Day Three

I bang the laptop repeatedly against the table in the way that all people believe it might make electronic devices work better: faithlessly, exhaustedly, desperately. Someone behind me tells me to take it out into the bay for a better connection.

No shit. Really? I truly thought smashing it to pieces on the desk might restore the internet.

I rub my tired eyes and stare at the crew room door with its dingy white paint, stained and peeling, its dirty glass and notes no one ever read which led to the massive garage beyond. Ten feet suddenly felt like the world’s longest expedition.

My cheap Amazon watch reads 07:24. Only an hour and a half off late. I should be so blessed.

With a disgruntled groan I drag my weary body into the bay, stepping aside for a day shifter clutching their coffee. We barely have the energy to nod to each other.

Ambulances are stacked two and three deep with no one to man them. A crew is checking out their rig in the line, another pulling in from the giant rolling doors at the opposite end, joining the long queue waiting to swap hands from night shift to day shift. I can hear the sounds from fleet as they do the necessary repairs to keep the rigs on the road, scuffed and held together with nothing more than rusted bolts and a prayer.

As I reboot my charting laptop the corner of my mouth raises at some newbie scribbling on a vehicle sign-out sheet. Check the oil, the tire pressure, the lights, the horn, the miles… I snort. No one has done that since they were in training. If we actually took the time to write down everything that was wrong with these damn rigs they’d never make it on the road.

The computer finally connects and I log back in and load my trip recon. Thirteen calls. More than one an hour. Not bad. Not a record by any means.

I trudge back into the slowly filling crew room to plug the laptop into the printer. After several curse words and punches against the side of the machine the stupid paper finally prints and I staple it to my other paperwork amidst idle chatter. Someone is holding out an EKG strip for the others, debating on whether or not it meets STEMI criteria or the machine was just crying wolf as usual. Someone had taken their post-coffee morning shit and now the stench is crawling into the room to mingle with body sweat and motor oil and the sugary sweetness of donuts someone brought in. I shove my recon in with the pile of other papers and log out my drug box, stuffing it into its allotted locker. When I finally place my middle finger on the time punch machine on the wall (single-finger salute) it reads 07:36.

Reason for late punch? it has the audacity to ask.

A keyboard pops up. While someone waits to clock in six minutes late I painstakingly type out “code brown.”

I might hear about it later, but what are they going to do, fire me? I chuckle to myself at the thought.

My feet drag as I haul my backpack, lunch bag, water bottle, and seat cushion complete with a sciatica cut-out to my car in the overflowing parking lot. Day has broken and the morning commute is well underway on the bridge above me, a train chugging along outside the gate, the air crisp and smelling of diesel and piss. But I look up at the pale sky and watch the warm air from my nostrils dance into the wind.

Then drop everything in my arms with a resounding “FUCK!” as I realize someone has parked in front of my car.

By the time I maneuver the old Subi into an open space and chuck all my effects into the passenger seat of my own car I’m seething. A late fucking call and four charts down only to have to play fucking car Tetris just to get home. Great.

07:46.

I hit the accelerator on the way home, driving like the jackasses I curse throughout the night. My fingers are frozen on the steering wheel and my stereo is cranked to the max, the heater finally warming as I weasel onto the freeway with everyone else. Obscenities fly off my tongue as I muscle my way through the throng of day workers, my fury mounting every time I’m forced to slam on the breaks.

I’m doing twenty over as I turn onto my neighborhood street, finally slowing as I see an elderly couple walking their dog. It’s not their fault the system sucks and my company sucks and my job sucks and traffic sucks.

I turn my voice cheery when my cat greets me at the door. She doesn’t know why I’m home late, why she hasn’t been fed. I ask her about her night as I toe out of my boots. She wants to be held so I do this, my eyes drooping and my lower back aching as I walk her around the house, turning up the heat, dumping my lunch bag in the sink filled with dishes, inwardly begging her to allow me to put her down so I can get out of my musty uniform.

I want nothing more than to faceplant onto my mattress but instead I grab the cats’ dishes and rinse out the wet food they didn’t eat, filling it with more wet food they’d probably waste, adding the drops of calming meds and crushing up the allergy pills, mixing it all in before refilling their dry food and adding the scoop of dental nuggets on top. The second cat darts in through the cat door screaming and skids to a halt in front of her dish.

Good morning to you, too.

I peel my uniform off right there in the laundry room, tossing the shirt and underthings into the washing machine tub and leaving the pants on the floor, its pockets full of the items I would need tomorrow. It’s only the end of day two, after all. Two more days of this before my weekend.

My stomach growls as I tug on pajamas, the house still freezing as the heaters strain to warm the small space. A sense of urgency is pressing between my shoulder blades to get everything done, to finally sit down, to enjoy a moment of peace that isn’t filled with feces or bedbugs or cellulitis.

I shove my aching feet into slippers and stand in the middle of the kitchen. I need to clean out my lunch bag and put the ice packs in the freezer so they’ll be ready for tomorrow. I should get the dishes into the dishwasher or at the very least rinse them off to get that smell out. I definitely need to eat, the last time I’d had anything had been the cold soup I’d shoveled down in the hospital parking lot at 02:58. I stink and could use a shower but there is no one here to smell me but me and I am by far the least-worst thing I’ve smelled in the last fourteen hours. I need to take my pills.

This I finally turn to do, the orange bottle in my hand before my eyes fall to the digital clock on my stove.

08:22.

