Bound 1
Story Vignettes
Dawn
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more days to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
– Mary Balogh, A Summer to Remember
Dawn
Choice
As paramedics we’re taught that our safety comes first, then our partner’s, then the patient’s. But what do you do when you have two patients, both in critical condition, and one is a child—who we all tend to go the extra mile for whenever possible—and the other is your partner; not your work partner, but your life partner? That was the situation that fateful day in January when everything good in my life fell apart…
Dawn
Sealed
A week after the World Trade towers in New York fell to the ground on that brilliant September morning, I sat in a diner in Boston across from my good friend Abyan, who was also an imam. He was staring at his lunch with what I can only describe as disgust—only it wasn’t because of the food. “This is not who we are,” Abyan spat, pushing away his plate. “These attacks…they violate all Islamic law, all its teachings, its values…these terrorists insult Allah and bring shame upon our religion. I fear that Muslims around the world are now doomed to carry that shame.”
A few months later, I felt Abyan’s disgust, only it wasn’t about Islam; it was about my own tradition. In early 2002, the Boston Globe broke the now infamous story of rampant child sex abuse by Catholic priests and its cover-up by the church hierarchy…
Dawn
Grip
I chose Demon as my gang name—because I had no soul, and I wanted to torment. I had nothing. I was born dead.
When the MS-13 gang first found me, I was almost 16-years-old. My family lived in Honduras. My mother died having my sister (who miraculously survived) when I was seven. And my father died driving drunk when I was 13. My sister and I were put into different foster homes despite our pleas not to be. I didn’t see her much after that. Six months later I went to live with an uncle and aunt, and then a few months later with a different uncle and aunt, and then with some family friend. I bounced between all of them for a while. I was pretty much alone and vulnerable. That’s what they look for, the gangs—your weakness. So when they asked me to join, I did. I figured no one could get me if I was one of them. My initiation was to kill a boy...
Dawn
Life
You don’t remember the day you were born or the day you die. But you do remember the day or days when your innocence is shattered: April 4, 1945.
It was a sunny morning in Ohrdruf, Germany, and my battalion, the 89th Infantry Division, was on patrol. We had heard rumors of Nazi concentration camps, but at that point none had been found. —And then they were, by us.
The profundity of the moment was completely lost on me, in part because we had no prior idea the extent of the atrocities being inflicted, and in part because the mind simply can’t process all of the horror that was revealed as we made our way through the camp…