The Last Time I Saw L.E.

The last time I saw L.E., he was strapped to stretcher and was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. I must have been 7 or 8 at the time. He had shown up again after many years absence. We were sitting in the kitchen when something – happened. I’ve blocked exactly what it was, I can’t picture it, but I remember looking at him and knowing that something was very, very wrong. Later, I learned that he was going into a seizure, but all I knew at that moment was primal fear. My mother shouted at me to go out into the yard. She didn’t have to ask twice.

Someone (who could it have been, I wonder) called the neighbors to summon a nurse who happened to be visiting. I remember watching this grown woman running clumsily up the driveway. She disappeared into the house and I didn’t follow. Not long after, the ambulance arrived and the EMTs hustled inside. By then, everybody in the neighborhood was out in the street, watching, whispering. I was hiding in the bushes next to our driveway, simultaneously terrified and mortified. After what seemed like an eternity, the EMTs came out, carrying L.E. on a stretcher. He was not five feet from me as they loaded him into the back. He saw me cowering under the bush. Our eyes met. He smiled. I can’t remember if I smiled back.

That was the last time I ever saw him. His daughters eventually took responsibility for his care and got him hooked up with the V.A. He finally received disability benefits sometime in the 70s, 30 years after receiving the wound that changed his life.