Shiv-a-Git

When I was an EMT, sometimes, I would have accidents in the ambulance. And I don't mean that I would pee myself. The patients did that frequently enough, and they were always kind enough to do it on the stretcher, which was easily disinfected.

What I mean, of course, is that, when piloting the ambulance, sometimes I would hit things. They were always inanimate things, and I only did it three times in a year-and-a-half of employment. I don't know if that's a lot or a little, as compared to the average American emergency medical technician, but, for a guy who'd never previously driven anything larger than a Dodge Caravan and who had received a bogus Emergency Vehicle Operator's Certificate without ever having driven an actual ambulance, I think three minor accidents in seventeen months isn't bad.

The first accident I had was while pulling into a Sunoco gas station. It was the end of an eight hour shift that, due to a long-distance transport, had turned into a ten hour shift. I was exhausted, and I lovingly kissed a concrete barrier with the side of the truck. Actually, you could say that I Frenched it more than kissed it. The body damage on 251 was, you know, noticeable. And I had to take pictures of it with a little throw-away camera and fill out an accident report, replete with diagrams and the police were called. The officer took a look at the barrier and at the truck and drove away.

"You don't want this reported and put on your license anyway," he said to me. He was right. How did he know?

The second accident I had was while transporting a terminally ill patient to her luxurious home in my old neighborhood so she could die surrounded by her family and her collection of vases. I was extremely flustered because I knew the address, had been down the street hundreds of times growing up, but, for some reason, I could not find her house. And gently, almost imperceptibly, the ambulance drifted over to the right as I peered out of the driver's side window squinting for the right house number when there was a BOOM!

"Oh, fuck," I groaned softly, but loud enough, apparently, for my partner in the back to hear.

"You okay," he said, "just keep drivin', man."

I had swiped a big, white moving truck with the large, black plastic side-view mirror on the passenger side of the ambulance. An hour later, after we'd finally found the lady's house, we pulled into a vacant lot and I inspected the damage I had done to the rearview mirror. There was a large, undeniable white scuff all over the black plastic backing of the mirror.

"Well," I sighed, "there goes this week's paycheck." I picked up the radio mic.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa-- what are you doing?" my partner, an enormous African-American with a gap between his two front teeth the size of a block of cheese, asked.

"I damaged the truck, so I've got to let them know."

"Hold on, hold on, hold on," he said to me. He ran his fingers over his eight trouser pockets, and then across the breast pockets of his uniform shirt. He smiled and he un-Velcro'd his right breast pocket and pulled out a Sharpie marker.

"I keep this on me for emergencies, just like this," he said. He undid the cap and carefully colored over the white scuff mark until it was completely concealed. Even I had to admit it was a pretty good job. Undetectable from three-or-so feet.

"Wow," I said.

"No shit wow," he affirmed, replacing the cap on the marker, which he then presented to me. "Here," he said, grinning, "you're gonna need this. And let me tell you something-- you're gonna have a tough fuckin' time in this world if you let shit like this get you down, you know what I'm sayin'?"

I smiled dejectedly as I accepted the marker. I did know what he was saying.

Not only am I afflicted with an unquenchable desire to announce the wrongs I commit to the world, but I care so desperately about what people think of me, and wouldn't it be nice, I often think, if I didn't care so much. About that. About anything. About everything. And then I think-- but, if I didn't: who would I be?

Who would I be if I took a drink? Who would I be if I were sometimes late for things? Who would I be if I weren't as self-deprecating or as embarrassed or as uptight?

Would I be me?

When I was in college, and for a year afterwards, I worked at an optical store with an 80+-year-old guy named Jim. Jim came into work every day wearing the same shit he'd had on since Nixon was popular, and he was racist and homophobic and old fashioned and cantankerous, and he called women "Cupcake" and "Dolly" and he didn't know what types of glasses we carried or how much lenses cost, and he frequently made mistakes when cutting jobs, but I loved him. Jim was quaint and Catholic and he detested profanity, though he used it sometimes, and he had lots of catchphrases, but my favorite one was, "You know, I gotta tell you that, at my age, somebody doesn't like me or somethin' I think or say: I really don't shiv-a-git."

And every time I find myself freaking out about what someone else thinks of me, I try my best to remember my old friend Jim, and how he seemed to have mastered the ancient art of shiv-a-git-ness. It's an attitude that I seem only able to admire from a considerable distance, and I was reminded of that when I last crashed an ambulance as an EMT in 2007. We had just moved into a new base and I hadn't quite figured out the dimensions of the truck as compared to the new garage and, when bringing 402 out of the ambulance bay for the start of our shift, I ran the entire driver's side against the edge of the garage door opening, ripping off shards of the garage bay and damaging the right side of the roof of the ambulance. Four of my coworkers, and my partner, were watching and applauded. It was our first day at the new base.

"Hey, somebody's gotta have the first accident," my partner said as he climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door, "I'm glad it was you."

You Have Been Warned

There aren't a lot of things I miss about working the streets as an EMT. There are a few, though.

I miss my old partner. Sure, he had psoriasis all over the back of his neck and on his arms and knuckles and, when his flare-ups were really bad it kind of turned my stomach, and he was cheating on his wife with another employee of our company, and that kind of turned my stomach, too, but he was exceedingly nice to me. And, really, when you're in an ambulance with someone for forty hours a week, that's pretty much what counts.

I miss wearing a uniform and a badge. I remember the first time I ever walked into a Krispy Kreme establishment, ordered a coffee, and had my money refused with a smile and a wave-off from the clerk. "Holy shit," I thought, "now I see how the badge'd class can abuse their power-- it's so damn easy. And sometimes power tastes like coffee with cream and six sugars." I enjoyed the authority and the gravitas that a clean, pressed, professional-looking set of blues with a couple shoulder-patches and a badge can carry. It felt good walking around like you owned a hospital-- who was going to stop you from going anywhere you wanted?

And I'd be peeing on your face and calling it a sex-act if I told you that I didn't miss those red lights and that fucking siren. The first time I ever ran hot I thought I was going to get washed away from the massive swamp-ass I was incurring, and the black, plastic steering wheel was positively soaked with palm sweat by the time we reached the E.R., but, after a while, even I learned to relax a little bit during emergency runs and just... enjoy the ride.

