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I raided the EMS fridge.

"Why medicine?" Jerry echoed. He looked past the screen for a second before he responded. I rolled my chair closer. "I had this illusion--a delusion, really--that people would appreciate what you did. That people would be gracious when you tried to help them out. I didn't think they'd be spitting in your face, cussing you out, and fighting you every chance they got. They're assholes. People are assholes and they expect you to be waiting on them hand and foot. 'Get me water. Get me food. What's taking you so long.' It's like they don't understand that I went to school and got an education--made something out of myself--to come and help them, you know? People are shitty, and that's something I learned real fast here."

"If I had known then what I know now, I would've gotten into something else." He added.

He returned to his computer. "What keeps you coming back to such a thankless job?" I asked. He paused from his work again and looked up. He turned and looked at me. "I don't know."

Working the night shift in the ED was the most fun I've had on a clinical so far. I had more patient time as I was hooking people up to the EKG and performing odd tasks as needed. Not being stuck with just one nurse was nice. I bounced around between nurses and techs to see all of the cool things. "Hey," Jonathan said. "Go check out what's in the trash can in room 27." I stepped into the room and put gloves on. I flipped the light and peeked into the bin. Next to a disposed glove sat a large, dark red mass. I walked back out to the nurse's station. "What the fuck, dude?" I said. He laughed. "What's in there?" Jerry asked. "It's a big twat clot." Jonathan said. Jerry shook his head and went back to his monitor.

"People are idiots and they come in here for the stupidest shit," Jonathan told me. "But I love this job. I can't imagine doing anything else."

EMS came in quite often, dropping patients off about every 30 to 45 minutes. I hooked an old lady up to the monitors and the EKG. I washed my hands and stepped out into the hallway, walking toward the nurse's station. As I did, Heather from my ride-out wheeled a patient in. "Hey!" I said. "Hey!" She replied. It was nice to see a familiar face come in. "Where's this patient off to?" She asked. "This one is going to..." I tried to remember if I'd heard anything on the intercom. "I don't know." "Slacker." She said as she passed by. I smiled and checked out the monitors.

Andy gave me a complete tour of the department, something we hadn't had time for on my last ED shift. We walked into the crash hall and scoped out the rooms. "EMS comes through here," He said, pulling the doors open. He pointed out the loading bay. "The ambulance pulls up there. And here's the EMS room." We walked into a room. The fridge was loaded with Nestea and Powerade. There was snack food everywhere. "This is all stuff for EMS. We're not supposed to have any." I grabbed a bottle of tea out of the fridge.

"Well the thing is," I said, cracking open the bottle. "I am EMS."

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