Three Close Calls

This story is available to read, for free, with the author’s expressed consent on Inkitt ONLY. If you are reading this elsewhere, the content has been stolen and you are risking your internet security. Read safely and benefit the author by reading from a legitimate source. Thank you.



The call came in just after 3am because…of course it did. I was halfway through a ‘hot dog’ that had fossilized in isolation under the heat lamp in the back of a 7/11, which I suppose is also just as well because, really, I should lay off of these. My heart quickens enough when the tones go off, whatever cholesterol or carcinogens these things have to offer me isn’t going to do me any favors when I retire.

Whenever the hell that turns out to be.

We were still in the parking lot. Paisley heard the call come through too, and I could feel her staring at me from the passenger seat of the ambulance. Our box was due to be out of service until 3, and the moment the dreaded number hit the clock, she was on the radio to put us back in action. New EMTs had a tendency to do that. Especially this one, and she gave me her stern mother eyebrow raise to let me know we had to go. That was about as far as she was willing to go. The stares. I could only imagine how her child, how old was she? Six, maybe seven?

She looked at me again.

I hurried over and jumped in the driver seat. Usually at this time of night, I’d let the EMTs drive, but Paisley just didn’t have the hands for driving the codes like I could. Maybe during the day, but at this time of night, you’d have to not only search bushes for the patients, but watch out for stray deer and cattle as well. She could raise her eyebrows to the moon and still not see what I saw.

I rolled the window down as we sped towards Main Street. The orchard air, with its citrus in full bloom, chased out the smell of gas station and old coffee from the inside of the ambulance, leaving me thankful for having remembered my allergy pill yesterday. Paisley, for all she tried to be Miss Perfect, didn’t seem to have remembered at all, and would sneeze incessantly into a pile of napkins she pilfered from a Jack in the Box we had visited earlier.

“Bless you,” I said.

She nodded.

With as many blessings as I had given her that night, you’d think that she’d hit the Powerball tomorrow, maybe pay off that debt her husband ditched her with, move out of her parent’s house and give up her longshot dream of becoming a middle-aged nurse.

God, they made these seats too damn close.

The call repeated over the radio. Man down on second and seventh, not many other details. We were nearly there.

“Keep an eye out,” I told Paisley.

“Yeah,” she said.

This part of town was on the fringe of the good and the ghetto. Only a bike lane divided the two, and if you missed that detail, you’d be hard pressed to ignore the lack of a sidewalk and the new speedbumps ready to serve hell to your undercarriage. I began to slow for the bump when Paisley began tapping on the window glass.

“There he is!” she said, already pulling off her seat belt. I put the truck into park. We were at the first house on the corner. A squatty building you could hardly see behind the weeds overthrowing the property. It was boarded up, likely to keep out squatters. Even with the red and blue lights of the ambulance flashing, no reflections bounced off of it. You could tell it had the potential, or used to be nice once upon a time, but those times seemed long gone, left behind in maybe a kinder world.

I hate this neighborhood.

Paisley went straight for the guy, leaving me to grab our bag. Once I rounded the sharp edge of the ambulance, I found out who we were dealing with. His clothes were ragged, a set that might have been mid-wash jeans and a light gray hoodie at one time but were now stained into a mosaic by various liquids that had me putting on my gloves. He was sprawled out on the sidewalk, face down, right in front of the worn cement that led up to the property.

“Excuse me, sir?” Paisley prodded the man, looking for a pulse. I could see his back moving from the truck. I couldn’t smell alcohol from my spot on the pavement, so drunkenness hadn’t likely put him there.

The man shifted, revealing a white beard that mimicked the sidewalk underneath him. Oh hell. It was a frequent flyer I knew all too well. I gave Paisley the bag and motioned for her to back up, but she must not have seen.

“Hey, Bill, Bill, you gotta get up.” I shook his shoulder and earned another look from Paisley. I jerked my head back towards the truck, but again, she looked at me like she didn’t understand. As if it weren’t a universal motion to get the hell away.

