what the hell, dude?

i run a lot of calls. the city i work for can be so busy that many of these runs, even the more bizarre or tragic, seem to just leave me right after i turn in the paperwork. i suppose that this is a good thing as many of them really should be forgotten. but then there are the calls that just keep popping back into my head. which leads me to this little story...

when a police officer arrives on scene and someone is obviously dead, they need us to come out to their location and do what is called a 'field pronouncement.' we have the ecg monitor which will print out a strip showing that there is no longer any electrical activity in the heart.

one day a call gets dispatched: such and such address for the obvious doa. self-inflicted gunshot wound.

the call is in a very affluent neighborhood on a very famous street, kinda weird, but whatever. my partner and i walk up to the extremely nice and tidy apartment and see a distraught man sitting on the stoop crying with his head in his hands next to an officer who tells me, "he's over there in his bedroom." i cannot find the light switch in this dark bedroom, so the officer shines his mag-light over to the bed. in bed is a white, thirty year-old male, in good shape, with a glock semi-auto in his left hand and a gunshot wound to the left temple. his hollow eyes are open and are staring at his feet. in the wall, there's a bullet hole, which clearly outlines exactly how he held this gun to his head. out of his nostrils is dried blood. the sheets were once white.

i carefully place the monitor on his chest making sure not to jostle his left hand and get a strip to give to the medical examiner. i exit the bedroom and enter the livingroom. the television is on espn and there's a basketball game playing. normal. i go to the bathroom to see if this guy was taking any meds. no anti-depressants, no anti-anxiety pills... nothing. i enter the kitchen. it's spotless. there's a wine rack full of decent bottles, there's nice dry dishes in the rack. the fridge is full of food. i go to the kitchen table. there i find an easter card from his parents. i pick it up. it's sweet, "hope your day is wonderful. we miss you a ton. love, mom and dad." there's a brand-new glock pistol case with the instruction manual out and open. i mean, brand-new. not a scratch. on the table, a sealed envelope from the man in bed. "mom and dad," written with a blue ball-point pen. nope... not opening that... but i want to. i ask the crying guy on the stoop if anything had been going on, anything notable recently, any history of depression. teary, he says, "nothing. nothing that i knew about. i didn't hear from him for five days and i started tripping out because that's not like him. i called the cops and we found him like that." he was a mess.

"hey man... i had a friend who did this in high school," i said, "don't beat yourself up over this. there's nothing you could have done to change this. believe me... i know." i was there, once... almost twice.

what a weird call. i go on many suicide attempts, and have been on several successes. but this one... this one just didn't add up. not for a moment did i think that there was foul play, but i also was unable to really intuit a motivation. seemed like he had it pretty good. theories? did a girl break up with him? kinda doubt it... the letter would have been written to her... one last dig. financial ruin? on this street? in this apartment? nah... don't think so. was he gay? would his parents never accept him? nope. he was too old to care enough about that to off himself. he wasn't 17. who the hell knows? maybe i should have steamed open that letter.

suicide... c'mon people. give us all a fucking break.