This is the second installment in my series of blog portraits that were inspired by Sir Edward Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations.’  The first portrait in this series and an explanation can be found here.  As will always be the case with these portraits, the name of this person will be withheld. 

*           *           *

“She is a real mess,” Mike said as he distractedly flipped through his Lifepak 10 manual trying to figure out how to set the time back one hour.  “She’s like 4’ 11” and 80 pounds soaking wet.  They say she can’t lift a stretcher.”

“Why do you do this shit to me, man?”

“You are our ‘sensitive’ training officer.”  He actually lifted his fingers for the air quotes around the word ‘sensitive’.  “Everyone else would just fail her out or try to get in bed with her.  I can rely on you to give her a fair shake.”

“So you are punishing me with this hopeless babysitting job because I am so professional and ethical?”

“Exactly.”  My last comment confused him and he looked up for a moment.  He momentarily wrinkled his nose, and then went back to tinkering with the time set feature of the LP10 on his desk.  “I can’t ever remember how to do this.  But if it wasn’t for me, all of these things would probably be blinking 12:00 and not recording any shows.  Look, just give her a fair shake, and I hear she’s cute so try not to screw her.  Maybe I’ll get you someone who is less high maintenance next time ‘round.”

“Right, boss.”

“Fuck.  Do you know how to do this?”

“No.  I’m the sensitive type.  Remember?  All my VCR’s and Lifepaks blink 12:00 and are covered with happy face stickers.”

“Bullshit.  You’re a nerd.  You’re holding out on me.  Screw it.  Just be careful.” 

*           *           *

“So you’re my new recruit, eh?”

“Yes sir!”  Her smile was so big that I thought it was going to pull her face apart.  As she said ‘sir’ she pushed herself up on her tiptoes and came back down swinging her arms back and forth.

“Holy shit, are you always this perky?”  And perky was the word for it.  She looked so happy I thought she was going to go supernova right there in front of me.  I couldn’t have a death like that on my hands this early in the morning.  “Do you drink coffee?”  She was tiny but she looked like an athlete.  Her short blonde hair just barely fell into her eyes.

“Yes!  And no.  Yes I am always this perky, and no I don’t drink coffee!”  She started swinging her hands back and forth again.

“It’s a good thing you don’t drink coffee.  If we added fuel to that perk I think you would just explode and die.  Damnit.  Tone it down so early in the morning.  I need a half a pot of freaking coffee down me before I can even see straight.  Can you go check out the truck or something while I try not to throw up?”

“Yes sir!”

She floated down the hall trailing bubbles, hearts, and flowers.  Small woodland creatures appeared in the hall and showered her with flower petals and garlands as she skipped to the truck.

“Fuck.”

“Hey, grumpy.  If I had scenery like that all day I would get into a better mood.”  Eric, the supply officer always had my number and he was rooting for the cute chick.  He was trying to calm me down so I could get through her full frontal onslaught of optimistic naiveté without vomiting.  “Give her a chance.  Her last training officer hated her, but she is still bouncing in here, bubbly and cheerful.  You gotta give her credit.”

“Alright.  I will give it a shot.  If she doesn’t calm down by noon though you are going to have to come get the body.”

The sun was starting to come up as I stumbled to the truck.  I was trying to remember what I had done to my body last night to make it hate me this much.  Was I drinking whiskey or gin?  Karaoke night was always rough.  The bar that was across the street from our base station was the downfall of our entire service.  It was not uncommon to find three or four employees sleeping in their cars after an outing.  Someone had dropped me off at home the night before, although I found myself struggling to try and remember who it was.

“I think we have everything.  I even checked the oxygen bag!”  Her voice was loud.  Way too loud.  Way too perky.  There was this hint of country twang mixed with enthusiasm.  It crackled.  Like fresh baked bread.  As she poked her head out the back doors I finally got a look at her in the sunlight.  Her eyes were wide and expectant, like whatever I said was going to be the most important thing in the world.  It took me back.  I tried to hate her, but I just couldn’t.

*           *           *

Training went slowly.  She was eager, but she just didn’t get it sometimes.  Her enthusiasm was infectious, but her mistakes were painful to watch.  After emergency runs I would find myself having to back up and explain every move and every procedure.  She hung on my every word, her eyes wide.  But the next call that was similar would stump her again.

