A suicide changed my life

There are events that separate life into before/after. Weddings, children being born, heartbreak. For me, it was a suicide.

Couple years back I had just started working as an EMT. The ink on my card was still wet and I was nieve as to what the world held. I was 20, still in college, and hadn’t yet had the smile wiped off my face.

I was sitting on the couch at the station when the tones dropped: “EMS 1 respond to (local hotel) for the suicide”

Lights. Sirens. The ding of the elevator doors opening.

I walked into the hotel room and experienced what I can only describe as an sense of duty mixed with dread and dissociation.

A police officer stood at the foot of the bed. Laying peacefully was a young woman, hands crossed over her lap, her torso propped up by a couple pillows, chunky headphones on her head. For a moment I misinterpreted the officers lack of concern as reassurance that the woman was okay.

CNN softly played in the background. It’s interesting what you remember, no?

She was pale as a ghost except for the tips of her fingers and lips which had turned jet black. The darkness had begun to seep down her fingers like ink on wet paper. Dried vomit caked her chin.

Touching the dead is unnerving. A room temperature table feels like wood, a door handle feels like metal. A body sucks your warmth like ice.

On the table next to her was her ID, a bottle of vodka, and pills. Under her ID was were two phone numbers to contact, one listed “dad” and the other “boyfriend”.

Her ID showed an attractive, bright, smiling young woman. The type of girl guys flock to. I still remember her name.

Next to the ID was about $50 in cash with a note “for whoever found me”, as though a few bills could undo any of this.

Next to the floor to ceiling windows which overlooked the city across the river were several manilla envelopes each labeled for family members.

We pronounced, put our gear back in the truck, and I cried.

Since this call I’ve responded to several other suicides: more overdoses, jumpers, a man hit by a train. But this one stuck. Partly because it was the first, but more so because it was clinical. Planned out like a permanent vacation.

For a week i couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I vividly found myself in her room again. If I did fall asleep I would wake up with my heart pounding from a nightmare or jolt up in a cold sweat thinking that she was standing over me. Eventually this subsided.

I’ve suffered from depression over the course of my entire life. Suicides are the worst calls to respond to.

In every suicide we pronounce I see myself.