The Firefly Field Theory

|15| Jerónimo: Part II

PART II:

The sharp siren echoes in my ears, it makes a superbly stimulating electric spark across my synapses setting my nerves ablaze. The agitated crowd’s attention diverts to the constantly intensifying sirens, of approaching ambulances. Along with the turning heads, all of us take a look back, and spot them hastily driving down the muddy path, rudely forcing the inhabitant mud to fly off the rash tires. I’m convinced that I was stupid to assume I would be needed. Here the catastrophe has been avoided by the efforts of a single man. And now that the ambulances are here, the disaster has got its fair share in coverage. What was I thinking? Showing up, in my father’s day to day life like this, thinking that he might need my help?

I hear the ambulances screech to a halt, doors slide open and I turn around to see men in white clothes quickly get out and walk up to the crowd of people, “Oh thank God!” Z mumbles. I want to take another look at dad, but just as I turn to the spot near the filthy slope where I last saw him hunched over the woman as she cried holding her child, he’s not there. Now it’s only the woman still gripping her boy, and dad is gone, “Where did he go?” I ask.

Bravo, standing with her shoulder touching mine, starts to look around. Then she points to something I can’t see, so I get on my tippy toes and even then in the shuffling herd of heads in my vision I don’t spot him. “Hey I think it’s over so if you want, you should go talk to him.” Out of the proverbial nowhere, Z presents the suggestion that legitimately makes me want to slap him across the face. “Where is he?” I ask like a dumb person.

Z being taller than me points over at one of the parked ambulances and says, “I think he went in that one.” Now of course I don’t know which one he is referring to, because I can’t see it and because I don’t want to see it, “You should go, it’s right over there.” He keeps stupidly talking and stupidly pointing so I begin to ignore him. I look away staring at the helplessly drenched boy gripping his mother right in front of the expanse of inundated and unwelcomed waters.

The mother keeps crying, like she seems to have trouble getting over the fact that her son is alive. I wonder, before the boy arose breaking free from the grasp of death completely drenched, did this woman shower him with the affection that she is showing now. Did she hold him that close to her heart when he hurt himself and kiss his little forehead before he went to bed like she keeps doing now.  Or was it the boy’s sheer proximity to eminent death that made him worthy of this special treatment. If I ask anyone from Bravo, Wall-e and Z; what makes us worthy of special treatment, I wonder what they would say.

Just my looking at the mother and her son, I’ve realized something, and I know what I’ll say to that question. Our worth maximizes when people see what we’ve been through. They come to respect us when we put on display the scars we have borne, and the pain we have endured.

“Sam, c’mon. This is your chance.” Z, apparently fails to take the signal. I’m not surprised. Maybe people, acknowledge the fact that we have not broken, we are still alive and that makes us shine in a new light. Bravo didn’t trust me or even give me the slightest ounce of respect, in fact her first action of kindness to me was after I narrated the head shaving incident. It was only after that she came to trust me, and tell me what she kept hidden. 

 “I’ll go later, he’s probably busy.” I mumble, still staring at the scene before me.

“No, he’s not. I think he’s staying back. The boats are here, and the other crew is gonna go collect the people on the roofs. You’re dad is getting first aid. Go, now.” He nudges me, I scowl without meaning to. I know he means good, but he doesn’t know how I feel about this. Bravo by luck sees  me scowling and chooses to intervene, “Z, don’t pressure her. She’ll go when she wants to.”