30. Kennedy
CHAPTER 30
Kennedy
He has kind eyes that are bright green with blue in the middle; I can see his smile lines, which adds to the comfort he’s giving me as I am placed on the ambulance stretcher. His thick mustache is dark brown, and it looks like Mario from the Mario Bros. game I play at home.
I feel sad, but looking at his eyes, even for a moment, and feeling him squeeze me in a hug, and just the way he looks at me, makes me feel a little better in the mess of this accident.
He hurries off to see how he can help at the scene, but he keeps looking back at me. I can see he is confused with his feelings, trying to take care of the people in the accident, even checking my parents one more time, probably to know for sure there is nothing else that can be done.
Something about the man made me think he has a kind heart just from these little movements he makes around me. As much as this feels like I’m having a nightmare, I never look at this firefighter as anyone other than kind, even in all of the pain.
Much like the warm blanket he threw on me before he left me with the paramedics, his simple looks are calming me in a way I never expected, especially from someone who’s a stranger. But soon, everything comes rushing back to me, and my heart feels too heavy for my little mind to understand the pain I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.
The paramedics ask me a few more questions, trying to find out if I have family nearby. I tell them about my grandparents, but my mom and dad have the cell phone. “It’s only for emergencies,” they would say, even though they would sometimes let me play Snake when I got bored and they were working.
The lady calls over to the nice fireman and tells him to look for a phone. She doesn’t say his name, so I still don’t know who he is. He goes on his search, and I feel like my body is a statue, looking past him at the two lifeless bodies under the drapes. My mommy and daddy, not laughing or playing peek-a-boo, but simply there, without any kind words or ways to make me feel better.
The fireman comes back with a phone; the screen is cracked, and I can’t help but think that I will never play a game on it ever again. I will never hear my mommy laugh or my daddy try to talk in an English accent when he would read me stories. In that moment, that fireman gives the last piece of my parents that I’ll ever hold. Because now I’m alone, and all I want are their hugs and their laughter. All I want is to go back home and start the morning over again. I just want to go to sleep and wake up from this nightmare I’ve been dragged into.
The fireman stops to talk to the lady paramedic, telling her to watch over me. He says something to me about his kids being young like me and tells me about his favorite cartoon to watch with them. He tells me maybe the emergency room will have a cartoon playing when I get there, and that if it is the same one, he wants me to tell him all about it. He promises he will check on me later to see if I am doing okay with my grandparents once they meet me at the hospital.
Before I know it, I’m being rushed off in the back of the ambulance, and the lady sitting next to me with her clipboard is asking me more questions. Even though I don’t know him, the more she talks, the more I wish the fireman could be with me, asking me questions instead.
My head hurts, and my heart feels like it’s never going to be the same. The rest of the day feels like a horrible dream, and I want to see the fireman again. He never comes though. The world changes from the look on everyone’s face when I’m waiting for my grandma and grandpa. But I’ll always remember that fireman with his kind eyes. No matter what I do, I’ll always remember his eyes.
Numb. That’s the only word that comes to mind with how I’m feeling right now. That memory of the younger version of me in the firefighter’s arms is playing on repeat. The moment River’s mom flipped the page of that photo album, and I saw his face, it felt like the world around me disappeared. In previous photos, he looked so different with his hair and no facial hair. But the minute I saw that one picture, I knew who was staring back at me.
I’m hunched over, feeling violently ill and close to passing out. I look at River to find him stunned and somewhat confused. I can’t imagine what I’m saying to him makes much sense.
“What do you mean he pulled you out of the car that day?” he asks, his features hard to read.
“Exactly how it sounds, Riv. Your dad, the firefighter who got me out of the car after the accident and got me to safety, is the same man in those photos.”
I don’t really understand why I’m so uneasy with River right now. I mean, this doesn’t change my relationship with him in any way, but some part of me feels strange being the last person to see him instead of River himself. Like I got a piece of his dad right before he ran into that building and never came out alive.
