because really—

This is ample evidence that the universe obviously has a twisted sense of humor if it has offered me rescue in the form of a piece of peppermint candy and a curly-headed nuisance named Chet Kelly.

After all, Chet is the very bane of my existence when I cover here at Station 51, the merry little phantom-cum-prankster who has played on me the same grade-school gags he plays on John Gage to hear him squawk. He has short-sheeted my bed; he has set up water-bombs in strategic places to soak me when I open a door; he has put a puddle of fake vomit in front of my locker and a pile of fake dog-poop on my pillow; he has replaced my toothpaste with a tube of Ben-Gay and my can of shaving cream with a can of whipped topping, along with removing the blades from my razor. Hell, he's even already pranked me twice on this shift, rigging up a water-bomb in the utility closet to get me when I opened the door to retrieve the mop and bucket to scrub the dorm room floor, plus as we sat down to a "delightful gastronomical repast of Chester B. Kelly's Magical Mystery Meatloaf made especially for the Christmas holiday", he slipped a whoopee cushion onto my chair. The resulting "fart" resounded loud enough to elicit a bark from that miserable lump of a Bassett Hound lazing on the couch, plus it also made Stoker snort milk from his nose and Marco drop a forkful of mashed potatoes on his uniform, while Cap and Roy tried desperately to keep straight faces as my own face burned with anger at Chet, who proceeded to "innocently" launch into a litany of fart jokes until a strangle-voiced Cap told him to put a cork in it.

And let's not forget Chet's piece dè resistance, his coup dè grace, whatever fancy French term you want to apply to the gag he pulled when I was still covering Gage's shifts while Gage was recuperating from being struck by the car. The miserable little wretch waited until I fell asleep one night before pouring two small bottles of multicolored glitter into my boots and the pockets of my neatly folded-down turnout pants, adding a third bottle of glitter to the pockets of my turnout coat and dusting a smattering of it inside of my gloves. When we rolled on a fire alarm at a local warehouse at 1 a.m., I was puzzled as to why trails of shiny dust rained from me whenever I moved, my bewilderment quickly turning to outright annoyance as I realized I'd been glitter-bombed by "The Phantom". My suspect list swiftly narrowed to the smirking little mustachioed pain-in-the-ass who lounged insouciantly against the side of the squad and casually noted that I either looked like a kindergartner's craft project gone horribly awry with Frankensteinish mutation or a really ugly male version of Tinkerbell, then he proceeded to clap his hands and tell me that he believed in me.

I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands, but I would've left tell-tale glitter-prints all over his fat little neck.

Because there's a couple of important things to remember about glitter—number one, it sticks like crazy to everything, threading itself into the weave of fabric and adhering to other surfaces via static cling, melding itself onto one's skin like a flashy, happy tattoo. Number two, it multiplies like rabbits, all the shiny bits copulating madly and continually reproducing in mere nanoseconds so that within minutes, what once was a couple of bottles of gleaming multicolored joy turns into a couple of gallons of gleaming multicolored joy…

All gaily spilling from the pockets of my coat and pants whenever I walked and flooding in a bright stream that poured out of my boots when I took them off.

And all that gleaming multicolored joy that surrounded me did not make me joyous.

In fact, it had quite the opposite effect.

I was decidedly not thrilled to have pixie dust footprints following behind me in a tell-tale trail when I walked in my socks across the floor. I was not thrilled to find glittering bits of dazzling goodness still clinging to my turnouts, my boxers and socks and undershirt, not to mention my uniform, no matter how many times I ran them through the wash. I was not thrilled to discover that in addition to multiplying like rabbits, the glitter had also migrated like gleaming birds, flocking to stick to other articles of clothing, even though I'd taken great care not to wash the contaminated items with the non-contaminated items. I was not thrilled to find that I required the use of the hose in back of the station to power-wash my boots out—several times. I was not thrilled to see glitter winking gaily up at me from all areas of my life—from the black leather seat of my car to the rubber soles of my running shoes, from the nap of the green shag carpeting in my apartment to the patterned blocks of the quilt my grandmother made for me, from the smooth wood surface of my desk to the lined pages of the notebook I write various things in, from the yellow laminate countertop of my kitchen to the chipped metal keys and heavy platen of my battered Smith-Corona typewriter—it was everywhere.

But MOST of all, I was decidedly not thrilled at all the bits of multiplying-like-rabbits, gleaming multicolored joy that clung to ME, sticking like flakes of shiny dandruff in my hair and adhering to my skin like I was a refugee from Studio 54, and the worst part of it was, the glitter casually wandered into various bodily orifices in which glitter ought NEVER to go. It clung to me with stubborn tenacity, no matter HOW many times I ran MYSELF through the wash, scrubbing and scrubbing until my skin was rubbed raw and pink, my scalp and various bodily orifices set aflame from the vigor of my attempts to exorcise that dratted glitter from myself.

My entire world looked like David Bowie had engaged in an orgiastic threesome with a craft shop and Christmas before detonating in shimmering incandescence ALL OVER.

ALL OVER EVERYTHING, ALL OVER EVERYWHERE.

Word of Chet's prank spread through the department like wildfire eating through dry brush. My partner at 16's, Bob Bellingham, took to calling me "Princess Craigie", while everyone else took to calling me "Glitter Balls Brice", a name that clung to me as tenaciously as the glitter itself, displacing for a time all the other nicknames the departmental wags who think they're wits have tagged me with.

And okay, I can tolerate being called the Walking Rulebook or the Perfect Paramedic.

I can put up with being called the Human Regulation.

I will cope with being called Cold as Ice Brice.

And even "Glitter Balls Brice" was largely confined to usage by my co-workers when they wanted to annoy me, at least after the giggling newness of it wore off.

But "Princess Craigie" was too much, especially after we handled a call for a kid stuck in a piece of playground equipment at a preschool and Bellingham slipped up and called me that name ("It was an accident!" my ass). One of the little girls watching us work took a squinty-eyed look at me before wrinkling up her tiny nose in a universal gesture of "eww!", loudly declaring me the ugliest princess EVER. I thought Bellingham was going to pee himself with laughter, particularly after one of the wee little tots patted me on the head with Koolaid-sticky fingers and nicely told me with a peanut-butter and jelly smeared grin that "it okay, I wike 'oo, Pwinzess Cwaigie."

Pwinzess...er, "Princess Craigie"...honestly.

I hated Chet Kelly for that prank.

In fact, it tied him in first place with my other arch-nemesis, John Gage, the two of them vying for the award of "people who should be shot full of tranquilizer darts and shipped off to the Arctic Circle outfitted with only Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and beach flip-flops to wear, along with a couple of badly scratched Lawrence Welk polka albums and a 1000-piece puzzle missing all but two pieces as their only entertainment."

So the idea that Chet could come to my rescue with a candy cane…it makes me want to…want to…

Thank him.

In my head, at least.

Because I'm aware how dangerously unwise it would be to EVER tell Chet that he saved me from suffocating in my own thoughts via tossing me a candy cane, for he'd crow with gloating glee and lord it over me for all eternity.

Or at least until I got my hands on some tranquilizer darts to shoot into his ass so I could ship him off to the Arctic Circle.

Or at least until I got my hands on some duct tape to slap over his big mouth.

(Because bandage tape won't do, it's not wide enough. I know, for I've occasionally contemplated taping Bellingham's mouth shut when he's decided to regale me with various tidbits from the steamy letters written to the Penthouse Forum, pleased at the sight of my face burning red and my ears flaming even redder. He likes to think retelling someone else's myriad sexual escapades in leering detail shocks me out of my prudish, Puritan sensibilities, but in reality I'm not as much shocked as I am just extremely embarrassed that he has managed to manglingly mispronounce the words mènage à trois and areola once again.)

Chet has finished passing out candy canes to Captain Stanley, Mike Stoker, Marco Lopez, and Roy DeSoto as well and he shoves his way into place at my side, holding his own candy cane aloft in front of him like it's a flute of champagne. "A toast…er…a candy cane!" he cries happily, the cellophane crackling as bright as his grin as he patiently waits for the rest of us to follow suit. "To little Angel Rodriguez, our true-blue Christmas miracle…may the good Lord bless and keep her safe for the rest of her life!"

"Hear, hear!" I bleat in mechanical response with the others, then I quickly drop the hand holding the candy cane lest someone notice the faint tremor dancing through my fingers, erasing just as swiftly the fake smile that rests thinly on my lips lest someone notice the insincerity lurking in the shadows of it.