The siren is a powerful tool inside an emergency vehicle. It has the power to instantly turn the brains of motorists in front of you into absolute clam chowder. They mean well, but they don't do the right thing. They slam on their brakes. They veer off to the left. They speed up. They turn in front of you. They freak. And I get it. I've done it. You panic and you want desperately to do the procedurally correct thing, the thing that you learned by reading your Driver's Ed manual on the toilet when you were fifteen years and eleven months old, and you inevitably end up fucking up. The siren warns you that something big and potentially dangerous is happening, right behind you, and you'd better get the hell out of the way.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to be in the car to hear another warning intonation yesterday. We were at the bank, about to deposit a check to stimulate our horny bank account, and a very leathery gentleman entered his Mercedes and put it in reverse. A back-up alarm, sounding very much like a child's bicycle horn, or the horn on Harpo's walking stick, sounded. And what warning did it send out to the masses? That an octogenarian was reversing in a 2009 Mercedes E-Class Sedan, thus creating a threatening situation in which a 3,740 pound mass of German engineering may very well injure you, cripple you, and/or terminate your existence had you the misfortune of perambulating across the Bank of America parking lot at that very moment.

And then it occurred to us: cars piloted by old fuckers ought to have alarms that sound, not just when they're backing up, but all the time.

I mean, sure, you can pretty much bet good cash money on the fact that a 1998 Toyota Camry (gray with gray interior) is being driven by someone whose varicose veins resemble the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on a full-zoom image from Google Earth, but why not just cut through the guess-work, save seconds and potentially save human life by forcing elderly drivers to drive cars that produce a high-pitched wail of warning as they barrel down the boulevard or meander across the double yellow line at seven miles-per-hour. That way, you wouldn't have to waste time looking for the pork pie hat or the teased-up blue hair peeking out from behind the driver's side headrest. You'd just know, because of the OFS (Old Fuck Siren).

The best part about the O.F.S. is that it does so much more than just warn you, the unsuspecting, fully-functional public, that some sag-ass named Milton is headed your way in a 1987 Lincoln Continental, its continual whine would actually remind the elderly sonofabitch that s/he is actually driving. You know how old people are-- they forget things, even whilst they're doing them. Sure, one moment they could be cognizant that they're driving a car, but the very next moment they could be convinced that they're on safari or at a burlesque show. The mind wanders. They get CVAs. The O.F.S. would pierce through their consciousness at all times with the unmistakable message: YOU ARE DRIVING A CAR. FO-CUS.

Because, let's face it: this is America. You can't take away a toothless hick's right to own a gun, you can't make nicotine-addicted blowhole necks stop smoking cigarettes, and you sure as shit can't stop guys from Altoona from fornicating with their sisters, so, in spite of all the research about brain atrophy and delayed motor responses, you're not going to take the keys to the Oldsmobile away from Cloris or Gaylord, so we might as well do all we can do to throw the rest of us a fucking bone, so we don't end up as the hood ornament on some old daddy Caddy.

Who's with me?

Just Take a Shower

Apparently, this isn't just advice given to horny teenagers who have watched too many episodes in a row of "Dollhouse" on Hulu. Now, paramedics are giving the advice, to mothers of sick children, and people are dying.

On February 10th, paramedics responded to a home in Washington, D.C. The 5 a.m. call came in as a report of a child having difficulty breathing. The paramedic advised the child's mother to "run a hot shower" and have the child stand in it, to "clear out her lungs." Then, the ambulance left.

Eight hours later, another call went out from the same house. Difficulty breathing. Medics showed up again, and this time they transported the child, who died.

The female paramedic, who responded to the first call and gave her fatal advice to the family never filled out any paperwork concerning the first response, and she did not transport the child. Not only that, she did not have the adults present even fill out and sign a Refusal of Transport form, which is standard operating procedure in all emergency responses. Don't want to go to the hospital? If you're of sound mind and body, that's fine, but the law states that you have to be clearly informed of the risks of not seeking hospital care, and you must obtain a signature on that form, which will absolve you of responsibility when the patient up and dies ten minutes later.

Maybe it's because I'm gearing up for a return to the streets as an EMT, maybe it's because I'm working towards becoming a father, but I have nothing in my heart but disdain, disgust, and outright hatred for the behavior of this supposedly veteran paramedic who, to my unpleasant understanding also serves as a preceptor-- an instructor and mentor for newly-minted paramedics. Not only should she be stripped of her credentials-- she should be stabbed repeatedly with the badge pin. Here's a newsflash:

Everybody. Goes. To. The. Hospital.

Always. Transport.

Always.

It's not just a suggestion-- it's policy. When someone calls 911, and you show up, they go. If they don't want to go, and they're not whackier than an opium-laced Ritz cracker, they must sign the form-- otherwise, it's transport time. This EMS disaster happened for one reason and one reason only: laziness. This bitch didn't feel like schlepping this kid to the hospital. She was cocky and arrogant and, above all else, goddamn lazy. She just didn't feel like transporting, which, by the way, is just about the sum total of her fucking job that she shouldn't even be allowed to have anymore.

It's your job, sister. Don't like it? There's probably a UPS truck somewhere out there with your name on it. And you'll never have to worry about the boxes dying on you.

I understand apathy. I understand sometimes not giving a shit. I understand being overworked and being underpaid and incompetent supervisors riding your ass about bullshit-- poorly maintained equipment and trucks are all scratched and dented up and smell like old mustard. I understand stupid partners, and irrational dispatchers, and working outside in the goddamn wind and the rain and the blazing heat-- lifting Big Ass Bertha up three goddamn flights of stairs, or down. I know. It's a pain. But, if you wake up one morning and find that you just don't care enough to do even the bare minimum of your job-- throw the kid in the back of the truck and put two liters of oxygen on her and drive her to a fucking hospital that's probably less than ten minutes away, and then fill out some paperwork after you hand her over to the nurses-- well, then you're just nothing but a stinky old piece of shit.

EMS is a little too important to be left to the dregs of society, the people who can look into the eyes of the parents of a two-year-old little girl and tell them to run a hot shower because you'd rather go out and get coffee or talk on the cellphone inside your truck. It's a little too important. And maybe that's the savior in me talking-- maybe that's part of the reason I'm going back. Because I may not take the most accurate blood pressures in the world, and I'm not totally up-to-date on all my medical abbreviations, but I'm pretty sure that my ethics and my logic are still largely intact.

Everybody goes to the hospital.

Everybody.

Speedwagon Rides Again

If I understood everything that went on in my brain-- every calling, every craving, every interest and every inclination-- I think I'd be a goddamned genius. Either that or I'd be a twitching, incomprehensible, foul-smelling, eye-booger-eating societal reject who finger-paints on the walls of his cell with his own diarrhea.

