25 January, 2009. 9:23 AM.

Part 2 of 4

After Matt’s call last night, I decided to go to the Village to find him, figuring he would go to his home to sleep. I get there, and I’m having a nice conversation with his roommate when my phone goes off—Matt’s outside my room, wondering if I’m inside. The journey of the Magi, I suppose. Sort of…

I go back to my building, passing the same BranPo car for the second time and find him on the floor outside my room, slumped over, his bag beside him. He’s somewhat awake. I apologize and kneel down beside him, about to kiss him when he reminds me that I might not want to get too close. To hell with BSI. I kiss him, regardless.

We go into my room, where Dina is sleeping. Matt asks about the mango that he and I had been about to share when he was paged. I get that and my knife and we go into the hall, sitting on the carpet with a paper bowl to put the skin into. I start to peel the mango with the seatbelt cutting tool on my rescue tool—I haven’t made more than three cuts before I pull back, dropping the knife and exclaiming that I’ve cut myself. Matt groans, mumbling “You’re an idiot” repeatedly while opening his bag and pulling out a band-aid and handing it to me. I rinse of my bleeding index finger and put the band-aid on (too tight, as I later figured out, and he would mock me for).

He took over the mango-opening process, and we discovered that the mango was intensely unripe. Ah well, we proceeded. The CA from the 3A hall walked out of the girl’s bathroom and stopped, seeing me putting a band-aid on my finger, him kneeling on the carpet with his bag open. There were some confused questions, I said, “He’s my boyfriend and I’m a idiot,” she said something asking again if it was an emergency, and then after I tried to explain again that, yes, a BEMCo person is, no it’s not an emergency, she said something to the extent of “Sorry, I saw you with your life-bag and a thought something was wrong.”

She left, and Matt and I exchanged amused glances and a few wisecracks about the word “life-bag.” “Oh no,” he said after she had gone, “She knows what we keep in here now.”
Another couple passed later, asking what we were doing. I said, “Eating a mango” and proceeded to get a few more comments about how seeing Matt in uniform with the bag makes this apparently look like the scene of an emergency. Everyone should see State Your Emergency, simply so that they understand that if this had been a call, there would have been a) more blood, b) more people, c) more shiny lights, and d) he would have been wearing gloves, at the very least. Thank you, BSI.

We attempt to eat the mango and fail miserably—it is too unripe. We go inside, and I put him to bed on the couch, under the blanket that Taylor gave us for Christmas. I go get ready for bed, filling up a water bottle for Matt (who is supposed to be drinking 3 liters a day. That is a lot of clear liquid). I return no more than five minutes later and he is completely asleep. Not even me climbing into bed over him wakes him up.

I dream that night that I go to Mattapoisett to see him, and I’ve forgotten most of that dream. I woke up and fell back to sleep—dreamed that he came to visit me in Ashland. He was on call in Ashland, and while we were at church, he was paged, and called from the church phone (?) that he couldn’t make it, while a trailer ran over people’s cars in the parking lot.

I woke up, and he and I exchanged a few words, but he was mostly asleep. And then the pager goes off. The radio goes on, the blanket goes off, I curl up out of the way on the couch. He sounds confused—the call seems to be over. He asks me if I heard it go off before—I didn’t, although maybe in my dream—I didn’t know. He gets the call to go to the police station, leaving his gloves here. He’ll be back, and I’ll leave the door unlocked this time.