I pray a day comes when they can tell me their names. I remember all their faces, but I've never been good with names.

You can't save everyone, and I know that. It's the nature of the job. You lose people.

But for some reason, when it happens, I always hear music. After the silence, that is. Someone dies in front of you, and there's a moment. In that moment, I hear music, but coming from inside me somehow. I can feel it. The music is, I guess, something like peace. Like weight being lifted. And honor? I'm privileged to have shared someone's last minutes with them. There's some shame there, too.

But it sounds like this music.

I'll be a fireman until I physically can't. Being called to help on the worst day of someone's life? It’s why I do it. But some days, I do it for a different reason.

I do it because I might get to hear it. This music.

Because maybe it means I might get to see them all again. I might get to know their names.

I’ve always liked sitcoms. It doesn’t matter what ridiculous antics the characters get into, by the time the credits roll, they learn from tragedies large or small. The world keeps turning. In the starch-pressed, neatly-packaged multiverse of Nick at Night, the dial always resets. No problem is permanent for Jessy, Joey, D.J., or Danny. They always make it back home, reflect, and hug it out. The House always stays Full. 

I lifted the plastic cereal bowl to slurp the luke-warm milk from my long-forgotten breakfast. I'm 20-minutes into the latest episode of my season-spanning Full House binge-watch. For the life of me, I couldn't remember how Joey was supposed to wind his way out of this particular self-inflicted predicament. 

Before I’d finished unceremoniously harvesting the emulsified sugar from the bottom of the bowl, my arm shot pain to my fingertips.