almost apologetically and gets back into his car. As soon as I walk in, I see exactly where John fell. A body left untended for a few days leaves marks—if not indelible, then at least unmistakable. The floor is stained by the brown smudge of decomposition.
There’s a long list of the things John was. An unrepentant gunslinger who nearly shot himself twirling a .38. A practical joker who once convinced Ted Turner that he was the spokesman for a Native American group planning to protest Braves games. A recognized genius who abandoned his career at one of Atlanta’s most prestigious architectural firms to work in a hardware store. Now he’s dead. He hasn’t passed away or gone to a better place. He simply died in the basement. I wait for revulsion, tears, anything. But nothing comes. A year ago this would’ve been out of the question. Opening the windows, thumbing through his books, unloading his pistol—it would have been too much. A year ago I would’ve been outside in the car with my neighbor. Today it’s just another call.
Medicine’s great magic trick is how it convinces us we’re here saving lives when more often what we’re doing is witnessing death. Over time, shock wears thin, empathy recedes, and a human being becomes nothing more than something I carry home in the tread of my right boot. This is my new normal, the resting heart rate of my psyche. It’s my state of mind as I wonder whether this job’s worth it.
• • •
My needle stick happened the way they all do. I was distracted, looked away, let my focus drift, and—
“Shit.”
I looked down and saw a small hole in the ring finger of my right glove. I yanked it off, and there, below the middle knuckle, was a tiny pinprick. A red dot of blood.
“Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit.”
I staggered out of the ambulance. We had no hand sanitizer, only sterilizing wipes with a label that warned against using them on babies, food, and bare skin. I scrubbed my finger raw. At the hospital the nurses all looked at me sadly, apologetically. They’d talk to the patient, talk to the administration, gain access to her records, and get permission to test her.
“Test for what?”
“To see if she has, well, you know . . . AIDS.”
My knees wobbled.
One of the nurses pulled me aside, said she’d been there, knew what it felt like. “Of course,” she said, “my patient was an old woman. Thank God. I knew right away she didn’t have anything. But still . . .”
My boss was cavalier. He drove me to get my blood drawn, then dropped me off at the station so I could get my car. Someone else was already on my ambulance, already running my calls. By now, everyone knew why. I wasn’t even dead, and already my obituary had been written. My boss said he’d call me with updates on the patient: It turned out they couldn’t force her to submit to a blood test, she had to agree to one. If she didn’t, they could take her to court, but who knew how long that would take. Either way, I couldn’t work until my results came back. “Go home,” he said. “Relax, whatever.” I got out. He unrolled his window, leaned out. “If you bang your wife tonight? Make sure you double-bag it.”
Sabrina wanted to know who it was. What kind of person. I told her it was a twenty-two-year-old who lived in a project and was pregnant for the fifth time. Sabrina slumped onto the couch, half-mad, half-grief-stricken.
I’ve spent three long days waiting and the results are in. A receptionist calls me back. She leads me through the swinging double doors and into the main treatment center. We pass through a small clinic—me breathless, her shuffling along—and then through another set of doors, and everything goes quiet. This is an old wing of an old building, all but forgotten by everyone except those called back here to have their fortunes read. There are posters on the walls, PSAs about drugs and premarital sex, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases. My heart is pounding so hard that my gums start to tingle. I’m seeing spots, sweating, a little nauseous. The joints in my knees loosen, so I’m not walking as much as jangling, and right about then the floor drops out from under me. The receptionist speaks, but her words come from somewhere deep under the surface of a pool.
I’m sitting in a tiny office of Sheetrock