Hershal Glen French

this was a letter to help me deal with a situation that occurred yesterday.

14DEC05 2:00 p.m.

Dear Wesley David,
     I just wanted to communicate sensibly to you regarding the situation today at brother Stewart’s shop.
     Just a few minutes before the paramedics arrived Cindy sent me out to help with Frenchie.  The 911 operator had told her to send someone out there to keep the blood out of his airways.  I grabbed a roll of paper towels and rushed out there.  Oh, Wesley, I know you are used to seeing such things (since you are an EMT), but I am not!   I was HORRIFIED!
     I saw all that blood pooled around his head and caked in his nose, that large cut in his forehead, and I was horrified.  (And I don’t know for sure, but I think I saw his skull.)  It was truly one of the most horrific things I think I’ve ever seen.
     I knelt down beside him, and tore off a piece of paper towel.  I looked to see where I could help clear an airway.  I saw his tongue through his slightly open mouth and could hear his labored breathing.  His nose was clotted with two mounds of thick blood.  I thought I would start there.  I was trying to keep his nostrils clear, but all I was doing was blotting, blotting, BLOTTING blood.   Looking back now, the fact that fresh rivulets of blood kept flowing from his nose was probably a good sign, but at that moment, I was thinking, “He is STILL bleeding…more blood to add to the gallons of it here on the floor around me.”
    At one point, I remembered something I had heard on a radio program one dark night driving back from somewhere…so, I sucked it up, Wesley, and I reigned in the tears I’d been crying, and I lengthened the short breaths I’d been taking (quietly, I hoped) and I said, “Frenchie, the worst is over now.  Whatever needs to happen now will happen.  The worst is over now, Frenchie” and I kept blotting blood. 
    I never thought I’d be so happy to see paramedics in my lifetime.  I backed away from Frenchie,  trying to grab all those bloody paper towels, in order to get them out of y’all’s way.  I took the widest path around Frenchie that I could.  I just wanted those rushing paramedics to be able to help him as quickly as they could without me in the way.
     I never saw you, Wesley, until you walked in the office near the end of the whole ordeal.  But by then, I had spent 45 minutes pacing back and forth between the office and the warehouse…wondering and praying, wondering and praying.  Cindy asked me to answer phones so I tried to stay in the office as much as I could, but I was worried.  What I saw out there in the warehouse while kneeling next to Frenchie was bad, Wesley.  That forklift where Frenchie had been working before he fell…it looked so high; and the blood pooled around him looked like too much.  I couldn’t imagine how he could possibly survive all that!   I saw his skull!  It looked like the back of his head might have been crushed up, also.  When that paramedic named Dominguez came in to question Weldon and Steve about what happened, I became even more scared.   He said, “I saw a cane up there.  Does he usually use a cane?   Weldon answered, “Yes, but he was sitting.”  (I’m sure he expected Frenchie to be sitting all the way up there).  But Steve piped up, “No, he was standing.  He is so hardheaded.”
    Then Dominguez said, “You can’t allow this to happen again.  He is not hardheaded.  His head is all crushed up.    If he even makes it to surgery, he’ll be in there for a long time.”   And at that point, I thought the worst.
     By then, Cindy and I were rushing around the office trying to contact his two sons, one of whom doesn’t really care about his Daddy, and didn’t care that he had a head injury and was being rushed by helicopter to Brackenridge.
   It was utter chaos in there.  I was scared.  I was a mess inside.  I was trying very diligently not to break down in tears like I really wanted to do.  What I really wanted to do was hug my Mommy or my Daddy and feel safe.  I wanted to cry.  But I sat there in the chair dealing with it all.

And then you walked in.

Tall, trim, wearing a perfectly shiny, white shirt, and that clean-cut, boy-next-door hair cut.  There was a hero…someone who could save the day…someone who loves me and, under normal circumstances, would have gladly volunteered to fill in for parents and give that “cry ‘til you feel safe again” hug.  So, I, without thinking, went to get that hug.  I wasn’t thinking that it might not look professional.  I was only thinking, “Wesley is here. He loves me. He is my friend. He cares. His hug will heal this hurt I am feeling.”    And Wesley, I don’t know that I was fully aware of feeling those things. I just knew you could make things better because you were Wesley.

     I wrote these words in a stream of conscious several minutes shortly after you left.
I sorta felt that it might have seemed that I crossed barriers since I hugged you while you were at work…or at least that some, perhaps even you, might have thought so.
And, I just felt like I needed to let you know what I was thinking, and how I was feeling.  And even though I often tease you about being such a hottie, and flirt with you way too much, I want you to know that your importance to me is much more wholesome and much deeper than how you look.
   I love you, Wesley David Hopkins.  You are my friend.  You are my brother in Christ.  I believe in you.  I feel safe with you. I trust you. I look up to you. I adore you…and I’m glad to have a friend like you in my life.
   I just thought you should know it.

With so much affection that my heart is about to burst,

Loralee