Bill stirred and finally his eyes fluttered open. He grunted, and the stank of his breath hit me like a rancid garbage disposal. No alcohol though.

“You take anything today, Bill?”

“I can get his blood pressure,” she said and stepped forward. I held my arm out to stop her since she couldn’t take a hint.

“We’re just having a nice talk right now, Paisley. Wait for instruction.”

I looked back at Bill and helped him to sit up.

“Nothin’,” he said then hacked up a cough. He spat towards the pavement near Paisley instead of the house. If I could do more than vague gestures, I’d tell her not to say anything else, not to look at the man the wrong way, or any way. I’d tell her that even I couldn’t tell what his triggers would be that day.

“Then you don’t need us here bothering you, do you? Best get out of sight before someone calls on you again,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t feel good,” he said.

Damn it.

“Probably from the nap, right? Stretch out, you’ll be back to it.”

“Back to what?” he huffed. “Back to not feeling good.”

I took a stiff breath. He pulled down the collar of his hoodie and scratched at the U.S flag underneath.

“I can take his vitals,” Paisley annoyingly added.

I was dreading the next hour too much to prevent her. It was either going to be her or me. If he was going to insist on being transported, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. What I needed to figure out was how we were going to get there. It was dark out, and Paisley was an inexperienced driver, but Bill wasn’t always a gentle patient. If this could be a short trip, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Paisley was elbows deep in the bag pulling out a blood pressure cup and O2 sensor. Maybe I could try to convince him to stay. It’s not like anything had ever been wrong with the old man. And nothing was more annoying than driving him all that way just to see him walk out while I cleaned up the back of the ambulance or wrote a report.

“Mind if I take your blood pressure, sir? Just let me know which arm you prefer.”

“Right on, young lady,” Bill said and raised his left arm. Bill’s sight must’ve been going. There wasn’t a planet in which Paisley could be considered young. She played the part of a lady, sure, but youth likely abandoned her once she squeezed out her kid. At least for the moment Bill was alright, but who knows if it’d last.

I watched her take the pressure in the textbook fashion.

“150 over 100,” she said. “Is that typical for you?”

Bill shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno. Don’t care to.”

“Well, do you know how you ended up on the floor?”

Bill’s eyebrows furrowed and my heart rate kicked up. Remembering was a dangerous thing when it came to Bill.

“How ‘bout we take you over to Trinity? Let them watch you for a while, sound good?”

Trinity was only a few miles up the road, hardly enough time for any trouble.

He shook his head.

“Nah. VA.”

If I could’ve cursed, I would have. He always insisted on us driving an hour out to the veteran hospital in the city, when they’d do no more for him than Trinity would expect maybe add a ‘thank you for you service’ snippet to any discharge paperwork.

“Oh, you’re a veteran? My father was also,” Paisley began.

“We’ll get the gurnie for you Bill, just give us a sec,” I said and motioned for her to join me at the ambulance. I went inside first. If she got this talkative with him during the ride, it’d likely go nowhere good for any of us.

“Look, I’ve been dealing with this guy for years, let me handle him, you just focus on getting us to VA. Got it?”

“Really? After six months, I thought you’d never let me.”

“Yeah yeah, just hurry up and try to get us there in one piece.”

Should be easy enough, once we got on the freeway.

Bill was able to get himself from the floor onto the gurney and we rolled over the cracked pavement and loaded him.

I hopped in and took the seat by Bill. As long as we kept quiet and focused on getting to the hospital and nowhere else, we’d be fine. I hooked him on the monitors, the standard stuff, things that didn’t require much talking, seeing as how many times we had been through this before. Routine like this is what he thrived on, knowing what the next step would be, and not having to deal with the unknowns that come with conversation. Which is why I didn’t say anything until I got to take my seat again.

Paisley pulled the truck down the road and hit the speed bump a little too hard. My pen wobbled in my hand. I knocked on the wall. If she hit more of those Bill may actually need this visit of his by the time we get there. Once we had miraculously made it to the freeway, I figured I couldn’t delay much longer.