But Chet isn't finished, clapping a comradely arm around my shoulders, trying to draw me into the cozy circle of bonhomie. "And to Roy and Brice, the heroes of the night!" he offers. "Thank you for being Angel's saviors!"

I twitch in annoyance because not only do I heartily dislike being touched, but Chet's innocent joy also pains me, for he doesn't know the truth of what happened in the back of that Mayfair rig as it sped screaming towards Rampart Hospital. If he did, he sure as hell wouldn't be singing hosannas of praise to me, he'd be despising me.

Just as much as I despise myself.

"Kelly, please, we were just doing our jobs," I deflect as I twist out from beneath his grasp.

He mistakes my deflection for humility instead of guilt and self-loathing. "Hey, don't tell me the Perfect Paramedic has suddenly become all humble and modest," he chuckles. "Because if he has, that's yet ANOTHER Christmas miracle."

I start to open my mouth to reply but Roy beats me to the punch, his gaze meeting mine in cool knowing. "Chet," he begins, and for a moment I hold my breath, worried that he is going to spill the beans and out me for the failure I turned out to be during Angel's transport. "Who'd you say gave you that St. Florian medal again?" he asks with the blatant innocence of someone intentionally tossing out a diversion to avoid the incendiary booby-trap lying before him.

Much to my relief, Chet takes the bait, releasing me from his scrutiny as he happily launches into the story behind that silly medallion he thinks had some part in Angel's miracle. Nodding in curt appreciation to Roy for keeping my secret, I ease out of the group—as an unwilling participant to all that happy cheer and shiny goodwill towards men, I feel much like a cockroach swimming laps in the Dom Perignon at a $500-a-head, black-tie event. It's not that I'm not just as thrilled as they are that Angel has survived, but it grates harsh and unwanted against my already rubbed-raw nerves the way they keep considering that timely intervention of modern medicine that saved her a miracle, not to mention the way they—Chet especially—keep calling Roy and I her saviors, acting like we're some kind of tinhorn heroes for the frantic work we did on her when she started crashing on us en route to Rampart.

And damn it, I don't believe in saviors.

I don't believe in miracles.

And I SURE as hell ain't anyone's hero, let alone that child's…

Because heroes don't break.

(her blood)

And heroes don't fail.

(is on)

At least not like I did tonight.

(my hands)

Oh GOD have I ever replayed that scene of split-second eternity a million times in my head since it happened and I know I'll be playing it a few million more in the hours and the days and the weeks to come, the incident committed indelibly on the film inside my mind—I have viewed it in comical fast-forward, I have viewed it in backwards rewind, I have viewed it in a second-by-second, build-it-up construction and blow-it-all-to-pieces deconstruction. Each time I have run the tape, I've hoped—needed, wanted, BEGGED—for a different outcome other than the one that really happened, that scene clicking frame by frame in my mind like brightly-colored slides narrated in excitedly cheerful fashion by the same booming bass male voice who narrated the in-class movies of my school years about everything from "Our Friend, Puerto Rico!" to "Meet the Electrical Appliances in Your House!"; to the joys of puberty: "Say Hello to Mr. Acne and Mr. Cracked Voice and Mr. Sudden Unexplained Boner!"; not to mention the evils of sex, drugs and rock and roll: "Why The Beatles are Bad for You and You Should Just Stick to Pat Boone and Andy Williams!", "Baby Aspirin, the Gateway Drug to Hell!", "Why You Shouldn't Have Sex Until You're Dead!"

(Okay class, if someone will dim the lights, we will get underway with today's slide show presentation entitled "Craig Brice's Brief Vacation Into His Own Private Hell!")

CLICK!—Look, Craig, look! See the injured little girl lying upon the cot, her lips trembly-brave and her tragic dark eyes damply stoic as she stares up at you from her tragic dark circumstances, begging you to be her savior. Look at her small fingers cradling tight that silver firefighter's badge she has wheedled away from the spot above your heart—or at least where your heart should reside—the badge getting entangled in the snaking, glinting chain of Chet Kelly's St. Florian medal, the two shiny tokens her lifelines to luck. What a silly child she is, naïve enough to believe that luck really exists, especially for children like her, just like you once naïvely believed that God always answered the prayers of a child like you!—Mister Craig, does your badge bring you good luck like Mister Kelly's Floor Shiner medal does? I like the pretty silver bear on your badge, is it Smokey Bear or is it Yogi Bear? I like Yogi, he's silly cuz he's always stealin' picnic baskets, but Smokey doesn't steal picnic baskets, does he?

CLICK!—Look, Craig, look! Watch the child's face twist up in a grimace as she gasps with pain, her face going even whiter than the whitest white, the badge and medal slipping forgotten from her fingers and falling back to the mattress of the cot with a muted thud as her hands flee towards the bullet wound in her stomach—ooh, Mister Craig I don't feel very well all of a sudden, my tummy hurts worse than ever an' my heart feels all weird like it's got angel wings of its own an' it's tryin' to fly out of my chest. See her looking fearfully up at you, her dark eyes pleading for help because that badge informs her that you WILL be her hero because in her world, only heroes have the right to wear badges! So step up and be this child's hero, Craig!

CLICK!—Look, Craig, look! See the child's gaze go swiftly blank as if her soul has never even existed for five years upon this earth, her white Christmas angel costume flooding with a garish red of obscenity, of cruel indecency, the monitor acting as the child's voice as it wails in panicked alarm to let you know what her gaze has already conveyed—she's dying! she's dying! she's dying! Come ON, Craig, step up and be this child's hero and save her life! Save her…oh god, SAVE HER!

CLICK!—Look, Craig, look! See yourself staring in wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock at the child as Roy leaps to your side, jostled into you by the jouncing of the rig as it wails its way towards Rampart with its precious cargo aboard. Feel as he digs hard, frantic fingers into your shoulder, his voice sharp and shrill in your ear to match the cry of the siren overhead—Brice, she's crashing on us, start CPR! Brice! Brice? C'mon man, move it, she's gone into cardiac arrest! Brice? What the hell is wrong with you, she's dying on us! Come ON, Craig, why can't you answer Roy?

CLICK!—See her innocent blood splashing onto your hands and your uniform with the viscous warmth of guilt and horror and injustice—see it, look at it!—dripping onto the floor of the ambulance like great crimson drops of accusation…

DRIP. (doe eyes, brown eyes)

DROP. (what have you done?)

DRIP. (doe eyes, brown eyes)

DROP. (what have you done?)

CLICK!—Look, Craig, look! See Roy muscle his way past you, elbowing you hard in the gut and shoving you out of the way—Brice? Brice! Damn it, if you're not going to do anything to save her, get the hell out of the way and let me work on her! Watch yourself crumple into the jumpseat—Mister Cold as Ice Brice is stunned!—the air exploding from your lungs in shock...why are you so surprised, Craig, why? After all, no matter how many times you've seen Death in all His different forms and visages, He always looks the same as He stares back at you from clouding, cooling eyes—vacant and eerie and oh so cold, just like the gaze that sometimes stares back at you from your mirror!

CLICK!—just look at Mister Cold as Ice Brice, look at him!

(his gaze so cold, so eerie, so vacant, just like Death)

CLICK!—all he can do…

CLICK!—oh God, all I can do…

DRIP. (doe eyes, brown eyes)

DROP. (what have you done?)

DRIP. (doe eyes, brown eyes)

DROP. (look at what you've done!)

CLICK!—what has Mister Cold As Ice Craig Brice done?

He has…

OH GOD…

(I have frozen up)

Yes, Mr. Walking Rulebook, Mr. Human Regulation, Mr. Perfect Paramedic himself…

I FUCKING FROZE UP!

Because for a few brief seconds I wasn't seeing little Angel Rodriguez dying in the here and the now, but rather another child—a young boy—dying in the there and the then of ten years ago on a rainy Christmas Eve just like this, the vision wallowing up before me like an ancient dinosaur fart bubbling free from the deep, dark mire of my own personal La Brea Tar Pits.

