Sunnyvale Train Station

Below is the train station where Ky fell. The Sunnyvale CalTrain Station. You can see a train approaching, heading north. The same type train, going in the same direction, that Kyle and Laura rode from Santa Cruz. Above is the front car, with the type of ladder he climbed. The top window: that is where the engineer sat whom Ky was trying to get to stop the train, because he wanted to get back on to continue his ride home, with Laura.

On Sunday, on Ky's 23rd birthday, I went to the station with my friend Maggie and George, one of Ky's oldest and best friends. The trains are double decker and Laura and Ky rode on the top. When their train stopped in Sunnyvale, it was delayed because of a suicide further north but on the south bound side. An announcement said it wouldn't be leaving for 45 minutes. Ky left to get them food. Laura looked out the window and caught Kyle's eye. He did a little skanking dance. Her last sight of him was smiling and happy and dancing.

He walked to a nearby area where there were all kinds of food, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese. A really charming welcoming little street with cafe chairs in front of places, doors to bar type joints wide open.

At some point Kyle got the calls and texts from Laura. The train was ready to leave. Sooner than the 45 minutes promised. The detective said 20 minutes, the newspapers said 30. He left the restaurant without the food and ran.

Looking up at the train, George and Maggie and I could understand what Kyle was trying to do. The engineer in his little window was just out of reach to our tall guy. It would have seemed possible to get the driver's attention. If he'd just look down to the right he'd have seen Kyle waving. But he didn't and Kyle climbed up a step or two or more--I'm not sure--of the ladder on the front. At some point, Kyle would have realized the train was moving and he'd better get off. He tried to jump, I believe, and then fell, hitting the back right side of his head. From the height of the step and with his own 6 foot 8 inches, the impact was massive.

We could picture it and make sense of it. It was good to be with George, who has been so dear, keeping in touch and visiting me. George, who was the last friend to see Ky and say goodbye, having put Laura and Kyle on the train not an hour before. It wasn't supposed to be goodbye for long. Another concert was coming up.

Maggie had so thoughtfully brought flowers and petals and we scattered them. And we hugged and of course I cried.

I was glad I went to the train station. Glad I could begin to see through my own eyes what Ky was trying to do. Glad I could understand his last conscious minutes. Glad I saw the quaint sunny street of shops. Glad I could picture him dancing off to get him and his sweetheart some food. That's the best place to freeze the memory.

Mysterious Ways

Lovely Laura, Kyle's girlfriend, came over last night. She is doing beautifully, having just graduated from the University of San Francisco with a psychology major. She looked wonderful and healthy and was upbeat. It was so comforting to see her doing so well.

Laura had done a remarkably brave thing. She had taken the Caltrain again. THE train from near Santa Cruz headed north. THE train that had stopped for 45 minutes and then, while Kyle was going to fetch them Chinese food, started up again after only 20 to 30 minutes. The train he had tried to climb on. The train he had fallen from.

Laura had gone to the second story (I hadn't realized this was a double decker train) and taken a seat. She sat at the back, as close to the seat she had sat in on July 5th as she could tell. It was not easy.

Obviously, this would have been overwhelming for anyone who had lost her boyfriend in a train accident. But two more things happened to shake her up a bit. The seatback that she faced was covered in graffiti. Writing not that artistic, kind of like Kyle would have done if he'd taken to defacing backs of seats on trains. She looked around at the other seats. No other had writing of any kind.

The she found beneath her seat a bag containing Chinese food, left untouched by a previous passenger. She called her parents.

I'm not going so far as to say that Kyle finally delivered Laura the food he promised but left in a hurry. But hearing about the graffiti and the food did take my breath away.

One more reason I may have to start Atheists for an Afterlife.

Altered Mental State or This Grieving Thing is Relentless

The bill from the ambulance company arrived and it's adding to my distress. It's not the amount of the bill that's distressing. Although the amount would be distressing if I believed I was going to have to pay all of it. But, as you know, I have a great union job (Go UPTE) with great benefits, and Blue Cross has told me to tell American Medical Response to send the bill to them. So, right now, it's not the amount that is distressing. It's the other information I get from this document.

(1) It's got the date of service: 7/5/07. The date of the fall. The date of the call. The drive up north to Standford starts.
(2) It's got a notation: "CALL RCVD 19:08." That is 8 minutes after 7:00. Ky answered his last phone call at 7:01. The call that Laura made telling him to hurry because the train was starting up again.
(3) It's got the "Service from" 121 W. Evelyn Ave and "Service to" Stanford Medical Center. I googled the address and it was the Sunnyvale Caltrain Station address. The map says it was 11.9 miles and it would take 22 minutes. I remember the hospital said the ambulance took 12 minutes. So it flew at 60 miles an hour on this route.
(4) Then it's got this list of codes, descriptions, units, and charges per unit and total charges. Again, I'm not gonna freak out about the charges yet. But here is the relentless part; thinking about all the paramedics were trying to do and did in those 12 minutes:

The did ALS for for 14 miles. ALS is Advanced Life Support. They did a "major dressing" and they intubated him, and they did an EKG and they used a cervical collar on his neck, and they had two kinds of masks (big value mask and non-rebreather mask), and a defib pad, and a lidocaine drip, and 1000cc's of saline, and a blood glucose test, and a headbed immobilizer, and $89 worth of oxygen. Bless you paramedics, for all you tried to do.

(5) At the bottom, I see the word Diagnosis and the code: 78097. I recognize this is an ICD-9-CM code like in my DSM IV. And I know it should be written 780.97, but they usually leave out the periods in computerized forms. And I look up 780.97 and the diagnosis is simply:
Altered Mental State.

Ky was no longer Ky.