On Tuesday night, my RA organized a tea event. We gathered together in the lounge and each brought our favorite tea bags to share. My RA provided the water heaters and we all sat on the floor, kumbaya style. The tea was supposed to relax us and give us a chance to meet people. It was honestly too late in the school year, more than two weeks in for that. We all knew too much about each other after orientation week to want to try to reach out.
We sat in a circle, muttering about how college was supposed to be fun and that we already had way too much homework.
“My professor breezed through the syllabus in five minutes flat on the first day. Then he jumped into Game Theory,” Yina said.
“That’s nothing. I stayed up all last night to try to finish a project and then I slept through the class,” Yina’s friend said laughing.
A girl named Carol waved her arms about wildly. “The book is that big! And we have to read it in a week.”
Carol’s right arm collided with one of the hot water boilers, knocking it into Yina’s lap. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except the container’s lid popped off, pouring boiling water all over Yina’s thighs, arms and stomach. Yina screamed, the blood-curling nature of it, driving us all to cover our ears. I pulled the hot water boiler off of her. My RA lunged for her phone.
“I’ll call EMS,” she said.
I rubbed Yina’s back as she sobbed, sitting spread like a starfish, because it was probably less painful that way. As we sat there, waiting for EMS to arrive, I watched her skin turn red like a birthmark and then frost white with blisters.
Two people whom I had not met at any of the EMS events jogged into the room. “Who called for EMS?”
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Everyone pointed to Yina.
They cleared us out of the room, or at least away from Yina so they could figure out what was going on.
“Station from EMS, can you dispatch medics for an approximately 18 year old female with second degree, partial thickness burns?”
“Copy that, 21:34,” someone said back over the radio.
They began to wrap her arms in white gauze, covering white with white, like snow in the middle of winter. They coached her breathing and had her calm down, explaining that these burns would heal.
They were stone cold calm. Nothing seemed to phase them, not even when someone almost spilled tea on them as well. They were a well-oiled machine, handing each other equipment without speaking. I knew I should have been paying more attention to Yina, but all I could think about was how I should have been able to do what they were doing, to jump into action when someone needed me. I wouldn’t have known to wrap it in gauze. I probably would have given her an ice pack, which, when I looked it up later, is actually the worst thing you could possibly do.
They were so beautiful in an official way. Their shiny metal rank insignia shone in the dim light of the dorm room. Their crisp, pressed blue shirts folded in precise lines, making me wonder if there was a special class I could take to learn that. And their pants. While cargo pants are definitely out of style, these two made their tactical pants look like Britney Spear’s clothing choices were making a comeback. They had scissors and tape in their pockets, which they used to cut and attach the gauze to Yina’s burns. I have never wanted scissors in my pocket before then.
They walked her out of the building towards the ambulance. The rest of the floor cleared out of the common areas to do homework but I stayed by the window, watching them put Yina into the back of the city’s ambulance, keep her calm and close the door. They spoke to the EMS people that were driving the ambulance for a few minutes, handed off some documentation and walked away.
I felt hollow. In that moment, there had been so much adrenaline. But now, I felt like someone had scooped out my insides. I longed for something to fill the hole they had left. I wished that calling them back for my emotional needs felt legitimate.