Flint had canceled our study session for the next night with no explanation. So I decided to drown my sorrows in adrenaline.

I slid on my tactical pants that my mom had sent me as an apology for her inaction. I focused on the pants to try to change their aura from guilt to rebellion. This shift was going to be about rebellion. I tightened my belt and tied my insecurities down. My plan was to pass a call. That would have made me feel so much better. My crew chief for that night was Carl. As I arrived at the office, Lily stormed out, her face averted so I couldn’t see her tears. That was the first sign to turn back. Carl put his fist through the plaster wall in the equipment closet. That was the second.

I put a radio on and played with the equipment in the jumpkit. Perhaps I could layer gauze over the hole in the wall and keep it there with medical tape. I could tourniquet Carl’s hand to a pole and keep him from doing more damage. I could put a face mask over my mouth to keep myself from inhaling the toxic atmosphere. I wrapped my radio in an ace bandage, because it must have been broken. We weren’t getting tones.

I hit it. It was either a coincidence or fate, because it blared out tones at the exact second that my hand collided with the ace wrapping. I leapt to my feet and thanked the universe that I hadn’t tourniqueted Carl’s hand to a pole. I needed him on the calls, regardless of his issues.

“Move out, crew,” Carl said.

I tried to put everything I knew about him out of my mind. Just follow him, I urged my legs. They reluctantly obeyed.

“I missed the dispatch,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow you.

“It’s a female with stomach pain. She’s in the wellness dorm.”

I ran after him. The wellness dorm wasn’t far, and taking the car wasn’t worth it. We would get there faster by relying on good old fashioned legwork. I fell behind, trailing Carl by thirty feet. I wasn’t sure if it was practice or Darwinism that made the crew chiefs the way they were, but they were consistently faster runners than everyone below them. I tried to close the gap by sprinting. When we reached the door of the dorm, I was gasping, ready to keel over. That was probably the third sign.

Carl stood with his legs shoulder width apart, shoulders solid. “Take a second.”

I nodded, afraid I wouldn’t be able to make noises that sounded like words.

“Ready,” he said after five seconds.

I took another deep breath and said yes, even though I really wanted to sit down for a few minutes so I didn’t look like a sweaty fool when I walked in. We took the elevator up. For that, I forgave Carl for making me move before I was ready.

At her room, we knocked to request entry.

“Come in,” a voice close to tears said.

We opened to doors and stepped around the clothes arranged by the wind on the floor. Each had fallen in an inconvenient location. I pulled my gloves on and tried to move some shirts away from the patient. I introduced myself and asked her what was wrong.

“My stomach. It hurts so bad.” She held her stomach like it would fall off if she let go.

“Carl, can you take vitals?” Delegating was good. “I’m going to palpate your stomach. Just tell me if anything hurts.”

She moved her hand away from her stomach, inch-by-inch so I could press on the four quadrants.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow,” she said.

Apparently, everything hurt. I asked her what she ate: a burger a few hours ago. I assumed it was food related, made an ass out of you and me. I figured that she had gotten food poisoning.

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“What do you want to do? Are you worried enough that you want to go to the hospital?” I said. “You can go in an ambulance or with a police officer to the...”

“I want to go to the hospital.”

The police officer stepped in. “Has she thrown up within the last hour?”

I scrunched my forehead and nodded, thinking he was about to dispense medical advice.

“She isn’t coming with me. I just waxed the squad.”

I bit my tongue, hoping I didn’t look like I was having an allergic reaction. The police were very particular about their police cars. I can imagine it would not be pleasant to clean out of a car, but wasn’t driving patients to the hospital part of their job description? I motioned to Carl. “Can you call for an ambulance?

We waited for half an hour, praying that any second the ambulance would come and end this call. The silence was punctuated by the occasional groan from our patient and the awkward topic of conversation from me. I heard them clomp down the hallway in their composite boots before I saw them. I stood to the side and tried to get out as much information about the patient as I could before they interrupted me.

“We have a 19 year old female experiencing extreme abdominal pain…”

“When was your last period?” the stodgy one said.

“Last month,” she said, looking up from her hands.

I almost walked out of the room. I had just forgotten the main reason for abdominal pain with women.

“We’ll transport you to Magee Hospital. They do women’s things…and medicine.”

The stodgy paramedic’s partner chuckled. “Alright, sweetie. Let’s go.”

I stood, watching them guide her out by her arm, too shocked by my own misstep to be enraged by his comment. Carl shook his head as he passed me, following the paramedics out of the room. I gathered the supplies we had strewn among the patient’s clothes, packing the stethoscope on top of the blood pressure cuff. I imagined how pathetic I must look to an outsider. All this time and training, how many times had I done this, and I still couldn’t tell menstrual cramps from food poisoning. Carl didn’t even feel the need to debrief me. It was such an unexplainable mistake. And I had done it in front of the city paramedics too.

I felt a hysterical bubble rise to the top of my chest. I pushed it down, frantically swallowing the cry that threatened to bludgeon the walls I had built. I put the jumpkit over my shoulder, hoping it would serve as a reminder that now was not the time for what was happening. My mother’s voice echoed through the back of my head, coaxing my fear and self-loathing to an acceptable level. Not in public, it said. I breathed more easily. Later, the cry said. I’ll come back later. I thanked my mother, for all her faults; her voice was one of the only things that sent my hurricane feelings away from shore.

I didn’t stay for the rest of my shift. I apologized to Carl for bailing and stumbled home, wiping away stray tears that leaked down my cheeks. It was dark outside, but I would have to make it through the bright lights of the dorm lobby and the inquiring eyes of the desk attendant before I arrived at a dark safe place for me to release the scream I was hiding. I prepared my usual excuse for if I saw anyone I knew. “Allergies,” I would say. “Did you see the pollen today?”

But Ruby was in the room when I arrived. I pretended I needed a pen for homework and paused to collect myself. Flint. Flint’s room was always unlocked. I bolted. Neither he, nor his roommate were in the room. I threw myself onto his bed and covered myself in blankets. It was never going to happen. I was never going to rank up.

I cried, screaming into his pillow all of the frustration that had come with EMS. I opened my eyes against the pillow and saw only darkness, extending for miles into that soft, cushiony abode my face had found. I wished my mother’s voice hadn’t encouraged me to be alone. My only reprieve from my panic attack were seconds when I though the door was opening. I wanted Flint to walk in, to hold me in his arms and tell me that it was going to be okay. That in four years, none of this would matter. And I would tell him that it mattered to me. That it would always matter to me. That I would be looking at jobs one day and thinking of promotions, when EMS would come to the back of my mind and tell me that I wasn’t good enough to advance through anything.

Flint came back to his room, and I leapt out of bed and excused myself, hoping he couldn’t see how swollen my eyes had become. I should paint my nails with sparkles, I thought. That would be distracting for other people. I would just wave my hands around and they wouldn’t be able to see me.

He stared at me, dumbfounded to find someone in his room. “Why are you here?”

I felt it in my bones. He didn’t want me to be there. I ran to my room, to give him space, to give me space. I called Flint and listened as his phone vibrated through the wall. The phone rang and rang and rang. I called him again. No answer. A sick feeling settled its claws into my stomach, barbs that I couldn’t shake loose. Was it because of the hallway before? I wished I had pushed John’s arm away. The wall didn’t need the support.

I crawled into my bed, moving slowly over the creaky parts so that I wouldn’t wake Ruby.

“Dammit, motherfucker,” she said as I lay down.

I froze and moved only my head towards her. Was she awake?

Silence followed. I gradually relaxed into my bed, hoping there were no more surprises. I thanked my bed for not judging me, for always drawing me in.