This story was my entry in the Tracy Island Writers Forum's 2015 "Rescue Me" Challenge. Thank you to Jaimi-Sam for the suggestion she made that I took. :-)

PENANCE

Every time we go out on a call, we're rescuing our own mother.

I can see it in our father's eyes. I don't even know if he's aware of it. But I am.

As the oldest, it fell to me to be the one my brothers looked up to after we lost Mom. Dad retreated from us. From life. And I can't blame him, really. Now that I have my own beautiful wife, I understand what it would be like to suddenly, tragically lose the woman you love more than your own life.

Of course, you can't ever really understand unless you've been there.

But I do understand because I have been there.

I was nine when our mother died in the front seat of the family car, just as Alan was born. Just as I brought him into the world.

I'll never forget the look in Dad's eyes when he came tearing into the hospital. He was too late. Anyone who wasn't in the car when it went off the road was too late.

Flashes of Johnny bawling, of Virgil wide-eyed scared. Of Gordon wailing just because John was. Of Mom crying, begging me to take care of my brothers as she pushed the last one into the world.

I made her that promise, and it's a promise I've kept for forty years now. A promise I will continue keeping until it's my time to go.

Even at seventy-five years of age the loss of my mother is no less raw for my father. When the klaxon wails, I'm usually the first one to the lounge so I always see that particular look in his eyes that he manages to hide by the time the next one of us comes racing in.

Dad doesn't really run IR anymore; hasn't for a good twelve years now. But he still wants to be there as we're discussing the latest call. He wants to be there as we head off to our respective Thunderbirds.

He wants to be there to say good-bye because he wasn't for Mom. And in his mind, every single person we rescue is his penance for not being there to save her.

In spite of the physical toll it's starting to take on me at almost fifty years of age, I won't give up this job until I'm so incapacitated I can't move. Even then, Virgil jokes, I'll just get Brains to invent a way to lift me into my 'bird so I can fly anyway.

Why would I choose to continue to risk my neck, especially now that I have my own wife and children? Why would I choose to continue to supervise my brothers also risking their necks, in spite of them also all having wives and children?

Well, maybe it's like my brothers have always said: I'm just like Dad. In spite of the heck I give them for that kind of ribbing, there could be no greater compliment.

Maybe, in his eyes, we are always rescuing Mom. But I think, just maybe, every single time we get a call for help, we're rescuing someone else, too.

Our dad.