“FUCK!” I scream, chucking the Ambien across the room, knowing it is too late to take them. Fuming, I grab an empty jam jar from the shelf because all the glasses are in the sink and fill it with the boxed wine sitting on the counter.

By the time my ass hits the couch a ball of anger and resentment is writhing in my chest. I turn on the show I’ve been binging and realize I must have fallen asleep during it last night and have to rewind to a part I recognize. The cat that had met me at the door is sitting at the foot of the couch. I rearrange myself so she can sit on my lap even though it hurts my back. It’s not her fault.

I give her the Obligatory Night Pets while half-listening to my show. I think back to the code I’d run only hours before, the dead body I’d left on a grungy living room floor. The carpet had been brown and stained and reeked of cigarettes and dog piss. The sheet I’d pulled over the corpse had little flowers on it. The tops of the IO needles were still in his shoulder and shin, the tube I’d shoved down his throat sticking out of his mouth beneath the dry, bloodshot eyes.

Why do movies always think people’s eyes closed when they died? Because they don’t, they’re peeled open watching me pant over their cracked ribcage while some firefighter fills their stomach with air because they forgot to tilt the head back before shoving a balloon full of oxygen into their slack jaw.

I think over the steps performed, the dosages given, the readouts from the machine. Asystole, asystole, asystole, we’d all chimed together, our tired mouths making the words, our exhausted hands making the motions.

And no, Hollywood, you don’t shock a flatline.

But after everything we’d done, a riot of empty syringes and drips sets and oxygen tubing surrounding us, the dead body was still dead. The medications my partner had painstakingly written down were useless, the grieving widow was still grieving.

Then we were on another call. Vomiting, I think. Or maybe it was the bug bite one.

The cat eventually grows bored and jumps away. The television rambles on. The wine empties then refills then empties again. And again.

By the time my eyes are drooping I don’t have the willpower to face my empty bed and a silent house, so I make sure my alarm is set, ignoring the 5 hrs 26 mins at the top of the screen.

When I wake on the couch the room is bright but I can tell it’s not time to get up yet. My eyes are dry. I’ve forgotten to take out my contacts. I amble to the bathroom to dig them out before falling onto my bed. I’m so used to sleeping in the daylight that I don’t even bother reaching for the eye mask I’d bought years ago, giddy with the thought of what the night shift on an ambulance would bring.

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Variato 25. a 2 Clav. rolls out of my phone.

I hit the side button.

Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85: I. Adagio – Moderato comes next.

I hit the side button.

Herzlich tut mich verlangen and Ave Maria and Nocturne in E-Flat Major.

Snooze, snooze, snooze.

I finally sit up. I pet the cat at the foot of my bed and the one purring by my pillow.

I lay back down and stare at the back of my eyelids to gather my willpower.

Just two more days, just two more days, just two more days.

With a sigh, I finally rise.

I feed the cats, the floor is cold. I turn on the speaker in the bathroom to blast Insomnium, finding it quite ironic, and start the shower, yanking my hair down from the bun it’s been in for two days and groan as I see the time on my phone.

16:57.

By the time I stumble out of the shower and rub various creams over my dry elbows and the bags beneath my eyes I’m double-timing. I’m dragging my sports bra out of the dryer where it’s been for a week because I never put my laundry away while brushing my teeth. I’m pulling on my watch while cursing myself for not cleaning out my lunch bag. Protein powder is getting dumped into a Blender Bottle while a needy cat is being pet. I yank a pair of 5.11’s off the hanger and sprint to the laundry room to grab the pair off the floor I’d left there last night, transferring my wallet and keys and trauma shears and chapstick and gloves into my various pockets. My socks skid on the kitchen floor as I tug a can of soup out from the cabinet and dump everything from my lunch bag into the sink with the dirty dishes. I grab a clean spoon from the dishwasher and shove that in with Tupperware and a half-eaten container of sunflower seeds because I don’t have time for anything else because it’s already 17:31.

A cat is crying as I shove my feet into tattered boots. I take a moment to pet it, to apologize for its hectic start to the day and to promise to see it in the morning before dashing back inside with boots that were so recently on a dead man’s floor to turn off the speaker and grab my phone which I had forgotten to charge and turn on the light above the stove so the cats aren’t in the dark all night.

I realize I never even opened the curtains this morning to feed my dying houseplants.

The sun is sinking as I drive west. I have to duck behind my visor as I battle through traffic once more, sucking down caffeine and blaring the radio to wake myself up. As I’m inputting the gate code an ambulance moseys through the lot and I back my car up to let them out. I wave to the guys on the shift that starts before me as they hit their lights and sidle my car into a spot someone’s just vacated.

I say my goodmornings and goodevenings as I join the queue for the time clock. It dings in my time punch at 18:01.

A donut box from this morning is still on the table, half a stale maple bar uneaten inside.

I fill my arms with my drugs and computer and backpack and lunch bag and water bottle and seat cushion and haul it all to the rig we share with day shift. A young gun is still restocking the IVs and we make our small talk as I arrange everything into its place for the shift. When my partner finally shows we’re already late to log on but I don’t say anything as she tells me about the walk she’d had that morning and I boot up the computer. By the time everything is situated and we’ve checked to make sure we have everything we need – water, coffee, drugs, coats, food – it’s 18:21.

I send up a prayer to the EMS gods that we get posted somewhere deep and I can close my eyes for a few sorely needed minutes as I hit the button that puts us available.

We groan as we get the tones.

I grab the radio resignedly.

“Medic nineteen en route.”