Firelight

I was at work on May 31st when I got a text message:

our son is missing

we were at the park and he must have walked off

My response - What the fuck - does a good job conveying the kind of disbelief any parent would feel in this situation.

I kept my cool as much as I could, I’m in a room with patients, just doing my job. But, I could feel my heart speeding up.

He’s only six years old, so he probably just went to play with some other kids, or went down into the creek to play. This is going to be ok. Most kids are just around the corner, where they can’t be seen. My wife can handle this, she will find him.

our daughter says he left with someone

He’s gone. He’s dead. I know it. Being calm is no longer an option. There is a bottomless chasm where my chest used to be. With each breath my chest echoes inward towards this bottomless pit. The razor slit light through the blinds freezes the room in place. Time stops.

I once donated blood - they told me to keep squeezing my hand, so I did. It was going quickly. I looked down at the bag. It seemed almost full, only 90 seconds have passed since they put the needle in. I kept squeezing, Is donating a whole unit of blood supposed to take two minutes? I started feeling cold, I felt my chest sink into the chair, sweat bloomed on the inside of my skin, primed, ready to come out. Something isn’t right. Sounds started to echo, I’m at the end of a hallway. I look around, something isn’t right. The colors are all dull. I feel like something is missing. Everyone’s staring at me. I feel alone. So alone. I’m sinking into a cold soup of desperate isolation.

The ink dark desperation of impending doom - the feeling of bleeding to death, enshrouds me. It pulls me down as a blinding white rage stretches me up out of my chair. Time pulls like taffy with me. I’m still in my chair yet I’m running now. “I need to leave. I NEED TO LEAVE NOW.” I blow past my coworker and race down the hallway. Space and time are arcing around me as my heart is pulled lower and lower toward the deep. I can see his dead body now in my head. It hurts. I want him back. Just one more minute, one more joke. One more hug. I don’t want him to be scared. I race through the locked doors, my badge, my keys, each action full and precise, this is the moment to seize control.

“My son is gone. He was at the park. My wife said my daughter thinks he left with someone.”

“Go John. Go find him.”

Don’t run. It only encourages the panic. It feeds the tumor that eats what little sanity is left. Don’t panic - but those words aren’t working. I’m working my way towards my car through the construction in the hospital. I am alone in a hellscape maze. My heart beats: lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub lub-… I see myself frozen in time, standing in the hallway between elevator banks, I look so small. Somehow I can see a birds eye view of myself in this hospital hallway. A hundred feet down, no ceilings, nothing in the way.

When you try to light a fire with a firebow, or by rubbing the sticks together with your hands alone, you have to keep the pressure going. You have to constantly work to keep the heat concentrated. You have to fight without stopping. If you give up for one moment, all the heat is gone, it dissipates and spreads outwards like the lifeblood oozing out as you sink into the darkness. If my son is dead the heat, the light, it all dissipates out into nothing.

I get in my car. Seconds at a stoplight are unbearable. The minutes are hours and days. The world is a paper diorama. I’m at a stop sign on my way home. A text:

he was in the house

There’s ground underneath my feet now, it’s not solid ground, it’s a flimsy rope bridge between me and the bottomless abyss. And there I am rubbing two sticks together, brow furrowed, fuming with concentration, working to keep the heat from leaking out into the darkness.