One day on a non emergency run, we were trying to load the patient into the back of the ambulance.  She could barely work the cot.  She was so short and her upper body strength so poor that she had never successfully lifted the stretcher by herself. Luckily she was just a third rider and my partner was always there to help. This patient wasn’t very heavy so I decided that this would be her time to go solo.

“Come on, your going to put her in there.  You work everything.  I’m just going to pull up the undercarriage.”

I could see her working up to it.  I could tell from the look on her face that she was determined.  She was going to use absolutely every ounce of strength to get that patient in that ambulance if it killed here.  She got ready.  She lifted.  Her face turned red.  But I’ll be damned if she didn’t clear the second set of wheels.  A big smile broke across her face, but it soon turned to terror.  She had just been hoisted in the air by her waste and her feet were dangling in mid air.  I stepped back to see what had happened and my eye caught sight of her leather radio case.  It had gotten caught in the undercarriage and she was suspended in mid air, unable to get down.  I took a step to my left, put my hands under her armpits, and lifted her in the air away from the cot and set her down.  She was so overjoyed that she had gotten the patient in the ambulance that it never occurred to her to be embarrassed.

Her cup was always half full. 

*           *           *

The real test of her abilities and my patience was soon to come.  All the planets had aligned together to make sure that my day was complete and utter hell.  For starters, they had taken my partner off my truck.  Someone had called in sick, and the shift supervisor decided that since my trainee had been with me almost a month that it would be good for her to ride solo with me for a day.  That sounds like a good idea on paper, but it was simply clearing a trainee before she was ready.  It was a lazy way to fix a hole in the schedule and I protested.  The supervisor listened to my protests, ignored them, and sent me off to get in service.

I went to see Eric who had a sour look on his face.

“Don’t look at me like that, Eric.  Tell me something I want to hear.”

“Well, how about your truck is being loved and cared for in the garage today while it gets its preventative maintenance check?”

“That’s not something I want to hear.  That makes me want to kill and massacre indiscriminately.”

“Okay,” he said, “Since that went over well, lets keep on rolling.  The only truck left in the fleet is truck 7.”

Every EMS service of any size has the equivalent of truck 7.  Somewhere on the back lot of every ambulance service in America there is a piece of shit truck that is held together with bailing wire and duct tape.  It’s only function is to be the ghetto ride of last resort.  Every year someone in fleet services says, “Hey, that truck looks and runs like six pounds of shit in a five pound bag.  Why don’t we put a bullet in its brain and sell it to the glue factory?”  And then someone will inevitably say, “No, let’s just keep it one more year.”  And they do.  And I hate them for it.

“I’m going home sick.”

“No you’re not.  You are going to take these keys.  You are going to get out there.  And you are going to help that nice trainee of yours get through this day.  It won’t kill you, so you will be stronger for it.”

The first call we caught right out of the gate was a respiratory distress out in the sticks.  I hadn’t even properly checked out the truck yet before dispatch was screaming at us to get going.  I was in the middle of checking out my airway kit when the supervisor appeared in my back door and glared at me.  “Make runs now.  Check truck later,” was all he said.  So I threw up my hands and complied.

The truck barely held together during the drive to the nursing home.  The perky one was driving, but she didn’t look too perky.  She looked horrified at the sound the engine was making.  “Don’t worry,” I yelled over the engine noise.  “Just drive it to the best of your abilities.  If it falls apart, it falls apart.  What are you gonna do?  It’s not your fault.”

We came screeching up to the nursing home entrance and she hit the brakes a little hard.  A side compartment flew open and some sheets fell out into a pile on the pavement.  The outside cabinet on the passenger side of this vehicle was famous for flying open at the most inopportune times.  Most of the crews were aware of this and simply left the cabinet empty.  But every so often someone would try to stock it with sheets.  Such was the case on that day.  I got out of the vehicle, slammed the door, and kicked the pile of sheets under the truck.

“What do we need?” she squealed with excitement.

“Another fucking job,” I told her with brutal honesty.

She looked sad.  Like a lost puppy.  It was so pathetic it was starting to make me sad.

“Please get the airway kit…thank you.”

