In Case of Emergency (20 page)

“You’re as big a dick as ever, you know that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How many people did you cheat on me with, anyway?” He doesn’t answer. He draws himself up and leans his head to one side, the way he always did when he was pissed. Four years we were together. It’s so easy to imagine him talking about me in some offhand way. For all I know, Christy could be living with him, wearing his engagement ring, and Jared would still make sure to leave himself a way out.

William comes out of the store carrying a bag filled with candy and energy drinks. “We got to go,” he says.

“Do we have a call?”

“Nah, they just need us back. Two-car got a move-up.”

I don’t look back or say goodbye. Jared stands there, next to the same broad-nosed orange Chevy pickup truck he owned the day we met, and watches me walk away.

Of all the days to be slow. By 1200 we’ve run only a couple of calls; I met the two-car crew briefly before they left to post in Malibu all morning. William and I have already taken to avoiding each other. I sit at the dining room table with my laptop while William watches television. I look up EMT-related blogs, rants, chats, journals. I start a list of medical slang, the acronyms and nicknames these kinds of websites like to throw around. PFO. Pissed and fell over. CATS. Cut all to shit.

TF Bundy. Totally fucked but unfortunately not dead yet.

“Good weather today,” William says. He’s slumped so far down in the recliner I can just see spikes of his hair and the tops of his ears. He waves the remote control at the screen, where a woman with a white-blond bob, black eyebrows, and a V-neck sweater points at animated cloud clusters. “It’s always going to be good weather when Sherri’s showing lots of cleavage.”

AGMI. Ain’t gonna make it.

Code Brown. Patient has defecated. Code Yellow. Patient has urinated.

“Yes!” William says, when he finds a rerun of
Rob & Big
. “Do work, son.” He throws the remote control onto the seat of the nearest recliner and coughs without covering his mouth.

AMF-yoyo: Adios, motherfucker, you’re on your own.

A black sedan glides through an obstacle course, its windows too tinted to see any sign of the driver. A man’s resonant voice layers over a symphonic swell; he promises a better life because of new mattress technology. A woman with teeth so bleached they look removable discusses wings on maxi pads and pours tinted liquid from a glass beaker. William has grown still; it’s possible he’s fallen asleep. I search websites and find a few more acronyms to add to my list. CC. Cancel Christmas. DILF. Doctor I’d like to fuck.

What bothers me the most is that I should know, better than anyone, what untrustworthy people look and act like. That’s my inheritance.

At 1302 we get a call for a “man down” outside a shopping mall. This kind of description is as vague as it gets. It can mean anything from a medical cause (syncopal episode, seizure, low- or high-blood-sugar diabetic, stroke, heart attack, drunk or drug overdose) to a traumatic one (assault, stabbing, gunshot wound). The man could be sleeping or he could be dead.

William and I arrive at the Slauson Super Mall, more of an indoor swap meet than an actual mall, where you can buy anything from stripper shoes to speakers to fittings for the bling on your teeth. The fire department arrived before us and located our patient, standing in the parking lot near the awning-covered entrance. He’s dressed in loose clothing, khakis and a half-unbuttoned shirt, and he looks meek, a little uncomfortable, a little sad. When asked what hurts the most, where his pain is, what his reason was for calling 911, he says the same thing over and over.

“I can’t function.”

We walk him to the rig, sit him on the gurney inside, and the lead medic and I climb into the back. The barrage of questions begins. Pain in your head, chest, abdomen? Difficulty breathing? Is there ringing in your ears, is it difficult to see, can you squeeze my fingers and wiggle your toes, do you have heart problems or diabetes, do you feel confused, weak, dizzy? Have you fallen, been hit or bruised, can you describe how you’re feeling, do you have any pain anywhere, has this happened to you before? What have you had to eat or drink, what medications are you taking, what kind of medical problems do you have? Drugs, alcohol? Anxiety, stress, panic attacks?

“I can’t function.”

He’s alert and oriented but to every other question says the same thing: he can’t function. He’s not taking meds, he ate lunch not that long ago, he feels “warm” from standing in the sun, he doesn’t want to hurt himself or anyone else, and one more thing: he can’t function.

At first it’s kind of funny, then it’s annoying, then it’s sad. The lead medic sits there, asking, asking—going through his store of medical information, the mental checklist. Interrupting, I report the guy’s vitals one by one. His breathing, pulse, and blood pressure are fine; his lungs are clear bilaterally. His blood is fully oxygenated and traveling to the farthest reaches of his body. His pupils are equal, round, and reactive to light, his skin signs are normal, he’s not altered in any way, and his blood sugar is perfect.

There is a moment of silence and we all sit there. “All right,” the lead medic says. He thinks for a moment. “Was there any hospital in particular you wanted to go to?” The man shakes his head. William mumbles something about our tax dollars as he shuts the back doors.

The two-car on B shift, 7102, consists of the puffed-up Steve Chang, who makes impressive use of the equipment in the exercise room, grunting,
and the docile pre-med student, Phil Hall. When we arrive back at station, we find them yelling at each other from the recliners as they play a video game. Even sitting down, Steve’s physique is noticeable, his lats and triceps inflated, like the orange floaties kids wear in pools. Phil’s curly brown hair frames his pleasant face with springs, and a mustache crouches on his upper lip. A & O Ambulance’s policy on facial hair allows mustaches but not beards; most of the guys appear too young to grow either. William sinks into one of the recliners with a bored expression.

“How was it?” Steve asks without looking up, the controller twisting violently in his hands.

“We totally saved a life,” William says.

Phil’s use of the controller is less frantic, more precise. “I’m sorry to do this to you, man—”

“You dick!” Steve says. He tosses the remote to William. “Here. Whatever you want.” But William turns the television off. For a moment it’s silent.