And that kind of adverse emotional response to such an unrelated stimuli startles me—I'm no stranger to violent trauma, for I served a thirteen-month tour as a medic aboard a Dustoff evac chopper over in Vietnam. After I got home, I worked as an attendant in the Los Angeles County Morgue while I was getting my two year college degree, then I went into the fire department. I spent my boot year working out of Station 65 in Watts for the Los Angeles city fire department and my second year working out of Station 11 in Westlake before I transferred over to the county department so I could go into the paramedic program. And just last year I worked the triage area of the Granite Park shooting rampage where several of the victims I helped to treat were young children who'd been brutally shot, so I know that sick kids and badly injured kids and dying kids and dead kids are a sad fact of life on this job, witnessing children in circumstances even more tragic and worse off than Angel's situation. Yet none of those cases has EVER caused me to have such a visceral gut-punch reaction such as freezing up while I'm treating them—not in Vietnam, not in Watts, not at Granite Park. Hell, tonight was even the first time in what feels like forever that a scene I've witnessed has upset me to the point where it's actually made me vomit. Sure, my analytical logic dictates that Angel's situation combined with the anniversary remembrance of the other child's death to create one unholy hell-storm of a flashback that may never happen again…

But it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

It's true that as much as I wish it were possible, I cannot erase that memory from my mind any more than I can erase it from my past. It lurks behind me like one of Scrooge's chain-rattling spectres, permanently linked and inked indelibly in the epics of my history. But that memory, like all the other things that bother me—my nagging self-doubts and annoying insecurities, my inner fears and deep soul scars and other darkly stirred memories that also haunt me—have been tucked away into neat little boxes with neat little labels that I lock tightly away inside that mile-high, mile-thick, steel-walled Fort Knox fortress I have built within my neat little mind. They must remain hidden away until I'm ready to acknowledge them—that is one of the rules I have for them and they have always obeyed me in the past. I even take extra care every single Christmas Eve to make sure that particular memory of the dead boy is buried the deepest, distracting myself with as many activities and as much work as I can shoulder and then some because to acknowledge it before I'm ready is to break that rule and to break that rule is to lose control and to lose control is to be imperfect.

So what does that memory do?

It decides to pick the lock and escape, making its presence known in the middle of a harried crisis.

And it scares me.

Oh god, does it ever scare the beejeesus me.

Because that memory and the others that hide behind it are tied up in my emotions and emotions are the Kryptonite to my Superman—Behold! I am the Walking Rulebook, the Human Regulation, the Perfect Paramedic! I'm the man with a hard-on for the rules and a craven lust for the regulations, and emotions do nothing but weaken my strength and my cast-iron resolve, turning me into an ordinary, fallible mortal as they pierce past the silver gleam of the firefighter's badge I wear in place of my heart, shredding to bits the fabric of paragraphs and numbers and sections and sub-sections and sub-sub-sub-sections of the rulebook and paramedic manual I use to cloak myself with.

And the rules are, you don't lose control.

(because the rules are control and control is perfection)

You don't cry, you don't get angry, you don't feel.

You don't get emotionally involved with the people you help in the field because it will only lead to heartbreak in the end.

That is the hairshirt mantra I don every shift to chafe at the surface of my conscious and itch at the skin of my conscience, becoming as much a part of my uniform as the buttons and pockets are. Sure, it's a harsh ideal to imagine following in a job dedicated to serving others, but it's a much-needed shot of dispassionate vaccination that innoculates you, insulating your soul and spirit against the various callous cruelties and depraved indifferences man can inflict on his fellow humans, some of which can be rather shocking in their downright evilness. You have to learn how to distance yourself from what you experience in the field, reminding yourself that every time those tones drop to send you on a call, you need to erase the names and the faces of the victims you're helping from your mind the moment the situation has been resolved because putting a name to their suffering personalizes it and putting a face to their misfortune internalizes it. Otherwise you'll wind up losing whatever faith you might've had, not to mention your humanity, making you hate the world and everyone in it, even as your heart breaks into a million little pieces, every single day and over every single senseless tragedy that happens to stain your hands and your soul with its blood and misery.

And I know—oh lord, do I EVER know—what it's like to lose my faith, what it's like to hate the world and everyone in it, what it's like to have my heart broken into a million little pieces, what it's like to worry that I'm losing my humanity over the tragedies that stain my hands with blood and misery, nipping at me like mosquito bites, needling past my defenses to prick sharply at my soul—draining me, draining me, draining me of the lifeblood of my spirit until I have nothing left to give…

NIP

(dontfeeldontfeeldontfeel)

Was the rosary bead recitation ticking a rote cadence in my head this past Thanksgiving Day, the pounding rhythm of the two words the heartbeat I was trying to force back into the body of a seventy-year-old man we were rushing to Rampart. The monitor shrilled flatline in tandem with the siren as we tried to outrace Death in that sixty-second eternity left to us in the back of the rig, my own bones aching with broken memory as I felt the man's fragile rib bones snap like dry, brittle twigs beneath my sharply thrusting palms. As I did CPR on him, I tried hard to forget how his teenaged grandson had watched with pie-eyed hero worship as Bellingham and I worked on his grandfather, the kid acting like we were some sort of saving-grace cowboys in blue shirts and black helmets, our magic potions and newfangled equipment and paramedic skills the sheriff's stars and six-shooters we'd use to arrest the heart attack his grandfather was having. I tried hard to forget how, just before the man vomited and went into cardiac arrest, he'd grabbed my hand, needing the reassuring touch of another human being as he asked me if he was going to make it, that question a toss of the net into the pool of hope by a man who knew he was dying. And I'd taken one look at his ashen face and blue lips and knowing eyes with their foreboding truths written in them, then I pulled my hand free from his grasp and said, "I do," those two words the last lie anyone would ever tell that man. But most of all, I tried hard to forget how much the man's affable, gentle manner reminded me of my own beloved grandfather, who'd passed away from lung cancer when I was only seventeen.

When we arrived at Rampart with the man, I planted my feet on the crossbars of the cot and rode it into the treatment room like that blue-shirted cowboy hero atop a shiny, rubber-wheeled steed, my arms burning from doing CPR, sweat sewing my hair into lank threads that clutched tight to my skull, remaining focused on my counts and not the fact that the man lying before me someone's father, someone's grandfather, someone who was loved and needed by his family. Dr. Brackett orchestrated the battle for the man's life, the room a Hunnenschlactic symphony of noise and activity as staff hurried to acquiesce to his barked orders. The high-pitched hum of the defibrillator firing to life harmonized with the tenor scream of the monitor and the hissing of the respirator, the thumping drumbeat of my compressions stopping long enough at Brackett's sharp call of "Clear!" as the defibrillator charge surged through the man's body like a solo cymbal crash. But despite the valiant effort, Death won anyway, Brackett somberly calling the time-of-death as personnel slowly trickled out of the room in shoulder-slumped defeat. I lingered behind for a moment, watching as Dixie gently unplugged wires and dismantled tubes from the man's body so he could be presentable should his loved ones wish to see him before he was taken to the morgue for the funeral home to pick up. "You did all that you could do, Craig," she told me kindly, her voice a harsh interruption in that sudden screaming silence.

At that moment, I hated her.

I hated her for her kindness and her blind faith in me and my abilities, but most of all I hated her words and the blanket absolution they offered me that I knew I did not deserve. Sure, I handled the man's heart attack properly as per ACLS treatment protocols, but I couldn't give him the truth when he asked me for it and I couldn't give him my hand when he grabbed for it. I couldn't even give him my goddamned caring because it hurt me too much, it scared me too much that I kept thinking of my own grandfather. But as I watched Dixie pull that white sheet up over the man's even whiter face, I didn't have the guts to tell her any of that, I just turned on my heel and left the room and that dead man who was and was not my grandfather, the sour stink of his vomit on my uniform the bitter reminder of the battle I'd just lost.

In the hallway, I found myself transfixed by the tableau that was playing out a few yards away as Dr. Brackett met with the dead man's daughter and grandson, the daughter wailing, "No, no, no, no!", her knees giving way as Brackett delivered his sorrowful verdict, her son trying hard to hold her up under the weight of the world that had suddenly crashed down around them, his face a picture of shock. When Bellingham joined me, he followed my gaze, then he shrugged rather fatalistically. "No matter how hard we worked to save him, that man was a goner the minute that heart attack hit him. He knew it and we knew it, but none of us wanted to face the truth because it's often too hard to swallow," he offered as penny-ante consolation.

"What a lovely sentiment, Bob, why not try telling that to his family," I said, my mouth twisting up in bitterness as we started to head out to the parking lot where one of our shiftmates waited with the squad.