River takes a few breaths and then goes to sit down, probably trying to digest what I just told him. He runs his hands through his hair a few times, a tell of his when he’s uncomfortable or thinking things through. I’ve noticed him do it often when he’s working something out, and hopefully, he doesn’t pull his hair out with how much he might be repeating my words through his head right now.
“Let me get this straight. The firefighter who saved you that day, who pulled you out of the car that your parents died in, is my dad?” He chokes up at the last part like it’s too much emotion for him to process.
I simply nod, trying to put the pieces together. There’s so much of that morning I’ve tried to forget, but his father is someone who was the only light on the darkest day I’ve lived through.
“He had kind eyes,” I can’t help but say out loud.
River moves to sit down and then looks up from the couch, and I see the comfort from my words enveloping him.
He nods, and a smile finally breaks the tension on his face. “Yeah, he did. He was always happy and everyone’s favorite person in the room. Even though Clay and I were young, I still remember the booming sound that would carry whenever he laughed. I remember my mom looking up at him and the pure love she had for the man, even years later. They were high school sweethearts. Did I ever tell you that?” River says, and I can see him being pulled into a distant thought, reminiscing about the father he lost years ago.
“Yeah, they met sophomore year in high school and started dating junior year after he spent twelve months badgering her to go out with him. She always tells the story like he finally wore her down, but I can tell she always liked him but just needed to play hard to get, even all these years later, and he’s not even here.”
He chuckles at his own words, and I feel like my heart is breaking all over again, knowing he lost his dad in a way so many others did that day.
“Can you tell me more about your interaction with him? I know it hurts, Kennedy, but it’s like I have been given this little extra moment to hear a story I never got to hear about a man I lost too early in life.” I can see the agony in his features. He knows how hard things are for me when it comes to recalling that horrible day in my life, but I know how much he needs this.
When I hear of people who lost loved ones on 9/11, many are saying how much they hope they know they were loved. Many will talk about their hopes that their person was happy doing what they loved. I think they just want to know that the person was at peace during such a horrible day. Add in the stories of people who missed a call from a loved one to only have a message on a machine that they play back over and over, recounting the love they shared in their message.
I take a seat next to River and pull his hand to rest in mine. “Of course I don’t mind.” I feel that lump in my throat try to form, but I push past it, knowing that we now share a moment we both wish would have turned out very differently.
“He was the only fireman I spoke to that day. He pulled me out of the car. He held me, and the moment I saw his eyes, I felt comforted. I felt like he could feel my pain. Now I wonder if it was sympathy knowing he had two little boys close to my age at home waiting for him. I can’t imagine scenes like those are easy on you all,” I say, knowing River lives a life that is very much parallel to his father’s.
He nods his head, not sure if he is in disbelief or in agreement with what I said.
“He didn’t say too much to me, but he made sure I was safe. He made sure I wasn’t left unattended and that someone would ensure my family came to get me at the hospital. Little did anyone know how chaotic that day would turn out to be for all of us, but in that moment, I felt cared for by someone who wasn’t a parent or relative, and that’s all because of your dad. He made me feel seen when all I felt was shattered.”
I let the tear escape my eye and fall down my cheek. The pain from that day still lives so close to the surface, and I can’t help how it takes over my body.
It’s then I realize I can show River one of the things I’ve kept from that day. “I need to go grab something. Give me one sec,” I say and scurry off to my room. I rush into my closet to find that one box I’ve carried with me since I moved out of my grandparent’s house years ago.
I find it at the top of my closet, and I pull the top off to reveal the contents from that life I’ve tried to leave behind.
I pull the item out and inspect it. I get up, about to step out and back into the living room, when I bump into a hard chest.
“What’s that?” River asks, and I should have known he was going to follow me here, curiosity getting the best of him.
I nudge my chin toward the bed, and he follows, both of us sitting side by side.
I put the old phone in his hand and let him inspect it. It’s no longer useful, obviously, but some weird side of me felt like I had to keep it. Like it was the last thing my parents touched before getting in the car that day. Like having this was at least a way to feel connected to them in some weird way.
“That is my parents’ phone your dad retrieved from the car that morning. I know it’s silly,” I say, feeling a little stupid that I care so much about a phone that will never work again.
