opens his mouth and shoots a geyser of dark brown blood straight up into the air.
I scream for help, but Jonathan keeps driving. There’s nothing to do but roll Mr. Perry onto his side and let him soak the cabinets, the equipment, the sheets, everything, with partially digested blood. A Stephen King novel has nothing on this. I am scared and furious, and even after we get to the hospital, I ignore Jonathan. When we’ve dropped the patient off, Jonathan shakes his head as he surveys the damage in the ambulance. “This is gonna be an expensive cleanup.”
Five minutes later, we’re standing behind FirstMed’s ramshackle offices, haggling for a better price. Jonathan has ten dollars in his hand. Richard, a local homeless guy, shakes his head.
“Come on,” Jonathan says. “It’s a pretty straightforward job. All I have is this ten-dollar bill.”
“That’s not a ten,” Richard says. “That’s a bunch of ones.”
“Ten ones. Same fucking thing.” Jonathan slaps the bills against his hand. “So?”
To my astonishment, Richard hops in and starts cleaning. Without so much as a pair of gloves. He hoses out the back, disinfects the ceiling, stretcher, and floor, then replaces all the dirtied items from the cabinets. Jonathan sits back, pointing out little gobs of blood Richard has left behind. “Missed a spot right there, man. No. There. Under the seat.”
When Richard’s done, he hops out, snatches the stack of ones, and shambles off. “Call me any time,” he yells as he disappears into the liquor store. “Any time.”
And none of this is an aberration. Everything I’ve seen since laying eyes on a FirstMed ambulance has been perfectly normal to everyone around me. Nobody finds it strange that I was hired without providing any proof that I’m an actual EMT. Though we are ostensibly an ambulance service, no one cares that people occasionally drink on the job. When I tell people about Jonathan’s stunt with Richard, everyone keeps waiting for the twist that justifies my revulsion. But no twist ever comes. The revulsion is mine alone.
The place is a misfit circus, a sort of way station for EMS cast-offs. It’s owned and operated by an incredibly kind couple about whom it is hard to say anything negative. At one time or another, nearly every medic and EMT in Atlanta has worked at FirstMed. Anyone in need of extra cash, who’s been fired, or who is fresh out of jail or rehab can walk through FirstMed’s squeaky front door and find a spot on an ambulance. Or a place to live.
I quickly learn that Richard isn’t merely one of the homeless men wandering the streets but that he lives, quite happily, in an abandoned tractor-trailer behind the FirstMed office. He runs an extension cord from the offices to the truck, which he uses to power a fan, a lamp, a hot plate, and a thirteen-inch black-and-white TV. Then you have Mike and Linda. Mike is a skinny white guy with stringy hair; Linda is a skinny black woman with stringy hair; neither looks even slightly trustworthy. Mike is an occasional crack addict who was fired for his addiction, and Linda is a dispatcher who was fired for being Mike’s dealer. In the span of a single week, each shows up—clean and sober—and is greeted with open arms. “Give it a month,” Jonathan whispers. “They’ll be back at it.”
One night a medic named Lyle—tall with a shaved head and the droopy-eyed look of a man who knows it’s his lot in life to be perpetually on the clock—disappears with an ambulance. Nobody notices he’s gone until the cops call to say they’ve caught him getting a ten-dollar blow job from a man wearing high heels. The manager bails him out but insists Lyle do the disinfecting himself.
Did I say the place is a circus?
• • •
Sabrina is standing at the open driver’s door, shaking her head. “I can’t drive an ambulance.”
Jonathan is undeterred. “Of course you can. Just put it in gear and drive.”
“No,” Sabrina says. “I mean I can’t. It’s illegal.”
“So?”
Sabrina looks at me. I tell her it’s a bad idea but not the worst idea. I’m wrong, of course, but if you spend enough time around lunatics, their normal slowly becomes your normal.
Two minutes later, we’re rumbling down the road. It’s a slow Saturday, and Sabrina thought she was just meeting us for lunch. Now this. It doesn’t seem so bad until Jonathan flips the sirens on. Sabrina’s head snaps over. “What are you doing?”
“Just drive.”
“I can’t. Not