The diaries of a street medic 8/18/08

The shift crept along at the pace of a mountains moving. My partner and I spent the the first twelve hours lounging at the base, watching the endless babble on television, and hitting golf balls into the wind. At first the silence on the radio felt like a blessing, a welcome change from the usual chaos of our busy urban EMS system, but by the time the dark evening rolled around we paced through the small station like animals looking for an escape. A moment like this is one of the worst in an EMS station. When you haven't been busy during the day an ominous feeling of foreboding creeps in at the edges of rationality. "If nothing has happened all day then something insane is bound to happen". We wish for tragedy if only to brake the boredom and get the stagnant blood pumping throughout our thrill seeking bodies.
At night the streets seem to pulse with their own vitality. When most people go to bed the city comes alive in its own absurdity. The street light illuminates a small oasis in the unknown inkiness,. The blackness is broken by the flick flick of the strobes as the ambulance cruises silently through the heavy night. There is no traffic on the street so the siren stays off. People sit on their porches quietly watching at we throttle through the lingering August humidity Its just the rush my partner and I have been looking for it rushes through my veins like a drug. Dispatch crackled on the radio saying that she was unconscious and she might have overdosed. We arrived and found her slumped over on the shit stained toilet snoring loudly. Her boyfriend said she might have been trying to kill herself. For the first time all day blood flowed and we lived. Suddenly, it all came to a crashing halt with the soft innocent sigh of a sleeping child wrapped in a blanket curled in a corner of the dirty bed.