Fortunately, I'm neither a genius or a... that.

I made the decision that, when my contract at my small non-profit is up in August, I will return to the streets as an emergency medical technician.

Last night in the kitchen, my wife, looking very nonplussed, I am relieved to say, said in reply,

"Can I ask why?"

"It's been calling to me," I said with a shrug and an assuredly earnest look in my eye. "It's been calling to me ever since I left."

And it has. And I don't know why.

She looked at me with the same love that has been in her eyes since we 2003 and said,

"Then you need to do what you need to do. And I love you."

There are so many things that I miss about the job-- the pride of putting on a uniform. Being of service to an organization and to a people. Taking charge and taking care. Driving an ambulance, lights on or off. The back-and-forth with dispatch. The indescribable feeling you get when it's time fo flip on the auxillary battery and turn those red lights on. The smiles people give you when they see you come in for a cup of coffee, that coffee sometimes free. The feeling of importance, of meaning. Of applying knowledge that I have, of getting my skills back. Of being able to say, "I am an EMT" without having to add, "but I don't work on the street anymore."

I worked from May, 2005 to February, 2007 and they were some of the best months and worst months of my entire life. I remember the day my first steady partner threatened to kill me, throwing a clipboard at me in the front of the ambulance, shattering the windshield instead of my face. I remember the day I got him fired. I remember transporting suicidal alcoholics and paranoid schizophrenics and homeless people with City Paper underwear and cardboard shoes. I remember bringing leftover slices of my wedding cake to my co-workers at base. I remember educating my Ukranian coworker about the Holocaust in the parking lot of a hospital. I remember busting my supervisor's balls, moving his van while he was inside the base taking a leak, and changing the radio station from country to classical, and placing a male urinal on his gearshift lever. I remember sitting next to the same man in the same ambulance every single day for thirteen months. I remember the patients-- the obese ones, the severely malnourished ones, the diabetics, the congestive heart failures, the addicts, the prisoners, the women in emergent labor. I remember the one neonate I transported, and I remember how petrified my partner and I were that we would kill it. I remember driving down I-95 with my lights on, going 40 miles per hour, fearful that every pothole would break its brand new ribs.

I remember careening down that same stretch of road with my siren wailing, in a desperate attempt to get a fire-fighter to the hospital after he had collapsed at the station of a heart attack while lifting weights. I remember his wife in the seat next to me, sobbing and thanking me as I drove, sweat pouring down my brow.

I remember a lot. And perhaps I remember too much, and perhaps I remember it in that skewed way in which we remember unpleasant things after some time has passed. I remember reading "The Passing of the Armies" which is a memoir written by Brevet Major-General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain about his time rising through the ranks during the Civil War. He writes about war in a sympathetic, eloquent, flowing, almost romantic way-- the battles long cleansed of the blood and brains, smoke and horror over thirty or forty years. Maybe that's how I remember life on the street.

Maybe.

But, after a long time being chained to a desk, I find myself longing for an opportunity to jump into my car and roam, even if it's just to go to the post office to pick up mail from the P.O. Box. I would never call myself a wanderer, but I know now that I need to be out there, whatever "out there" means.

And, oh, I'm out there alright.

But I think you know what I mean.

For years and years I've struggled with what it means to work. Does a job need meaning? Does a job need to align with your perceived status or education level? Do you have some sort of familial or religious or societal obligation to seek a white collar job if it's what your parents sought, or your wife's family sought? Does being in possession of a Masters of Education degree obligate you to teach? Well, no-- just as my undergraduate degree in Theatre doesn't obligate me to whore myself out in the world of off-off-off-off Broadway or appear in local car commercials smiling while receiving the keys to some piece of shit Ford Focus.

I've come to understand that you've just got to do something, and it might as well be something interesting, engaging, rewarding, and maybe a little bit fun, even if it doesn't pay the best and you may run into elderly ladies who tell you they're going to "fucking kill" you as you're strapping them snugly into a stretcher and covering them with a blanket.

Without the Kiss

Yesterday morning, my wife and I were in a doctor's waiting room, watching "Good Morning, America." Dr. Sanjay Gupta, America's favorite Model-Minority Physician, was discussing the virtues of "compression-only CPR," and how it was carefully developed and greatly increases the chance of saving lives.

"Bullshit," I murmered in my wife's ear. "It increases the chances that people will actually perform CPR on some dirty hobo who collapses in front of them on the street, if they don't have to actually put their mouths on the stinking bastard."

That afternoon, after my wife went to work, I got a text message from her. It's very long, because we just got an unlimited texting plan, and she just got a brand-new phone with a QWERTY keyboard:

"You're right about comp. only CPR: they
developed it to increase the likelihood
someone will actually do it. Dr. Sanjay
Gupta admitted it on NPR. Love you!"

See? Sometimes there is even truth in my cold, cruel, cynical view on the world. Welcome to The Kiss of Life, without the Kiss.

Of course, I don't mind that they've developed a handy-dandy new way to do CPR, namely, with your handies, that's fine-- but I do have a problem with their couching it as a "better" or "more efficient" or "more lifesaving" way to do CPR. It isn't. One of the first things they taught us back in EMT school was that CPR has a less-than-2% success rate. 20 compressions to 2 breaths, 50 compressions to 2 breaths, 100 compressions to 2 breaths. 10 to 1. 12 to 2. Whatever-- it doesn't matter-- the guy's dead by the time you've started, and chances are he's going to stay dead.

And all you'll get is very fucking tired.

My CPR certification expires in two months. My EMT certification expires on October 1st, 2011. I suppose, soon, I'll have to start making decisions about whether or not I want to renew both, or just the CPR, or neither. I haven't tended to a patient in an ambulance or driven one since February of 2007. Yet, when my EMT certification was due to expire in 2008, I renewed it for three more years, taking a bunch of ridiculous online courses and practice quizzes. I know that, if I decide to renew my CPR certification, that they will have changed the procedures. They change them every two years which, coincidentally, is how often you're required to get re-certified in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Funny, that.

I have no doubt that, with the American Heart Association and the American Red Cross's PR blitz about compression-only CPR, they'll be pushing that hard during the 2009-2010 re-certs. And that's fine. I can remember getting certified in CPR for the first time in 2004 or 2005, I forget which. The instructor, a 6'3" red-faced, big-nosed, no-nonsense paramedic, said,

"Look, if you come up on some disgusting scumbag with a stoma spewing yellow shit all over the place, you're not going to put your fucking mouth on that, right? You're gonna do compression-only, because you'd be outta yer goddamn mind to kiss that foaming neck-pussy."

