The Pinning

"Still remember me?" a voice asks from my office doorway at the hospital.

The voice is a familiar one and makes me smile. It belongs to Brewer, "Brew" a former EMT trainee who had spent some time training with us while he worked toward getting his state license last winter. Brew is a big guy, a year older than me and his life's ambition is to become a fireman. When he rode with us he called us the "Brew Crew", had decent ability and a sincere eagerness to learn new things. Over time his timidness with patients wore off, he learned to hold his own with Chris and Ron when they harassed each other, and he studied like a demon asking me questions by the ton or to show things to him again and again until he "got" it.

"Got a sec?" he asks. "I have something I wanna shoot by you."

When I welcome him in Brew helps himself to coffee, plunks down, and fills me in on what's gone on in his world since I last saw him some months ago. He had indeed gotten his license and had gone into the Fire Academy from there and now he was about to be pinned as an official fireman and hired on by the city. This was no easy feat by any means considering how few jobs there were around here and how hot the competition was for those jobs. Brew had done it, he had finally attained his dream.

"Will you do the honors?" He asked me. "Would you do the official pinning? They asked us who had helped us the most to get to this point... and that would be you."

"Me?"

"You. The academy was a lot easier for me then getting my EMT was and I couldn't have gotten this job without that. It would mean a lot. You told me once you were proud of me and I have never forgotten it, especially if you knew how close I had come to giving up and quitting. You helped me the most of all so would you do the pinning? It would mean a lot"

So it was a great honor a week later when Brew walked across the stage downtown in front of his wife and daughter and allowed me to pin his hard-fought-for Fireman's badge on his new uniform and congratulate him on his new career. When I reached up and fastened that badge on him Brew was grinning like a cheshire cat, and I would have swore to the heavens a Superman cape was about to appear and he was going to fly a victory lap around the auditoreum. You cannot help but be awed when you see someone that happy, especially when you know how hard they worked to get there. Brew shared his moment in the sun with me, and it truely was an privilege and an honor for me and one I will always remember. To know I had that impact on him and his life... well it makes me want to bust out my own SuperWoman cape and do a victory lap of my own.

Congrats Brew, you earned it!