I wrote this one last year as a response to a prompt I was given from a friend (dark comedy, two EMT’s, victim wound: self inflicted). I had a lot of fun researching what goes on during a day in the life of an ambulance driver. I also had a difficult time learning that they go through so much trauma themselves that they need to either laugh off the ugly stuff or dissociate entirely.
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Last call of the day.
Fuckin’ fifteen minutes before we’re done. We’re already collecting junk wrappers out of the back, so the next tech doesn’t crawl up our asses. I remember that one time buddy left fuckin’ McDonalds fries and shit behind the seat, rottin’ in its colorless way, couldn’t figure out what the smell was ’til we had someone in here who’d had too many birthdays go and empty their bowels into their pants, had to slam on the brakes, and the body slid backwards cause I’d forgot to strap ‘em in tight that day -hung over somethin’ fierce - and I managed to stop him from flying off, but what was in his pants just slid down and out against the back wall of the cab. I was bent over cleaning up shit and I’d managed to snag a peek behind the driver’s seat and noticed that disgusting food doing its best attempt at rotting, never really changing color; just sort of mummifying, so I’d asked Ruth to come up and fish it out while I cleaned up the stranger danger.
“You believe this shit, Ruthie? Last call, huh?”
“What’s weirder is you’d rather clean up that shit than the Ronnie Donnie’s.”
“All in a days work. Slap on the tones, Ruth.”
She flicks the lights. I stuff a dip in my lip. We’re bumping’ through downtown. Blazing fuckin’ fury. Last week I almost ran over a pedestrian. More and more zombies walkin’ around these days, and they don’t even know it. I don’t have room for more of ‘em in the back if we’re already on a call. Best pay attention, son.
We pull up to the park and I spit chew in the crinkled black water bottle that’s in my hand, ‘bout an inch of black at the bottom, I’d say, and just when I think nothing bothers me no more, something from my childhood bubbles up and starts ticklin’ my brain like someone wet pop-rocks and poured ‘em all over up there.
I grab the radio: “Responding – code ’T-49’.”
Fuck sake. I see the guy. He’s wearing makeup. Puff balls on his chest, big, red nose, and a big curly wig on his head. Shoes are too big, too. Stupid fuckin’ shoes if ya ask me. What an asshole. He’s still one of ‘em, though. Gotta treat ‘em all the same.
“I hate fuckin’ clowns,” I say under my breath.
“Whassat?”
I say nothin’ and start gatherin’ our stuff. Why can’t I just hop on patient transfer? Nice, cushy job driving to and from different hospitals, can stop wondering what kind of circus – excuse the pun – Ruth and I might run into. I mean, it’s still exciting, just not as often. Out here, it’s not even the gore that bugs me. It’s the social stuff. Like this one family left their kid dehydrated for four days, only called when he started keeling’ over, I guess when their highs finally wore off. I gave that little kid a teddy bear when he came to, had to call social services on mum and dad, though. Got him right back to normal eventually. Seemed they didn’t even give a shit. Only cared about the Murder-8 fix — slang for Fentanyl. Hell, I’ll take a guy with his guts blown open or an arm hanging off any day, but when you give me a kid with shit parents, that shit bugs the hell outta me.
This clown, though. Why’s he gotta dress like that? I see him lying there not moving. Then his head pops up, he looks at me and smiles. Gives me the fuckin’ willies.
“Jon,” Ruth snaps her fingers in front of my face. “You okay? Get your shit together.”
“Right. Sorry. Let’s roll.”
Clown hadn’t moved at all. Seein’ things again. Head swimmin’. Too much Skoal, maybe.
We grab the cot and pack and run past some kid’s birthday party on hold, like this clown’s gonna get up and start makin’ balloon animals again. There ain’t no way he smiled at me. He ain’t movin’. I ignore his silly makeup and assess.
Some stranger’s lookin’ onward. “Aren’t you gonna take him to the hospital?”
“Ma’am, it’s not like the old days,” I say as I’m leaned in close to the clown’s mouth. I hear a funny squeaking sound coming from it. “We bring the emergency room right to your door, nowadays,” I look up at her and say, winking in the process, feeling like an asshole while I do it.
I check his trachea and listen for the squeaking sound again.
“Thoughts, Jon? Anything you wanna tell me,” Ruth asks.
“You hear that,” I ask her.
“Hear what? Ears ain’t so good anymore, Jonny.”