In my seventeen month career on the streets of Philadelphia, I never kissed any foaming neck-pussies, and I never performed CPR on anybody. Neither had my partner, who was a paramedic with many more years on the street than me. I found that out one day, when it was quiet in the ambulance, I turned to him and asked him if he ever had.

"No," he said, before very a-typically launching into a monologue, "but there was one time where I was real close. I had this patient, typical cardiac old lady, in the back of the truck and she was going to the hospital for chest pain, but she was talking to me, nothing weird going on on the moniter, and then she just looked at me, and I knew something was going to go wrong. Then, all of a sudden, she went stiff as a board on the stretcher and the cardiac monitor flat-lined, and I was like, oh, fuck, you know? Here we go. So I checked her pulse, nothing, then I straddled her, you know, I was down on my knees with one leg over top of her, I rolled up my fuckin' sleeves and, I swear to God, I was about to push down on her when her eyes popped open and she was fuckin' staring at me, on top of her with my sleeves up. And she goes, 'Is everything okay?' And I stared at her for a minute and I was like, 'Uh.. I think so. Is it?'"

Sometimes, during a particularly long transport, I would silently pray that my patient wouldn't code on me. I guess, I would have known what to do if it happened, but I was always panicked by the logistics of different things you had to do. Were you supposed to radio dispatch to report the code? Would they notify the ER for you? Were you supposed to call the ER? If you were on a Basic Life Support ambulance, staffed with two EMTs, were you supposed to call for an Advanced Life Support ambulance to meet up with you to provide higher intervention? I was never certain how many liters of oxygen you were supposed to give a patient through the bag-valve mask once compressions were begun. If you're on an Advanced Life Support ambulance, and you, the EMT, are in back with the patient who codes, should the paramedic driving pull over and jump in the back since he has the higher training and the goodie bag full of drugs? I just didn't know. And I had even read the employee handbook, cover-to-cover, confident that I was the only employee of our company ever so to do.

Early on in my career, I had a conversation with an elderly, black EMT nicknamed Strollin' Roland, for the lackadaisical manner in which he lumbered to and from his daily activities-- like a moose through Jell-o. He had a slow, melodic way of talking, and he spoke as if he were constantly on the verge of falling asleep midsentence.

"Have I evah been scared in this bizness? Yes, ah have... Have I evah had patients die on me? Yes, ah have... You get used to all that shit."

I got used to a lot of shit in that job-- incompetent supervisors, manic dispatchers, psychopathic partners, rude nurses, malingering patients-- but I don't know that patients dying under my care is something I could have gotten used to. I guess, of course, we'll never really know. Unless I do decide to renew that cert in 2011 and suit up in blue for one more round.

I'm thankful, though, that I got out of EMS before I ever had to do CPR on a patient, before having a patient die on my watch. I feel lucky, like the cop who retires with 25 years under his belt and never had to fire his gun. Maybe going back would be like tempting fate. Maybe the first call of the new chapter of my EMS career would be an unresponsive male or female or, God forbid, child. That is how God works, isn't it? That would show me I should have just let that cert go the way of an autumn leaf.

Then again, maybe it's just a rite-of-passage that I never got to experience, unlike all the rites I did go through: slamming an ambulance into our station's garage door frame on the first day at our new base, being part of a six-man crew called to lift and transport a 680 lb. patient, getting AIDS blood and pee on my uniform, having a nurse slip me her phone number, almost being killed by my partner with a clipboard, getting stranded in a broken-down truck in the middle of summer, having a 92-year-old nun scream "Heil, Hitler!" at me, complete with gestapo salute. But maybe, just maybe, you have to give CPR to a patient in order to be a lifer.

Me? I just left one cold day in February.

And, when I did, I bade my partner of a year-and-a-half a warm farewell before he unceremoniously patted me on the back, declared, "It's been a lot of fun, man," and walked to his car. I shook my supervisor's hand, and the hand of another paramedic who was in the office, and I walked to my car. And, in the parking lot, I stopped. I turned around, and walked back into the base. My supervisor was still having a conversation with the other paramedic. When they saw me, they stopped talking and they looked at me. I looked at them. Then, I grabbed my uniform shirt and pulled it way, way up, exposing my stomach and my nipples. I jumped up and down and screamed in a high-pitched voice, bugging my eyes out. I showed my supervisor my nipples, and then I turned to the other paramedic and showed him, too and, as they collapsed on the desk in front of them in hysterics, I ran out of the office, slamming the door behind me as I jumped into my car and skeedaddled out of the parking lot.

Well. No one ever said I didn't know how to make an exit.

And who knows? Maybe I'll return, and maybe I won't. One thing's for sure, though: whether I go back on the ambulance or not, I won't be putting my mouth on that foaming neck-pussy.

Mother Apron

Lots of my bloggie pals participate in a phenomenon widely known as "TMI Thursdays" where they regale their readers with blush-inspired OMG, LMT offerings from their unfortunate days of yore. Because the vast majority of my blog entries already offer up what most people who don't live underneath cars would classify as too much information, I feel little reason to engage in the TMI Thursday clique.

That said, in recognition of rapidly approaching Mother's Day, I'll use today's Blog Entry #2 to chat about my mother, and to formally nominate her for whatever the Jewish equivalent of sainthood might be. "Jewhood" doesn't sound quite right-- I keep seeing images of gritty, downtown Yonkers.

And so, as much as I hate the idea of having my mind and my blog controlled by Hallmark, I wouldn't be a very good mama's boy if I didn't compose an eloquent paean to my mother dearest, so here we go:

I get a little overwhelmed when I try to think about something to write about my mother. Writing about my father is easy. His personality, his questionable grasp of the finer points of technology and the English language (paternal text message regarding dog-sitting: "Finley wasGREAT. He ate at 4;30. I know he slept good. He made a very healthy BB .i should have taken a photo and mail it to the art museum. R u on the way? love dad mcnab") make him pretty prime material. I mean, be fair: how can mom mcnab compete with that?