We shuddered and sputtered our way down the hall with an ancient cot that rolled like a broken shopping cart.  I took one look inside the room and knew it was bad.  She was breathing like a guppy and her lips were blue.  A set of aids were slowly trying to put her clothes on, completely oblivious to how sick she was.

“You’re going to have to move ladies.”

“But we need to get her dressed,” they protested.

“Look at her,” I said.  “She’s not going to need clothes if she’s dead.  I could care less about her pants.”

They looked at me in disbelief while I laid her flat on the bed.  “Look here,” I said.  I pried one eye open and poked the side of it with my gloved finger.  She didn’t flinch.  One of the aids started crying.

“Look, I’m not trying to freak you out.  I need your help.  Hold it together.  Is she a DNR?”

They couldn’t answer my question.  They just ran from the room.  I told my partner to get the BVM out and start bagging.  She did what most new people do.  She tried to ventilate the patient about 90 times a minute.  “Whoa, slow down,” I told her as I put the pulse ox on her finger and got a reading of 72%.

It wasn’t long before an angry nurse stormed in.  “What do you think you’re doing?” she stared me down like it would mean something.

“Ma’am, it’s pretty obvious she is dying.  She’s unresponsive and her sats are 72%.  Her lips are turning blue.  Does she have a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order?”

“There is no reason for me to tell you that and you have no idea what you are doing.”

I would have been mad, but I was too dumbfounded by the amount of denial and stupidity that was flowing from her gaping maw.  As she was letting me have it, three more nurses came into the room.  One of them was wearing nice clothes and a white coat.  My nurse manager radar was glowing red hot.  Their faces showed various shades of anger.

I decided to go for broke.  “Okay then, any of you know if this completely unresponsive patient is a DNR?”

Silence.  Staring.  More silence.  I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  My tiny blonde partner was bagging at some incredible rate that must have been in excess of 200 breaths a minute.  “Easy there…keep it down to a dull roar girl.”  She slowed down a bit and tried to take a few breaths herself.  “There you go,” I told her, “your doing fine.”

“Okay then,” I said.  “You all can watch me intubate her.”

I was able to do the deed fairly quickly despite my partner being so flustered and the rest of the room staring at me with hatred.  But, as often happens with a backup truck that has not been properly checked, we were missing something very important.  There was nothing with which to tie off the tube.  There was no twill.  No tape.  Not so much as a garbage bag twisty-tie.  Nothing.  It was time to get bold.

“I don’t suppose any of you ladies has any tape in your pocket?  Do you?”  I put on an exaggerated smile when I said it.

“You’re kidding, right?”  The one who looked like management was speaking.

“You know what?  I’m not.  If you hadn’t noticed, this woman is blue, unconscious, and has no gag reflex.  The fact that I was able to place this honking great piece of plastic down her face without so much as a twitch from her was absolute proof that the procedure needed to be done.  I have no freaking clue why you all are so pissed at me other than the fact that you don’t want to take the blame for letting this patient deteriorate to this point, but it happened, and here we are.  I am breathing for her, and I’m not going away so will one of you give me some damn tape?”

They all started filing out of the room.  They were oblivious.  They were indignant.  One of them said something about calling my supervisor.  I yelled after her promising to dial the number for her if she got me some tape.  I got no answer.

“What do we do now boss?”  My partner was trying to smile, but she looked like she was about to cry.

“We’re going to go to the hospital my dear.  We are going to go to the hospital.”

It was interesting trying moving a patient with only the two of us while one of my hands was out of commission due to its death grip around the tube.  It wasn’t pretty, but we dragged her over and got going down the hall.  The back of the truck was only a little better.  I found something resembling tape.  I secured the tube and rechecked breath sounds.  Her sats were coming up and although she was still unconscious, her numbers were back up in the 90’s.  I took a minute to get a line before we left since I would be the only pair of hands in the back.

“Okay,” I said looking up. “Time to go.  Warp factor three.  Make it so.”

“Okay…where’s the hospital?”  She was now biting her lip.  It was cute, but I wanted to kill her.

“You don’t know where the hospital is?”  This was more of a statement then a question.  I was letting it sink in.  “Okay, we can do this.  Get up front and take a left out of the parking lot.”

She instantly disappeared.  I heard her scamper up into the seat and try a few knobs until the siren came on.  We lurched forward and the g-force never really subsided.  We were constantly accelerating and we had not even cleared the parking lot.

