Feeling Generous?

You'd have to be made of a pillar of salt or some sort of titanium compound to not be extremely moved by the pictures and film that are coming out of Haiti right now.

And you're very nice, sensitive people, so I think we can all take that you are extremely moved as writ.

It would be very easy for me to write some desperate-sounding, hyperbole-laden plea begging you to send money to aid the thousands and thousands of people who are without food, water, shelter, proper medical assistance or hope. Blogger makes it pretty easy for even technological blunderboobs like me to plop "Donate Now" buttons all over this site and hyperlinks directing you to the American Red Cross and other various relief agencies whose sole mission in life is do-goodery and beg you to send anything, whatever you can afford to the people of Haiti.

But, and it sounds terrible to say this, that's just not me.

Now, before you bitch me out in the comment section of this blog and write angry letters to Lord Jewdemort demanding that I be excommunicated from Heaven and my own home, I ask you to just please hear me out.

Large-scale tragedies are too big for me. At forty pounds underweight for my height, I'm a real small fry. I can't comprehend the big numbers-- maybe this has something to do with my deficiency in mathematics, but I find it almost a total impossibility to comprehend and wrap my skinny, boney little head around a calamity like this.

I can't do it. And maybe that makes me an insufferable asslick, and, if that's the case, go ahead and call me that. You wouldn't be the first-- not even this week.

I can remember going to college with crunchy people who would have jumped right on this earthquake, in fact, many of them are doing so now, even though they're a little more crinkly around the eyes and wizened than they used to be, back when they wore baggy corduroys, dreds, and carried around filthy Nalgene bottles festooned with Amnesty International stickers. They're on Facebook now (I have 267 Facebook friends, you know, and I regularly communicate with approximately four people-- one of them being my wife) donating their statuses to the Haiti earthquake, putting up desperate appeals for funding through your cell phone company or through UPS, even though most people write comments under these statuses claiming that these are nothing but frauds and schemes designed to take advantage of people with filthy Nalgene bottles.

Which I find sad and a little bit pointless.

When I worked on the streets as an EMT, Katrina beat the everloving shit out of New Orleans. My ambulance company got organized and sent dozens of ambulances down South, manned by many of my coworkers and friends. If I weren't affianced at the time, I said to my supervisor, I'd go. Of course, when my friends and coworkers returned, they told stories that made me glad I hadn't. Their radios didn't work with New Orleans emergency dispatch frequencies. They didn't have GPS and routinely got totally lost looking for unfamiliar addresses in a foreign environment. Some EMTs and paramedics resorted to sleeping in their trucks because their motel rooms were virtually uninhabitable. They ran out of supplies, got into fights with New Orleans EMS crews, and with each other, and the relief effort mounted by my former ambulance company was generally regarded in the end as uncoordinated and bungled.

When I looked at pictures of the cortege of ambulances headed down I-95 emblazoned with our company's logo, I snarkily snarffed, "It looks like charity, but it smells like a publicity stunt."

Geez, what an asslick.

I'm disenfranchised, too, I think, with all the media coverage that is being filtered, sifted, sorted, and exploited by the American media. Tallies of how many Americans have been injured or killed, profiles of Americans who have lost legs or have no contact with their adopted Haitian children. Americans who are missing. It's a little much and, while I realize that we are in America and that these are American media sources, I think it's presumptuous to assume that the only thing Americans care about are whether or not there are Americans affected by a tragedy. Why are we not able to feel for and empathize with people of different nationalities, and worry about them and their welfare?

That said, I'm not going to be sending any of my fungible funds that are earmarked for charitable endeavors to Haiti.

Why? Like I said-- it's just not my thing.

Many of you know what my cause-de-plume and charity-of-choice is: fallen police officers. My wife calls it my "fetish." Well, if it is, it's my number one. And I have a number two, too: wounded police officers.

On Saturday, January 9th at around 2am, Anchorage Police Officer Jason Allen was sitting in his marked patrol car finishing up some paperwork on a domestic assault call. A dark colored sedan pulled up next to his cruiser and someone opened fire on the officer, striking him five times. Officer Allen had absolutely no inkling of what was happening to him, he never had a chance to draw his weapon or take any action to defend himself-- he was taken completely by surprise in a totally unprovoked act of violence, hatred, and cowardice.

The occupants in the dark sedan got away, speeding off into the frigid Alaska night.

The bastards who shot Officer Allen are still on the loose, and Officer Allen is still in the hospital, only moved out of ICU a day or so ago. I know it's difficult for lots of 20somethings to muster up the gumption to give a rat's ass about anyone who dons a blue uniform and pins on a badge every morning, but if ever there was a time to stand up, it's now.

There's two funds to which you can make a contribution in support of Officer Allen, the victim of a senseless and rage-filled act of brutality. If you want your efforts to go towards finding the shitheads who opened fire on him, there's the Jason Allen Reward Fund. If helping to assist with his gigantic medical bills, and unmet costs for his family, there's the Jason Allen Family Support Fund. There's only one way to support either, or both, and that's by dusting off the old checkbook and writing a check to:

Key Bank, Anchorage
601 W. 5th Avenue
Suite 100
Anchorage, Alaska 99501

In the memo section of your check, write either "Jason Allen Reward Fund" (if you like catchin' bad guys) or "Jason Allen Family Support Fund" (if you like, um, supportin' families).

