Gretel.

Later, they would call him the Broken Man.

Found in inhuman angles next to the box truck.

He stood a little too close to the edge.

He was thrown a little too far.

His body in the air too long. 

Meeting the gravel, kissing the dirt. 

The end of his life, the beginning of a resuscitation.

But, he never stopped bleeding.

Heroic, desperate measures: aorta plugged, leg amputated.

Still, he wept crimson, from the wounds where his face used to be.

The blood soaked my socks. The sunset over his scalp bloomed purple.

Five hours of transfusing, of deliberating, of working, working, working.

Of not wanting to be the person who calls it.

Twelve people to transport him down the winding halls toward his last hope.

His scalp dripped in time with our footsteps.

We delivered him with a cooler of reds. With a prayer.  

Doors closed. I stood alone. Lost. 

But, on the floor, he had left his mark. 

That trail of blood through unfamiliar halls.

Drip, drip, drip. 

Like Gretel, searching for solace, I followed. My eyes hugging the lines of tile.

Trailing those little ruby gems through the corridors.

Until they abruptly stopped, with the swish of the mop.

I looked up. Our eyes met. Swish. 

As though to say that finally, for the Broken Man, it was over.