Overtaking

I’ve been to so many jobs with Ben that now I’m never sure if I am not running some together, taking details from one and putting them in another.

There was only ever one that he talked to me about in more than passing and I will remember it forever now.”

He lowered his head so it almost touched the lectern. He hoped he could do this, one last, tiny thing for such a friend. Andy closed his eyes and he was there, with Ben, and he could begin.

“It was a bad accident, out on the country roads and it had taken us time to get there. Ben jumped down from the cabin before I had even stopped the truck. There was a big sedan crumpled in against an earthen bank and I saw Ben climb in from the passenger side. I could hear quiet voices and then by the time I got to the driver’s door it was quiet and I could see Ben with his head right up against that of the young man. He worked so fast to get that young man out he barely needed me. The boy was big, muscular, I think he probably looked to Ben just like many of the men he spent his life with surfing or playing football, just like Ben himself. Ben stood in the back seat once we got the roof off, he pulled the boy up against his chest and then stepped out onto the road, and lowered the body down onto the cold tarmac like he was putting a sleeping child to bed. He was cradling the boy’s head as the ambo’s crowded around.

Ben was stooped down behind the car after the ambulance left, he was cupping water onto his face from a bottle and slicking down his hair. Ben never showed emotion, usually once we were done he would simply climb back in the truck, ready for whatever came next. But this time he seemed to need something, he stood with his hand on the steering wheel as if the young man was still there and then he just nodded and turned to me, told me he was going to go and see the driver from the other car. She was sitting on the back step of the last ambulance.

This was the sort of small country town where everyone knows everyone.

The boy’s mum was driving that car, the one he overtook on the bend.

The boy must have recognised her car at the last moment, as he came up behind her fast. Ben found his phone between his legs, half a text written. The woman had a blanket around her shoulders and I watched Ben hand her the phone and then she collapsed against him, she just seemed to disappear. Ben told me what the boy had said, how hard he had worked to make sure someone heard it before he went. Ben held that woman there and told her those things word for word; every now and again she would rock a little, collapse a little, and he would hold her just a little tighter.

Andy looked up at them as he gripped the lectern again, all those faces, waiting, silent. He was almost there, he was proud to think of that, but so desperately sad to be telling such a story at all.

“He spoke to me about that one boy and his mother whenever he questioned what it was we did. It stayed with him for a lot of reasons that I think are the things he hoped I could turn into words. He did a fantastic job, the young man died. He was always going to die. That’s not the point.

Ben saw there was only one thing that could be taken from such a terrible thing, only one thing left that wasn’t pain.

Ben was a dad. He had done things that hurt his own mum. It tore him to pieces thinking about what had happened there, but he knew he was the only one who could give that woman something from her boy.

But to do it Ben took strength from himself he would never have again, for that woman, for that boy. And I never really saw him believe in himself, ever again, after that. He pretended he did.

That was years ago. And every year since then, around the same time, Ben has met that woman for a coffee, just to make sure she knows someone remembers. I didn’t get the chance to speak to Ben about that before he went. I worry now she might think that that night has been forgotten.”

He looked over to the coffin then. Nodded slowly a couple of times.

He looked out to them again, found Sam.

“It summed things up for Ben, that job. A lot of the time there is almost nothing you can do. Life is life. His life was hard. Some things he couldn’t do anything about. Some he could have.

He was a great fireman, a great man to have on shift. I will miss him so much. As so many others will. I loved Ben, he would push me away for saying such a thing. But we all did. And we knew who he was, didn’t we? And we loved him.

He was willing to give up anything if he could just take the pain away from others in that moment and I’m so proud to think such a man wanted me speaking for him now.”

He turned to Michelle, and they came together and hugged for a long time.