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“As a first responder, you’re a grief mop, a trauma janitor, a sickness sponge—you’re the guy who shows up on the worst day of someone else’s life.”

As a first responder, you’re a grief mop, a trauma janitor, a sickness sponge—you’re the guy who shows up on the worst day of someone else’s life. And when you’re saving someone’s life, the odds are good they’re going to yell at or vomit on you. You’d think the job would get you laid, at least—everyone likes a uniform, right? But that seems to work better for firefighters, with their big trucks and fire poles. When you’re a medic, civilians ask you for stories and then say "EW, STOP" when you tell them that a freshly exposed human skull isn’t shiny, but actually resembles the flat off-white of institutional wall paint. Usually, for around $11 an hour ($13 if you’re a paramedic), you’re just wiping the shit off a drunk’s legs before you bring him in to the ER, or asking a wheezing woman if she remembered to take her meds. During slow days you do a lot of sitting around, hoping for a chance to be heroic. "We’d get to talking about how we’d really like to do a call," Peter Canning writes in his memoir Paramedic. "EMTs would joke about throwing ice water on the back steps of churches in the winter. Driving up behind senior citizens and blasting the air horn. Giving alcohol to minors. Stringing razor wire across the minibike trails. Anything for a call.

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/137-fire-behavior


last updated april 2016