How to Save a Life

Anthem of the brokenhearted. I know how he feels. My broken heart is already pounding hard in anticipation of what’s to come.

Thanks for the heads-up, but it’s too late. The deed is done. It was done the day Riley ran into me. The day she saved my life. Because she saved me in every sense of the word. I was going through the motions before she crashed into me, barely living, barely surviving, waiting for the end to come.

The train stops and everyone pours out. I jog up the stairs. The wind cuts through me when I reach the top. You can see the 9/11 Memorial clearly from here and it makes me think about Riley’s father, everything she’s been through. Everything I put her through. I’ll gladly spend the rest of my life making it up to her if she’ll let me.

I was fourteen the day the towers came down. It was the summer I was diagnosed with cancer and whether you choose to see it as a stroke of luck or tragedy I wasn’t in the city that day. But I should have been. I should’ve been attending the private school only a few blocks from the World Trade Center. Instead I was in Boston, getting my first treatment, where I met a girl named Delainey Chen who would become my best friend.

I’ll always love Lainey. She gave a teenage boy with no hair and even less friends a reason to live. But that was a boy’s love, a selfish one, impulsive, desperate to be seen and heard. I haven’t been that boy in a long time.

For most of my adult life I thought I couldn’t let myself love again, to hope for a family, to build a life with someone. Fear held me back. Had me believing I was living on borrowed time, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Riley changed all of that.

The ferry is cold. Windy as hell. I flip up the collar of my coat, look ahead, to what awaits me on the other side if only she’ll have me. If the person of my heart and soul, my match in every way, can forgive me one more time. If she can give me one last chance to prove to her how much I love her.

“Hey, watch where the hell you’re going,” an old woman barks at me. It makes me laugh, reminding me of that fateful night at the restaurant.

I spent decades in a state of inertia. Not willing to go forward, but not ready to let go of the past. Riley didn’t save my life that night on Broome Street when she came onto the scene like my own personal Avenger, chewing gum and brandishing her stick. She saved my soul. Stole it for safe keeping. Because I sure didn’t have any use for it.

The ferry docks. I follow the crowd to the taxi stand, flag one down, and head to Riley’s place.

Riley

Moving day. Or D day. It depends on how you look at it. Whether you’re a glass half full or half empty person. I choose half full. I choose hope. I choose to fight. I may be battered and bruised but I will not let this world ruin me.

We’ll be spending Christmas next week in our new studio apartment. Mrs. Argento moved out last week. We closed escrow on this place last night. We even had a little bidding war going on. It’s not a total wash. I’ll be able to pay off what’s left of the mortgage on the other property and put the rest away for rent and other essentials until I can get another job. Right now I’m helping Dom out at the wood shop and it’s keeping us both busier than we thought it would.

“Did you pack the utensils, or do you want me to do it?” my mother asks.

She’s seeing a new doctor and they have a solid plan for tackling her health issue. So far, so good. She’s even applying for a permanent job. Fingers crossed because we need help with the bills.

“Here”––I hold out a mug she forgot in the kitchen cabinet––“you forgot this.”

It’s not just any mug. It’s my father’s old NYFD coffee mug so faded the enamel is half worn off on the handle.

“No, I didn’t,” she tells me with a sad resigned smile. This is a step in the right direction. It’s time. Every small step she takes to letting him go means she’s one step closer to living for herself again.

“Hey, mom…” She looks up from the box she’s taping shut. “Do you think it was worth it…Dad’s work?”

Her head tilts slightly to the side, eyes cast down thoughtfully. “He used to say to me…when I told him there was talk about the air quality being bad down there, at the World Trade Center…he used to say, ‘It’s not a job, babe, it’s a calling.’ I couldn’t have stopped him even if I wanted to. So it doesn’t matter whether I think it was worth it or not. Because he did. He loved his job, even knowing the risk.”