“Over here!” one of the firefighters yelled, spotting the two of us coming their way. He pointed and, as we approached, I saw a young man lying on the cement, half of his face burned away. His skin was red-blistered and scorched all the way down his right side, ending just below his knee.
Oh, Christ. My stomach lurched, and my mind immediately flashed on the memory of being in the burn unit with Curtis. The smell of roasting flesh. The way his nose and both ears had turned to ash. I’d been around other burn victims since then, but something about this one—paired with the anxiety-spiked adrenaline already raging through my blood—made me feel dizzy and weak.
“You got him?” the fighter yelled as Mason dropped to his knees next to the young man and began taking his vitals.
I gave the fighter a thumbs-up sign but didn’t speak. Damn it. Get your shit together, Hicks! I swallowed and tried to steady my breathing.
The fighter ran back toward the smoldering cars, and I saw several other paramedic units on the other side of the disaster. They must have come from the south.
“Ty!” Mason yelled. “You need to get a line in, now!”
I realized I was still standing there, staring at the burning cars, leaving my partner to fend for himself. I dropped to the ground, kneeling on the other side of the young man Mason was treating. I heard my father’s voice, echoing inside my head: Man up, Son! The victim’s eyes were closed, but he was moaning, rolling his head back and forth. The rest of his body didn’t move or respond to stimulation.
“We need to get him on a board,” Mason said. “Could be a spinal.”
On a three count, I rolled the man carefully onto one side so Mason could slip the yellow backboard beneath him. The man shrieked when we eased him down, startling me so badly, I almost dropped him.
“You sure you’re okay?” Mason asked again, his dark brows furrowed.
Hands shaking, I bobbed my head once. “Sorry.” I grabbed what I’d need for running an IV from my black bag while Mason checked the man’s pupils. The victim screeched again, a howling, animalistic sound. Thunder cracked, the sky opened up, and the rain began to pour.
“He needs pain meds and fluids,” Mason said. “Hurry up. We need to get him stable.”
I nodded again, but the smell of the man’s cooking flesh rose up and I was thirteen again, standing in Curtis’s hospital room in my father’s angry presence, feeling like a disgrace. The anxiety that had been coiling tightly within me, stockpiling inside my chest all day long, began to unwind, gaining speed until it spun out of control.
Before I knew it, I had dropped the tubing and the needle onto the wet cement. “I can’t do it,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I can’t.” My heart jackhammered and the contents of my stomach twisted. I felt certain I was going to vomit. Again, my father’s voice: Only newbies and pussies puke.
“What the fuck?” Mason said. He grabbed the necessary tubing and needles from his own bag and came around to the man’s undamaged side, pushing me out of the way.
I watched my partner work, my own skin feeling as though it was peeling away from my body, as the victim’s had, all his nerves exposed. I felt too disoriented to stand, but I forced myself upward, groping and grabbing on to the back of my partner’s shirt for support, which almost toppled both of us over.
“Get off me!” Mason said, pushing me away. “Jesus, Ty! What’s wrong with you?”
I couldn’t speak. I could only feel the terror pushing through my blood like a toxin, poisoning every cell.
Mason stood up, grabbed me by my biceps, and squeezed them, hard. “Tyler!” he shouted. “Look at me.”
I blinked heavily, then lifted my gaze to my partner’s. My body trembled and my chest heaved; I could barely catch my breath.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Mason said, giving me a quick, violent shake. “But it needs to stop. Right. Now.” He let go of one of my arms and grasped my chin instead. “Do you hear me? I need you to help me get this man to the ER.”
I shook my head, unsure if I could do what needed to be done. My partner’s voice sounded distant, muffled and cloudy inside my head.
“Goddamn it, Hicks!” Mason smacked my cheek with his thick fingers. The sting of that impact was finally enough to jar me out of my foggy state, enough to get me to stumble over to the injured man’s feet and lift him, with Mason’s help, onto the gurney. Though I was still trembling, I met Mason’s steely gaze with my own. I can do this. Just try not to breathe in too deeply. Ignore the smell. Save this man’s life. My heart still pounded.
“All right then,” Mason said, guiding the gurney back through the maze of cars to our rig. Once we got the gurney secured in the back of the ambulance, Mason radioed ahead to notify St. Joseph’s that we were on our way with an accident victim. Then he held the keys out to me. “You drive. Okay?”
I looked at Mason, then allowed my eyes to dart back toward the injured man. There’s no way I can treat him, I realized. Not when I’m feeling like this. I’d probably make a fatal mistake. I could kill him. I snatched the keys from Mason’s hand and jogged around the vehicle to the driver’s side, steeling myself against any thought but the need to deliver this man safely to the hospital.
I started the engine, glancing behind me to make sure Mason was inside and ready to go. “Punch it,” my partner said as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the man’s uninjured arm. Fortunately, the pain meds Mason had administered had kicked in, and the man was finally—mercifully—silent.
I put the vehicle in reverse, and the cars around the ambulance shifted out of the way so we could turn around and drive north in the southbound lanes. With the tanker truck still blocking the road, it was the only way off the freeway. I gripped the steering wheel as tightly as I could, taking in deep breaths through my nose and blowing them out through my mouth to try to steady my erratic pulse.
My right foot longed to press down hard on the gas pedal, to push the ambulance’s speed up and up and up; to feel that sense of relief when the adrenaline in my bloodstream finally dropped, then leveled off. But with all the cars around us, there was no way to go faster than five miles per hour. There was no way for me to get relief.
“You doing okay up there?” Mason yelled over the sound of the siren.
“Yeah!” I managed to reply. I hunched over the steering wheel, maneuvering around the last few cars that were preventing us from reaching the exit. I drove the wrong way up the ramp, staying perilously close to the edge of the shoulder, honking the horn and swearing at the few drivers who still would not get out of my way. “Move, goddamn it!”
“We’re almost there,” Mason said, sensing that I needed some reassurance. “You got this, brother. Everything’s cool.”