realized, oddly, not passing wasn’t a deal-breaker. Don simply nodded and talked about everything, everything, except the job. His love of sci-fi novels, his decade-old divorce to a woman he still lived with, and the recent household addition of his neighbor and her three young sons. When I finished filling out the application, he took the paper and tossed it atop a towering stack of folders and notebooks made more unstable by the occasional crumpled paperback.
“Welcome aboard,” Don said, making it clear that this single sheet of paper represented not only proof of my credentials but also a formal job offer and my acceptance thereof. Any questions?
Yes. In fact, I had tons. What job did I just accept, and when did it start? What did it pay? Was I supposed to wear something other than shorts and flip-flops? Don nodded and lit another cigarette. Some people loved this place, he said. There were employees who’d been there for a decade. Some didn’t last a week. He himself had been at FirstMed twenty years, during which time he’d been fired and rehired, by his own conservative estimate, thirty times. Hours were flexible; so was dress. “Something that looks legit” was all he said regarding uniform. FirstMed also had the contract for the Georgia Dome, which meant I could volunteer to work Falcons games and sit on the sidelines.
It all sounded good. Then, checking to see that the door was shut, Don told me not to listen to the rumors. The accusations of Medicare fraud were a line of shit. FirstMed had been investigated multiple times, he said proudly, and each time the investigators came up short of having enough evidence to prosecute. Maybe, I thought, this is my signal to run. Job interviews aren’t supposed to include assurances that your new employer, despite the rumors, despite nearly all the evidence, is not actively engaged in insurance fraud—as far as the government can prove.
But Don seemed nice, and I’d been offered a job. He asked if I could come in tomorrow. I said yes. What time should I show up?
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Eight?”
7
First Day
At ten minutes to eight, I yank open the door and step into a haze of smoke. Sherry—parked in the same spot as yesterday, probably smoking the same cigarette—nods. Without taking her eyes off the TV, she motions to a neatly stacked pile of equipment.
“You’re in 304,” she says, turning the TV up a notch. “Jonathan will be here eventually.”
I wander outside and look for 304, the ambulance that will carry me to my first patient, the ambulance in which I might actually save a life. In my mind, 304 is muscled and gleaming, smelling of disinfectant, a fully stocked diesel-powered extension of the modern emergency room. In reality, 304 is a piece of shit. It’s unwashed and dented to hell. The antenna’s broken, the tires are bald, and there’s a piece of cardboard taped to the back window that reads TAG APPLIED FOR. I toss in the gear and look around. The upholstery is torn and stained—stained? Stained. My mind quickly moves beyond 304’s aesthetics, its disrepair, its jagged corners—bristling with tetanus—to the terrifying reality that today I’m not here merely to watch and learn. I’m here to work. I look around, and it’s all so foreign—the wall-mounted suction unit, airway devices, bandaging supplies, long backboards, traction splints, and rubber bag for ventilating patients called a BVM—all of which I’ve been trained and signed off on but little of which I really know how to use. All the lessons from class—the acronyms, abbreviations, anecdotes, body parts—are running confused and frantic circles around my mind. I close my eyes, press my hands together, and say out loud, “Please God, let Jonathan know what he’s doing.”
On cue, the side door flings open and Jonathan jumps in.
“Morning. I’m—”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I freeze, hand extended and wavering in the air. Without looking at me, Jonathan tosses a bag on an empty shelf and drops into the captain’s chair. It’s then that I see the Bluetooth earpiece. Relieved, I wave. He doesn’t acknowledge me.
“Yeah. That’s what I told him,” he barks into the air. “I mean, seriously. This is what it’s come to? I gotta go to work and come home to my apartment, to accusations of fucking other guys? In our bed? And what did I do? I’ll tell you. Not a fucking thing. Keep this up, though? I’ll fuck every guy I see.”
Jonathan looks at me.
I blink away the sweat.
“I