The man's daughter and grandson were still in the middle of the hallway, clinging to one another in a forlorn island of tear-stricken desolation, their accusatory gazes burning hot like a brand into my skin as they watched Bellingham and I approach them. As we passed them, the grandson reached out to grab at the sleeve of my shirt that had the yellow paramedic patch sewn onto it, anger flashing hot and bright in his eyes as he realized he was looking at a blueshirted saving-grace cowboy who was far from the hero he'd thought I was in that once-upon-a-time that existed in those minutes before his grandfather started crashing in the back of the rig.

"You!" the boy lashed out in a voice hissing with agony and rage, tears welling fresh in his eyes and spilling down his face as he clutched at the patch with tightly-clenched fingers. "This…this gave you the power! You had the power in your hands to keep my grandpa alive and you didn't do it, did you, you didn't keep him alive!"

A part of me wanted to lash back at him and tell him that I didn't exactly ask for his goddamned hero-worship because that patch I wore on my sleeve granted me no more magical powers to save a life than anyone else who wore it, but the bigger part of me wanted to tell him how much I'd wished I WAS able to save his grandfather because I knew from my own experience what kind of hurt and anguish he was going to endure. I longed to tell the kid that my grandfather's death almost killed me as well because right up until the day he died, my parents lied to me and kept telling me he was getting better, and they refused to take me out of school so I could see him one final time—hell, they almost didn't even take me out of school so I could attend his funeral. So I didn't get to thank my grandfather for always being there for me, even when he was busy with his medical practice; I didn't get to thank him for loving me for ME and for not who I was expected to be or who he'd wished I'd be; I didn't get to thank him for all the things he taught me, like how to channel my feelings and calm my always-whirling mind via the power of the written word, leaving my worried world behind me by escaping into the adventure of a good book or writing stories of my own. Most of all, I never got the chance to tell him that I loved him, one last time, and that was what almost killed me. But I didn't share any of that with the grieving young boy standing before me because as much as his grief was the same as mine, it was also just as different, so all I could say was, "I'm sorry," for that was the only truth I could offer him, the words ringing hollow and meaningless in that desolate loss.

"Yeah, I bet," he choked out, tugging hard on my sleeve, the cloth ripping a bit in his grasp before he released it. "I just bet you're sorry." The words broke sobbing and biting from his throat as he swiped a palm across his running nose, his fingers trying to sweep away the tears that rolled down his cheeks, for he was old enough to remember that a man never leaves evidence of his sorrow like that.

"I'm sorry," I repeated, but the boy and his mother turned away from us, so Bellingham and I left them with their bereft hearts as torn as the cloth of my shirt, as torn as the cloth of my own heart.

Nip.

(dontfeeldontfeeldontfeel)

Was the endless loop mantra tattooed in my brain just two weeks ago as Bellingham and I, along with a paramedic trainee riding with our squad, treated a little two-year-old girl whose tiny body lay naked and brutalized on the cold green linoleum floor of the bathroom of a shabby, cockroach-ridden apartment that smelled of cabbage and rancid grease, of cat piss and sad desperation. In the living room, a scruffy man who was about as beat-up and unkempt as the apartment itself kept belligerently repeating to the sheriff's deputy guarding him, "I told her to keep that fuckin' little bitch away from me or I was gonna do somethin' to her, I TOLD her to keep the bitch away, so why the fuck didn't she listen to me?" In the hallway outside the bathroom, the weeping mother of the child was held back by another sheriff's deputy, a sobbing litany of hope and prayer spilling frantically from her lips as if that would suddenly take all the horror back and make it not be true, her hands closed tight around the scrawny scarecrow shoulders of a little girl about four years old who watched it all with eyes loaded with sorrows too ancient for that young of a child. When the deputy began to queasily relate to us how the child was injured, the trainee fled, leaving Bellingham and I to begin treatment on a girl who remained alive simply because her body hadn't finished shutting down yet.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus," Bellingham kept muttering and I wasn't sure if it was his form of a hopeful prayer or a frantic lament over the atrocious damage inflicted on the girl, for her abuser had been nothing short of brutal to her; her face was bruised and her right eye swollen shut, blood and clear cerebral fluid seeped in watery red rills from her ears and nose, while even more blood oozed from her anal and genital areas. It was obvious her left leg and right arm were badly fractured, given the odd angles the limbs lay folded upon the chilly linoleum floor. Her abuse was also clearly not confined to just this day alone, for fresh black and blue marks mottled her pale skin and competed with space against fading yellow-green ones, while her arms were pockmarked with scabbed-over cigarette burns and brand-new ones. The pupil of her left eye was fixed and dilated, staring with doll-like vacancy at the water-stained ceiling overhead as if it held all the answers to why she had been so sadistically violated, while through blue-hued lips, she kept emitting a queerly broken cry that reminded me of the helpless kitten my brother, Gary, once tortured to death. Once we stabilized the injured limbs, we gently moved her onto a yellow shock blanket in order to transfer her to the cot with as little jarring to her shattered body as possible.

Suddenly her sister spoke up from the doorway where she was still watching us. "You put her on sunshine," she said, turning to tug on her mother's shirt as she pointed at the bright yellow blanket. "Mommy, look, they put Rachel on sunshine. I'll bet she's happy, she likes the sunshine."

Rachel.

Oh Jesus, the savage innocence of her comment burned like a small sun against the bitter heat of the bile churning in my guts…Rachel was the name of another little girl I knew, one that was the same age as this beaten child and one that I hadn't seen since her birth two years ago.

But I quickly shoved that from my mind as we gingerly picked the damaged child up and laid her on the cot, winding our way past the still-sobbing mother and the sad-eyed sister and the angry, drunken man sitting on the couch still spewing his story. I blinked like a stunned mole as we exited that gloomy apartment, startled by the bright glare of sunlight that flooded across us like bright, blinding freedom, releasing us from the hate and sorrow that chained us to that hellhole. The trainee sat hunched and shivering in the passenger seat of the squad, listlessly watching as we loaded the child into the back of the ambulance, and as Bellingham wordlessly shoved the drugbox and biophone at me, I knew I was going to be the one riding in with the girl.

So I climbed into the rig with that shattered child who continued to emit that queerly broken cry once we got underway to Rampart, a battered little doll trying hard to speak, a tortured kitten trying to mew for its mother. Like that elderly man of a couple of weeks earlier, she was dying and needed the comfort of another human being in whatever time was left to her. But as I knelt at the side of the cot, I felt sick and helpless because I wasn't sure what I could do to comfort her, my mind scrabbling about for some way I could soothe her. Then I thought of what her sister said about the blanket being sunshine and how little Rachel liked sunshine, and I remembered how my grandmother used to comfort me when I was scared or sick as a child, and I then realized how I could soothe her. Gently taking her small hand in mine, I leaned close to her ear, my voice soft and low as I began to croon "You Are My Sunshine", the song Grandmother would sing to me.

For a brief moment, her broken cry halted and she twitched, her small fingers grasping weakly at mine. So I sang that song over again.

And again.

And again.

All the way to Rampart.

When we returned to hospital later that day with a patient from another run, we bumped into Dr. Early in the breakroom. He grimly informed us that Rachel died not long after she arrived in the E.R., recounting a horrible laundry list of both fresh and already-healed injuries and abuses inflicted upon her, each worse than the last, as if purging himself of them would make his own horror not be true. Somewhere in the midst of his recounting, Bellingham and the trainee fled the breakroom with grey-green faces, so the good doctor turned to me, tears glittering in his eyes and his own face ashen as he asked, "Why? Why would someone do that to such an innocent child? She was only two, for god's sake! She was only two!" And suddenly feeling a thousand years older than my twenty-five years, I finally fled the breakroom as well—I could not stand to see the brokenness on his face and hear the anguish in his voice any longer; I could not answer his question because I'd been asking it myself.

But most of all, I fled because I didn't want to think of the little Rachel I knew lying dead somewhere because some drunken bastard decided to shatter her innocence as well as her body.