“You fall asleep on the sidewalk on purpose?” I asked. This was about the only way to go about talking to him, saying questions that don’t quite require remembering.

“I didn’t fall asleep on nothin, I don’t be fallin asleep nowhere,” he said.

Helpful.

“Well, you trip then?”

“I know how to fall. I don’t be trippin neither.”

“Okay.” Patient doesn’t know what happened. Easy enough. “You know your name then?”

“Bill Thompson. Same its always been. Even if the govment says otherwise.”

I gritted my teeth. Just a few more questions.

“And you know what year it is…?”

“Sure. Fifty past war and twenty-three since seventh.”

I was not going to write that one down.

“And do you know who the president is?”

“No one important.”

Well, he’s alert at least. This exchange was not bearing fruit, so I decided to fold my hands in my lap and stare at the exit signs as they passed by the windows. Beyond the lights of the few cars on the highway, there wasn’t much else. Just off-ramps that went into the void.

“So young lady, you said you were a military brat?” Bill yelled towards the front.

For the love of god, I hoped she had the radio on or could at the very least follow instructions.

“Yeah, I was! Born in Fort Hood, actually,” she said.

It’s too small in here for this.

“So, your dad was part of the real military! Army, only branch that matters if you ask me,” Bill said.

“Yep,” she said.

Good. Maybe that would end there. The ride would only be another twenty minutes.

“They say the Marines is where the real work is done, nah, those jarheads couldn’t nav their way outta a paper bag, but the Army, see that’s where dynasties are born. Real men.”

He looked in my direction.

“And medics on the ground durin’ war times, see they knew how to act.”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me, sir. My dad started as a medic, but by the time he hit his twenty he was a doctor.”

Bill smacked his knee.

“That’s good shit there. Army will make something of anyone. I’ve seen it.”

I sat back in the seat and resigned myself to staring out the window again.

“I met this real sack during basic. Tall guy, good build, but dumber than the dirt he walked on. He was named William. He had stumbled into a recruitin office, back in Virginia, where I’m from. No cash there but what could be got by enlistin. Best to do that before getting drafted anyway. See back then, there weren’t no bonuses for putting your name to paper like there is now. Back then you had to have real courage, real pride to have enlisted written on your dd-214. No perks but a steady paycheck and that on your papers. Like an invisible badge, one with no ribbons or pretty medal, but still a badge. Anyway, ‘bout this William fella, he had no prospects after ten years of wasted education. When he got to basic, he shot better than anyone there, faster too, damn near machine like. Dumber than rocks when it came to makin his own decisions, but he could follow instructions, I’ll give him that. Basic instructions, not much other than that, dumb as he was. No creativity in there, no mind of his own. Built for the Army, y’know?”

“Sounds like he did well there!” Paisley shouted from the front.

She would say that. She’s never heard this story before. It’d be better if she just focused on the road and made sure she didn’t miss anything.

“How are you feeling, Bill?” I asked.

He waved me off.

“It’s not like you done anythin to make me feel better. I’m talkin to the lady.”

I hoped Paisley wouldn’t take that as an invitation to keep the conversation going. I looked at the monitors and recorded a fresh set of vitals. Everything seemed normal, blood pressure was still teetering between normal and worrisome, but, again, that was normal too.

“Anyway,” Bill began again. “Basic was easy enough for him, fun even. But it’s not long, just a few months, and the shift from basic to combat, eh, too much for the idiot. Didn’t help that young folks back then had such bad attitudes towards what our mission was. But a mission’s a mission, so we went where we were told to go. That William fella shared a bunk with me once we got deployed. Big fool that he was, I took him under my wing, y’know, as a kindness. It helped that he was strong too, if he died so would I, so the bigger the better. Until we got to the jungle. The muck and the grime came up past our calves, and the rain would be more fickle than a woman on her monthly. We never could get dry, and the only thing in that jungle that ate well were the mosquitos. I won’t regale you with the details of what I saw, the other things that ate out there, but I will tell you, it’s a good thing I was there cuz boy, that kid William was a mess. Crazy mess. I mean we all saw friends get blowed up. Everybody lost somebody, but we made it back, that’s what was important.”

