I had no doubt that my parents would let me stay with them for as long as I needed. I just was not so sure what the reception from my mom would be like. It was just after 9:00PM when I came to a stop in front of their house. I reluctantly went and knocked on the door and suddenly felt very cold even though it was a warm night.
My dad opened the door and took one look at me before stepping aside and letting me in. He could always read his little girl like a book. The fact that I was crying and shivering just made it an easier book to read. He led me to the couch and sat me down just as my dog Jake came running up to me trying to crawl into my lap. The problem was he is far from a lap dog. He is a 90 pound German Sheppard.
"Was she killed?" My dad asked already knowing it had to do with Sara.
"No." I said between sops and groans as Jake was fidgeting in my lap. "She came back from Iraq just to kick me out of the house."
I strategically left out the sex part because what parent wants to hear about their kid having sex. Just like what kid wants to hear about their parents having sex. Hell I still believed in the Stork story. I was just starting to calm down a little when my mom came walking out of the bedroom and came to stand over me with her arms crossed. Clearly not happy that I was there. I did my best to ignore the irritated look on her face when I asked if I could stay for a while. Mom just snorted but dad said yes right away.
He told me to take my old room and I knew that I would need to sleep on the small couch in the room until we could get my bed out of storage. After my mom went off to bed my dad and I chatted for awhile about anything but Sara. He was telling me about some of the calls he had been on in the last few weeks. Being the only responding paramedic for a 50 mile area he got to see some really cool and really bad things. I had always thought about going into the EMS field but figured I would faint at the first sight of blood.
Finally I was pretty much over taken by the events of the day and headed to my room and flopped down on the small couch but had to make room for Jake seeing as he followed me. I curled around him and quickly fell asleep wondering how my life could get any shittier.
I brought it on myself and I knew it. Less than three weeks after I moved into my mom and dad's my mom was rushed to the hospital by ambulance for heart attack symptoms. It just happened that my dad was at the hospital dropping off a patient when my mom was brought in. I was riding in the front of the ambulance so I was right there and I thought my dad was going to faint right there in the middle of the Emergency Room. I think he knew all to well that not only his partner but every member of the hospital and EMS community would have heard about it before the day was up so he kept on his feet.
It took me half an hour to get him to calm down and leave the hospital staff alone to do their jobs. He was critiquing their jobs and he was bugging more than a few of them. Finally I got him to leave and head back to his station after promising to keep him updated. My mom was rather scared that she was having a heart attack even though the EKG machine was showing nothing out of the ordinary according to the Paramedics and Nurses that were looking after her. I just stood in the back of the room we were in and let everyone do their thing. I think they stuck her with about ten needles between drawing blood and other things. Mom looked like she was about to faint at any minute. I was not feeling all that well myself to tell the truth.