Growing up

This morning while I was working, a rather shocking situation arose.  I had my head down, trying to wrestle a nail gun and its uncooperative hose into a tight space, and the rain was falling pretty steadily on me when suddenly I heard a loud crash from a house nearby.  My coworker, Drew, and I looked up immediately and then at one another.  I think carpenters everywhere know instinctively the sound of an aluminum ladder crashing to the ground.  We paused, hoping it was just a clumsy mistake.

Soon we heard a woman yelling her husband's name hysterically.  Drew dropped his toolbelt in a flash and was off through the woods.  I vaulted off the deck and did the same.  The man had fallen from his ladder onto his balcony, so we couldn't immediately get to him.  We told his wife we were there to help and listened to the 911 call from below.  Thankfully, as we were waiting for her to unlock the door, I heard him begin gasping for air.

Soon we were there with them.  Drew pulled the ladder off the poor guy and I knelt by his head to keep him still as he came to.  I trained for this sort of thing much of my early life, but that was years ago.  I was surprised that it came back so easily.  I sat by him and tried to keep the rain off him as he began to slowly realize what had happened.  I found myself talking to him and telling stories the same way I do when my kids need something to distract them.  After a few minutes, the paramedics arrived and my work was done.

I went inside, found his wife and told her where we were if she needed anything and that we would keep her in our prayers today.  I washed some blood from my hands, and we turned and walked out the door.  We tried our best to get back to work.

What shocks me in all of this is my own capability.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have any delusions that I saved someone's life or came swooping in to the rescue; far from it.  It's just that I have been in the past the type of person who finds myself paralyzed in moments like these--simply hoping that someone who knows how to handle things will show up and take care of it.  Today I realized that I am becoming one of those people.