“Sure is, sir. My dad would say the same, and he saw little combat.”

Bill chuffed.

“Peacetime guy, eh?”

“Not quite. He got deployed a few times while I was growing up. Went to the gulf and briefly to the Middle East,” Paisley said back. She had that motherly tone in her voice again, as if she were correcting her child. I’d heard it from her often enough, when she’d try and remind me of the protocols she picked up in the handbook, or in class. She was new to the profession. She didn’t see the value in education was in its application, not the specifications.

“More forgiving environments, for sure. You don’t see the chaos of the draft wars these days. When you’re forced to rely on your guts and instinct instead of commander instructions coming in through your ears. Lucky him. Would have been a better time for a fella like William, and I bet he’d wished he would’ve been born during your dad’s years instead of his.”

Paisley said nothing, she was getting over and preparing to take us off the freeway.

“See, William lost it out there, not getting the direction he needed. Got all twisted in the head. So bad they sent him mainland. First place they could find, as far as home as he could get. No hope of reenlistment, of getting that bonus, but he did enough for some of the perks. Bought himself a house in a decent neighborhood, since that’s what everyone said to do with the money he hadn’t touched. Not much advice came for him after that though, once everyone tried to forget the failures. Wish I could have told him what to do, the idiot. Best to try and forget everythin, get some sanity back, y’know?”

“That’s very unfortunate,” Paisley said.

“More unfortunate is the ‘minders. All the health issues that came from red stuff in the air. Poor dumb William could have lived his whole life in the military if they’d let him. Only place he every did learn somethin,” Bill said. He eased back into the gurney, and his vitals improved. There wasn’t much more to his story. Nothing more than I thought he would tell without prompting.

“We’ll be getting to the hospital in a few minutes Bill, you feeling okay?”

He grunted at me.

“Anything hurting in particular? I have to tell the nurse something,” I said.

“Nothing feels good,” he said.

Of course, how could I forget.

I met Bill and heard his story when I was an EMT about six years ago. My eyes weren’t sharp back then like they are now. The paramedic I was partnered with wasn’t as kind as I am with Paisley. He was a brash, rude, salty asshole to me and most of the patients we picked up. It was as if he were dedicated to the craft of making sure anyone who got into our box was suffering too greatly to care for our manners. And for the most part, he succeeded in that. He made the jump into the fire service, so he could the annoyance of driving patients to the hospital and being poor. He was younger than me when he made that switch, if I remember correctly. He had been a dedicated paramedic for three years when he got saddled with me. He knew Bill too. Could see him, wherever he managed to be on Second or Seventh street, from the ambulance. I always envied his vision back then.

On my first call with Bill, I got stuck in the back with him. No word from my paramedic about how he was, how to talk to him. We got to talking on our way to VA, about this story, and it went about as well as it went for Paisley. Until the end. You never could know what would be the thing to set Bill off. Never knew what the magic words would be. The phrase or word that would, like some kind of spell would snap him out of himself, it sure as hell made me feel like some unrealizing hypnotist.

Out of the window, the darkness gave way to lonely streetlights, and then, out of the darkness like a ghost, the white hospital. The lights there were harsh, white LEDs that not only lit the parking lot, but the street and bus stop outside of it. Cars were littered around the parking lot, along with security meandering and going through roundabout over and over again.

“Doesn’t look too busy, sir. They ought to get to you pretty quickly,” Paisley said.

I got up and leaned towards the front.

“We’re going to swing left at the roundabout, entrance for us will be the second overhang on the right.”

“I know, I know. I’ve been here with my dad plenty of times.”

“Sorry to hear it,” I said and retreated back to Bill.