My mother is quiet wisdom. She doesn't speak much (because it's impossible to do so when my father is, and he usually is) but, when she does, it's memorable, important and funny. She's a Jewish mother, but she's not. She doesn't obsess about when we're having babies (she's never mentioned it to me or my wife once), she doesn't ply us with food ("Eat, nu?!") and she doesn't insist that we cook her recipies, although my wife makes me her chicken approximately thrice annually. She's traditional, but she's not. She couldn't care less that the man my sister is dating isn't Jewish, but she is very displeased about the fact that my sister is pregnant and unmarried.

She told me around ten years ago that all she ever wanted to be was a mother. She got her chance probably earlier than she would have liked, at around seventeen. Nobody but her really knows all the details, and I guess nobody but her really needs to. When my father came into the picture, and the other guy went distinctly out of the picture, my father adopted my sister and that, my friends, was that. It's funny-- she was married when she had her first child, but it didn't help. I suppose, if it's to the wrong man, marriage offers very little of the protection, security and comfort it advertises.

My father and my sisters and I have put my mother through a lot. He, without telling her, depleted their entire savings and pumped the money into his failing business in a psychotic effort to keep his feet from getting wet on the deck of the Titanic. That was almost fifteen years ago. Eventually, he broke and admitted to her what he'd done. She was furious, but they worked it out and, all these years later, his work phone still rings and the lights still come on. My sisters are a ripe pair. One has emotional issues stemming basically from day one, and spends her day endlessly obsessing about probiotics, product recalls and emergency broadcast system alerts-- the other one is, well, unmarried and pregnant.

And then there's me. I kept her consistently harried throughout my youth as I showed her mole after rash after mole after rash in a seemingly endless quest to identify a phantom life-threatening illness. I was constantly pestering her with the most bizarre interrogatives, such as,

"Mommy, if someone throws up into someone else's mouth, would the other person have a heart attack?" Age 5.

and:

"When did Zayda have his first thrombosis?" Age 7 or 8

and, the big winner:

"If two gay men kiss each other hard enough, do their mustaches fall off?" Age 6

I bothered her ceaselessly with questions about death, craving her knowledge, her opinions, her best time estimate of her own demise ("so I can prepare myself") and I even went so far as to ask her to speculate about what I might die of. She didn't answer. I think we all know I'm going to stroke out majorly.

I thought her life would come to an end on the day I announced that I was going to enter the police academy. And, you know what? It probably did. I guess it restarted when I dropped out.

I can remember one day in 2006 when I was sitting in the ambulance while my partner was asleep inside the fire station where he volunteered. It was snowing outside and I had the radio on the dashboard in case we got a call. My cellphone rang and it was her, checking in. I hadn't been on the streets for very long, probably a month or two and she wasn't very crazy about this particular line of work either. Uniforms and badges and lights and sirens are not for Jewish boys to play with, you know. I was curious about her feelings, as I always was as a boy. We always want to know what our mothers are thinking, and if they love us.

"Are you proud of me?" I asked. I wasn't fishing for compliments-- there was, in my mind, a very real possibility that she was disappointed in me for not becoming a writer, or an actor, or a teacher. There was a little sigh on the other end of the phone.

"I'm always proud of you," she said.

A couple years later, after I completed my Master of Education program, I got a chance to become a teacher for a month. A private, Catholic girl's school was looking for a substitute for an English teacher who was going out for a month to have surgery for cancer. It didn't look good, and there was a very real prospect that, if I did well, it would lead to a permanent appointment for eighth grade English. On a stellar recommendation from my employer, glowing references and a relatively un-awkward interview, I was hired to start May 1 and finish out the schoolyear.

I used my full bag of tricks from my M.Ed. program, as well as some tricks of my own. I had the girls singing Gilbert & Sullivan songs to boost their lackluster vocabularies. They did freewrites inspired by quotes from authors like William Blake and Mark Twain-- on subjects such as sacrifice, human nature, happiness and heroism. They did creative final projects that emphasized their multiple intelligences-- some drew comics, some did monologues or scenes, some did diary entries, some did formal reports. The girls excelled and flourished, and we had a solid rapport. They were so obsessed with structure and formality, with what color pen they were "supposed" to use, and I can remember one of them getting so worked up for handing me a freewrite with the paper chads still attached from her notebook.

"Relax," I said, "this is school, it isn't the military. I'm concerned with the content of your papers, not with whether or not you used black ink or purple ink. That doesn't change your ideas, does it?"

Of course not. But that was the culture I had entered-- where they were scared stiff to be different, themselves. I had no idea, for example, the unchartered, revolutionary waters I would be stirring by arranging the desks in a circle, as opposed to the rather Draconian straight rows. I can recall one or two of the girls gasping upon entering the classroom for the first time.

I admit that I felt a little out of my element in the affluent Catholic school, being neither affluent or Catholic, but I did fine. I couldn't stand the bitter, catty exchanges about the students that were favorite lunch-time conversation topics amongst the careworn old hagithas on staff-- so I often ate lunch alone in my room during a free period.

On my final day as their teacher, I asked the girls to write me some feedback. "It's my first time teaching," I told them, "and I have a lot to learn from you, too." I told them that their feedback, their critiques of our time together would be most helpful in my future teaching endeavors.

"It can be anonymous," I said, "though I can probably figure you all out by now by your handwriting." They laughed. I went home that day with my briefcase full of their comments, which I said I would read at home. I told them I would be back Thursday for their graduation ceremony.

The next morning, the Head Penguin called me at home.

"We've found something on your... your Google," she said to me. What? I didn't understand what she was saying. But then it became clear. Someone had been Googling me and had found a personal essay I wrote ten years ago, when I was single, dating, and horny. Foul language. You know me well enough by now to know the kind of stuff we're talking about.

"I don't think I need to tell you that you are not welcomed back here. I also understand that you have intentions of attending graduation. Do not return here."

I asked for an opportunity to speak, and she said, "Sure, say whatever you want."

"That piece of writing is a piece of fiction that is a decade old. I'm rather shocked to think that I am being judged and persecuted based on an old piece of creative writing. It has absolutely no bearing on my conduct at the school, which has been professional and of the highest caliber at all times."

"I have no evidence to the contrary," she said, "the girls have said only wonderful things about you. Goodbye."

And she hung up. And I sat in my desk chair for a solid hour, frozen. Horrorstruck. Blindsided. Embarrassed. Ashamed. Ridiculous. Destroyed.

Now you know why I write my blog under a pseudonym. Because this is the world in which we live.

I told my wife the day it happened, and she was furious at the school for crucifying me-- something Catholics know a lot about, I suppose. I told my best friend. I even told some not-so-best friends. The one I couldn't tell was my mother. I was too scared she wouldn't be proud of me anymore.

