A Thousand Naked Strangers (25 page)

We know nothing about this guy. Not what's going on, his meds, history, anything about his complaint, even his name. We know he was confused and now he isn't breathing.

“Get his meds, his wallet, whatever,” I shout at my partner. “Anything you can find.”

He returns with no meds, just a wallet and a checkbook.

“Son of a— Come on, man.”

I hand him the BVM and run to the kitchen, open the fridge, and find some half-empty insulin vials. In the bedroom I find a couple empty pill bottles, some discharge papers. I snatch
it all and we're out the door. I'm scared. Scared that he'll die and it'll be our fault. I'm nothing but a trembling wreck, face flushed, mouth dry, a set of wide, terrified eyes.

By sheer luck, his heart waits until we reach the ambulance to stop. For whatever reason, the fire department never shows up, so it's just us, struggling to catch up but never quite getting there. At the hospital, they pronounce him dead and that's that. Outside the ER, after it's over, I sit on a bench while my partner cleans the ambulance. This has all the earmarks of a patient who simply had the Big One; there was probably nothing we could have done about it. But the fact remains that I got lazy and indifferent and showed up unprepared. What if he'd died in his apartment? What if we'd needed our equipment but didn't have it because I'd left it fourteen floors below?

I spend a few days sitting around and wondering if this is my cue to leave—if I've turned, like two-day-old meat left out of the fridge, and if it's irreversible.
Is there time to salvage this thing?
I'm still thinking it over a few shifts later when, out of nowhere, someone steals my ambulance.

•  •  •

Really, it couldn't have come at a better time. People always say they're waiting for a sign, and here, in big bold letters, is mine. We're dispatched to a third-floor condo to see a patient with difficulty breathing. We grab the equipment but don't lock the ambulance doors, which may sound strange, but I've never heard of
anyone
locking the doors. Ever. So we go upstairs, begin treatment, load the patient onto the stretcher, and bring him down. We walk through the lobby, nod to the doorman, and get outside to find our ambulance gone. Really gone. Vanished.

“What the fuck . . .”

I stand on the curb, mouth open, lips slowly curling into a smile, while my partner runs up and down the block as if it'll be there, as if it hasn't been stolen but simply hidden. Even the patient knows it's gone. It's late—three in the morning—and here we are, two lonely medics pushing a stretcher down a dark street.

The phone picks up on the sixth ring. Across town, our supervisor is huddled in her office, feet up on the desk, phone cradled between her ear and shoulder. Her voice sounds groggy, like she's been asleep, like this is the last conversation she wants to have.

“You're not gonna believe this,” I say.

“Try me,” she says.

“My ambulance has been stolen.”

“Great.”

“I'm serious.”

“It's too late for this.”

“I know.”

“So quit fucking around.”

“I'm not.”

“You're not?”

“I'm not.”

Our supervisor shows up, the police show up. Another ambulance is dispatched to transport our patient. We're sent back to Grady to fill out departmental incident reports. My partner is panicking. I'm almost happy. I've wanted this to be over for so long.

A few hours later, while our fate is being mulled over, the police find our ambulance. It was driven across town and
abandoned in a vacant lot, keys in the ignition, gas in the tank. For some reason, before the thief left, he whipped out his dick and pissed all over the cab. He got the dash, the steering wheel, both seats, the radio. The absurdity never ends.

That morning I sleep better than I have in months. It's exhaustion, yes, but also the knowledge that it's over. Finally. The next night I shower, put on a fresh uniform, and show up at work to have my sentence read. But no one mentions the ambulance. Ever. Not the cops, not the supervisors, not the unlucky medic who had to mop up all the piss. Certainly not the guy who stole it. It's the crime that was never committed.

Imagine my disappointment.

