The Job.

In the summer the days are long and hot. The nights even worse. I imagine you can hear the cries of the lost souls over the din of the city. People crying out for help and redemption. It’s not my job to bring it to them. I am the bringer of life, death and bad news. I hold hands and say I’m sorry as people rail against the cruelty of fate, I watch as a man takes his last breath, I rush against the clock to save another soul caught on the wrong path. Then I go home and try to wash it all away. In my dreams the dead speak to me. The boy with the bullet wound, the baby that no-one could save, the young guy on the motorcycle that couldn’t get out of the way and the young woman so overcome by the loss of a relationship she shot herself on her lovers lawn. In my waking hours I just put it all away. That’s my true job. To take it and keep on moving. More often than not I am a taxi service to the poor and disenfranchised of the city. Another cog in the system. Burn out? I think about it everyday. I think that I have only been doing this for 8 years so far and sometimes I am so tired I can’t even muster a care about the guy with a cough. I wonder what happened to me. People always want to know what the worst thing I have ever seen is. It is a question people in this business get everyday. The public has a romanticized vision of the life of a medic. They also have a morbid curiosity about other peoples lives. I never tell them the worst things I have ever seen. They wouldn’t understand and I don't want to field the questions. I never tell them about the dreams where the boy with the bullet wound sits up and speaks. I just smile and tell them I have the best job in the world. They smile like they know. This job can break relationships and build others. It can make you not relate very well to normal people who don’t see what you see. We are all haunted by something and I think people can see it, or at least sense it. We are all a little isolated in our own ways. This is the true life of a paramedic. It’s not as dramatic as it sounds. We are all just a bunch of people placed in extraordinary circumstances trying to get by.