I already imagined this guy looking at me, I say no more about the subject. “Let’s get him in the truck.”
She nods.
We go to lift him up, and I think the big, red nose is too surreal for the onlookers, so I snatch it up and stuff it in my pocket for safe keeping.
We get his goofy ass in the back, and I see a sad kid without a birthday host, thinking: couldn’t do your job, could ya? and I can’t help but hear the squeakin’ sound again. “Ruth. You sure you don’t hear that?”
She puts her ear to his mouth. “I hear wheezing. He’s a smoker. Fingers, see?” She takes his gloves off and shows me. “Yellow.”
Always a step ahead of me, that woman. God, I love workin’ with Ruth. I love her old-ass curly lady-mullet, and her thick-rimmed eighties glasses. I love that her bottom lip sticks out all the time, and that she don’t take shit from no-one.
“You keep his ass company; I’ll drive the truck.” She hops up front and pops the cherries. We bounce around, and before I forget, I strap him down, so he doesn’t slide off like that one fella.
He’s breathing, which is a good sign, but I’m all too aware that I’m alone with a goddam clown now. I shiver.
I stuff a dip in my lip. Can’t find my spit bottle.
“Can’t you drive any faster, Ruth?”
“You fuckin’ kidding me?”
I notice his handkerchief. One of those “endless” rainbows. I’ve always wanted to see how far they go and remember that it is a little funny when they sometimes have their underwear attached at the end. I start to pull. Green. Yellow. Blue. Red. Pattern goes forever, and it really is fuckin’ funny, and I’m still pullin’ on the thing and there’s a pile of handkerchief on the floor like some kind of funny puke, and then the pull of the thing seems to get heavier, and then I feel like I’m about to get to the end, and I slow down the pull. The last few colors are coming out, and then I see that the last piece is tied to something wriggling blue and purple and wet.
His guts are attached, and for a second I’m sweating cold bullets, and I know I’ve seen every kind of biological anatomy you can imagine, and then I realize I’ve never seen this shit before; start thinking that clowns are literally built different, then I decide to clip the end of the handkerchief and I stuff the end of his intestine back into his huge clown pocket.
“You okay back there, Jon? You’re quiet.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I look down at my hands to wipe the blood off. Nothin’ there. “We close?”
She doesn’t answer. I see that the pile of handkerchief isn’t there, that maybe this guy is fuckin’ with us, and that maybe he cleaned it up in the half second I was talking to Ruth, and then I shake my head because he hasn’t moved. Hasn’t moved for sure, and he’s lying there, his makeup scuffed around his mouth from where we’d placed the oxygen earlier.
I see his pocket has a bulge, and I wonder if it might give us a clue as to what he did, so I reach in and pull it out of his pocket. It’s a small, plastic container you might use for a pee sample, with a mini wooden stool inside.
“Ha,” I say. “Jesus, Ruth, you gotta see this.”
“Little busy.”
I laugh at the clown’s ‘stool sample’, and I lean over again to put it back and I check his breathing. I press my hand on the table and a great, big fart rips through the truck.
“Jesus, Jon, that you or the clown?”
I find a whoopee cushion stuffed into the side of his baggy clown pants, and then he’s barely coughing, and his eyes are open, and I snap out of it and I’m on him checking his pupils.
“Ruth, headlights are on!”
He coughs and grabs at his throat, and he’s not saying anything. He’s tryin’, though, but I can’t get into his throat so I’m gonna have to make my own path.
“Ruth, pull over.”
The truck isn’t rocking anymore, and now I’ve got a knife and ruth is holding him down, and she sedates him, then I’m at his throat with the blade and I’m cutting into him. Just a small hole. I reach in, and I pull out a goddamn deflated balloon.
“I fuckin’ told you I heard somethin’”
“Well, I’ll be a fuckin’ monkey’s auntie with a brown banana.”
He’s still. Stable.
I lean back and exhale like the breath’s been in my lungs since this mornin’. Maybe since always. “Always the last call, Ruthie.”
She nods.
“I’ll drive,” I say. “You’re with the clown.”
“I told you not to be so hard on yourself?” She says. She winks.
I hop up in the front, pop in a dip, and drive to the hospital and realize I’d left the crinkly bottle of black in the cupholder all along. I really should put in for a transfer. Maybe one day I’ll get it and I’ll drive someone up to that hospital on the hill and never come back.
I grab the clown’s red nose out of my pocket and stick it over mine and we burn through the city like an hour in a junkie’s workday.