I kept it inside for almost a year. At every family function, every time I saw her, I wanted to cry and confess what had happened to her-- because I can't lie to my mother. But I couldn't do it. I made up some story about how they decided to hire someone else for the following school year. Whatever. It didn't matter.

Finally, one day a couple months ago I drove to my mother's house when I knew she would be home in the middle of the day. She and I were sitting in the living room talking and she got up to go to the basement to do laundry.

When she comes back, I said to myself, I'm just going to tell her.

And I did.

"You know," she said, "I'm not surprised. That's how those people are."

"Aren't you ashamed of me?" I asked.

"They're the ones who should be ashamed, not you. You just did something naive-- stupid. They did something cruel and malicious. They don't care about protecting those girls. They care about protecting their goddamn money."

She shook her head.

"You're probably the best teacher those girls will ever have at that fucking school."

The 60 or so sheets of feedback from those girls, written in their pens of purple and pink and green and red, chads hanging off some, little hearts floating above the "i's" on some, would seem to concur with her. I know that no matter how zealous I get about spring cleaning and minimalist living, I'll never throw those papers out. Never.

I think it's very telling that what I was afraid of most from this whole sad affair was not losing my position at that school, or not being psychologically prepared to enter a classroom again, or obscuring my online identity so that I could continue to write with honesty and humor, but it was my stomach-rattling fear of disappointing my mother.

I said to my wife one day a while ago in reference to this incident that I didn't think I would be able to truly move on from it until I 1.) told my mother about it and 2.) wrote about it. I couldn't do the latter without achieving the former, and I have my patient, perceptive, supportive, surprising mother to thank, as always.

Happy Mother's Day.

Memories from an April's Fool

I'm really a woman!

No, just kidding.

I don't do April Fool's Day. I'd like to pretend that I don't put people through that shit in order to preserve their dignity, but really, it's just me hoping to lead by example, because I don't want anybody embarrassing me.

Selfish little prat, aren't I?

I'm petrified of embarrassment. People who know some of the things I've done on stage in plays might find that somewhat of a strange admission, but it's true. The things we do in a play are carefully calculated, and they're done specifically to provoke a response from the audience. You're in control of what is happening to you, what you look like, nobody else is doing anything to you, catching you unawares in your underwears. This is why I will never go to a comedy club, or any show that requires audience participation, which, of course, involves the possibility of being singled out, of being the straight man, of being embarrassed, of being April Fooled.

April Fool's Day reminds me of my time working on the ambulance. There's no sector of employment, I don't think, that is a breeding ground for practical jokes than first responder services. A cop I know once told me that, when tasers first came out, that one of his coworkers waited in a dark station room for his partner to come in and, as soon as his partner flipped on the lightswitch, the cop who had been lying in wait jumped up and tased his partner.

I guess it's good I never became a cop. Bro.

There are a lot of things I miss, though, about working as an emergency medical technician, wearing a uniform and a badge, getting discounts on doughnuts and coffee, going lights and sirens, the comfort and security of having a good partner, each and every day...

But I miss the fucking around the most.

When you're new, you're the one who gets fucked around with-- that's just the way it is. Being new on the job as an EMT is just like being a high school freshman, or a college freshman. Whoever you were before, well, that was before. I think I was called "New Jack" by a couple EMTs for at least my first six months on the job.

My first steady partner, a paramedic named Mitch, was a psychopath. He hated his job, he hated the company, he hated minorities and, well, he hated. He didn't hate me, though, until the day I got him fired. Until that point, while he would sometimes explode at me in fits of testosterone-induced rage, he and I got along, because I walked on eggshells with him and pretty much did whatever he wanted. If he wanted to drive the ambulance to his apartment and sleep, that's basically what we did. I would sit in the truck, panicked, clutching the radio just waiting for the call that we wouldn't get to in time because the fat ox was asleep on his couch.

Mitch was a practical joker. He used to love telling me stories of how, when he was on the local rescue squad, he would relish breaking in newbies. While on a scene, working up a patient, he would look over his shoulder at a green-faced EMT and say with urgency, "Hey, run to the truck, now, and bring me back the fallopian tube. STAT!" The panicked freshman would no doubt be running through the list of standard ambulance equipment in his head.

"Fallopian.... fallopian....I know I've heard that name before...."

Then they would proceed to hysterically tear apart the ambulance looking for the fallopian tube, probably thinking that the patient would promptly expire without it.

Mitch knew that I was probably too intelligent to fall for something stupid like that. He had another way of breaking me in up his sleeve. In an ambulance, there is a switch on the left side of the driver's seat, near the floorboard, that activates the auxiliary battery, which allows the emergency lights and the siren to function. You can still start the ambulance and run the radio and headlights, etc without the auxiliary battery switch engaged-- and it's easy for a newbie to forget that the switch is even there.

One day, Mitch and I went to a crowded convenience store to get coffee. "I don't want nothin," he said, which was unusual for him, tipping the scales as he was at 320 lbs. I left the truck and went inside for my coffee. It being around 8ish in the morning, the store was jammed with construction workers, contractors, business folk, nurses, teachers-- everybody in the neighborhood was grabbing their go-juice. I came outside and hopped back in the driver's seat, put the key in the ignition and started the truck. Instantly, the siren sounded full blast, scaring the shit out of everybody in the parking lot, and in the store. I almost shat all over my brand-new uniform pants.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" I screamed, spilling scalding hot coffee on my leg and the seat. Mitch was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his fat face. I fumbled and fidgeted with the keys and the siren switches to make the damn thing shut up. The emergency lightbar, by the way, was also flashing red. He had, of course, activated the auxiliary battery switch and hit all the buttons for the siren and the lights. It was a fucking ambush.

After Mitch got fired (that's a story for another time) and I started working regularly with Jake, I started getting more comfortable in my uniform, in my job, in my skin. Soon I was assuming the role of the prankster. I loved fucking around with our supervisor, Copley. He was a fat goober with a goatee-- he liked movies like "Anchorman" and his favorite show is "Airwolf," if that tells you anything, and it should. Our ambulance didn't see a lot of action on the street, and so we were constantly hanging around at our base, and constantly getting on Copley's nerves. Jake was an architecture student, and so he wisely used the time in between calls sitting at base reading architecture literature or doing coursework. I, being a Master of Education student, used the time to fuck around with my supervisor. I would find whatever props that were lying around the base and use them to entertain myself. One of my favorite activities was getting an old wheelchair from the garage and an orange traffic cone. I would sit in the wheelchair and put the orange traffic cone over my head (and face) and slowly, quietly roll myself into Copley's office, usually while he was on the phone. If that didn't get the reaction I was after, I would moan quietly and tip the wheelchair backwards until I would fall onto the floor.

