Free Orrie's Story by Thomas Berger

same garage, at auto repair.
    Not everybody for whom the lifesavers were summoned died. In fact death was far and away the exception. Occasionally the squad really saved someone’s life by its actions. At other times the men arrived to find their services unneeded—the subject was breathing again either by reason of God’s help or interim first-aid measures taken by nearby loved ones. And then false alarms, sounded by the panicky, were not unknown.
    Though having considered himself a friend of Augie Mencken’s, Terwillen had never been in his home before; in fact, though in such a small town everybody knew where everyone else lived in an approximate way, he could not have identified the particular house as being Augie’s, and the dispatcher (the police chief’s wife) had not got a name from the individual who called in. So Terwillen had no idea of the identity of the victim until, with the other fellows, helping to carry the heavy pulmotor, he climbed the front steps, crossed the porch, and entered the front hallway, there encountering an urgent Esther Mencken, in a garment that was dripping wet.
    â€œUpstairs, first door on the left,” said she to Mel Furman, the leader of the squad. “Bathroom, fan fell on his head, passed out in tub. We gave him artificial respiration, but I # think he was too far gone.”
    In the bathroom, the others got to the body before Terwillen did, and for a moment blocked his view of the head and trunk. He could see only the more pitiful half of the naked corpse, with the splayed feet and the skinny white shins and defenseless private parts.
    From the edge of the closet door hung the beribboned officer’s tunic. Protruding from the left chest pocket, erect against the decorations there, was the cigar he had given Augie not an hour earlier.
    â€œOh, no,” he said. “No . This can’t be. I just left him at the party.” The others were silently going about what was necessary to get the pulmotor going: that was their job, they were not licensed to certify death, they would try to revive the body while one of them, Red Mercer, ran downstairs to phone the doctor on call for such emergencies.
    Ordinarily Terwillen was capable of discharging his responsibilities, but he was useless at the moment, inconsolable, though he had not laid eyes on Augie nor heard from him in a personal way for four years. It was the injustice! To survive four years of combat unscathed, come back, and within hours drown in the quiet home tub, while family members waited unwittingly just outside the door.
    Terwillen could not endure the bathroom. He left and wandered distraught along the hallway, passing several rolls of toilet paper in a stack against the wall. Through the open doorway of one room he saw a young girl sitting on the edge of a bed, her face in her hands. He knew Augie had several children but would have recognized none by sight in the absence of a parent.
    He trudged to her. “Honey,” he said, and when she lowered her hands to look at him, eyes streaming, he began himself to weep, had to remove his glasses, which meant he was almost blind.
    He offered her his clean handkerchief, but she did not take it, so he finally brought it to his own tears. With the specs back in place, he could discern that, though so thin and pale, the reddened blue eyes providing the only color, her face showed a marked resemblance to her father’s. “Honey,” he asked, “what’s your name?”
    â€œEllie.”
    He sat down alongside her, the bed sagging, and put his arm around her narrow shoulders. “Ellie, honey, I’m Bob Terwillen. I was one of your dad’s closest friends.” Without warning, he was shaken by a profound sob and gripped her more tightly. “This is a terrible accident. He was just at a party we gave him at the restaurant, not an hour ago. Oh, it’s just awful. Oh, honey.”
    Ellie’s body stiffened in