The Bridge

I never really wanted to write this book for two reasons. First, the supernatural event that I experienced as a young adult radically changed who I was, but I was afraid to share it for fear of what others would think. The second, I had to live for the next forty years before I realized why the supernatural event was part of my life in the first place. Looking back, I might not have been able to bear the emotional overload of dealing with the continuous tragedy working as a firefighter- paramedic, and witnessing some of the most horrific conditions imaginable, without the hope from my life-event so many years before. Working thirty-five years at some of the busiest firehouses in a large metropolitan city, I came to realize that my entire life had been far from normal. My coworkers would tell me that someone needs to write this stuff down; no one would ever believe it. My family would echo my coworkers' requests for me to pick up a pen, so I finally did. It took two years to produce a rough manuscript, not because I am so slow, which I can be, but because pulling up these stories deeply embedded in my brain meant reliving them. As I wrote the book, I periodically, inadvertently, shifted my writing style to present tense, as I found myself experiencing the events and emotions all over again. Therapy came in the retelling, as finally processing the suppressed memories brought peace. Now retired, I live in a modest house in the burbs with my wife and a yellow lab named Cooper. The transition from my former life is different--surreal, as if I now live in some kind of alternate reality. Sometimes when I am sleeping, I will hear the wailing of nighttime first-responder sirens responding to emergency calls. I pull my blanket up and go back to sleep.