One day, Jake and I returned to base and another crew was getting ready to hit the street.

"Where's Copley?" I asked quietly.

"In the bathroom," the EMT replied.

"Okay, good," I said. "Just be quiet, pretend I'm not here."

"Uh... okay," he said.

I hid under Copley's desk. Being extremely thin and flexible has its advantages. I waited and waited for him to finish his marathon crap and he finally came back and sat down at the desk. Miraculously, his knees didn't touch my face, which was inches away from his crotch & paunch bulge. Ever so quietly, I pulled out my cell-phone and dialed the phone number for the base. His desk phone rang.

"Qualcare Ambulance, this is Copley."

"Oooooohhhh..... Mooooooooohhhh...." I moaned into the phone. It took him a second, but then he opened his desk drawer and slammed it shut, right into my face. It hurt, but it was worth it.

"What the fuck? Were you, like, locked in the basement as a child?" he asked me as I cackled hysterically on the floor under his desk.

I also used to love lying down on spare stretchers and propelling myself across the garage by pushing off the wall with my feet screaming, "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!"

"Man, you retarded," one of my coworkers would say, shaking his head-- but smiling.

It was important to joke around in this line of work, because it gets to you. EMTs and paramedics have some of the highest rates of burnout, and so you have to let off steam. I got good at that part of the job. One day, our ambulance broke down and Copley had to drive an hour out of his way to pick me and Jake up in a wheelchair van.

"You can sit in the back, retard," Copley said to me as he opened the passenger door up for Jake.
"Fine," I said.

For the entire hour's trip back to base, I contorted my face, drooled, rocked back and forth and screamed like a mentally challenged individual, pressing my face up against the window to the horror of folks in cars passing by our van.

By far, though, the most fun I ever had was one day when Jake and I were at a hospital, picking up an elderly lady with dementia who was being discharged to a nursing home. She had a lot of belongings and clothes that were not yet put away into bags, so Jake and I, and two nurses were very busy with that. This hospital room had a floor-to-ceiling wardrobe with two long doors. I made sure that their backs were turned to me and, quietly, I cracked open one of the wardrobe doors and slipped inside. I could see through the crack between the two doors, and so I watched the nurses wandering around the room, collecting toothpaste tubes and nightgowns, and then I watched Jake, with two bags in his hands, stop, look around, and look around some more. He called to a nurse,

"Hey, have you seen my partner?"

She looked around too.

"No. Maybe he went to the bathroom."

Jake shrugged, put the two bags in his left hand and walked over to the wardrobe. I thought about screaming as soon as he opened the door, but I didn't want to scare the nurses or the patient, so I decided to just stand there, stoic. It worked.

"OH! FUCK! JESUS! YOU! Crazy sonofabitch!"

He clutched his chest and gasped for breath. I put my hand on his shoulder, my shiteating grin almost hurting, trying not to cry.

"Hey, do you need oxygen or something?"

Those days are gone now. I miss my old job sometimes, and around April Fool's Day I guess I miss it the most, because that's the part I enjoyed the most.

Happy April Fool's Day, Jake, Copley-- and even Mitch, wherever you are.

Tales from the Ambulance: "Fall Down, Go Boom"

From May, 2005 - February, 2007, I worked as a full-time Emergency Medical Technician for a private, for-profit ambulance company. Unlike the guys you see responding to freeway wrecks and shooting calls, we schlepped fat old ladies for MRI appointments and took people from hospitals to hospice centers so that they could die without getting in their family members' way.

Sure, we had our emergency calls every now and then, but mostly, it was bullshit.

In my EMT stories, I have changed the name of the company for which I worked, as well as the names of all of my co-workers, hospitals, nursing homes & other facilities. I like not getting sued.

If you've ever met an EMT before, you know that they love to yammer their goddamn heads off with their "stories from the street."

I am no exception.

Fall Down, Go Boom

I was only the recipient of disciplinary action at Qualcare Ambulance Company once. Employees at Qualcare get disciplined for a colorful variety of misdeeds and missteps, from the accidental to the downright criminal. One paramedic who worked here, widely thought to be a cokehead, was fired for stealing cash from elderly patients. He would do this in the back of the ambulance, rifling through belonging bags and pocketbooks, while his partner eyed him suspiciously in the rearview mirror. This same paramedic was also widely believed to be the person who ran up a stunning $8,000 tab on our company-issued gasoline cards in one month.

Most of the time, though, employees were disciplined, suspended or fired for non-criminal, though usually negligent, offenses such as repeatedly not turning in paperwork at the end of a day, refusing a run, not showing up for your shift without calling out sick, or falling asleep in the back of the ambulance with a patient on-board. This happened to Topia. Topia was working with a recent hire, a girl named Nouisha (which looks and sounds a lot like “nausea”, doesn’t it?). Nouisha had just worked a twelve-hour shift at a nursing home and then came right to Qualcare to do another eight hours overnight with Topia. They were transporting a young male psych patient from a hospital to a psychiatric facility. The nurses swore up-and-down that the patient had been given loads of Ativan, a serious ass-kicking anti-anxiety medication, and that he was very docile. These assurances are always bullshit concocted to lull the EMT into a false sense of security, so he or she takes the patient without qualm or quarrel, so the hospital staff can relax with the patient safely away from them. If a patient’s so “docile,” one might ask, why must he be smacked-up with enough drugs to incapacitate a horse?

Anyway, Topia was driving that night on Route 202 in blinding rain and Nouisha was in the back with the patient, who was covered with a blanket. Big mistake. I, personally, always like to see psych patients’ hands at all times, so I can see if they’re masturbating, or reaching for a gun, a dirty syringe or a serrated machete that they are going to embed in my neck. Nouisha, over-tired and uninterested in her current situation, promptly fell asleep. Topia told me later she could hear Nouisha snoring and saw the back of her head drooping down in the rearview mirror. A clink of stretcher-strap buckle hitting the floor didn’t wake Nouisha up and, in seconds, the psych patient bolted upright and Nouisha, finally awake, screamed. She jumped into the driver’s compartment to get away from the psych patient, who pushed her head and knocked it against the passenger’s side window of the ambulance. Then he went after Topia. She slammed on the brakes, causing the heavy box-truck to skid in the rain and slide along the highway until it came to rest, sideways in a ditch.

