We arrived and jumped out of the car. We raced up the stairs; every step feeling like it had been put there to slow us down. The lights from the car flashed against my back, urging me forward, reminding me that this was not a drill. We stopped at the door, just for a second and each took a breath. You cannot be out of breath when you arrive on scene. No one will listen to you, regardless of how important what you’re saying is. We burst in, each going to our assigned tasks.

Is the scene safe? How many patients do we have? What do I think is going on? My teachers’ voices scampered through my head like rats. John checked the girl's pulse and breathing and motioned that I start breathing for her. I set it up and started to pump oxygen into her body. In between breaths, I watched the other people in the room. Her friends had hidden nearby in an open room and seemed more scared of the cops than worried about their sister. The cops were standing around the scene, holding their belt buckles in rapt attention. Once in a while, they would report something to station on their radios. They were supposed to be there for our safety, but sometimes I wondered whether it would really work

“John,” I said. “Her arms.”

“Yeah, heroin overdose. Who knows what else she was doing. Her sisters won’t tell us anything.” He started to assess her blood pressure, by pulling up her sleeves even more. Her track marks looked like Flinttmas trees, the veins were branches and the entry points the decorations. I almost fainted, but I knew she needed me to keep going.

I looked away and delivered another breath. “When will the medics be here?

“Soon enough, I hope. They were co-dispatched with us.”

Another breath, for her and for me. I bagged for what felt like an eternity, counting up to six and then starting over. I hoped she would be able to start over. How many times had she done this? Did her family know? Did they want to know?

“She’s a good student,” someone had said when we walked in. But you could be a good student and do dangerous things. It was meant to justify the situation, to help us understand that she wasn’t just this situation. But what had her grades gotten her. A support system? The desire to exist in her life? She was trying to escape and she was very close to succeeding.

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The medics arrived, almost bowling over the police officers and their belt buckles. The first one checked pulse, breathing, saw the track marks and called for the drug box. It was like lightning and I wished that we had been allowed to carry Naloxone, or Narcan as we called it. They prepared the syringe like they were going to give her a flu shot and injected it into her leg. Three, two, one. She took a slow breath. The medic seemed satisfied and we transferred her to a stretcher. As we walked her to the ambulance with the medics, I asked if she was going to be okay.

He laughed. “This one’s going to live to shoot up another day. Didn’t want to bring her to completely. She would have been in a lot of pain and pain makes addicts very angry.”

“I wish we had been able to give her Narcan. I was worried you weren’t going to get here in time.”

“We always get here in time…except for when we don’t.” He smiled. He was used to this craziness.

I tried to process all of the information. John and the graduate student walked away, debriefing about the impressive acts on the call and how they could improve for next time.

“Can I be part of the debrief?” I said when I caught up to them.

They weren’t debriefing at that point. They were talking about what the University was going to do about the incident. John was hoping they would make an announcement, encourage people to get help and re-explain their resources. The graduate student was adamant that the University was going to sweep it under the rug. The next morning, he assured us, people were going to go about their business as usual and no one was going to know that anyone had ever done drugs on the University’s campus. Ultimately, the graduate student was correct. The University wanted to cover its legal arse more than it wanted to promote awareness. I’m sure it had been a hard decision to make the first time it had come up. But since then, it had become routine. Keep it on the down low. Call their parents. Give them the semester off.

Community is a funny word. It means people who have something in common, people who have formed a group. The University was always handing out pamphlets and having workshops about community and helping our community. Community is all in your head though. That girl died a year later, from an overdose. I saw it in the college newsletter. That time, the city paramedics didn’t get to her fast enough. That time, the University talked about it.