“Easy woman!” I yelled.  “I’m gonna hurl all over this patient.  Slow down and get to the second light and make a right.”

Slowing down was not an option.  She flew down the road like a mad woman possessed.  I was having trouble staying in my seat until suddenly without warning, we came to a grinding halt.  A glance forward told me it had something to do with a busy intersection.  What I didn’t expect was for the siren to be turned off.

“Surely we aren’t there.” I said.

“Buck,” came a meek voice from the front.  “The side door is open again.  I can’t see around it with the mirror.”

I paused for a short second just to take in my sheer an unadulterated hatred of this one moment in time.  I looked down at the patient.  She was gorked and glassy eyed.  I looked at the truck.  It was a mess.  I looked at my paperwork.  It was strewn about the patient compartment.  I took a deep breath and cocked my chin to crack the cartilage in my neck.

“Well, go outside and shut the damn thing.  The patient and I are not going anywhere.  We’ll wait.”

I heard scurrying and tiny footsteps outside on the pavement.  I heard a door slam followed by more footsteps.  Then I heard the driver’s side door open and in less than two seconds we were flying down the road again.  I had no idea truck 7 could move like that.

“Is that the hospital up there?  That big building?” she asked.

“Fuck yeah it is.  Follow some red signs and land this bitch.  I want this goddamned call to be over.”

When we slid to a halt in the ER dock the side door came open again.  “Leave that fucking thing,” was all I could manage to blurt out.  A very frazzled and tiny person opened the back doors and looked expectantly at me.  She tried to smile, but I could tell she was crying.  It was then that I think my grinch heart that was two sizes too small decided to grow just ever so slightly.

“Its alright,” I said calmly.  “You’re doing a good job.”

“Really?” she asked.  She was still crying, but her smile was real now.  For a moment I thought the woodland creatures would return to shower her with flower petals.  But she just stood there sucking in diesel fumes.  She coughed slightly.

“Pull this damn thing outta here.  I need this run to be over.”

Things went smoother in the ER.  We transferred care to the staff who was not surprised by our description of the idiocy taking place at the nursing home.  They were already calling the ICU to reserve a room while I was finishing up my paperwork.  The unit secretary came to tell me I had a phone call at the desk.

“Hello,” I said.

“Man, did you piss those bitches off.  They were screaming at me so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.  You just spread good will and cheer where ever you fuckin’ go.”

“Oh yeah…about that…sorry if they dumped on you.”

“Don’t sweat it, I already talked to the ER doc and he says the patient is FUBAR and you did a good job.  So I guess those nurses are pissed that you saved their patient’s life?  I called them back and told them that the patient has severe respiratory compromise and is going up to the ICU.  They seem to think that is your fault some how.  I tried to explain it but they were too stupid.  They are just covering their ass.  If we lose the contract, we lose the contract.  I can’t please someone who is that bone stupid.  Just clear it up and get back on the road.”

I tried to explain everything to my trainee, but she just wasn’t getting it.  She was so kind hearted that she was having trouble understanding why a nurse could be bad at her job or not have the patient’s best interests at heart.  I tried to explain to her that most people on this planet are lazy and stupid, but she just looked at me with confusion and sadness in her big blue eyes.

The rest of our day was a never ending stream of naiveté and anxiety punctuated by the side compartment popping open despite my best efforts to tape it shut.  I went home exhausted, angry, and confused. 

*           *           *

My wife, who was at that time my live-in girlfriend, used to be the kitchen manager for a large chain of restaurants.  For a couple of years it was her job to open new restaurants and so she knew a lot about training.  Even though she never trained medical employees, her general advice about people and adult learning was sound.  She was also more socially adept than me.  I was terrible at trying to read people or tell what their needs were.  I was too clinical, cold, and duty driven to ever try and figure feelings into the equation for anything I was doing. 

“Maybe you can help me,” I told her during dinner one night. “I have this walking train wreck of a trainee.”  I told her a few stories about what had happened on the truck but she looked very impatient and disinterested as I described my frustrations.  She kept asking questions about her personality and background.  I kept disappointing her with my lack of information.  This continued for a few minutes until I finally protested, “Look, I don’t give a damn where she comes from or what she thinks, I just want her to calm the fuck down and drive in the right direction when I’m holding a BVM.”

