Blue

I can still remember the squeaking of my dirty, old, worn out Keds on the pristine mint and white-checkered hallway, the far off screams of patients in pain, and the stench of blood and tears.  The funny thing about hospitals is that underneath one roof both immense joy and immense pain can be found; June 15^th 2013 the latter hit me like train. All throughout the day I had a knot in my stomach, some call it woman’s intuition, but I knew something bad was going to happen. I got out of bed, showered, dressed into my new white lace shorts and pink chevron chiffon top, and headed off to my first graduation party. The knot was still there. About 2 hours into the party my phone rang, and just as the conversation began to unravel, so did the knot, my friend Dustin Kruthaupt, a lifeguard at a neighborhood pool had been involved in a drowning accident and was being rushed to Memorial Herman hospital. I left the party rushing to pick up Hannah, my friend, and the girl Dustin had been seeing, 45 seconds from her house my phone rang again and my stomach plummeted. I knew, I knew instantaneously what I was about to be told: Dustin was gone. Walking into the warmth of Hannah’s home and having to watch her face transform from carefree happiness into contorted grief is something I’ll never forget. As we raced to the hospital we sat in silence, only the sound of our tears and labored breathing echoing throughout the car. As we arrived we were met with some of Dustin’s other friends, all crying, with the same hopeless look in their eyes. Walking down that hallway and seeing the disheveled gurney with the pale blue sheets made everything real. I suddenly because aware of just how loud my heart was beating and the pounding of my head from all the tears streaming down my face, and then I saw him. He was lying on the hospital bed, tracheal tube still in place, blue. Dustin was taken too soon, but as his mother said to me as I did my best to console her “God must have needed a very strong Angel”, and June 15^th 2013 he damn well got one.