A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,10

snaps me out of my daze. I grab the syringe, pop off the top, and jab it into the man’s ass.

Then I back up. Pike and Wooten slowly untangle themselves and watch as the drugs work their magic. The man rolls onto his back, twitches, and starts snoring. Pike grabs the stretcher, and the three of us snatch him up and load him into the ambulance. Once the doors are closed, Pike and Wooten laugh and exchange the weary glance—part exasperation, part celebration—that always passes between partners after the dust settles and you find yourselves sweating and exhausted but alive and in one piece. Wooten takes out a pair of scissors and cuts off the guy’s pants. Pike and I set to work on tying restraints.

My crash course on tying someone’s hands and feet to a stretcher with soft restraints is contained in a single sentence: The legs should be spread wide and tied at the ankles; left arm is down at the side; right arm is up by the ear. Careful consideration should be given to the knot itself. Pike assumes I’m good with knots. That assumption is incorrect.

We’re only a few minutes down the road when our patient begins to stir. Sure, he’s been sedated, but there’s still all that cocaine. His eyes open. He twitches, jerks—a wild animal caught in a snare. He turns to me and shakes his head in fury, then flops back, sits up, kicks his legs, and blows out a lungful of hot anger. He pulls against the restraints. His right hand, the one Pike tied to the stretcher near his right ear, doesn’t budge. But the left hand? The one I tied? It’s already coming loose. He runs his fingers over the shoelace-style knot and smiles. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell through my rising panic. Either way, he yanks on the knot and his hand is free. Just like that, he’s up. Wooten throws a sheet over the patient’s face and holds him down. I reach for his free arm but miss. A paralyzing pain shoots through me.

Dude has grabbed my nuts.

I try to endure the pain, swat away his hand, and regain control of the situation. Instead I let out a scream that is terrified and desperate and too high-pitched to be mine. Pike stops the ambulance. He jumps in the back, and together he and Wooten properly restrain the patient. The transport continues, though I hardly notice. There is nothing but the pain, the echo of my long humiliating scream, and a quiet period of huddled convalescence.

At some point we drop the patient off, then run more calls. The day ends. I go home, and whatever I tell Sabrina or my classmates of that first day is edited for content. There are other ride-alongs, more classroom hours. There are other things I do right, other moments I live up to. But as always, lessons are drawn from mistakes, not victories.

So I learn that knots are knots, that patients will turn on you, and that what happens in the ambulance—well, it’s best that it stay there.

5

Failure Is an Option

Unlike the first four months, the second half of my EMT course speeds by. We attend class, do our ride-alongs, and work shifts at a local hospital. All this is background noise; nothing matters anymore except the impending doom of the National Registry exam. Alan devotes a chunk of every class to the exam—passing along his tips and warning us not to panic, not to let Registry become a huge stumbling block.

National Registry consists of two parts—the written and the practical—and sports a fail rate somewhere near 50 percent. Everyone is anxious. If I don’t pass, I can’t work. It’s that simple. If I choke, I’m just a paperboy who took an EMT course. Alan assures us that we can retest but only so many times—after that, it’s back to school. I silently voice to myself the things I must remember: Know the material, trust your instincts, avoid the fatal mistakes—scene safety, scene safety, scene safety. We study. We prepare. We wait.

Our course work ends in mid-December. After eight months, it’s strange to be set free from the three-nights-a-week mooring we’ve relied on for so long. School, even technical school, becomes an end in itself. On the last night we do a few scenarios, and then Alan asks if we have any final questions. Not one hand goes up. We’re simply ready to leave. After class I head to a Mexican