After ducking into a quiet hallway to take few moments to calm myself, I knew we had to get back into service so I went off to retrieve my partner and the trainee, finding them hiding in the men's room. The trainee was puking his guts out in one stall while Bellingham quietly wept in another, probably thinking of his own little son and daughter. I hesitated with uncertainty near the paper towel dispenser, unsure if I should back out and give them a few more moments of their private sorrow. I was slightly embarrassed by such blatant displays of emotion, even though part of me wanted to break down and cry like Bellingham was doing and part of me wanted to vomit up my horror like the trainee was doing, while the heartless tin man part of me resented them, jealous of the ease with which they wore their hearts on their sleeves. Finally, after a few seconds of shuffled-feet indecision, duty took precedent over heartbreak and I popped a tight fist against the metal hull of the towel dispenser, the noise ringing sharp and my voice ringing even sharper as I tried to jolt them out of their misery so we could get back to work. "I know it was a bad run, but we've got the rest of the shift to finish out yet, so the two of you need to pull yourselves together so we can get back on the job."

Startled by my intrusion, they both fell silent, then Bellingham emerged first, slamming the stall door open so hard that it bounced madly on its hinges, his eyes flinty as he glared at me. The kid emerged next, hands shaking as he wiped at his mouth with a wad of toilet paper, his gaze horrified as he stared at me. "How the hell can you remain so…so…so unfeeling in light of what happened to that little girl?" he demanded hoarsely.

"Kid, don'tcha know we call him Cold as Ice Brice for a reason? He's nothin' but a hard-hearted, emotionless fucker who never feels a damned thing for anyone or anything on this job. Shit, he makes that chilliness as much a part of his uniform as his patch and badge is," Bellingham spat acidly, face twisted up in a sneer. "He's nothin' but a goddamned robot and I bet it wouldn't even rattle him if that was his own sister lyin' dead on that slab at the morgue."

His words were sharded icicles that stabbed viciously at my heart and I folded my arms across my chest, struggling to slam my usually chilly shield of protection back into place as I turned to face the trainee. "You're never going to make it as a paramedic if you don't learn to keep your feelings out of situations like this."

There was a loaded moment of silence over my little "lesson", then Bellingham jerked his head at the door, "Get the fuck outta here!" he snarled at me, his face red with rage and his fists balling up tightly as if he wanted to punch the shit out of me. I knew if I didn't take his advice and get out, I was apt to find myself laid out flat on the floor.

But as I started to leave, the trainee lurched forward and put a hand on my arm to stop me, his eyes filled with tears as he peered at me, trying to break past my barrier and reach the human side of me. "Her name was Rachel," he babbled, his breath sour and rancid in my face as he dug his fingers into my skin. "'Rachel' means 'little lamb' and…"

I didn't give him a chance to continue as I jerked my arm free of his grasp, leveling him with a glare that was as full of ice as it was of fire, my voice harsh and low as I warned, "Don't!", that single syllable ripping like a sob from my lungs and hanging there shocked in that thick silence between the three of us because there was more emotion in that one word than I knew they thought me EVER capable of feeling. Then I left because I was afraid I'd break down myself and shatter my reputation as the Ice Man—I didn't need to be told what the name 'Rachel' meant, for I'd helped the mother of the child I knew pick it out of a baby book.

Bellingham and the kid assiduously avoided me for the rest of the shift and so did the rest of the crew at 16's, stiffly interacting with me only when they had to, whispering behind my back when they thought I couldn't hear them about how they'd found what I'd said appallingly cruel and cold-hearted. When the shift ended, Bellingham took the kid to The Hydrant bar so they could both get drunk and forget what they saw, at least for a little while, and I went home and took a scalding hot shower to wash the day's horror from my skin. Then I got the bottle of whiskey from my kitchen cupboard and quietly proceeded to get drunk myself, trying to wash the day's horror from my soul. I wished like hell I could pour the booze into my eyes to bleach away the image of that child's battered body and wished like hell I could pour it into my ears to deafen those pitiful mews and the killer's stumbling excuse. I wished like hell I could get my hands around the necks of her killer and her neglectful mother, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing the breath out of them, taking pleasure in watching their life slowly ebb away beneath my fingers. My last memory before I passed out was that of maudlinly serenading the nearly empty bottle of whiskey with "You Are My Sunshine"…

Because her name was Rachel.

And that was what I wanted to forget the most.

NIP

(don't feel until you can face the world with dry eyes and a hard heart)

NIP

(don't feel until you have been bled as dry as the desert and your soul is nothing but dust)

NIP

(don't feel until you are frozen solid inside and all that exists within you is nothing but sleet and silence)

NIP

dontfeeldontfeeldontfeel

And so I don't.

At least not on the outside, I don't.

Because if there's one thing I am really good at, it's pretending, playacting like everything is normal—take one look at me in the daytime after I've just gotten off a harrowing shift full of ghastly tragedy or hellish horror and you'd never know I'd faced any of that, for I capably distract my always-busy mind by immersing myself in various activities. I can focus on whatever work might need to be done on the different fire departmental committees I'm involved in, or I can go to the library and haunt the rows of dusty tomes that house tales even darker and more twisted than what I see on the job, occasionally grabbing the spiral notebook I keep in the glovebox of my car and using the quiet time at the library to scribble some of my own dark, twisted tales and maudlin poetry. Or I can take to the streets for a long jog, the exercise draining off my nervous energy as my feet pound my stress away upon the sunbaked pavement, or I can catch a flick at one of the theaters, the comedic antics or overwrought drama that plays out on the screen in front of me working well to dispel the darkness that surrounds me. If the weather's good, I'll sometimes go hiking in the nearby mountains, occasionally even taking an overnight trip up to Yosemite National Park to get in some rock climbing.

But now the nights after a bad shift—oh god, the nights—are a different story.

I avoid going home for as long as I can because while the quiet of the library does not bother me, the quiet of my apartment does, for it is in that ticking time bomb of silence that the terror and horror screams the loudest.

And I cannot escape.

Oh, I still pretend I can because pretending is a form of running from it all.

But I cannot escape.

I'll turn every single light on in my apartment until all the corners blaze brighter than daylight, and I'll pretend I don't see the ghosts that frisk along the edges of my peripheral vision, merrily playing hide-and-seek among the cowering shadows of my furniture, daring me to find them, only to swiftly evaporate into thin air when I do look straight at them, reappearing moments later in another spot to laugh at me...now you see us, now you don't!

I'll turn on the television and the stereo, keeping the sound on them low so as not to disturb my neighbors, and I'll pretend that their soft, soothing racket is noisy enough to prevent me from hearing the spectres whispering mournful and needy and accusing in my ears, begging me for the acknowledgement that would breathe solid life into their revenant forms.

I'll keep my body moving, my feet pacing in a restless parade that marches me from my living room to my bedroom and back again so I can pretend I don't feel the feathery brushes of those spectral fingers caressing my skin and tickling through my hair, raising goosebumps on my arms and making the hair on the back of my neck prickle in alarm as they touch me, dissecting me to see if my physical essence is worthy of them or if they find it weak and wanting.

I'll keep my mind moving, using my paramedic manual and academy textbooks to parse out various paramedical or firefighting scenarios—each one wilder and more extravagant than the last—throwing out every single possibility that could ever potentially happen to challenge my abilities and see if I can figure out the most efficient method to handle them. Or I'll work on whatever ideas or stories or poems I have scribbled down in my notebooks, my fingers flying rapidly over the black and white keys of my typewriter to rattle down the thoughts tick-tacking in my brain, just so I can pretend I am not afraid of the knife-fanged, razor-clawed Jabberwocky that hides in the closet of my heart, even as the monster growls and lunges against his chains to threaten me with those jaws that bite and the claws that catch—come closer, my child, I promise I won't eat you!

When I finally get weary, I'll go lie down on my bed, the lights still burning brightly overhead as my fingers white-knuckle the sheet and blanket into tight-fisted bunches, my eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling that peers just as blankly back at me, and I pretend not to be afraid of something as innocuously innocent as closing my eyes in sleep, just because I'm scared of the nightmares come what may.

It is on those nights that the ghosts are most needy and desperate for recognition, and it is those nights that the monster lurches hardest against his chains, roaring to be let loose, and it is those nights that the nightmares are the worst as they play out like flickering movies on the darkened screen of my eyelids, for god knows they are already etched like acid into the books of my soul. And it is on those nights that I wish I had the courage to face the keening spectres head-on and permanently vanquish them to the past where they belong; I wish I had the courage to unleash the Jabberwocky and challenge him to do his worst to me because he can't hurt me any more than I've already hurt myself; I wish I had the courage to let the nightmares play themselves out because I have the guts to face hellish situations on a regular basis in real life, so why can't I face the horrors of my nightmares, for they nothing more than bad dreams.

