(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Colors [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-06 It’s 1981. I’m a nursing student at LA County Medical Center, an 18-story concrete-grey monolith that squats atop a small brown hill that dominates the dusty East Los Angeles barrio called Boyle Heights. I’m sitting at a red light waiting for it to change green, the only car at an empty, trash-strewn intersection on a beautiful spring morning. That special Southern California sunshine bathes everything in a hazy, lazy yellow glow. The hospital, a few blocks behind me, fills most of my rearview mirror. There’s some nice music playing on the radio. Not much traffic. Just enjoying a day off, heading down to the grocery store to do some shopping. A maroon sedan is approaching the intersection from my left, but my attention is drawn to movement out my passenger window…. A light-blue lowrider approaching from the right…. Coming in fast…. Oh, man, he is really moving…. The maroon sedan is passing directly in front of me now, but I’m focused on the light-blue lowrider… and… Oh no… NO, NO, NO…. He’s TURNING??! And time slams into slow motion. A few feet in front of me the hood of the light-blue lowrider begins to push its way agonizingly into the side of the maroon sedan until the maroon sedan’s body starts to bend in half and I can see each new wrinkle in the metal as it develops, maroon and light-blue steel pleating together, and clear glass and silver chrome and purple smoke and white steam and black plastic bits all swirling and twirling into a whirlwind of chaos in midair. The maroon sedan spins serenely down the street and the light-blue lowrider skids leisurely to a stop twenty feet beside me and the cloud of debris falls gently to the pavement and the driver’s door of the light-blue lowrider flies slowly open and a 20-year-old gang-banger wearing khaki pants and a white wife-beater shirt jumps out and because there’s no one else in the area, he looks straight at me and yells, “Hey man, get me and my two buddies to the hospital! We been shot!” But I’m stuck five seconds in the past. My white-knuckled hands strangle the steering wheel. I find myself staring out my window at a young man shouting at me. I look down and notice that the young man has a hole in the middle of his white wife-beater, and that a red stain is slowly spreading down the front. Awareness rattles through my body and suddenly I’m scrambling frantically at my car door, trying to figure out how the fucking door handle works, and I’m yelling back at the gang-banger in the red-staining wife-beater, “Are you OK?!” and he’s yelling back at me, “Yeah I’m OK, but my two homies aren’t doing so good!” and I’m yelling back at him to sit down and put pressure on the hole in the middle of his chest and I figure out how the fucking door handle works and I’m running to the side of the light blue lowrider and I’m tripping over broken car parts and slipping in puddles of oil and ripping my clothes and I lean against the side of the light-blue lowrider and I look inside …. And it’s almost beautiful. A sparkly patina covers everything, billions of tiny shiny glass shards all refracting brilliant rainbow colors which dance and play in the sunlight. In the front seat, lying on his side, is a 14-year-old blue kid. In the back seat lies a 12-year-old pink kid. Neither one is moving. I look at the blue kid and I look back at the pink kid and I look back at the blue kid and I’m thinking, “Sorry blue kid, two of you, only one of me,” and I jump into the back seat and gently roll the pink kid onto his back and a handful of his brain glops out of the hole in the side of his head and plops onto the back seat beside me and I think “Oops, sorry pink kid,” and I jump into the front seat and I roll the blue kid onto his back and I can’t find a pulse and he’s not breathing and I can’t find any wounds and I start CPR and my hands and knees bloody from the rainbow shards of glass and gradually over the next five minutes as I wait for the ambulance to arrive the blue kid starts to turn pinkish with my compressions and mouth-to-mouth and I can hear the siren getting closer and closer and the paramedics finally get here and they scoop everyone into their neon-green rig and go careening wildly away toward the concrete-grey monolith behind me, red and white and blue lights flashing wildly around them as they disappear down the street. Then… just as suddenly… I’m slammed back into the slowness of real time… covered with bits of broken glass and blood and brains. And once again alone, standing in the middle of a dusty-brown, debris-strewn intersection in the middle of the East LA barrio called Boyle Heights, on a beautiful yellow-tinged Southern California spring morning. ————————————————————————————————————— It had been a drive-by shooting. Twelve gauge shotgun with #00 (double aught) buckshot. Nine little lead pellets, each the size of a green pea, traveling at 1500 feet per second. The 12-year-old pink kid had been playing in the street and had caught most of the blast with the left side of his head. The 14-year-old blue kid had seen it coming and was turning away, but one of the nine little pellets had found its way under his left armpit and traveled straight through his heart. And the 20-year-old gang-banger, the intended victim, got away with a single pellet lodged directly in the middle of his sternum. He was the only one who lived. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/6/2100604/-Colors Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/