I don't know if anybody writes checks anymore. You might feel kind of old-fashioned doing it, but I hope you don't think I'm presumptuous in saying that you'll also feel good, too. I'm hopeful for Jason Allen's recovery. I'm hopeful that they catch the shooter(s), too.

And, even though I'm all curmudgeonly about it: I'm hopeful for Haiti, too.

Phony

I spent much of this weekend writing a grant. It's for an ambulance company-- not the one I used to work for. They want a powered stretcher that automatically lowers and raises at the push of a button, so the EMTs and paramedics operating it don't pop their vertebrae every time they have to transport a fat bison. It's also extra durable and extra wide, again, for the benefit of the bison.

I mean "patient."

I met the managing director of this ambulance squad after I had written a scathing editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News about the state of Philadelphia's 911 system, which is pretty poor. I wrote the letter after a woman called 911 complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. According to national standards, the average response time for an emergency call to 911 should be under 9 minutes. An ambulance showed up at her house 41 minutes later. She was obese, like many patients are, and the crew had a very difficult time getting her out of the house and into the ambulance. Once they had her loaded in, the truck wouldn't start. They called for a second unit, which had to race across town to get there. They arrived in around 3/4 of an hour, too.

Don't be surprised when I tell you that the patient died.

In the editorial, I wrote that the Philadelphia Fire Department, manning 40 ambulances, cannot possibly provide effective and timely service to the 1,447,335 citizens of Philadelphia without assistance, and I suggested that they integrate any number of the almost 50 different private ambulance companies that operate in the city for help when Philly can't respond to calls for help.

This gentleman, the managing director of a private ambulance company, read my editorial and was impressed. He had long been saying the same thing I was saying, and he was happy to find a friend. He asked me to come work for him as a grantwriter. This was last year, and it began my first paid gig as a writer.

The only problem is, I'm not a grantwriter.

In my regular, full-time job, I write grants also. But I'm not a grantwriter. I never learned how to write a grant. Nobody ever told me. I've never been to a grantwriting seminar. I've never read "Grantwriting for Retards" and I've never been formally trained on the ins and outs of writing grants. I've been given advice by successful grantwriters. I've looked at a lot of grants, both successful and unsuccessful, and, by this point in time, I've written probably close to ten full grant applications. I've applied for a total of probably close to $200,000. Let's just say I haven't earned nearly that much for my benefactors' benefit.

I told you: I'm not a grantwriter.

Engaging in professional or even avocational activities for which I am unqualified, untrained or unskilled appears to be a hallmark of my existence. My level of fakery, then, must be pretty good, because people keep trusting me with responsibilities, hiring me for jobs, giving me assignments and casting me in roles when, probably, they shouldn't. In November, I'll be appearing in my fifth Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. I know nothing about singing technique. I've never had a private voice lesson. But I get by, I guess. People keep handing me the keys to Gilbert's Rolls Royce. Don't ask me why.

At age 20, I was hired as an optician in a small eyeglasses store. I didn't even know what an optician was. Was it the doctor? Did I just get hired as an eye doctor as a sophomore in college? Was I going to have to puff air in peoples' eyes and perform surgery on fishook eyelids? Didn't you have to go to school for that? To my relief, I found myself cleaning 300 pair of eyeglasses and the display boards on my first day of work. I eventually sold, repaired, cleaned, and adjusted eyeglasses, checked prescriptions, managed the doctor's appointment book, ordered lenses, cut and grooved lenses (though I never got very good at this), measured bifocal heights and did a lot of other boring stuff like taking out the trash (which I was very good at.) I learned how to do all of this stuff by watching my boss. But I didn't actually know anything. I was faking my way through it.

Then I was hired as a loan officer. Talk about faking it. Amortization schedules? Debt-to-income ratios? Charge-offs? Lending practices? I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. But I had an office with a big desk, and a computer, and a filing cabinet and a bunch of loan applications that I barely knew what they meant. I was on the phone with banks and they were saying shit to me that was like some alien dialect. I was truly alone in the ocean with this one. But I hung on for a year. Being a phony.

We're all phonies to a certain degree, I suppose. Some more than others of course. People trust us with things and tasks that they probably shouldn't, mostly because they're probably too lazy to go out and look for someone who is actually qualified. Plus, qualified people are much more expensive than unqualified people, aren't they? They demand big bucks for their competence. Us? We're just happy to have a job.

My favorite character from literature is probably Holden Caulfield, not that that should be pretty surprising to any of you who know me well, or even those of you who don't know me well. I love Holden very much, and it depresses me that, if he met me, he probably wouldn't like me half as much as I like him. He'd undoubtedly call me a "phony" but I guess that's okay, because I am. And he is, too, and I guess that's the point. Holden and I have very little tolerance for the world, but, then again, I don't think we're particularly fond of ourselves either.

"My brother D.B.'s a writer and all, and my brother Allie, the one that died, that I told you about, was a wizard. I'm the only really dumb one."

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.