A
fter my stolen ambulance has been found, after it's back on the road and no longer smells like urine, after I've endured the embarrassment of a local news cycle, I'm named an unofficial field training officer. Grady's turnover rate is enormous, worse than ever, and they can't keep people on the streets. Nor can they get new ones in fast enough. We're getting a dozen new hires a month, too many for the current FTOs to handle. They need more, but there's no time to go through the process—the applications, the testing, the interviews—so the existing FTOs get together and suggest a handful of experienced medics. People who've been around, who are good at their jobs, who have the respect of their peers. To my shock, I'm among those mentioned.

The night before the start of my workweek, the phone rings. It's the director of training. Even though I haven't applied, even though I'm visibly and all but irreparably burned out, he says I'd make a good FTO.

“Are you interested?” he asks.

I accept the job without hesitation.

My first new hire is from New York, with years of experience, and this should be easy for her. A quick three weeks to prove she won't
kill anyone and then off on her own. It should be nothing more than a rubber stamp. It should be relaxing. It's a complete failure. She doesn't know the protocols, can't handle patients, can't handle pressure, can't hustle, can't multitask—can't function as a medic.

At the end of the first week, someone from training asks how she's doing.

“Terrible,” I say. “Worse than terrible. That she hasn't killed anyone yet is sheer luck.”

I go home that night, expecting her to be taken off my bus and given to someone else. Instead, they double down and saddle me with a brand-new EMT as well. Now I have two new hires, both clueless, both looking to me for help. We're pitiful. Things reach a boiling point one day when we're busy as hell and calls are dropping back to back. The EMT can't drive, and the medic can't tell him where to go. She's buried beneath a pile of paperwork, he's sweating and wobbly and complaining about missing lunch. Then we run a patient with low blood sugar who's barely conscious and totally pissed off. The medic doesn't know what to do; I'm running around the room, trying to keep the EMT from punching the family and the medic from giving the wrong medication. Any time I focus my attention on one, the other starts fucking something up behind me.

I take over and tell them both to watch, which they're all too happy to do. The second we clear that call, we catch another, and on the way, the two of them get so lost and are screaming so loudly at each other that I have to force them to pull over so I can get behind the wheel. When we finally arrive on-scene, the EMT slips and falls and knocks himself out.

Three weeks have never dragged on so slowly.

My parade of newcomers continues. Grady is a kind of mecca in the world of EMS, a destination job because of the volume and the reputation. There's always new blood, it's just not necessarily the right blood. There are realities to working at Grady that medics don't face anywhere else. Like breaking into abandoned buildings or helping a cop search the grass for the pistol used to kill your patient. There are other obstacles, with respect not just to Grady but to public hospitals in general. Like not having what you need when you need it.

•  •  •

“He says I have to pay.” I'm on the phone with a supervisor again. This time I'm not on the street but in a gas station.

“Excuse me?”

“He says if I don't pay, I can't leave.”

I'm at a Citgo on Bankhead Highway, leaning against the counter, smiling politely to the clerk while whispering into my phone. On the other end is a supervisor who has other things she'd rather be doing than dealing with my gas situation.

“He won't let you leave?” she asks.

There's a problem with our fuel cards. Someone hasn't paid the bill, and they're not working. They haven't worked in a couple of days, so we're operating on good faith. Gas stations are letting us fill up and keeping a tally; they know exactly how much gas we've pumped and what we owe them. That number is getting high. And this gas station owner out here on Bankhead has decided he's done extending credit.

“He says a whole bunch of units have come in—”

“Five,”
the clerk says. “Five.”

“Five units have come in and not paid for gas. He wants to get paid. Now.”

“Okay, tell him I'll be right there.”

I tell the clerk, “My supervisor's coming.”

“Fine,” the clerk says. “But you wait.”

Into the phone, I say, “He wants me to wait.”

My supervisor is getting annoyed. She starts to rail on about how much money we spend at his place, how I'm an emergency vehicle, not only expected but mandated by state law to respond to any and all emergencies in my zone.

“Tell him you're leaving,” she says.

“He said if I walk out the door, he'll call the cops.”

“For what?”

“Theft.”

My supervisor laughs. “You gotta be shitting me.”

“I don't believe I am.”

“Just run,” she says. “Go.”

