Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,43

I had to take off my shirt and sit in my sports bra while he practiced placing EKG pads in the right order on my chest. And all the while, the closeness of him would wake up all my senses like static electricity. The mouthwatering scent of his laundry detergent and his general manliness would waft past me in relentless waves.

In my real life, I never let anybody touch me.

But the station was different. I could—and would—withstand anything for the job. Even a beautiful man touching my body.

It was torture, but not the kind I would have expected. In general, I didn’t let people touch me because it stressed me out to be touched. But, for some reason, the rookie had the opposite effect. The more he touched me—moving my hair back to check my C-spine, sliding the stethoscope over my chest and back, wrapping my arm with the BP cuff—the more I wanted him to touch me.

Weird.

Maybe it was the frequency of it. The captain really did make us practice a lot. Maybe we crossed some basic barrier of familiarity I’d never gotten to with anyone else, where I could relax into it.

Because, relax I did. At a certain point, all he had to do was pull out the EKG kit and my body started tingling like I was sinking into a hot bath. Full-immersion anticipation.

It was funny, because I’d done these things with other people in other trainings and it had never, not once, been so, um … evocative.

I guess context really matters. My crazy crush tinged even the most pedestrian interaction—passing in the hallway, eating dinner, practicing a blood draw—with electricity. Plus, that was just an effect the rookie had on people: He put everyone at ease.

It was so good, it was bad. It was so wonderful, it was terrifying. It was so delicious, it was awful.

And it just kept getting better—and worse.

It stirred up something ancient and powerful inside me—some unfamiliar longing I had no idea how to handle. And I hated things I didn’t know how to handle.

But how I felt about any of it wasn’t relevant. The captain said to teach the rookie everything I knew? I taught him everything I knew. The captain said to spend hours letting the rookie put his hands all over me for the benefit of the fire service? I did it. Chain of command. No questions asked.

Whether or not the rookie was turning my body into a symphony of emotion was not relevant.

No matter what, I gave it my all. I showed him how to make an eye-wash out of a nasal cannula and an IV bag. I helped him practice his bowline knot and his clove hitch. I taught him to operate the handheld radio with his left hand so he could take notes at the same time. I taught him that if a patient’s wearing too much nail polish for the pulse oximeter, you can turn it sideways to get the read.

I also taught him not to look into his critical patients’ eyes. Pro tip.

“Why not?” he asked.

“It haunts you,” I said, shaking my head a little. “It just haunts you.”

“You mean, if they don’t survive.”

“Once I’ve left the hospital,” I said then, dead serious, “I always tell myself they survive.”

Other advice: Carry extra pens, because once a homeless guy covered in lice has used your pen to sign a waiver, you don’t exactly want it back. Never cut open a down coat with your trauma shears unless you want to be covered in feathers for the rest of the shift. And always cut pants off on the outside of the leg. A guy in Austin famously cut a patient’s pants off from the inside with a little too much enthusiasm—and he got called “the rabbi” for the rest of his career.

The rookie paid attention.

But not every part of the job came naturally to him.

I’ll give him this: He was one of the fittest guys on the crew, and he could lift anything. He was endlessly good-natured and very well-intentioned. He was decisive, and physically strong, and mentally committed. He was up for anything. And okay, fine. He was handsome, at least to me—though maybe that’s not a job requirement.

He also—with some frequency—fainted at the sight of blood.

The first time it happened—though certainly not the last—was the first time he started an IV on me.

The thing about blood is, you can’t overthink it. If you really focus on how odd it is to stick a metal