The patient is still screaming. My partner is waiting for direction, but not for long. If I don’t make a decision and set the chain of events into motion, she’ll begin to act on her own, and there’s no recovering from that. The call will be out of sequence, and worse, when it’s over, word will spread that I froze. To nut up, as they call it, is an act of paralysis, and it would leave an indelible black smudge on my reputation. No one would want to work with me, and those forced to would never trust me. All of this is in danger of happening, seems destined to happen, when—without warning, without provocation—the patient turns and runs. Disappears between two houses. I look at my partner, and she looks at me. Before either of us can say a word, a cop walks up behind us and says, “Did you see the tits on that broad?”
The day Chris passed down to me those three rules, he also gave me his clipboard. It’s the clipboard we carried with us on every call, through every house, every situation we went through. It was the dented reminder of the confidence I’d built and the experience I’d gained in our time together. After he gave it to me I turned it in my hands, felt its heft. I opened it and took out the patient pen. Chris yanked on the end, and it farted. We both laughed.
Months later, I’m laughing once again—this time with a cop I don’t know and at a patient who’s all mine. As we stand in the street watching the patient—shirtless, pendulous breasts swinging in the heat—run in and out of view, I add a fourth rule: Look for the weird and take time to laugh. My mind has been so crowded with the practicalities of medicine that I’ve forgotten why I’m here in the first place. And it’s this. So I can stand in the street and witness this moment. I smile. I laugh. My hands stop trembling. I motion for the cop to go one way around the house and for my partner to go the other. They flush her out, and I’m waiting. She’s still yelling, and it occurs to me that it’s not only unlikely but impossible to scream with your lungs punctured and filling with blood. This isn’t serious. We take her to the ambulance and away from the chaos. She stops yelling but keeps talking. Still alive, still panicking, still very high on crack.
We do a quick assessment, and it turns out she was only stabbed in the boob. Still, it looks nasty. The human body—hers, mine, everyone’s—is basically sausage. Puncture the skin, really puncture it, and fatty tissue explodes out like a pink mushroom cloud. It stays that way, wobbling like chewed bubble gum, until it’s stuffed back in and the hole is closed. It’s neither practical nor hygienic to do this in an ambulance. I would never get the wound clean enough and in the end she’d wind up with a big festering boob. Which really isn’t ideal. So I put a clean dressing on it while the cop tries to figure out what happened. The conversation loops around and around until it comes out that her boyfriend caught her smoking his crack, and well, the rest we know. The boyfriend’s name is Fat-Fat, and the victim doesn’t want to press charges. The cop hops out and closes the door. My partner puts the truck in gear, and we roll away.
When it’s all over, my partner and I laugh and then run more calls. She’s unaware how close I was to coming unglued, how close she was to issuing my death sentence by telling everyone that I’m no good.
• • •
It continues like this day after day, calls coming in and me on the very edge of panic. It’s only a matter of time before the Big One shows up. Every new medic knows his first real test is out there, so I wait—half dreading it, half breathless with anticipation. When other medics speak, I hang on every word, peppering them with questions. I try to be discreet, but my desperation shows. What did you do? How’d you know to do that? What were the signs? Had you seen someone catch on fire before, or was the treatment something you learned in school? I’m looking for answers or help or peace of mind—an indication that I’ll be able to handle the