Right then, River interrupts, “It’s not silly at all,” and I feel reassured by something in his tone that shows his appreciation more than anything else.
“Well, I find it comforting to touch things my parents touched,” I shuffle through the box I brought out from the closet and onto my lap, “like the car keys they carried with them and the note my mom had packed in my lunch that morning. This phone became a piece of their puzzle I couldn’t let go of. But now I think it can be a part of yours too.” I hear the shakiness in my voice as I show things to River, tossing the items onto the bed one by one, still unsure how he’s feeling about all this.
He stays silent for an uncomfortable amount of time. I don’t know what to make of it, and I’m starting to get restless. I fumble with a piece of plastic on the side of the box, then pick up the car keys and mess with the little baseball keychain my uncle had gifted my dad that last Christmas we were all together, unease lacing all my movements.
River clears his throat and keeps his eyes on the phone I handed him. His thumb keeps grazing the plastic, almost like he’s trying to feel his dad’s warmth from the gesture.
“I always wondered what his morning was like that day. My mom had talked to him that morning, and he even said it had been quiet on his shift. I remember my mom giving a little chuckle on the phone, telling him to keep from saying the dreaded word: bored. I still remember my mom sitting on the couch, hours later, clutching our cordless house phone, wishing things had stayed as boring as they had been when she had spoken to him earlier.”
“Was that the last time they spoke?”
“Yeah, I think so. Cell phones were nothing then as they are today. Even if he had his on him, it was sort of known to just use them for emergencies. So he didn’t call again. One of the guys from another company met up with my dad, and my dad had told him to give us a message that he loved us and that he’d always be with us. Luckily that firefighter happened to survive, and he was able to pass the message a few days later. Even though my mom had a premonition my dad had perished in the collapse, that message was almost like a confirmation because my dad would never have said that had he not known what was going to happen. I think deep down he knew he wasn’t coming home.”
Another tear falls down my face, and River has the strength to comfort me while he’s remembering his own father.
“I’ve always wondered where he went after that call with my mom. I wondered if he was at the firehouse that morning and saw the building on fire with the first plane and headed over. I never asked those who survived from the firehouse.”
He is speaking to me, but at the same time, it feels like he’s talking into the open space of the room. Like his thoughts are so jumbled that saying them out loud will make more sense.
I rub circles around his back, comforting him as he processes everything. The tables have turned from earlier when I felt paralyzed by the knowledge that River’s father is the same man who cared for me hours before his own passing. Now I’m the one allowing River to lean on me.
This all feels so heavy, and it’s hard to separate this emotion I’m feeling from the one he is most likely coming to terms with.
“I don’t know, Kennedy. I am in shock that all this time, right in front of me, I was so close by to someone who was one of the last to see my dad before he went into that building to never come out. After you told me your parents died on the same day as the tragedy that tore through every American, I felt a deeper connection to you, but this? I never, not in a million years, would think you got to see my dad that day.”
I push his hair away from his face, and we simply stare at one another. We share something unique, and even though his dad witnessed me on my worst day, there’s something about the fact that I got to meet him in some capacity that makes me feel like I’m linked to River in an unshakable way.
He puts the phone down and carefully places all the mementos back in the box and move it to the ground. He places his hands on my cheeks and glides them through my hair; instinctively, I close my eyes and lean into his touch.
“You were brought to me, Kennedy. I truly believe my dad is watching us, and he knows that I finally found what he had left for me before leaving me behind.” He drops small kisses along my face, catching the tears coming down.
“The way my heart has opened to you, Kennedy, is like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life. Thank you for sharing your day with me, even though it’s one filled with so much pain. I know what you and I experienced that day is in many ways different, with similar feelings attached to it. I don’t think we will ever walk a day in our future without that piece of our past latching on.”
I nod, now the tears are constant streams down my face. I hold his hands over my cheeks and allow this feeling to overtake me. My love for this man may have hit me out of nowhere, but the more time we spend together, the more I’m reminded how much our past intersected in ways we never expected.
The moment he brings his lips to my own, I realize I’ve stepped through the worst part of life just to lead me to him.