I spent the day cleaning, trying to regain some control over any part of my life. I organized my desk, threw away extra papers, washed my sheets, vacuumed and picked the random change up off the floor. I opened one of the drawers, and found a pile of folded, lined paper. I picked the pile up and sat among the blankets, still warm from the dryer, which had yet to be folded. I pulled the sides apart and opened them. They were from Flint. I opened each one, remembering how we had passed these notes back and forth during floor meetings. I had shoved them in my backpack and then into a drawer. I should have been grateful, thankful to a friend who just wanted to spend time together. But had he? The kiss changed things. Now I wasn’t sure where we stood and I started to feel like I was sinking again.
I felt the same sinking feeling when I was in the office with my advisor when she said “I know you tried.” I did. I did I did I did. Was it not enough?
“You just missed the cutoff for passing statistics and your other grades were C’s and B’s.”
I put my head down on her desk, not caring for decorum or presenting myself well. She knew the worst part of my life. She couldn’t possibly think any less of me. But that wasn’t the worst part.
“Your GPA is so low that we have to put you on probation for next semester.”
A fly could have easily flown into my mouth. I hadn’t even known that we did that. A flash of panic and I saw white. “Please,” I said. “Don’t tell my parents. I can get this under control. I just had a rough start.”
“That’s not up to me,” she said. “It’s protocol because you’re still a minor. I would get in trouble if I started making exceptions.” She paused and started again. “The letter will come about two and a half weeks from now in the mail. If it never got to them, that wouldn’t be my fault.”
I didn’t even get my wish for after that meeting. There was no way I could drift off to oblivion and try to forget that this was happening. I had to go on duty. I had already signed up for it, and to drop it, this late in the day, it would certainly get noticed. Right now, I did not want to be noticed. In fact, I slunk into the office with my head down so no one could catch my eye and talk to me. I went straight to the closet to get my equipment and sat myself down in front of the T.V. It was playing a cartoon that I used to watch with my brother. I hadn’t seen him in forever. I hadn’t spoken to him either. I wasn’t used to having to make an effort to contact him. He had always been there when I wanted to have fun or when I needed a distraction from what was hurting me. He was the best defense against my parents, just because he didn’t seem to care what they did to him.
Sandy walked in.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“I’m the supervisor on tonight.” She didn’t even look at me.
This day and night combination has remained in my mind as one of the worst of my life.
I was already on edge when we heard tones go out. I leapt out of bed, happy to be going anywhere away from Sandy. At least we would have patients and bystanders around us. She couldn’t be that rude to me if there were other people around. But I also couldn’t ask her for help on the call if I needed it. Sandy was a hands-off supervisor to begin with and she certainly wasn’t going to help me. I would have to do this all by myself.
The dispatch was for an approximately 20 year old female unable to breathe and experiencing pain in her chest. I flipped through possible situations as we ran. She could be having a heart attack, but she was very young and the common symptoms for women having heart attacks were not usually just chest pain. There was usually shoulder or back pain involved. Unable to breathe sounded bad. That was going to have to be controlled. I had grabbed the oxygen tank with the airways before we started running.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Sandy was gaining ground. She was more than ten feet ahead of me. Granted, she didn’t have an oxygen bag but I felt like she was trying to prove something. I sped up, trying to close the gap. So did she and I wondered why I hadn’t asked her to carry the oxygen bag. “I am more physically fit and therefore more worthy of your boyfriend,” each step seemed to pound into the ground. She passed the door for the dorm and I didn’t remind her. She figured it out after a few seconds and followed me in. I tried to slow my breathing and my heart rate to a human rate so I could deal with this situation calmly. Sandy barged on ahead and I decided to make due with the penny-sized amount of air left in my lungs.
We arrived at the scene and Sandy left me to talk to the police. Granted, that was her job, but I was a probationary member and not exactly overqualified for this call. The patient was my age and seated on a chair in the lobby. She had a friend on each side of her who would take turns hugging her as she sobbed while trying to draw in air at the same time. She punctuated her sobs by grabbing her sides, like they were going to explode. I introduced myself and she started hyperventilating, breathing faster and crying harder. If anything, this was impressive. I was surprised she hadn’t passed out.
“Can you put your hands on my shoulders? We’re going to breathe together. Big, deep breaths.”
She lifted her hands to my shoulders and I covered her hands with mine. I breathed in and she followed, six little breaths for my one. “Try again,” I said. I felt like the breathing might be good for both of us. She looked how I felt.
We breathed in together, again and again, until she took only two small breaths for each one of mine. “My chest,” she said, clutching her the sides of her rib cage.
“Sandy, can you get her vitals?” I turned to the patient. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Has this ever happened to you before?”
With tears streaming down her face, she explained that she had a panic disorder, that she had gotten up to get herself some hot chocolate while she was studying. She said she was trying to memorize a presentation she had to deliver the next morning at eight a.m. As she finished her sentences, she grabbed her side again. I looked at Sandy and mouthed “medics?” She nodded and went outside to talk to the dispatcher and get them sent over. I explained to our patient that we wanted to get her heart checked out, that the pain was probably from breathing in such an irregular way.
“You’re worried about your final project. I understand that,” I said. More than you know, I thought.
“It’s the difference between passing and failing my class. My teacher hates me.” As she said that, her roommate shook her head.
“She does not hate you. That’s just the way she deals with the class.”
The patient shifted away from her roommate and started breathing faster.
“Have you thought about getting a tutor? Asking for counseling or help?” The mirror near the elevator mocked me as I said those words.
She shook her head. “I had counseling about a year ago, but the medication should be controlling this.” She started sobbing again. I wondered what she would do if I joined her.
“The ambulance is on its way. They’re going to take a look at your heart and see what’s going on.”
I stepped away and let Sandy talk to the patient for a while. I was too close to the patient’s situation to be objective here. All I wanted was to curl up in a ball and mourn how difficult this was. My self-pity was keeping me from being the right level of optimistic. Her heart problem was probably because of her hyper-fast breathing. I wished one of the treatments I could give to be a hug, but I knew that was unprofessional and Sandy would probably report me, knowing her. I watched as the patient shrank from her cool demeanor. It was cold but the patient was starting to calm down. I wanted to go back in and demonstrate that I was the one who calmed her down, but it was too late. Sandy was in charge now.
The ambulance and paramedics arrived. Sandy transferred care to them and they assessed the patient’s heart. We stood, watching from the doorway. She’s fine, they proclaimed, the gods of EMS. They advised her to go to sleep and told her that everything would be fine. She handed them her phone, on which she had called her mother and asked them to speak to her. Sandy and I booked it. The mom call was like quicksand, you think that it will only take a few minutes, but you can spend forty-five minutes explaining and reassuring.
“That wasn’t bad,” Sandy said. “Your patient interaction was spot on.”
You wouldn’t know it from what followed. I will never know if that was the call that freaked Sandy out about my advancement, but soon after we got back from break, she started proposals forbidding relationships in EMS. Maybe I should have done worse on the call, so she wouldn’t have seen me as a threat. But I like to think that it would have happened anyway, no matter what I did. I tried to make the situation not about me, although I knew it was.