And I endure those nights in silent, fearful solitude because I've told myself…no, forced myself…not to need the solace, the comfort, the understanding another human being could provide to me, having stripped that basic requirement out of the essence of my being a LONG time ago because to need someone is a weakness and to share those fears with them is to invite them to use them against me, revealing a weakened chink in my armor that I'd prefer to keep hidden away lest an arrow pierce that spot and fell me to my knees in agony. So when the spectres whisper mournful in my ear and compete with the white noise of my television and stereo, when the monster growls and slashes at me from the confines of his closet, when the bright sterile lights of my apartment drive out that darkness that lurks in the shadowed corners, I long for the courage to drive out the darkness of my soul, even as I work at wrapping yet another layer of razor-wire around that icy brittle heart of mine in order to protect it—

(because the nowhere man is not afraid of the pain of death, he is afraid of the pain of living)

—in order to keep the Jabberwocky trapped inside and the dark-thought demons trapped outside, shoving those gut-twisting fears and chain-rattling spectres inside that solid-steel fortress because cast-iron walls make the best of friends, especially in solitary confinement. And I assure myself that eventually I'll maybe deal with all of them sometime, someday, except sometime and someday have never really come.

Until tonight, that is.

Tonight that razor-wire slashed to ribbons the very heart it was supposed to protect and I stand alone amidst the heaped, rusted wreckage of my inner fortress, those steely walls of my personal Jericho tumbling down around me as a dying little girl in a Christmas angel costume came along and ripped open the neat little lids to all of Pandora Brice's neat little boxes, unleashing all that I have tried so hard to dam up or deny within myself—anger, sorrow, guilt, shame, hatred, fear—leaving behind only the hope.

And as I look down at the candy cane clutched in my hand, the red candied threads winding around the stick of white peppermint a match to the angry red scrapes winding across my knuckles in sharp reminder of the tornadic fury fist-fight I had earlier with the cinderblock wall of the men's john at Rampart, I bitterly wonder if even the hope still remains to me.

Or really…

If it was ever there at all.

Because hope is a fragile thing, beating its feathered wings against the caged bars of your soul and like all fragile, feathered things, hope can die hard and it can die fast and it can die ugly, but it always dies in the end, no matter how desperately you try to cling to it, no matter how desperately you try to breathe life into it. Despite what the poets and the platitudes tell us, hope only springs eternal until that eternity dries up into a cracked scar of a riverbed, the earth taking back in slow revocation what she created in a heartbeat instant—hope is not meant to live forever…

Nothing ever is.

And nothing ever does.

Besides, is there ever truly any hope left to the drowning man—hope that he will be rescued from the dark suffocating waves he thrashes about in, hope that someone out there will grab his desperately flailing hand and pull him up out of his distress, hope that someone will hear his weakening cries for help and toss him a life-preserver to cling to just before he goes under for the very last time?

I suppose could test that idea out by screaming for help here, my mouth opened in a raging primeval howl that exorcises my demons and banishes the ghosts and empties my soul of all that choking, acrid blackness that burns within it, hot as the sun, hot as Hell, hot as the Devil himself—but I worry that if I do…

I may never stop.

Confession is good for the soul, after all.

Or so they say.

And there is plenty I could confess to, for I've committed sins as old as the Bible, sins as vibrant as the mark of Cain, but I'm not sure I would be willing to relax that tight-fisted control long enough to spill my secrets. Plus, I'm not sure which one of these five me who surround me I could trust to hear my cries for help and come to my aid without blabbing my secrets all over Los Angeles.

(who is going to save the nowhere man from drowning in his invisible ocean?)

Scanning the faces of my shiftmates, I quickly weigh each for the role of my personal confessor and just as quickly reject them for various reasons—Captain Stanley is out, for while he's a good man and a solid leader, as the commanding officer of Station 51, I know that if I went to him with my problems, he would be required by protocol to strongly suggest that I seek assistance from the departmental shrink. And the LAST thing I want is to have everything about me deeply psychoanalyzed by some grim-faced psychiatrist who will listen to me in the hour's time alloted to me, then he'll diagnose me with mommy issues and Freudian slips related to the phallic symbolism that is rampant in firefighting before sending me on my way with the admonition to return next week, maybe by THEN I'll be cured.

Engineer Mike Stoker is out as well—a quiet sort who isn't boisterous or noisy or whiningly annoying as Kelly or Gage can be, he seems to be trustworthy and not the type to spill confidences or secrets, but after spotting him reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I suspect he might be into that mystical self-help mumbo jumbo that is all the rage right now. And I really have no interest in learning how to balance my chakra or cleanse my aura via feng shui and use of the proper color palettes that "go" with my personality, nor am I interested in learning how to enjoy a healthier lifestyle via macrobiotic cooking and yoga.

Lineman Marco Lopez is friendly and affable, not to mention the station's best cook, and while he would likely to lend a listening ear, he's also deeply spiritual, so if I went to him with my problems, he'll probably recommend that I pray to God for guidance, then offer me some fantastic guacamole recipes as a way to take my mind off my issues. And I'm not religious, nor am I a fan of foods that are unnaturally green or avocado-y.

My partner here at 51's, Roy DeSoto, is out as well—it's not that Roy's not empathetic and caring because he truly is, but I got off on the wrong foot with him when I first substituted for John Gage after Gage was hit by the drunk driver, making the mistake of trying to force Roy to bend to my will as far as patient treatment protocols and department rules went. Ever since then, he and I have clashed over various protocols and procedures and methods of running committees, so we've never been able to treat one another with anything other than stiff-necked, polite dislike and diffident respect.

So that leaves Chet Kelly.

And the answer to that is NO.

NOPE.

NADA.

NO FUCKING WAY IN HELL!

Sure, I'm grateful to Chet for the save just moments ago as I was drowning in my thoughts, but he is THE last person I'd ever consider sharing secrets with because it'd be like telling them to Walter Winchell or Hedda Hopper and expecting them to keep it quiet. Plus, it'd be yet another thing he'd hold over my head, crowing gleefully as he cawed my secrets from station to station, for Chet's as bad as Bob Bellingham when it comes to gossip, the two of them worse than little old ladies telling tales and nattering about juicy secrets over a bridge game.

So while confession may be good for the soul, it won't be good for my sanity here at 51's, not to mention my reputation throughout the entire department. I must deal with my problems on my own, just as I've always done, and as I scour vigorously at my temples in an attempt to evict the USC-Trojan marching band that seems to have taken up clatteringly disharmonious residence within the tight confines of my skull, I fight to lock the monster back into the closet of my heart and shove the ghosts and guilts back into their boxes because damn it, I will NOT do this, I will NOT drown myself.

At least not here in the middle of this stationhouse kitchen where the only life-preservers I have to cling to are that silly piece of peppermint and myself.

Because I know neither can really save me, for there's not much a flimsy little piece of candy or the shoddy, shady façade of a man who is bitterly aware of what a sham he truly is can do in terms of rescue.

Besides, maybe I don't really deserve to be saved.

(because maybe)

Not tonight.

(I'm not)

Maybe not ever.

(worth it)

I risk a glance at the clock, knowing I need to go get my uniform changed because we're back in service and I don't want to roll on a call with a dirty uniform, so I detach myself from the others, aiming my body in the direction of the doorway leading out to the engine bay. But my feet drift across the dayroom instead, the chatter of my shiftmates soft waves lapping at my back as Henry glances up from his perennial perch on the burgundy leather sofa, the sad-eyed dog looking as depressed as I feel.

I find myself in front of the little four-foot artificial Christmas tree standing in the corner of the dayroom and I study it with a critical eye, hard-pressed to actually call the shabby thing a tree, for it looks less like a symbol of the holiday and more like a dehydrated tumbleweed someone has painted green and stuck atop a coat-rack. The anorexic branches are crammed haphazardly into a chipped, scarred, broomstick of a trunk, the fake pine needles fading with massive leprosy in several spots, falling out from apparent male-pattern baldness in others. There is a strand of multicolored twinkle lights blinking out an erratic S.O.S. in response to the grungy grey rope of mangy Kerlex that twists around the tree, either in an attempt to whimsically liven it up or happily strangle it to death, heroically putting it out of its artificial misery. Brightly painted tongue depressors and empty plastic bandage tape dispensers hang like weird fruit from some of the spindly branches, while EKG strips dangle curling from others and puffs of white cotton bandage batting clutter about like fuzzy snow, an homage to the black humor that graces the paramedic/firefighting profession.