“And that’s your problem,” she explained.  “Mike is right, you are probably the most patient training officer they have, but you are a heartless bastard.  All you care about are machines and computers.  She doesn’t have any knobs or buttons on her so you don’t get her.”

“I thought I was a sensitive 90’s man.”

“Nope, you’re a soulless dork.  I don’t think anyone argues that if someone is dying, you’re the first person anyone would want to have around, but you are going to be a failure as a training officer unless you take a personal interest in the people you are training.”

My nose crinkled in disgust.  “This sounds like we are going down a very dark alley for me.  How interested do I have to be in her?”

“God, you are clueless.  Look, I can already tell you that she is probably a very open and caring person.  You have quite a reputation where you work and she probably heard a lot about you before she even got on your truck.  Then she starts working with you and you are cold as ice.  You know the answer to everything.  It sounds like you have run some hairy shit with her and you always know just what to do.  She is a meek person who wants desperately to do this for a living and I guarantee she has put you up on a tall pedestal.”

“What?”  The very thought was both confusing and disgusting.  “Woman, you have lost your mind.  I am a short, squatty, ridiculous little man who totes Gomer around town.  I am no one’s hero.”

“That’s where you are wrong.  She desperately wants to be an EMT because she is trying to prove something to herself.  You are the real deal, and I bet she thinks you are larger than life.  I guarantee that everything she is doing is designed to please you.  Because you are such a distracted cold nerd, she can’t read whether or not you are pleased with her.  You just walk around smoking, chugging coffee, and being pissed.  She’s probably lucky if you occasionally will allow her to speak.  Am I right?”

“Everything but the nerd part.  I was better with ‘heartless bastard’.  It sounds sexier.”

“Buck, you are actually going to have to listen to someone else, and try to give a shit whether they live or die.  Tell her to stop trying to please you, and to start doing things for herself.”

I nearly did a spit take, “You actually want me to confront her about this?  What the fuck!  Feelings have no place in EMS.  This is getting weird.”

“Buck, you better do this, or she will fail.  She will never realize her dream, and she will go back to taking care of her kids at home knowing that she wasn’t good enough to do what she always dreamed of doing.  And you will have failed too because you didn’t put another employee on the street.”

“Really?”  The very thought of this was completely alien to me.

“Really.  Trust me.  You need to do this.”

*           *           *

It took me a couple of days to build up the courage to talk to her.  I had been avoiding the conversation, thinking that my girlfriend’s assessment had to be wrong.  Mike brought me into the office to check our progress.  He was getting impatient and told me that if I couldn’t turn her around in a week that it was going to be curtains for her.  They couldn’t afford to pay her to be a third rider forever.

I left his office and found her telling stories with a few employees out back.  She was her bubbly self, pushing herself up on her tiptoes to emphasize points.  I caught part of her story and realized that she was telling a story about me.  Maybe my girlfriend was right?

“Hey,” I called out to her, “We have an errand to run.”

“What is it boss?”  Her eyes were as bright and wide as ever.

“I have to stop by my apartment to get some food.  I am broke a shit and can’t even afford Taco Hell.”

She drove us to my apartment that was only about five minutes away and waited outside while I grabbed something to eat.  The tone pager went off just as I was finishing up and I rushed back outside to help her look it up on the map.  When I climbed in the passenger seat she declared that she had already looked up the run and knew exactly where we were going.

“Alright then,”  I said sounding impressed, “let’s do this thing.”

Seconds later she pulled out into the street right into another car.  She wrecked my brand new truck right into a passing Honda and locked up into its bumper dragging us about five or six feet into the street. 

*           *           *

She was mortified.  There was paperwork.  Supervisors came to take pictures.  There were questions.  And there was the angry guy in the Honda.  Let’s not forget him.  Then the supervisor found out that we were right in front of my apartment.

“I thought you weren’t fuckin’ her.”

“Oh, come on man!  My girlfriend’s still inside.” I protested.

“Really?  You managed to pull that off?  I tried to get my wife to do that a couple of times, but she won’t roll like that.  More power to you though.”

“Fuck you, man.  This is serious.  She wrecked my truck.  The best truck in the fleet.  They use it for ‘Walker: Texas Ranger’ shoots all the time.  It’s screwed now.”