“You had any good calls?” I ask, spooning peanut butter onto a plate filled with carrots and celery.

“You mean like our move-up to Malibu?” Steve replies. He turns to look at me, holding his index finger to his temple like it’s a gun. “Or taking in a frequent flyer?”

Phil stands up to stretch, throwing his chest forward and raising his arms overhead. “Don’t forget about our hypoglycemic this morning. She was practically convulsing, and when we asked how long she’d been like that—”

“Her husband said, ‘About two hours,’” Steve finishes.

“We had a guy in perfect health call 911,” William offers.

“That’s this neighborhood for you.” Phil drops his arms back to his side. “Too early and too late. Nobody calls for anything in between.”

“My worst BS last year was a dumbass who ‘overdosed.’ Two hits of Motrin on an empty belly and he was sure we’d have to pump his stomach.”

“I responded to a paper cut once. I shit you not. A paper cut on a grown woman’s pinky finger, and before you ask, yes. We transported her.”

“I showed up to a residence once where an old man wanted help finding his remote control.”

“What was wrong with your guy?”

“He didn’t even know,” says William.

I sit at the table with my plate and a glass of water and open up my laptop. They continue to joke around but I find myself unable to join in. Our patient walked out of a shopping mall on a Wednesday afternoon. He didn’t make a purchase. He walked toward his parked car, or the bus stop, and then stopped dead in his tracks, not knowing if he wanted to go home, stay put, or go back and buy something. Not knowing if he was hungry, thirsty, tired, lonely, restless, anxious, sick, or crazy. Only knowing he didn’t know. It’s not a medical complaint, and there isn’t a thing we or the hospital can do, but all the same. What do you do when you can’t function? You call 911.

The day my mother left she dropped me off at school as usual in the morning. I was in fourth grade. Mom was forever forgetting things, so the entire way to Crestway Elementary I kept reminding her not only to come to my soccer practice that afternoon but to bring food. It was her turn to bring a snack for all of us to eat; I kept whining at her not to bring orange slices like she always did. I hated the stickiness the juice left on my fingers.

When we took our break someone else’s mother went to the store and brought back Popsicles. I was angry Mom forgot to come, forgot to bring us anything; even orange slices would’ve been better than a mother who simply hadn’t showed. But when I got dropped off at home, Aunt Judy was there, and Dad couldn’t get a handle on anything, and Ryan told me there was a note from Mom we weren’t allowed to read. It didn’t take long before I was convinced she’d left because of me. I drafted a hundred apologies that night and many nights after, silently bargaining with her, swearing not to
complain about anything ever again if she would just come back. And my shame deepened and warped and spread; it flared up when I had to withdraw from soccer, when I got special treatment from the homeroom teacher, when I would come home to a lopsided household, and Dad would steal sips of Scotch, thinking Ryan and I didn’t notice. All through fifth grade I got into fistfights with a crew of bullies; three times I got sent home, once with a black eye. They knew, the way kids just know, that something was wrong with me. And when I graduated from high school, Ryan and I went just once to visit Mom and Sergio in Colorado, and the two of them acted more like teenagers than my teenage friends did; they did LSD together and offered Ryan and me each a white paper tab so we could trip “as a family.”

I look up from the computer to find William watching me. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at the picture of the pale pink jellyfish that serves as my desktop image. He grabs his lighter off the counter and heads outside to smoke. Steve makes his way to the exercise room.

“What’re you working on, Piper?” Phil plops down across from me with a massive textbook and an assortment of highlighters. When I realize he’s referring to the list I started this morning, I slide it over to him.

Phil reads the whole thing and laughs once, a high-pitched
hee-haw
sound, which is all it takes to endear him to me. “That’s hilarious,” he says. “You should add ‘WNL.’”

“Within normal limits?”

“We never looked.”

He cracks open the giant book and flips pages until he gets to a drawing of a skinless man flexing his bicep. An inset reveals the layers of muscles found in the upper arm. “So what are you in for?” he asks.

I look at him blankly.

“You going police, medicine, or fire?”

“Oh, probably nursing. You’re pre-med?”

“Yeah. I used to want to go fire but I went on a call a while back that
changed all that.” He tells me about a stroke patient who had symptoms for five days before his wife finally called 911. What would have been reversible by thrombolytics became permanent paralysis of the entire left side of his body.

“Too late,” I say despite myself.

“It was so depressing. Made me want to go into medicine. With an emphasis on education.”

Even more endeared by him, I have a moment of relief when I realize I’m exactly where I need to be. Everyone around me is in a state of career limbo, trying to figure out their next steps.

“Did you know William’s last partner?”

“William hasn’t had a steady partner in a long time. People get on this shift and then they bounce—maybe it’s the high volume of calls, or maybe it’s him. He seems all right to me, but I’ve never run calls with him.”

Phil tells me Steve used to be skinny, but he’s made a steady transformation into meathead over the last year. He highlights every single line as he reads. I watch him use the yellow highlighter for a couple of lines, then pink for a paragraph, then green for a whole page.

“Hey, Piper, there’s something you should know about William.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ever ask him what his worst call was.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“No, you seem like you know better.”

From the workout room, I can just make out the sound of a Britney Spears song, coming from a very tiny speaker or a very loud pair of headphones. “Is that—”

“He thinks we can’t hear it,” Phil says, grinning.

27

When Marla gets home from work she climbs the stairs without putting her bag down or taking her shoes off. Poking her head into my room, she says, “We’re going out.” She hooks her thumb in the direction of the street as if I’ve never been outside before. “Unless you need to get it over with here?”

We’ve been texting all day, so she already knows about running into Jared, the DOA covered in ants, and the series of naps I’ve taken to make up for getting three calls after midnight.

“Get what over with?” I ask from my position under the covers.