Other more traditional Christmas-themed ornaments litter the branches as well, many of them evidently handmade by the children of the crewmen who work here, judging by the lopsided sled made of wooden popsicle sticks held together by an overabundance of Elmer's Glue; or the misshapen cotton-ball snowman who looks more like the Michelin Man instead of Frosty; or the brown-felt reindeer with one eye fixed on his bright red nose and the other eye staring lasciviously up the skirts of the trio of laminated caroling angels that hang above him, the angels innocently unaware of what he apparently plans to do to them with his antlers; or the oak-tag cut-out and crayon-colored image of a grinning red-suited man identified as "Satan Caws". Some decorations seem to be cast-offs from family collections or rescues from the trash bins behind the discount stores…cracked plastic Santas with chipped paint, wooden gingerbread men missing the buttons or beads that make up their decorations, bead-and-wire wreaths that are more rectangular than they are circular, ancient-looking candy canes that compete with space against gleaming glass orbs of various sizes and hues, some of the colors of the orbs fading away. A grimy yellow shock blanket serves as a skirt at the base of the tree, while upon the blanket are scattered a handful of empty boxes that have been gussied up with bright paper and ribbons to resemble gifts—I know the boxes are empty, for when I was alone in the dayroom earlier, I surreptitiously picked each one up and shook it out of foolish, child-like curiosity.

And any other time I'd be a little concerned about misusing a shock blanket for a tree skirt instead of its actual intended purpose of covering up patients, but right now I don't give a damn if they decorated the tree with splints and stethoscopes, hanging bags of Ringers and IV tubing from the branches—hell, they could even have the defibrillator and biophone wrapped in shiny red bows beneath the tree and I wouldn't care; not out of any kind of Christmas spirit warming my Grinchy little heart, but rather out of the fact that I am too bone weary and soul tired right now to give a flying fuck about anything, let alone that miserable little tree and all its accoutrements.

I catch sight of my reflection in one of the smooth silver balls dangling from a nearby branch and I frown—Christ, I look much like a grotesque Christmas ornament myself, my features comically misshapen in the funhouse mirror of the orb's distorting gleam, my uniform marred with blood that has dried in a stiff, purple splash across the blue cloth. As I scrub a hand down my face, my shrunken mirrored image does the same, an involuntary shudder coursing through the two of us at the faint coppery scent still lurking behind the sharper antiseptic smell of Rampart's hand soap. Lowering my hand, I stare at the maroon flakes that remain stubbornly embedded within the whorls of my fingerprints and my palms like bits of that glitter Chet dumped on me—it's not the first time I've had someone's blood upon my hands or uniform, for my experiences as a medic both in Vietnam and here at home have put me in various situations where I have been splashed with all sorts of bodily fluids, from blood to spit, to piss and shit and vomit, and even once what could best be called "liquified human" when a badly bloated, decomposing corpse literally exploded on us when we tried to pick it up. But usually it's the bloodstains that represent a hard-fought and sometimes barely won battle against Death.

Except this is no proud badge of gory glory that I wear tonight, a triumphant battle flag of victory to fly tattered and torn in the face of Death's defeat—no, this clings to me like a stinking miasma, tattooing my skin with an 'F' for 'failure' like Hester's scarlet letter, searing my heart and soul with the white-hot brand of shame…

Aye, the crimson stain of innocent blood upon pale guilty hands doesn't feel any better the second time around because it is no less damning, no less condemning than it was a decade ago—tonight it is a reminder of the child I nearly allowed to die, and ten years ago it was a reminder of a child I did let die.

Neither rests easy on my conscience.

My gaze floats upward to the angel perched atop the tree, her fragile body tilting precariously from the uneven peak, and I am struck by her exquisite, simple beauty. She has clearly been made by loving hands, her white satin dress sporting an embroidered design woven with tiny seed pearls and glittering sequins, her fluffy wings made from real feathers that wave and wisp along the currents of air, the gold wire halo wreathing her shining black curls trimmed with a matching thread of golden garland. Her pale bisque face is painted with rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes that peer daintily from beneath long lashes, while her lips turn upward in a Mona Lisa smile and her tiny hands are folded demurely before her in prayer. She is perfect in all her devotion, she is pretty in her purity, she is unbroken and whole and clean, a sanctified consecration of all that is meant to be holy, all that is meant to be right, all that is meant to be forgiving in this unsanctified, unjust, unforgiving world.

(and I hate her)

That anger that still flickers hot and vibrant beneath the surface of my skin snakes like sudden venom through my veins, my fingers closing tight around the candy cane still clutched in my palm. The cellophane crackles in sharp protest against my skin and I am pleased at the visceral sensation of the candy snapping into bits like shards of bone as I stare at the serene little angel who lords like a shining queen from the top of the tree—I hate her.

I fucking hate her.

I hate her because she represents a religiousness that I do not possess, I hate her because believing in her requires a leap of faith I cannot make, I hate her because her presence feels like a judgemental condemnation to me…

But most of all, I hate her because she offers lies that masquerade as truths, all wide-eyed innocence and ethereal goodness and pristine purity that is a grotesquely irreconcilable difference in comparison to the night's other little threadbare angel in her homemade costume, her oaktag wings torn and crushed, her coat-hanger halo bent, the gold garland ripped fluttering from it and drowning in the rain in the garbage can outside the hospital, her white nightgown staining with her own blood as she lay helpless and scared, as she lay dying in front of me, tainted by the black-smudged sin of the tragedy that has befallen her.

How unjust that is.

How unfair that is!

So I snatch the Christmas angel from her throne.

Sheer angry irrationality drives me to reach up and grab that beautiful seraphim from the treetop, the branches brushing a rough, prickly warning against my hand, the other ornaments clinking in tinkling complaint as I bump them in my quest to remove the angel from her throne. Her small body is surprisingly lightweight in my grasp, her white satin gown rustling stiffly against my fingers and her feathered wings pressed tight against the heat of my palm, her blue eyes gazing demurely up at me and her tiny lips still turned shyly upward in a smile that feels nothing like the vicious, cruel smile ghosting about my own lips…

(I want to destroy her!)

My grip tightens, taking as much pleasure at the feel of the excelsior stuffing of her bodice crunching brittlely beneath my unforgiving fingers as I did seconds ago over the candy cane breaking in my palm—goddamnit, I want to rip her to shreds with my bare hands, feeling that fragile body tear apart like it's nothing more than paper. I want to throw her to the fucking ground and stomp her smiling face into shattered bits beneath the heel of my blood-stained boot, fairly relishing her annihilation as I crush those perfect porcelain features into dust, rendering her just as forever damaged as that little girl in the hospital—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a broken angel for a broken angel—

And yet…

Yet she still smiles that all-knowing smile at me, her hands still folded in prayer for me, aware that I'm contemplating her demise, yet pre-emptively granting me total absolution for my actions because her faith gives her that power.

And I hate her even for that.

Because I don't want to be forgiven—not by her, not for the sin that desires her destruction, because if she forgives me for that, then she will have to forgive me for my other sins and I'm not ready for that kind of pardon for all that I've done in my life.

Irked by her presumptuous forgiveness, I run a thumb over the thread of gold garland adorning her halo, the gleaming wire circle yet another hangman's noose to tighten about my neck, then I draw my hand back, preparing to dash her to the ground and lay waste to her presence.

"She's pretty, isn't she?" a voice inquires softly at my side and startled, I turn to find Marco standing there, smiling down at the angel with pride shining bright in his dark eyes. "My sister, Rosalie, made her for us, she said we needed something beautiful to grace our otherwise ugly little tree."

And as I stare down at the small body lying limply in my hand, hot shame swiftly floods me for wanting to destroy that little Christmas angel, for her destruction would do nothing in terms of saving that child in the hospital and would only prove to my shiftmates that I truly am the cold-hearted bastard they think I am. "Yes," I admit, that single syllable admission agreeing with Marco as much as it hides how much I wanted to decimate that one piece of shining beauty that exists in an otherwise blandly decorated stationhouse.

He gently takes the angel from my grasp as if she's a precious relic—if he was aware of what I'd planned to do, he does not show it as he carefully places her back on her throne atop the tree, his fingers smoothing her skirt and fluffing her feathered wings back into place from where the warmth of my palm has flattened them. "I love Christmas, it's such a wonderful time of the year, don't you think?" he genially asks me over his shoulder.