“And who’s her training officer?  It’s all on you, my man.  You better get this shit under control or her heads gonna be on a chopping block and I’m gonna be holding an axe and wearing a hood.  Hey, that sound’s kinky.  You said your old lady’s just inside there?” 

*           *           *

“Okay, we have to talk.”

She looked terrified when I said it to her.  I didn’t know who was dreading the conversation more, her or me.  We had a long wait ahead of us while we waited for the supervisor to complete the accident report and find another truck for us.  So there were no more excuses.  We were just sitting around and she looked like crap.  My time honored technique of being a cold distant dick wasn’t working.  I decided to give my girlfriend’s idea a try.  I motioned for her to go outside to the hut where all the employees smoked.  The woodland creatures were not laying flower petals in her path.  She was terrified and looking like tears were going to shoot out of her eyes at any moment.  She silently sat down on a wooden bench as I lit a cigarette.

“So, what makes you want to be an EMT anyway?”  I was squinting when I asked her.  The smoke from my first puff was still in my eyes.

“Really?  You want to know?”

“Yeah, I do.  And you can relax, by the way.  I’m not going to can you during this conversation.  You got a few more lives left.  I just want to get to know you.”

Immediately all the stress flowed right out of her body.  Her shoulders relaxed.  Her posture changed.  I expected her to become perky again, but she didn’t.  She looked guarded and shy.

“Well, I got married pretty late.  I had a lot of relationships that didn’t work out.  I seem to always be attracted to these asshole types.”  Hearing the word ‘asshole’ come out of her mouth was almost shocking.  I wasn’t aware that she was capable of using profanity.  “I finally did find someone to settle down with and my husband is a good man.  We have two kids and the youngest one is finally school age, so I was finally free to start a new career.  My husband works regular hours and can come home in time to watch the kids after school.  He has been promising this to me for years.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but what has you doing this crazy shit?”

“Well, I became really interested in healthcare after I was disfigured in an accident.”

“What?  There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I never talk about it. But you know that we live out in the country, right?  Well, a few years ago we were burning some trash and brush out on our property.  I couldn’t get the fire going and I was getting frustrated.  It was windy and the fire kept going out, so I put way too much gasoline on it thinking that it would help.  When I finally did get it lit it flashed and caught my clothes on fire.  I ran around screaming while my clothes melted.  I ripped my shirt and my pants off, but it was too late.  My husband found me on the porch naked as a jay bird and screaming my head off with skin sloughing off of me.  He picked me up, threw me in the car and drove like a bat out of hell to the hospital.  We didn’t know what to do.  I panicked. When we pulled into the parking lot I just ran into the ER screaming my head off.  They were surprised to see me, let me tell you.  They put me on a bed and started working on me.  I don’t remember much after that.  I woke up in the ICU.”

I was speechless.  I wanted to say something comforting, but words failed me.  She continued.

“I spent a couple of months in the hospital.  There were quite a few surgeries.  My wounds got infected a few times, but I survived it.  I had to so I could go home to my baby girl who had been born not long before that.  The doctors and nurses were so good to me.  They kept my spirits up.  And now I’m all better.  That is except for the skin under my clothes.  You probably haven’t noticed that I wear a turtle neck everyday.”

“I thought you were just cold natured because you’re so petite,” I said, “I never thought to question you about it.”

“For years I was sensitive about it.  Not so much anymore.”  She pulled the collar of her turtle neck down to reveal the milky white skin beneath where the grafts had been placed.  It had no pigment and it was obvious where the line of new skin began.  “This is all over my upper body and on parts of my legs.  Anyway, I always admired the people who worked on me and brought me back to health.  They were always so patient and kind.  And I always thought that I wanted to do that someday.  I haven’t been to school in a long time.  We didn’t have a lot of money for me to go back to college either.  A friend of my husband’s is a volunteer fireman, and he told me about EMT school.  At first my husband was dead set against it.  He said it was dangerous and I had no business trying to do it.  We had a lot of fights about it.”

She paused for a moment and started to get upset.  Her eyes teared up again.  But it was obvious that she had been holding this in for a long time, and I was the first person she had talked to about it.

“Does he not want you to do this?”

There was a long pause.  “No.  He wants me to stay at home.  Things were real bad for awhile and we almost separated.  It wasn’t just about the job.  It was ever since the accident.”

