wants to hear, but as I’ll learn, it’s not uncommon. For all the talk of heroes and sacrifice and selfless service, EMS is just another job. There are, to be sure, people among us who grew up wanting to save lives, but many more enter the profession as capriciously as we did. Disturbing as it may be, the raw truth is that often enough, the people showing up to your medical emergency do so because this was the only respectable job they could get with a GED and a clean driving record.
• • •
For the first few weeks, the mood is light, but eventually a disquieting reality takes hold. We’ll soon enter the world of EMS and be expected to perform in an environment of intense pressure. Some of us, owing to how the percentages inevitably work out, won’t live up to the moment. I’m suddenly no longer the only one with doubts. It’s clear in our faces, in the looks I get from other students—always accompanied by a nervous laugh—that say, Yeah, I heard the lecture and memorized the words, but will I remember them later, when I’m with a patient?
Me, I feel less sure of the answer every day.
Three nights a week I drive the forty minutes to class, sit at my little desk, open my book, and listen. The lectures veer wildly from topic to topic, and after a few months I feel no more prepared to handle emergencies than on my first night. The way I calm my nerves is to remind myself that this is a nationally recognized curriculum. If I study and memorize and pass, then when I get hired, I’ll be no worse than anyone else fresh out of school. I’ll be exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s this thought, this little cocoon of denial, that carries me through the self-doubt.
Then one night the cocoon bursts.
It happens during our first break. We stand, stretch, wander outside, and collect into little groups. My four friends and I are standing in the evening sun just beyond the door when Justin, the former ballplayer, says he has a friend in EMT school across town. They started a week after us, but they’re already doing scenarios. Every day. We all freeze. Scenarios are hypothetical emergency situations devised to put to practical use what we’ve learned in the classroom. Their purpose is to get us accustomed to bringing the knowledge in our heads down to our hands, which is the only place it matters. Because all of an EMT program’s students are untrained and inexperienced, scenarios are the key qualifying step.
Alan told us we’d be doing them at some point, but he never said when. I’m not sure we’ve learned enough practical information to devise scenarios, let alone work our way through them. We’ve discussed a lot of things in general but almost nothing specifically. There were the two weeks dedicated to anatomy and physiology, but they felt more like a dead sprint than anything else. We learned about kinematics—the study of how force acts on the body—as a means of anticipating the different injuries in someone who’s been hurt in a rollover versus a head-on collision. But what those injuries look like, how to spot them, and what to do about them, we haven’t gotten to any of it. That’s cause for concern.
It’s not that Alan is a poor instructor. He’s just easily distracted. Tucked away in our corner and whispering, we come to the conclusion that the problem isn’t Alan. It’s our classmates. The class has formed two cliques, the four of us and everyone else. Those not in our group seem more interested in smoke breaks and war stories than learning, and in our opinion, they’re holding us back. Not that our gang is necessarily any smarter. Hell, two days ago Alan pulled Randy aside and told him the only way he’d be allowed to finish the course was if he promised never to work in EMS. But we’re behind, and not only are those outside our group unconcerned, their grab-assing is part of the problem.
From that night on, every time the lecture strays from the practical, every time someone derails Alan with stupid questions, every time the class ends without the passing on of real and usable knowledge, the ticking clock that’s been present since day one gets louder and louder until it’s no longer a clock but a freight train, steel wheels screaming as it barrels down the tracks.
“I have a quick