One thing you learn pretty soon after you begin your career in EMS is that those "great" stories you tell at the station don’t necessarily go over very well during thanksgiving dinner. Mom doesn’t want to hear about how you and your trusty pilot came scant inches from getting incinerated in your helicopter because you almost hit a power line yesterday. Somehow the thrill of such stories is lost when it’s your son telling you about almost not making it home from work. All this running around getting killed business is pretty easy for the primary character. It’s really exciting stuff and if things go terribly wrong you’re not left crying over some overpriced wooden box with your favorite person in it, destined to cry through decades of "could have been" birthdays and lonely Christmases. You’re just…well, dead. While most people agree that it is not at all a good thing to be dead, and I am in wholehearted agreement with those people, let me tell you, things are not so good for those you leave behind either.

When I recounted the "Dog Story" (available elsewhere on this web page) to my loving family I was bewildered to discover that they didn’t think is was nearly as funny as my buddies around the station had. They politely smiled and changed the subject. I assured them that my job was very safe, and that they could take comfort in the fact that I’d never risk my keester in such a foolish way again.

The story that follows happened about a week later. Needless to say, I politely ate my dinner and didn’t utter a word of it to them. "How’s work going?" "Oh, same old stuff. These peas are great, Ma. Did you make these?"

My trusty partner Al and I were, I’m sure, off somewhere minding our own business when we got a call for a "Possible Poisoning". When we arrived we found a shirtless, moderately confused looking young man who was maybe eighteen years old shuffling nervously around his living room. I asked the policeman who’d preceded us what was happening and he said he didn’t know. My curiosity unquenched, I asked the young man (we’ll call him Adam) what was going on. Adam explained that someone had been tainting his food with angel dust. The words "angel dust" set off a tiny paramedic alarm in the back of my brain. Angel dust, or PCP is an animal tranquilizer that consumed by humans sometimes makes them insane, invincible and capable of breathtaking feats of strength and brutality. This is not a good combination. Adam, however, seemed calm enough, so I let it ring. I asked him in my calmest voice, with my best look of passive concern if he’d like to join me for a nice, quiet ride to the hospital, so that we might ascertain his chemical status and provide him with whatever assistance he needed. He thought that was a good idea, as he wasn’t feeling quite himself. He just needed to go in his room and get a shirt. Great, I said. No problem.

One of the super, duper most important rules in "The Paramedic and EMT’s Guide to Living through Your Career" is that you should never, ever, let a patient "go to his room to get something", because "something" might turn out to be an Uzi. Having learned my lesson the first time I was nearly killed by not following the advice found in "The Paramedic and EMT’s Guide to Living through Your Career ", I followed Adam into his bedroom.

When I crossed the threshold I wasn’t sure initially if I wanted to rush further in or turn on my heals and run for my life. The walls of the room were covered from floor to ceiling with symbols, a swastika here, a pentagram there, a lovely demonic saying over by that festive little lamp. The bells were ringing really loudly now. After carefully considering the "run like hell" option for a few minutes I decided that if I got closer to Adam I could have a bit more control over what he picked up, and I stepped in to the room. Adam and I found a suitable garment without any trouble and I led him cheerfully but carefully to the ambulance. As long as nobody threatened him, I thought, things would be okay.

I sat him in the "jump seat", the backward facing seat at the front of the ambulance, rather than on the stretcher so he wouldn’t feel confined, and off we went. About half way there we came to a stop at a traffic light. Adam suddenly looked confused. "Where are you taking me?" he asked, politely. "To the hospital, just like you asked." I replied, that alarm still ringing the near background of my mind. He seemed to accept this and settled back into his seat. I settled back in mine and exhaled. What does that stupid old alarm know anyway? He’s cool.

Adam suddenly sprang out of his seat belt and lunging toward me. Shocked, I lurched back. To my surprise he didn’t plow into me, but went right past. "Damn," I thought, "he’s going for the door." I caught Adam around the waist and yelled for my partner. Adam managed to get one door open and we struggled, halfway inside and halfway outside out the ambulance. Scant inches past my struggling charge I saw the wide-eyed face of the man in the truck behind us. It was an armored car, and he looked as though he thought the heist was on. He was starting to reach for his gun when Al arrived at the back door. Al grabbed the inside of the door frame so he could lift himself into the back of the ambulance and at just that moment Adam, whose hand was still on the inside door handle, slammed the door on Al’s hand. In doing this he lost is, (our?) balance and we both tumbled to the floor. Just as I was about to reacquire a grip on things I felt what I thought must have been someone smashing my guts flat. It was Al, jumping on top of our unruly guest, who was, as it turns out, on top of me. Funny things occur to you at times like these, and my thought at that moment was "What the hell did the guard think he was going to do with a gun from inside an armored car?" Just then Al and Adam rolled far enough off of me that I could move again and I was able to joined Al in the battle to restrain Adam.

