In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno Read Free Book Online Page A

girl,” my patient says. “Baby girl, I’m not okay.” He can barely keep his eyes open but he’s trying; his eyebrows are pulled up like ship sails trying to catch a breeze.
    When we pulled him out of the bushes near the neon signs of Hollywood Park Casino, he was alone, with no wallet or ID, utterly incapable of answering any questions. A comical, towering six-foot-five that spilled over both ends of the gurney. Now, on the way to the hospital, the largest rag doll I’ve ever seen is coming to life.
    I awkwardly pat his shoulder. It seems the thing to do. “What happened, sir?”
    He shudders and grows still, his eyebrows relaxing, eyelids drifting shut. “I lost all my money,” he says. “I gambled it away.”
    I nod even though he can’t see me. “What did you take?”
    He tries to remember. Definitely he drank, maybe even for twelve hours straight, and then he recalls taking about seven pills given to him throughout the night. One or two of the pills was Ecstasy, but other than that he can’t remember a thing. Which, it sounds like, was the point.
    “Baby girl,” he says again. His low tone is intimate, and there’s something about those two words and the way he keeps saying them that’s getting to me. He fumbles for my hand, and as he grasps it I blush, amused and caught off guard by my own vulnerability. Ruth’s attention is still on Carl, but I hate to think how she would react if she turned and saw this. His warm, drug-addled hand wraps around mine with the tenderness of a lover.
    My patient rolls his head to look at me; it’s a fluid, slippery motion only drunks are capable of, and for a moment it looks like his head will keep rolling right off the gurney. With supreme effort he keeps his eyes open and peers at me, solemn as a priest.
    “Baby girl, I’m sorry.”
    At the end of my shift, Ruth lets out a groan when she sees my paperwork. Slamming one of my forms down on the table, she points out mistakes.“How old is she? How do you spell diaphoretic? Why is there a number missing from her zip code?”
    I’d been doing so well. I’d jumped to holding C-spine for a patient who slipped in the bathroom, recognized sepsis in a frequent flyer, restocked the ambulance in between calls without any reminders, and gave a report to a triage nurse for the first time. But our last patient was a middle-aged car thief who was covered in Taser barbs from her escape attempt from the cops. She cussed loudly and creatively the entire way to the hospital (“mama-pissing-pig-bitch-butt-wrench”), and seemed to be under the firm impression that her own mother was the one who had outed her to the police. The way she struggled against the restraints shifted the silver-cylindered barbs, and as I watched the folds of her jowls turn raw and pink from the points of puncture, and as she proceeded to call me every name she could think of, I had felt, strangely, a swell of excitement, a sudden self-assurance that I would be able to handle the job, and this assurance echoed old choices—my previous escapes from the ordinary—and an almost-forgotten version of myself, which is to say that I got so overwhelmed with a rush of simultaneous emotions that all I accomplished in the back of the ambulance was staring at her.
    Ruth presses her palm to her face, and I watch as her fingertips drum against her forehead. Finally she says, “Listen, Piper, you have four days off before we see you again. I suggest you make the most of them.”
    “I’ll get better,” I tell her. “I absolutely will.”
    8
    By now you’re starting to realize the simplicity with which it’s all possible. If you want to memorize something, turn it into a mnemonic device. Rhymes help, as do melodies; throw in visualization and associations for good measure. To memorize that the normal range for an adult pulse rate is 60 to 100beats per minute, picture a snake curled up next to a bucket in one room, a skinny man blowing smoke rings in another.
    The