I evade the query, a non-committal sound muttering from my throat as my shoulders rise in a listless shrug.

"What, don't you like the holidays, Brice?" he asks, resettling a couple of the ornaments I knocked askew when I bumped them getting the angel down.

I hesitate, for this is the first time I've covered a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day shift for anyone here at 51's and I'm not sure they know I don't recognize the holiday. "I'm afraid I don't observe Christmas," I reluctantly admit, for this is a conversation I never relish having with anyone.

Marco nods sagely. "Oh, you're Jewish, then?"

"No, I just don't celebrate Christmas, that's all." My voice sounds sharper than I intended, as brittle as the glass orbs on the tree, the words shattering shards sent flying across a room that has suddenly gone silent as everyone stares at me like I have magically sprouted antlers from my head and begun reciting the Gettysburg Address in pig latin.

"Why not?" Marco asks, frowning in consternation.

"It's…" My voice trails off as I struggle to decide which of my pat answers I should toss off as to why I dislike Christmas and all the jubilant joy that goes with it. I could cite my annoyance at the glittering decorations that seemingly go up in the stores right after Labor Day and at the tinny canned carols blaring from their speakers from November 1st until December 26th, and at the Salvation Army bell ringers that stand outside the stores, pleading for donations with peals of their bells and their sad, yearning eyes. I could cite irritation at all the various versions of Christmas carols the pop artists du jour sing that clutter up the radio airwaves, or the Christmas specials and "holiday" episodes that dominate the television airwaves, spreading their saccharinely sweet and heartwarming messages that love and faith can conquer all, if only one believes, oh gosh oh golly gee. I could cite disgust at the greedy consumerism and crass commercialism that runs rampant as shoppers clog the stores, bleating and shoving madly like crazed sheep as they mindlessly flock to spend their hard-earned money on cheaply made crap that will be broken and forgotten by New Year's Day. I could cite frustration at the expectation that I should be willing to suspend my imagination long enough to believe in elves and flying reindeer and a jolly old fat man in a red suit who flies all around the world to hand out gifts to deserving kiddies. I could cite indignation at the even worse expectation that I should be willing to suspend my imagination in order to believe in the cloying mysticism and devoutly pompous religiosity that encourages the masses to believe that a miracle was born eternities ago in a manger in Bethlehem—a man who was put on this earth solely to die for our sins, His death offering us complete absolution for all our trespasses we've committed, not to mention offering us eternal life, if only we believe in Him—the masses paying hypocritically pious lip service to that miraculous deity who largely gets ignored the other 363 days of the year, save for at Easter.

Of course, I pay my own hypocritical lip service to those excuses I capably cite, using them to shield the real reason why I hate the holiday so much and it has nothing to do with my Grinchy little heart disliking the Salvation Army bell ringers and the saccharine-sweet specials on tv and the magic of Santa Claus and the glittering decorations and the greedy consumerism and the religious mysticism. They just roll easier from my tongue and my heart, pretty packages of pretending and fakery wrapped up in gay ribbons of falsities and lies, and people seem willing to accept them because it's me that's offering them.

And I'm fine with that method of deception.

Because the honest truth as to why I refuse to celebrate Christmas is really nobody's business, for it has much darker roots that go far beyond a basic dislike of all things holiday-related, stretching back a decade ago to that rainy Christmas Eve so like this one when I tried to stop that other child from dying, his blood coating my fingers with sticky viscosity as I frantically fought to staunch the lava-flow of crimson erupting from the volcano that was his throat, my hands shaking and my tongue stuttering swiftly and madly over wild tangles of beseeching prayers as I pleaded with God to make the horror in front of my eyes not be true. Just like tonight with Angel, I was helpless, I was useless, I was fucking worthless as I watched his life quickly flee him in a single whispered exhalation of shock, dying before me in an eye-blink instant that shattered my own heart into a million little shards, for that boy—

He was my brother.

My brother.

I was fifteen and Donnie was only thirteen when he was accidentally shot and killed as he and I, along with our seventeen-year-old brother, Gary, argued over illicit possession of our father's pearl-handled Army Colt .45 automatic while our parents were out finishing up last-minute Christmas shopping. Donnie's tragic death devastated us, forever bleeding away all the bright color from the season and leaving behind only funeral blacks and mourning greys to wrap the holiday in, the joy silenced by silver sorrow and golden guilt and splashes of blood that were as red as the holly berries that glistened from the evergreen wreath hanging on the front door of our house. That Christmas Eve night, Mother and Father made Gary and I take down all the decorations from the pine tree we'd put up just a week prior and pack them away in their boxes in the attic, the two of us silently hauling the tree out into the backyard, the strands of silver tinsel that dripped from the branches and wept onto the snow that had started to fall matching the silver tears that slipped from our eyes and snaked down our cheeks. The gifts were all removed as well, ostensibly to be returned to the stores where they were purchased or given back to the people who'd gifted them, and the only two gifts Gary and I were allowed to open were the two presents Donnie had given us—little leather keyrings with our names carefully embossed on them that he'd made at sleepaway camp that summer prior to his death.

Such a bitter reminder of what we had lost, a bitter reminder of what we had done, the leather keytag the lash with which Gary and I have whipped ourselves with in the years since then, driving Gary into a nomadic lifestyle of drugs and drink and women, driving me into a lifestyle of obsessed rule-mongering and strict devotion to the regulations.

We never celebrated Christmas again as a family, unspoken recriminations and accusing eyes the blizzarding snow that blanketed us every time the season rolled around, and even a decade later, the holidays still hold no joy for me—it's the reason why I don't bother putting up a tree or decorating my apartment in any way; it's the reason why I don't send out holiday cards or exchange gifts or wish anyone a merry Christmas. It's the reason I don't go home to Marion, Iowa to visit my parents; it's the reason why I take on as much work as I possibly can over the holidays, throwing myself into my job so I don't have to think, I don't have to feel, don't have to remember my own damningly guilty role in my brother's death.

And it's the reason I stop living the day after Thanksgiving and don't start living againg until January 2nd—

It's the only way I can survive.

(if what the nowhere man does can be called survival)

Marco reaches out, touching me lightly on the shoulder, his face an etch of concern. "Brice, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost or something."

"I'm…" I say as I flinch away from the touch, distinctly aware of the five pairs of eyes that are staring at me with curiosity, with quiet expectation, with silent need for me to explain myself, and yet none of my lip-service excuses spring to my lips because they are caught clogged in my throat, for I HAVE seen a ghost—I've seen the ghosts of Christmases past, of bleeding brothers dying in front of me, accusing crimson oozing across the years to seep into my own blood, making me helpless, making me useless, making me fucking WORTHLESS as I watch Death snatch Life away in his spindly, bony hands that feel like they're wrapped around my own neck and—

oh god

icantbreathe

And as flop-sweat beads on my forehead and those emotions start tilt-a-whirling once more in my gut, Chet nudges Mike Stoker, nodding in my direction. "Christ, he's been actin' weird tonight," he whispers sotto-voce. "Didn't say a damn thing at all on the way back from Rampart and didja see the scrapes on the backs of his hands?"

stopitstopitstopitohgodstopitstopitstopit!

And then that drowning wave I've been trying to swim away from all night rises up in a roar from that white-tiled floor beneath my blood-stained boots and slams into me with a fury, the dark waters smothering me with their blackness, plugging up my ears and blinding my eyes and raging in my stomach, and—

icantbreathe!

imdying!

And suddenly I know I've got to get the hell out of that dayroom—I need to get away from that mangy little tree and that perfect gleaming angel and those five men who keep suffocating me with their fucking Christmas miracles and joyous saviors and heroes who are nothing more than broken bastards who can't even save themselves. "I've got to go grab something from my car," I manage to rattle out, my voice shaking as I shove that broken candy cane into the pocket of my blue twill jacket, jerking a thumb in the direction of the parking lot, that wave chasing me as my body swiftly follows my pointing digit. Five pairs of searchlight gazes trace my escape, Chet's derisive hoot of laughter pushing at my back and the startled snickers of the others pricking against my skin as I flee on the back of a hasty fabrication that is less of a white lie and more like sweet freedom, the siren-song sisters of silver grief and golden guilt and red-black shame whispering wantonly in my ear…

Come to us, we will love you, we will cherish you, we will make the nowhere man be someone somewhere someday somehow.

We will make the heartless tin man whole again.

We will make him feel again.

We will make him live again.

Even if living kills him.