Necrotizing Faciitis

I think it's good that I chose to be in the trenches. I can't even see those books on the bookshelf without thinking of the life I would have chosen before, the lofty ideals I had in my youth. You never put together that the awful people who are your peers in college turn into awful adults and so your task becomes to figure out what you love. And fuck all to the things (people) that would put that love asunder. Life is hard no matter what, but it's easier to fight for and justify your existence when it's something you can believe in. And barrelling down a busy street in a college town in the big white and red box sirens blaring and life clining desperately to its target in the back is the something for me. I hope it doesn't get muddied up.

I used to say a prayer, for the EMTs and the patient, everytime I heard an ambulance siren. It's funny and endearing that the girl who would have been content to make her world academia acknowledged what was going on inside there. Or perhaps like in a Kurt Vonnegut novel my future self was able to visit her and tell her, whisper quietly in sleep, your elbows gotta get dirty, this ain't the life for you, pea under your mattress. I wonder sometimes why it has taken so long. Or that perhaps my sisters got the Irish blood with their stout opinions and strength and backbone, levity and determination. And so I was left with the Russian part, the brooding and mania and staunch belief that my suffering will somehow be deposited into a bank that loved ones can borrow from at a future date. I will stay the same, there is no getting over that part. The goal becomes to find strength in that.

I still say the prayer, but the words have changed a little. I want to drive there but be in the back on the return trip. I want to be calm. I want to hear my patient's heart beat through my stethoscope instead of my own pumping wildly. To be the best at it. To fix a life! How can it have taken me so long to come to this. And a thank-you, that finally I did.