I'm halfway through the store before the owner realizes I'm actually gonna run out. There are other patrons in here, watching this. I wonder what they're thinking as I burst out the door. Behind me, I hear the clerk's voice, angry and high-pitched. I hear the beep-boop-boop of his phone as he calls 911. I'm running across the parking lot, yelling for
my new hire to start it up and put it in gear. Behind me, I hear footsteps and yelling. The ambulance is moving when I reach the door, and I hop along with it, door open, and swing myself in. We bump over the curb and rattle away down the road. Just a couple of petty thieves in a City of Atlanta ambulance.

My new hire is white as a ghost, and after a minute he asks if we just stole gas.

“Yes.”

“Is that normal?” he asks.

“How do you define normal?”

A
nd then there's all the vagina.

Where once I was down and all but beaten by this job, I'm back—buoyed by the excitement of my new hires—and for that I'm rewarded with an unending line of pregnant women. Not just pregnant but in labor. This year I've delivered more babies than any medic alive and have earned the Stork Award. For twelve months I see more vaginas than I'm prepared for. Many more, but then I'm not given a choice. They simply come at me. The first time a woman, stripped naked to the waist, flung her legs apart and demanded I get in there to see what was happening, I was understandably taken aback. Eventually, they become routine, another body part in need of attention.

Most years, deliveries are rare calls. This year they're seeking me out, tigers slowly and methodically cutting off my escape routes until there's nothing left but to walk right to them. Some medics go their entire career without delivering a single child. This year my career total hits thirteen.

They've found me at a strange time, all these vaginas and the babies emerging from them. My wife is pregnant with our first child, one of a thousand babies scheduled to be born this year. We were told more than once that pregnancy might not be in the
cards for us. For many pregnant women—definitely the ones who deliver in an ambulance—conception is the easy part. They've often accomplished that task accidentally, sometimes unknowingly. Not us. We've endured years of fertility treatments, including multiple failed in utero and in vitro fertilization attempts. The growing swell of my wife's belly—the presence we fear might fade away without a sound—represents tens of thousands of dollars, an uncountable number of ultrasounds and doctors' visits, intrusive exams, pills, shots, and our own fluctuating hopes.

Over and over we tried, and then one day Sabrina was pregnant. In vitro attempt number three worked. So began nine months of analyzing every dizzy spell, every cramp and unexpected movement, for signs that something—a
nything
—was happening. People tell me that being in medicine and knowing about the human body is a good thing. It's not. Knowing what
could
happen—having seen it, how it affects people—is not good. There are truths I'd rather not know.

During the years-long process—our reproductive wilderness years—I believed, maybe without real conviction, that the worries would end once Sabrina was pregnant. But as any parent can attest, fears are only amplified once a child ceases to be theoretical and becomes a living, breathing, gestating possibility.

The first miscarriage I worked was the worst. Tiny hands, fully formed, curled into fists that dangled from arms attached to the world's smallest human. Nobody told me it would be like this. I imagined blood and pain and a quiet woman. Instead,
we got a person in miniature, asleep in the Tupperware. At first our patient wanted to hold him, then didn't and placed him on the stretcher. We hit a bump and the container fell off. He landed in the street, as soft as a raindrop. The process of picking him up and finding a suitable place to carry him was funereal—imagine two ashamed pallbearers in the orange glow of a streetlight.

Most times it's not that dramatic. Often first-trimester problems arrive as a presentiment—an anonymous voice from deep inside the body, whispering that something might have gone wrong. Sometimes there's blood, sometimes not. Many women know, though they might not be able to put a finger on how. All too often it's not a miscarriage, only morning sickness or cramps or back pain, the dizziness that creeps in from dehydration and exhaustion. These women, the ones who call every day for the duration of the pregnancy, have stacks of unfilled prescriptions and discharge paperwork from last month, last week, last night. Their paperwork is nothing but admonishments—direct and not at all subtle—
not
to return to the hospital,
not
to call 911. But still these women call. And we take them.