She paused again and was obviously having trouble continuing.  She had stopped for such a long time that I felt uncomfortable and thought maybe she had told me too much.  I was expecting a bit of soul bearing, but nothing like this.

“If you don’t feel comfortable telling me all this,” I trailed off, giving her an out if she needed it.

“No!” She got mad and pounded her fists into her knees.  She wasn’t mad at me, but at some scene playing in her mind.  She focused on something off in the distance.  “He didn’t think I was pretty anymore.  He didn’t want to touch me.  Our marriage fell apart and I thought we were going to get a divorce.  So I said the hell with it and went back to school.  I just want to help someone like they helped me.  My skin’s all milky and blotchy and screwed up, and so is my marriage, but I’m here.  I am the mother of my daughters and I can help people too!”

The dam burst and tears started streaming from her eyes.  She started that uncontrollable kind of crying that men don’t know what to do with.  I wasn’t even sure she was getting enough air.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was supposed to be the ‘sensitive’ training guy, and I was at a complete loss, so I thought of what my girlfriend would want me to do.  I tossed my cigarette to one side, sat down next to her, and put my arm around her.  She buried her head into my neck and cried like that for a long time.  When the sobbing slowed a bit she took her head away from my chest.  I fumbled around looking for some kleenex I knew I didn’t have.  She produced some and blew her nose.  In a few moments she was peering into my eyes with a grateful smile, waiting for me to say something.

“Okay, I’m going to help you be an EMT.  But there’s something else I have to tell you.”  My girlfriend had been right about everything else, so I decided to go for broke.  “I know that everything you have been doing on that ambulance hasn’t been for you.  All you have been doing is trying to please me.  That isn’t going to make you an EMT.  That’s just going to make things worse.”

Her face instantly crumpled up and she looked even more upset than before.  She started to cry again.

“Whoa, now.  Hold on a minute.  That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get through this.  I have more respect for you now than I have had for any of my trainees in a long time.  Probably ever.  I want you to promise me something.  You started doing this so that you could do something with your life and help people.  So instead of worrying about what I think of you, and instead of worrying about what your husband thinks of you, just come in here and do a good job for yourself.  Do it for your patients.  That’s all you have to worry about.  If your husband doesn’t know how beautiful you are, that’s his damn loss.  We’ll get through this and you will be an EMT if it kills me.  But stop trying to please me, and stop trying to figure out how to be the EMT that I want you to be.  Just do the best you can and I’ll pick up behind you.  Deal?”

“Deal!” she yelled as she threw her arms around me, nearly choking the life out of me.

“And if you ever tell anyone that I got soft on you I’ll lay waste to your tiny ass.  I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

“Yes sir!”

*           *           *

“So, what’s the verdict?” Mike was sitting on the edge of his desk, staring me down, wanting an answer about my trainee.

“We’ll keep her.  Clear her today.  Make her my partner.  Give me another trainee.  I have most of the kinks worked out.  Let me work with her for another two months or so and she will be good to bid on her own truck.  But she’s not allowed to work overtime yet.”

“You are da fuckin’ bomb.  I knew you could fix her.  Outstanding!  Just in time too.  I have another project for you…”

But that is a story for another time.  I’ll be damned if I didn’t turn her into a fine EMT.  My wife was right.  She just needed to stop trying to please me.  She relaxed and started to remember what I told her, and before long she was doing it with the best of them.  She gave me one more big hug on the day she left my truck.  I have always had this thing about people touching me, and I felt uncomfortable showing affection towards a trainee.  I allowed it but threatened to kill her if she told anyone.

As is often the case, I may have learned more from her than she learned from me.  As the years go by I act less and less like a machine and have learned to see the human side of things.  It was only last year that a student who had observed me having trouble interacting with another student offered up the observation that I was too soft on people.  I nearly threw up in my mouth, but I knew he was right.  This blog is evidence of it.  And this trainee was one of the ones that taught me to look past the starch and the polish and the protocol.  I am better for it.

Someone told me months later that she had made amends with her husband and that she was doing well.  She was even considering going to paramedic school.  It made me proud.  But as the years went by, I lost track of her.  Every now and then my thoughts drift back to her.  Whenever she is, I know she is bubbly and excited, and her patients are better for it.