Excerpt from Issue 305 (Autumn 2025)
"How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor" by Shelley Pacholok
Winner of the 2025 Creative Nonfiction Prize
I have survived a tornado and, as a sociologist, I studied disasters — wildfires, hurricanes, tornados. Now I live in a valley of fire, where wildfires burn hotter, more frequently, and destroy more homes and hectares of forest than ever before. Many days during fire season, usually May through September, smoky skies blanket the valley, plumes of smoke billowing over hills not far away. There is the deep roar of engines, as water bombers drag their bellies across the lake, and fire areas on the map grow each night.
What to do in the event of an Evacuation Alert
Don’t panic. You’re a disaster expert.
1. Make an emergency plan.
This is key for your safety and survival. A plan also makes you feel like a disaster can be mitigated and managed, perhaps prevented.
2. Pack a go-bag.
Clothing, toiletries, food and water. First aid kit, an extra pair of glasses or contact lenses, a flashlight and whistle are good too.
Medications. Don’t worry about this, you’re not on any medications. You’re in perfect health. Never been better.
Important documents and cherished mementos. Imagine what you’ll want if all of your possessions, except the contents of the bag, are reduced to ash.
Mementos
Ph.D. degree. Twelve years of university, six of those three time zones away from family and friends. Framed in ebonized wood, thick paper the colour of cream, university seal stamped in gold, bestowing upon the recipient the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, together with all the rights, privileges and honours pertaining thereto.
Irreplaceable photos
Annual triathlon race. You on your road bike, torso torpedo straight, forearms on the aerobars, race number 817 in black marker on your muscled calf. Trisuit sleek and shiny as an eel, mouth determined, a group of riders in pursuit.
3. Study documents prepared by emergency officials. Memorize your evacuation route.
4. Be ready to leave on short notice: fill up the car with gas; put the cat kennel by the back door.
5. Keep your phone fully charged and with you at all times. Check the wildfire app every fifteen minutes. When the wildfire map shows the red evacuation order areas growing ever closer to your home, trust the Incident Command Team — they’re experts in planning, logistics and safety.
6. Eat something comforting. You don’t know when the next good meal will be. Ask your husband to make the gnocchi dish you love. Set the table. Enjoy the pillowy potato clouds bathed in red sauce fragrant with basil.
7. If the whir of forestry helicopter propellers overhead makes you skittish, that’s normal. Relax, you’re prepared.
Open a nice bottle of wine. Wait.
If the alert turns into an Evacuation Order
You are at risk. Leave IMMEDIATELY.
Stay calm, you have a plan. Load everything into the car. Follow the escape route. It will bring you to safety.
Hope the worst doesn’t happen.
I thought I knew a lot about disasters.
Then, early one summer morning, I went for a bike ride and a hit-and-run left me roadside, bloodied and broken.
Suddenly, I knew nothing.
*
State of Emergency declared
Incident Command Team deployed: paramedics, emergency room personnel, plastic surgeon, dental surgeon, neurosurgeon, orthopaedic surgeon, opthamologist, intensive care doctors, nurses.
Team members on stand-by: physiatrist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, social worker, neuropsychologist.
Incident Report
File KG00451279
Trauma Resuscitation Record
Trauma Team called: 0725
Emergency department arrival: 0733
C-Spine: Clam shell, Straps, Hard collar. Trauma bay 3.
Peripheral IV line. Pre-foley rectal exam. Foley catheter inserted.
Glasgow coma scale 8/15.
Vocalization: None, purposeful murmur. Skin color: Pale.
0745: ECG
0750: CT scan — head
0755: CT scan — spine
0800: CT scan — chest
0805: CT scan — pelvis
0815: Fentanyl 50mcg IV
0820: Trauma surgeon in to assess
What to do in the event of a disaster you know nothing about
Don’t panic about panicking. Your brain checked out at the accident scene, along with the vehicle driver who entered your orbit. Emotions, if you have any, are currently indecipherable. There is no panic, only blackness.
You don’t know anything about traumatic brain injury. Never even heard of it. Later, you will learn that this malady occurs when a sudden, external, physical assault damages the brain.
You don’t yet know that it is one of the most common causes of disability and death in adults. Or that brain injury is a catastrophe like no other. This calamity doesn’t follow the rules. It’s defined by disorder and chaos, and unknown futures.
What you have no way of knowing: Your professor self died on the road that day.
— Shelley Pacholok’s current manuscript narrates a personal journey of brain injury. Her autoethnographic writing appears in Prairie Fire and the brain-injury anthology Impact. She was longlisted for the 2024 Upstart & Crow writer’s residency and was the second-place winner in the PRISM International Creative Non-Fiction Contest.
Read the rest of "How Not to Say Good-Bye to Your Professor" by Shelley Pacholok in Issue 305 (Autumn 2025). Order the issue now:
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