(no subject)
Mar. 23rd, 2024 07:42 pm"So yes, the medicine is great, but you can keep it. I miss the madness. I miss being out at night, running through streets alive with the dead and dying, the drunk, the crazy, the angry, those in need, and those who only think they are. I miss the distant pop of a pistol and the long fading howl of a dealer who’s spotted a cop. I miss fighting meth heads in seedy motels, I miss the crack houses and flophouses, the chaos of a shooting scene. I miss the projects after dark. I miss the sense of duty, of honor, of humor, the sense of having lost myself somewhere, somehow, in a very strange world. I even miss the fear of mistakes. Whatever it was that brought us here, it’s everything else that kept us around.
People like to say it takes a certain type of person to do this job, a special person. They’re probably right, just not in the way they think. Medics don’t have to be heroic or tough or even good people. They simply have to enjoy the madness. The normal reaction to gunshots or screaming or house fires or someone collapsing in a messy heap is to get away, to back off, not necessarily to ignore it, perhaps, but not to stumble in half-cocked. And really—aside from a driver’s license and a high school diploma—that’s what this job takes. A willingness to walk in unprotected when we clearly should walk away. A desire to take part but just as often to bear witness.
So why are medics here? Because panic and death, near death, even your own, is a peculiar drug, and whether or not it’s what the injured and the sick and the desperate want to hear, the people who show up do so because they like it. Disasters, even the small ones, mean freedom. Freedom to bend the rules, break the rules, disregard the rules. Maybe I don’t even know the rules, just make them up as I go along. The people who stay are the ones who like those moments and all that comes with them, even the hard parts.
Someday it’ll be my turn. A call will be placed, an alarm will sound, an ambulance will shudder to life. Six minutes later, weather and distance permitting, two medics will walk through my door. Experience has taught me what they’ll find, how they’ll react, the things they’ll consider when deciding whether or not to save me. That much, at least, is preordained.
And this crew, the one who shows up for my death, will be there for the same reason I hoped to show up for yours.
Because it’s fun."
A Thousand Naked Bodies, by Kevin Hazzard
People like to say it takes a certain type of person to do this job, a special person. They’re probably right, just not in the way they think. Medics don’t have to be heroic or tough or even good people. They simply have to enjoy the madness. The normal reaction to gunshots or screaming or house fires or someone collapsing in a messy heap is to get away, to back off, not necessarily to ignore it, perhaps, but not to stumble in half-cocked. And really—aside from a driver’s license and a high school diploma—that’s what this job takes. A willingness to walk in unprotected when we clearly should walk away. A desire to take part but just as often to bear witness.
So why are medics here? Because panic and death, near death, even your own, is a peculiar drug, and whether or not it’s what the injured and the sick and the desperate want to hear, the people who show up do so because they like it. Disasters, even the small ones, mean freedom. Freedom to bend the rules, break the rules, disregard the rules. Maybe I don’t even know the rules, just make them up as I go along. The people who stay are the ones who like those moments and all that comes with them, even the hard parts.
Someday it’ll be my turn. A call will be placed, an alarm will sound, an ambulance will shudder to life. Six minutes later, weather and distance permitting, two medics will walk through my door. Experience has taught me what they’ll find, how they’ll react, the things they’ll consider when deciding whether or not to save me. That much, at least, is preordained.
And this crew, the one who shows up for my death, will be there for the same reason I hoped to show up for yours.
Because it’s fun."
A Thousand Naked Bodies, by Kevin Hazzard