An otherwise quiet evening

Our neighborhood is usually quiet, with only the occasional speeder zipping down the Church Street curve, hell-bent on hitting 50 mph before skidding to a stop a half a block away at Traverse Road. Wintertime is especially quiet. Now that spring has decided to stick around, open windows invite siren sounds in as ambulances hurry along Sunrise Drive to the new hospital.

This evening when I heard sirens several times--ambulance and police--I let the sounds in, then out, of my mind. What I didn't realize was that the last set of wails stopped next door, at Mary, Darrel, and my other brother Darrel's house.

Dad/Paco/Larry saw the ambulance and police car in their driveway, so we waited anxiously out on our front steps to find out who was in peril. It could have been Mary or Darrel, of course, or a visitor who had left a bike outside the house. As we sat there trying not to appear nosy, which we weren't (we were worried about our neighbors), EMT's went in and out of the house, taking objects out of the ambulance and putting them back shortly afterward. The bike owner soon rode off, and the police car eventually left (which was either a good sign or a bad sign).

Finally, all three EMT's came out of the house without a stretcher carrying either a live-but-ill or a dead Mary, Darrel, or my other brother Darrel. The jocularity exhibited by the EMT's led us to believe that M and D were upright and breathing, which Dad/Paco/Larry verified after a quick visit to see if they needed anything. Turns out Darrel had passed out for several minutes, a replay of a similar episode a year ago. Mary tried to cancel the ambulance call when Darrel came to, but apparently cancellation is against emergency protocol. Darrel is fine, Mary is fine, and neither of them have a brother named Darrel.

Facsimile of ambulance referenced in story