Fortunately for Topia it was three in the morning and there weren’t many other cars on the road. Nouisha jumped out of the truck and the psych patient jumped in the back. Topia walked around the truck quietly, hoping to catch the psych patient as he exited the back of the ambulance. But he didn’t exit the ambulance; he was in the driver’s seat. Topia leapt back into the driver’s compartment and fought with the psych patient over the ambulance’s keys as he twisted her fingers, trying to gain control over the ambulance. He eventually fled into the nearby woods and was apprehended soon after by Pennsylvania State Troopers who responded to the scene. Topia got a broken finger. Nouisha got fired.

Qualcare is very protective of its biggest investment, its ambulances, and so you would think that Topia would have gotten rewarded for her selfless attempts to prevent this lunatic from escaping with a Qualcare truck. She was disciplined. You’d think that Mitch, my psychotic ex partner, would have been fired for his jubilant, effective, and deliberate destruction of Qualcare trucks, but I guess they couldn’t determine that the breakdowns were the cause of intentional acts, you know, without my information. Other employees, however, were not as immune from persecution. One EMT was disciplined for putting regular gasoline in a diesel truck, which the truck thought was poison and consequently died. Another employee got in quite a lot of trouble for shearing off the light-bar of unit 305, a brand new truck, on the overhang of a Wendy’s drive-thru. After that little snafu, no more drive-thrus, not because of the potentiality of damaging more trucks, the memo said, but because, if a crew were in line at a drive-thru and that crew received an emergency call, they would be trapped, ostensibly, in that line. I chuckled as I read that one. An emergency—us? Please.

The other big no-no at Qualcare is dropping patients. As medical professionals, it is our goal to help the sick and the injured, not make them that way. While the plan is “zero patient injuries”, things don’t always go according to plan. The following incident report contains my word-for-word account of the events of August 23rd, 2005, the day Buddy Wendt, a part-timer, and I took Gretchen Madeira to a doctor’s appointment.

“Whilst at Dr’s appt, Pt requested to utilize the lavatory. We requested a bedpan & were told none were available. My partner & I assisted Pt out of stretcher over to toilet, assisted her w/ removal of shorts & underwear. She said she was okay & we said for her to let us know when she was ready to be moved. As bathroom was quite small, we exited & stood by w/ door cracked open. Pt urinated & talked to us through door, then a crash was heard. We immediately entered lavatory & found Pt with a substantial amount of blood emanating from her nose. Pressure was applied & Pt was placed on stretcher. Pt’s lip was also injured. We asked the nurse for directions to closest hospital (Miquon County). Nurse gave directions & we proceeded to Miquon County’s ER. Nurse said she would call them to advise. As our NEXTELs were dead, I called dispatch on my cell, reported incident as we initiated transport & asked him to advise Miquon County’s ER. Upon our arrival, we were told no one had called in. Pt care was then transferred over to ER staff after a report was given by Mr. Wendt. I then called Springfield Rehab (Pt’s residence) to inform them of the situation. Pt. Injury occurred at approximately 14:40pm.”

After a week of nail-biting, hand-wringing, and Qualcare street supervisor Jake Stone calling me on the radio each day, bothering me for more information about the incident that would tilt the field in Qualcare’s favor, I picked up the pen and wrote some more.

“Continuation of Gretchen Madeira incident; Additional information. A female nurse (whose name I did not obtain) at the Dr’s office assisted us in getting the patient inside the lavatory, however, when it came time to help the Pt. with her shorts & underwear, I turned around & the female nurse had vanished. When the Pt was in the lavatory, Mr. Wendt & I were the only ones standing by the partially closed door. After the Pt fell, I had to go into a separate room to fetch the nurse, who had no idea what had happened. The Dr bent his head down & looked @ the Pt & said “Looks like you’ll be making a trip to the E.R.” This was the extent of his professional involvement in the incident. On the whole, I think it would not be unfair to characterize the staff’s (at the Dr’s office) attitude towards Mrs. Madeira as blasé. They were ill-equipped, unprepared & unable to accommodate the needs of a stretchered Pt—hallways were too narrow & lavatory was not fully accessible. The female nurse appeared more interested in repeated personal telephone calls received on her cell phone than she did in appropriately and fully caring for the patient in question.”

If there is one transport I think about more often than all others, it is this one. If there is one moment at Qualcare, frozen in place in my mind that I can flash back to at any time, and I do: it’s Gretchen, on the floor, slumped against that cold, tile wall, her shorts and underwear down around her ankles, crying. Blood everywhere. I have never felt guiltier, sicker, more irresponsible, more foolish and more alone in my entire life. I still, after almost a year, am sure that, one day, a certified letter from some vengeful, powerful, bloodthirsty law firm will find its way to my mailbox, and maybe I deserve it. Maybe I deserve to pay for what happened to Gretchen Madeira. I thought I did the right thing—she was complaining that she had to pee for at least an hour and a half, whining and holding her stomach. The doctor’s office was so far away from Springfield Rehab, and we had been waiting there for almost two hours—this woman had to go. I thought I did the right thing—what does that even mean really? Right for whom? Right procedurally? Even after my disciplinary meeting and remediation, I still don’t know what Qualcare’s procedure is for escorting a patient of the opposite gender alone in a bathroom. Ought I to have gone in there with her with the door closed and end up getting sued for sexual harassment? No, I don’t think so. Should I have let her go in her pants? No, that’s inhuman. Should I have made that cell-phone-obsessed nurse get off the goddamned phone and told her that she had to escort Gretchen to the bathroom? Probably.

Looking back on it with perspective as my partner instead of Buddy Wendt, I guess that would have been the thing to do, but I didn’t do it. Through the choices I made, or didn’t make, harm came to my patient. For my punishment, I got to see her blood pour out of her nose and mouth like a river, I got to see it spattered on the tiled bathroom wall, and that is something I suppose I will just have to compartmentalize and deal with, as surgeons deal with operating room mistakes, as police officers come to terms with shooting suspects who turn out to be unarmed. We are only human, all of us, and we are destined to fail and fuck up at times, sometimes in minor ways like breaking a light-bar, sometimes in major ways like breaking a patient. Our humanity is the sum total of whom we are as a species, and that’s not an excuse, but it’s the truth.

I hope Gretchen’s lawyers feel the same way.