She brought the ambulance to a clumsy stop, making me wish I had enough time to buckle myself in. I’d scold her on that later, maybe. Not sure how much good it’d do. Not sure if I could handle her stares while I did it.

“Your dad ailing?” Bill asked as Paisley moved to the back.

“No, he’s a doctor here, in the emergency department actually. I’m not sure if he’s on duty today, but maybe he is. Dr. Duarte, if you see him, tell him I drove you.”

Bill grunted. “That the secret to getting proper care ‘round here?”

Paisley let out a laugh I think she meant to be polite. It was better than talking.

I opened the back doors and stepped down. I stretched my arms a bit and put my hands on my side of the gurney. Once he hit the pavement, we rolled him through the sliding doors and parked him next to a blank space of wall.

“Here’s the info I took down, go get him checked in with registration, I’ll wait here,” I told Paisley.

“Two firsts in one night?” She took the tablet from my hands and smiled. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”

I watched as Paisley went up to the counter. She looked to be trying to joke with the tired woman working the computer. She looked this way, saw Bill on the gurney, and motioned to the waiting room. This was going as it usually was. The waiting room was sparsely littered. Only one television was on, showing some house renovations no one here could afford. The house in question, supposedly one of the ‘worst in America’ had been refurbished to fit the sterile, open concept that was popular on Instagram and Pinterest, or whatever other apps people with misplaced dreams seemed to use.

Once Paisley made it back to us, I sent her away again to get a wheelchair. We were almost done now. She came back quickly and looked at the screen above us.

“Ooh I love this show. That house is gorgeous,” she said.

“You didn’t see what it looked like before,” I said back.

Bill got himself off the gurney and into the chair. He didn’t need much help. Sure, he was old, but still a well built and relatively healthy guy. Paisley rolled him to the edge of a row of chairs where he could take in the renovations.

“Alright, Mr. Thompson, you try and take care of yourself, alright? And don’t go around calling yourself dumb, okay? You seem plenty smart to me.”

Oh hell, she had put it together, just like I had.

Bill jerked up from the chair so quickly it rolled into the chairs behind it.

“What the hell did you say to me? My name’s Bill, don’t care what no one else says, I made it, I didn’t lose nothin.”

I pulled Paisley back by the shoulders as security sprinted to catch him before he began throwing things again. I could feel panic radiating from her.

“Take the gurney back to the ambulance. I’ll finish up here.”

She was still looking past me towards Bill.

“Look at me, Paisley. Just follow my instructions, alright?”

That seemed to snap her back into focus, and she quickly rolled the gurney back to where we came in.

“Sorry about that,” I said to the nurse when she came out.

“To be expected, especially at this time of night.”

“And with the full moon out there, can’t discount that,” I said with a sad chuckle. I let her sign the paperwork to take him off of our hands. “Wish he hadn’t rattled the new EMT though,” I said.

She handed me back the clipboard.

“Can’t shield them from the reality of their work forever. We’ve all seen worse than William.”

“You’re not wrong about that. You all hang in there for the rest of the shift.”

“You too.”

I found Paisley outside the ambulance, sipping on a coffee too sugarfied to do what she’d need it to do.

“There’s a 7/11 down the road, if you want a fresh snack for the ride back,” I told her.

She sighed heavily and looked at the floor with her shoulders slumped.

“Sure. I could use a coffee.”

We got back in our seats. I had to adjust the chair she had messed with. I started us up.

“You aren’t going to get another one of those hot dogs, are you?”

I laughed.

“Don’t you go trying to control my diet. You can mother your child when you get home.”

She gave me that look again, the look I could see while still seeing the road in front of me. I gave her a look back. Like a mother who had given the same instruction, the same worn-out phrases to not one, but three children before her, who had seen enough of them to adulthood, enough be shoved out of the nest and fly away for better towns, and better prospects. The kind of look you had to have the same eyes to really see, because it was only worn eyes that could see past surfaces.