....something nice happens.
Dinner at the fire station is always an event to be viewed as a sort of game. "What are we having tonight?" is how it starts.
"Oh I dunno. What's on sale?", they say.
"I haven't seen the paper because y'all took it into the restroom.", is my frustrated reply.
Someone goes and gets the ads (I won't touch the paper at that point. I have a germ phobia). "How 'bout chicken? We could stuff bacon in it."
"I don't want bacon." Now I am being ignored because we have entered the Bacon Discussion which I am always excluded from for protesting overmuch.
"Kim likes chicken and we could wrap it in bacon so she can peel it off. Do we have any Bac-O-Bits for the salad?"
This is the usual winnowing down of options. They always include bacon, though.
Last night however they said someone was coming with steaks for all of us. Huh... what did we do to deserve that? I wondered. Someone said, "I dunno. D-shift saved some guys wife or something and he brings each shift steaks from the Tavern each year." D-shift? But we are A-shift. I am always happy to eat some other shift's food but this seems like a bit of overkill.
The man arrives and he is a youngish man about 40-something with steaks, potatoes, and the fixings for all of us. I sat at the head of the table with Chief Kelley so we could continue bickering pleasantly about whatever the Discussion of the Day is but I was watching the guy out of the corner of my eye and the curiosity was killing me. After dinner I went and sat with him and some of the other guys migrated over. I finally asked him, "What is the story? Dinner was wonderful but I have to know what we did that was so outstanding to deserve this."
He is an insulin dependant diabetic and has been for several years. About four years ago he was at home early in the AM sleeping and his wife (a doctor at Scott and White) called 911 because he was having an alleged Grand Mal seizure. Paramedics arrived and he was severely hypoglycemic. They D50'd him up but in the grips of the seizure he dislocated his shoulder. HFD trundled him off to the hospital, routine stuff. We do it dozens of times a day.
I opened my mouth to say we D50 people like it was nothing and 9 out of 10 times we get complaints. After we get these people back to right, wander around a kitchen of varying degrees of cleanliness and make a sandwich out of what we can find (I have gone to a neighbors house to fix a sandwich before), watch them eat it, educate the incurious bystanders the best we can, we leave knowing that this is a problem we will usually be back to fix because of persistant ignorance, laziness, or the end effects of some longterm metobolic disorder. I kept my mouth shut, though.
Here is what floored me. He says he is so grateful for our service that every year he brings every shift steak dinner. He visits for awhile and repeats the process again the next year. He is a computer programmer. He has never desired to be a firefighter but just has a generous heart and shows it in his own outstanding way. Here is the rare shining gift we are being offered from a caring citizen that focused on the good we did for him and is giving a gift back in a way that comforts him and us both.
We chatted for about an hour and showed him pictures of fires we made, told him funny stories, we said he could not have a brownie under any circumstances, he shared with us and we invited him to come ride with us sometime. He was astounded. He said that would BE AWESOME!!! He wants to come soon and we will have to show him that we are grateful to him for showing us we are appreciated and we can live happy again for a few hours that we are indeed changing lives.
I hope he comes soon. For all our sakes. And with the steak fixings he brought... there was bacon. And it was good.
No comments:
Post a Comment