by Courtney Pierce
Today I'm compelled to twist around this month's theme of "villains you love to hate." Instead, what about the thousands of real-life heroes I love who are being cast as villains?
One of those is a cops saved my life in 1969. Ever since then, the police have been elevated to a position of utmost respect in my eyes.
I spent
part of my youth living in the small fishing town of Cohasset, Massachusetts. I wasn’t one of those blue-blood kids from Boston who spent the summer in a palatial part-time home. They called
residents like me a “Townie,” kids who lived there all year round.
So what triggered my fifty-year respect-a-thon with law enforcement? When I was ten
years old, I got really sick . . . the emergency kind.
Back in the late sixties, Cohasset didn’t
have ambulance service. The police handled most situations; they saved accident victims, arrested
perpetrators, found stolen bikes, and retrieved pets that harassed the ducks in the town fountain. With no leash law in place, our German Shepard was a regular perpetrator. Her low-tide antics in the clam flats in Cohasset harbor became small town entertainment. A policeman would regularly pull into our driveway to eject our muddy dog from the cruiser. The reward was a quick cup of coffee and a generous slice of cinnamon streusel cake at our kitchen table.
My stay-at-home Mom never learned
to drive. My Dad worked in Boston during the week and came home on Friday night
for a weekend of grocery shopping and schlepping me to my music lessons at the
South Shore Conservatory of Music. My evenings were spent exploring on my bike,
dreaming of what the future held for me. Independence was mine with no phone,
Internet, and video games to eclipse my imagination. Given how safe our town
was, Mom was fine with letting both our dog and me run loose. She didn’t worry about my being kidnapped,
violated, or killed.
However, one weekday morning my gut started to hurt. Whoozy, I plopped myself on the couch for a quick shot of Bugs
Bunny. Daffy’s declaration of “Thuffering Thuccotash” echoed the pain and
nausea in my gut.
“Mom,” I called out, “my stomach hurts.”
“You probably ate something bad,” Mom said,
banging dishes in the kitchen. “It’ll run its course. You’d better get ready
for school.”
I moaned and shifted as my two-year-old
little sister fussed for attention. Cartoons ceased to be entertaining.
The pain soon became unbearable. “Mom! Help me!”
Mom's radar must've gone off, because she rushed to my side. Her eyes widened.
“We’ve got to go. Can you get up?”
I pulled myself upright with a
cry-out from the pain. Mom gathered my little sister in her arms, grabbed her purse, and we walked the quarter
mile to Dr. Seary’s office. Every step was a chore and my hair dampened with fevered sweat. Thankfully, our doctor practiced from a small house down
the street. When we
finally got there, Doc whisked me into his office. I felt weak as he helped me
to lay on the table and pressed my belly. He whispered something to his nurse.
She made a hasty exit.
Dr. Seary looked up at my mother. “Her appendix has ruptured. She needs to get to Mass General for surgery
as fast as possible. Leave the little one here. We’ll take care of her while we get you and Courtney to the hospital.”
Before I could take my next deep
breath, a police cruiser skidded on the gravel driveway in front of the office.
The back door opened and my mother slipped into the seat. Dr. Seary carried me
outside and handed me off to the policeman. I eyed the gun on his hip as his
strong arms carried me to cruiser. He gently laid me on the seat with my head
on my Mom’s lap. Mom stroked my wet hair as the engine revved and the siren erupted.
Sirens always made my blood race. This one blared for me, someone who wasn’t a
murderer or a thief. I faded in and out with thoughts about adding "saving kids" to the list of what the police do.
The morning commute traffic became
an obstacle course all the way to Boston. Cars parted as we maneuvered through the rush-hour clog entering Boston, the cruiser shifting lanes and racing on the shoulder. Beneath the siren, a babble of voices crackled on the radio
dispatch as we screeched through red lights. I was only half aware of what the policeman had to do for me to get to the hospital, but in my poisoned gut I knew I’d get there. I had trust, a kid’s blind trust.
About twenty minutes later, the
cruiser jerked to a stop. Strong arms lifted me. My limbs went
limp as the policeman rushed me into the emergency room. I was
giving up, a surrender of my life to God as I was raised to believe.
Awaiting
me were dozens of student interns, lined up at the door of the examination room, anxious to
experience their first peritonitis case. Press after painful press of my stomach resulted in my being whisked into surgery.
The
policeman caught up with the gurney on the sterile route. He'd waited just for me.
“You’re going to be okay, kiddo,” he
said and squeezed my hand. They were exactly the right words a hurtin’ kiddo
needed to hear before the medication took hold. Everything and everyone faded
away before I could respond.
I was allergic to antibiotics, which
made my situation dire. The day went on without me. It was well into the night
when my eyes finally opened after surgery. A group of Episcopal nuns stood by my bedside, their heads down in prayer, presumably giving
me my last rights. I thought it was silly, but I had no idea what had happened
in the adult world while I had been out. All
I knew was that I was alive and without pain.
It took a whole month for me to
recover. I spent the summer, and the next two, with the Sisters of St.
Margaret’s at their camp in Duxbury. I sang and sang, becoming the lead of Mary
Poppins in the camp musical. All my voice lessons led to roles in musicals
in high school. Hard work led to roles in operas when I was in college. Ten years later, I had earned
a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Voice at San Jose State University in
California.
I would never would have had a
28-year executive career in Broadway entertainment without the caring and commitment
of a lone policeman. Now at the age of sixty-one, connecting the dots of my
life is a humbling task.
I never again saw that policeman who saved my life, but my Mom and Dad did. The policeman's friends did. I’m sure his family
were awed at his heroic act when he finally got home that fateful night. He'd saved another kid.
All in a day’s work for a cop. To
me, it meant the rest of my life, allowing me to now have a paradise of a Montana
home, a wonderful husband who loves me endlessly, a loving family, and a satisfying existence as a writer.
Curious, I researched how many lives
were saved each year by the police. It’s an impossible statistic to get without a myriad of digging. Google was happy to give me the number of deaths—a mere 999 lives taken per year in the entire U.S.—but
the number of lives saved were sadly suppressed from the online search results. Positive images were also difficult to find.
After a deep
dive, I finally found the metric I was looking for: each policeman in the United
States saves an average of one life per month. When I multiplied the numbers, I was shocked that it equated to millions of lives saved each year across the country. The police rack up these numbers with CPR, talking people down from the ledge, rescuing the
abused, and stabilizing lives before the ambulance arrives.
In my case, I was a ten-year-old kid
with a heck-of-a bellyache, one that was well on its way to killing me. I would
never have been here to write this blog without a heck-of-a policeman who put his life on the line to save mine.
And I will be forever grateful I’m here because of him.
Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell,
Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton.
Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an
executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to
create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied
craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne
Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community,
Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and
on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a
member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Authors
of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library
Journal Self-E recommendation seal.
Print and E-books are available
through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.
Check out all of Courtney's
books:
New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney
Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected
romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is
like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."
Coming in 2021!
When Aubrey Cenderon moves to
Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country
becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured
grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again.
The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey
with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for
her too . . . for a different reason.
