hustle the patient into the back and start driving. This man, it turns out, is lucky beyond measure. The bullet passed through his neck but left his airway and spine intact. He can breathe, he can move, he can talk.
Which is convenient, because the cops meet us at the hospital, and they have questions of their own. Mainly, why the guy who shot him never ran. The patient gives his side of the story—that he was the victim of an attempted robbery. The cops aren’t buying it. They ask why a man washing cars in a parking lot would rob a vagrant. And why would he call the police from his own phone and, more, why would he sit calmly on the bumper of his van and wait for the police to arrive?
“I’m the one who got shot!” our patient yells.
One of the cops takes out a pair of handcuffs. “Because you tried to rob him,” he says as he cuffs our patient to the bed.
“My word against his.”
The cop shakes his head. “The innocent don’t run.”
Marty and I walk outside. I’m shaking from the adrenaline, giddy from the weirdness. I look to see if Marty’s thinking the same thing, to see if he, too, is scared and excited and . . . He’s got his eyes closed, chin tucked in. A bird has flown low overhead.
• • •
Two shifts later and money is on the line.
“How much are we talking here?”
“To eat the entire bottle of mustard?”
“Yeah.”
“Ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars.”
“Yeah.”
“How long do I have?”
Marty thinks he can eat an entire bottle of mustard, start to finish, without stopping. He’s so confident that he thinks he can do it now, in the ambulance, while the city crumbles around us. I know he can’t, so I want to see him try.
“I think five minutes is fair,” I say.
“That doesn’t seem like much time. Gimme ten.”
“Ten dollars for one bottle of mustard in five minutes.”
“Fine.”
We drive to a Kroger, and Marty buys a bottle of store-brand stone-ground mustard. He gets a plastic spoon from the deli. We sit in the ambulance and he pours himself a big wobbly spoonful, begins to think this was a bad idea, and eats it. The mustard doesn’t go down well. He tries another spoonful, smaller than the first, with more reservation. He chokes it down, takes a deep breath, goes for a third. It gets stuck in his throat.
“Try it without the spoon. Maybe if you can’t see it, it won’t be so bad.”
He tips the bottle to his mouth. Squeezes. Tears run down his cheeks. He shakes his head like a dog that’s been dunked in a bath. Drops the bottle on the floor between his feet. “Uh-unh. Nope. Done. I’m done.”
I’m driving now, but I’m not watching the road. “You’re done?”
“Done.”
“Gimme ten bucks.”
“Pull over.”
“Huh?”
“Pull over.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna puke.”
I whip into a gas station. Marty jumps out and throws up in the parking lot. A homeless guy leans against the wall, washing with water from an old two-liter bottle. He stops and watches, his bathwater splashing onto the blacktop. Marty sees him, apologizes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m better now. I’m done. Sorry.”
The homeless guy resumes washing and Marty pitches forward, hurls again. The homeless guy, disgusted, grabs his stuff and shuffles away. Marty puts a hand up, tries to apologize, to explain, but he can’t stop puking.
And here, in the ambulance, I can’t stop laughing. Because he’s puking, yes. But also because he’s publicly and unabashedly making a fool of himself. Because he did something so stupid simply since he thought it’d be funny. I’m laughing because this, at last, is someone I can get along with.
“You okay, Marty?”
“Yup.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“That’s because I’m not.”
I tell him to take his time, get it all out, I’ll wait. As soon as I say this, the dispatcher’s voice rings out. “Two-ten,” she says over the radio.
I key up the mike. “Go ahead for two-ten.”
“I have a call for you.”
25
Dead Smurfs
Marty doesn’t know anything. Not about how much mustard he can eat and certainly not about this job. He’ll be the first to admit it. In fact, that was the first thing he admitted when we started working together. As a reminder, he’s saying it again now.
“Seriously.” He’s behind the wheel in his brand-new uniform and untied boots. We’ve been through this before, but evidently, we need to go through it again. “I don’t know anything.” He looks at me, serious but unshaken by the admission. “Not a thing.”
Marty’s