I CAN’T TAKE THE BONES ANY MORE

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Randy, an underprivileged young teenager, often stayed with Peter, his long-time Catholic “Big Brother,” and his family who lived in the house next door. Peter’s wife, Karen, had taught Randy in Far Rockaway before they moved to Freeport. Randy was a gentle, easy-going boy and played so nicely with Peter’s and Karen’s young daughter.

On a rainy Independence Day in 1995 – Sylvia, my 81-year-old mother, who was visiting from Florida, was first to the front door when there was a knock on the screen. When she yelled “Lloyd!” Vivien and I hurried to see Randy standing on our porch as if in shock, with blood gushing from his hand. He said he was at home by himself and there was an accident, which we later found was not the exactly the truth.

Even though Peter prohibited Randy from having guests over when he was by himself, Randy had been in the house trying to both tease and impress his two friends by waving a high-flaming Bic Lighter he had in one hand closer and closer to an M-80 he held in the other. (An M-80 is a waterproof, cylinder-shaped small explosive about 1½ inches long originally designed by the military as a gunfire simulator.) And then, the fuse got lit.

Randy tried dowsing the M-80 in the sink and then throwing it in the toilet bowl but the fuse didn’t extinguish. He was afraid of damaging the toilet, and when he reached in and pulled it out, it exploded in his hand. [My son recalled he heard it happened differently – that the young teenage girl had run into the bathroom but got stuck in Randy’s way as he tried without success to put out the fuse on the bathroom floor.]

My wife Vivien wrapped his hand in several towels and we left my mother at home while I rushed Randy and Vivien to the South Nassau Communities Hospital, where he was triaged in the ER. Then, she accompanied him in the ambulance to the Nassau County Medical Center, which was then the regional trauma center, while I drove home to look for and retrieve parts of his fingers. Perhaps because Randy was a black boy on public assistance, and he had no identification, the private SNCH wanted him shipped off to the public NCMC.

Meanwhile, our son Jonathan had arrived home. He and I went next door to scrape pieces of bone and flesh off the ceiling, the walls and the floor in our neighbor’s tiny bathroom, and then to tweezer them into plastic sandwich bags inside an ice-filled bag. But after we raced up the Meadowbrook Parkway to the emergency room at NCMC, we were told it was too late. There was already too much damage and the pieces we had brought were probably too degraded to be of any use.

Ultimately, Randy completely lost the index finger from his dominant hand, and had, from several other fingers, most of his skin completely torn off of the underlying tissue, down to the bone.

Peter, a lawyer, urged Randy’s mother to make a claim against his homeowner’s insurance, but an ambulance-chasing lawyer advised her to file a lawsuit. After a large settlement, and paying out his sizable fee, and after Social Services and Medicaid took back their years of payments, there was little left for Randy and his mother. And worse, she then had to re-apply for assistance.

Because it became a contentious legal issue, Randy never again had any contact with Peter and Karen and their warm, welcoming family.

It was such a waste, such a loss, and the bitter end of their ten-year relationship.

My mother was lucky to have never experienced anything so first-hand in her long life. The horribleness of that July 4 afternoon was zayn genug – enough.

Vivien, who accompanied Randy and stayed by his side at both hospitals, had – and still has – the patience and the soul of a saint. But one can never un-see or un-feel something as traumatizing as her hours spent with Randy. This is her artwork from that time.

Jonathan joked that working the crime scene was good experience for him. He and I often joke about things that are sometimes too awful to contemplate. Four months after this incident, he entered Suffolk County’s police academy. This October, he will have completed 25 years of service.

As for me, I’ve often thought about that afternoon and the impulsivity and stupidity of youngsters. And still, I can neither un-see it nor un-feel it. But what surprises me is that it has taken me almost 25 years to finally write about it.

Rev 9 / June 29, 2020

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June 29, 2020 … Copyright © 2020, Lloyd B. Abrams