Adam was a skinny guy and we had him two to one, so we managed, after a protracted battle to get him under control. We got him on the stretcher and tightly applied all three seatbelts. Having exerted himself mopping the floor with both of our asses, he settled in for a bit of rest and returned to his former calm self. We were scant minutes away from the hospital, so we elected to rush toward more help rather than try and wrestle him into restraints on our own. We knew from past experience that the sight of restraints would probably incite him to more posterior enhanced housekeeping. I sat at the foot of the stretcher, between him and the door, looking menacing, or as menacing as I could while trying to catch my breath.

He stayed calm for a few minutes and then looked at me and said the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard anyone say in my life. He said, "…so, do you want me to blow you, or what"

My heart fell. Suddenly I understood. This kid had gotten mixed up in some bad drugs with some bad people who had used him for unspeakably bad things. I wanted to cry. "No", I said. "We’re taking you to get some help. You’re going to be okay." This kid had suddenly been transformed in my mind from a threat, from an enemy, to a scared, hurt kid. Ten minutes later, I was a scared kid too.

We took him into the hospital, found him a bed and, more difficult, found a nurse who could take report on him. I told her all I knew. The factual information didn’t boil down to much. As I closed I added that she really needed to put leather restraints on him, as he was likely to be dangerous. The nurse looked behind us to see our "dangerous" patient filling out paperwork for the registration clerk. She gave me a disapproving glare and walked back to her patient. "What a jerk." She didn’t quite say. I shrugged and walked over to a desk to do my paperwork.

A few minutes later I heard yelling coming from where I’d left my new friend and knew just what had happened. Adam had freaked. I jumped up and went over to help. The nurse and a tech were fighting a touch and go battle to restrain Adam’s left hand while he pummeled them with all of his remaining free appendages. Al, my trusty partner was suddenly at my side, and with the help of another tech and the just arrived policeman from Adam’s house we joined the battle. Adam was not interested in capitulating this time. He was giving all six of us a run for our money. I grabbed his legs just above the knees to keep him from finishing the job of kicking the stuffing out of the nurse. Al held Adam’s head in order to keep him from biting anyone, not least Al himself. As I concentrated on my knee holding technique I heard those four little words you never want to hear from a police officer. He said, "He’s got my gun!"

It was at this point that things became a bit more serious. I looked, reluctantly, in the direction of the officer’s service pistol. It was, I was a little relieved to see still partly in it’s holster. Adam’s right hand was wrapped around the grip of the gun, the veins in his forearm bulging as he began lifting the cop off the ground by the barely holstered gun. The cop had both of his hands on top of Adam’s; struggling to keep his gun in the holster "Adam must be killed" was my first thought.

I let go of his legs. I suddenly didn’t care who he kicked. Kicking suddenly wasn’t that big a deal. I grabbed Adam’s forearm with both hands and began forcing his arm back down toward the bed, the officer descending with it. I’m not, I wouldn’t say, a violent person. I wait patiently in the 10 items or less line while the guy in front of me tallies enough frozen vegetables to feed the third world for a few months without so much as a sneer. At this moment, though, struggling for a loaded handgun in an ER full of nurses, patients, children, and me, my heart knew violence. "If that gun clears that holster," I thought, "I’m going to have to break Adam’s arm". Just then the cop, his training returning to him, twisted away from Adam, applying some strange Asian finger hold that caused Adam to howl in pain and, more importantly, release the gun.

"Get this red headed m*&^%$ f&^^%$ off of me." He screamed. Relief at the sight of Adam’s now empty hand turned to curiosity and I turned toward Adam’s head. When I did, I saw less than half of it. Al, my red haired partner, was all but standing on Adam’s head, the weight pushing most of it into the soft mattress and out of view. Al yelled back "Nobody’s letting go of anything until YOU settle down, damn it!" I smiled at him, my hands still firm on Adam’s arm, and then laughed. He looked at me like for a second, puzzled, and then he laughed too. Then we all laughed. Adam, confused by our laughter and a bit tired from nearly killing us all, relaxed and was quickly restrained beyond all hope of escape.

Once I got over the rush that one gets from fighting for one’s life and surviving unscathed, a strange thought occurred to me. Things, I thought, aren’t always black and white. Moments ago I would have broken Adam’s arm without a regret, moments before that I was ready to weep for his lost soul. What I felt afterward was something different. Adam had nearly killed me, and others, and I would have done a great deal to stop him, including kill him. At the same time, I knew why he’d done these things. He was lost, confused and scared beyond my ability to understand what scared is. He’d tried to kill me and it was okay. He’d been lost, and I could forgive him for that. I shook my head, marveling at my new insight, and went back to my paperwork. This story, I thought, was definitely not going be invited to dinner. "Great peas, Ma. Did you make these?"

Adam was a run-away. The nurse found his father, and he came and got his lost son. I don’t know where Adam is now. I hope he is well.