PARAMEDIC FICTION
Of Monsters And Healers
Chapter 12: “Where do I fall in your fucked up view of the world?”
“I-I can’t breathe.”
The man gasped, his eyes unfocused and distant as I placed the heart monitor’s leads on his chest. I wiped the blood from the handcuffed man’s chest, a viscous crimson mess, a mix of his blood and the blood of his victim. The man’s skin was pale, his body trembling weakly from where he lay on his side. His breathing came out in shallow gasps, the sound of a mockery of the strangled gasps of the girl he had preyed on as she was loaded into her own ambulance.
“Shut the fuck up.”
I was being unprofessional. A poor representation of the badge on my chest and the EMS patch on my arm. But as I looked across the park toward where the pair of paramedics worked frantically to save the life of a girl who had been reported missing only hours ago, I really could not care. I hated this man. This beast forced into my care.
Predator and prey. Monster and the girl who would live with the nightmares. Both now patients. Both now in our care.
The other rig loaded up the girl, taking her to the hospital where she would be treated for injuries that would only heal surface deep. She was young, her body would heal. Her mind, however, would forever bear the wounds of the man now in my care.
I did not pity the other crew. It was always horrible to work on a child. But part of me envied the good they could do. They would be the first safe place for a girl who had just gone through Hell.
I looked at the man, appearing to be nearly in the throes of death, and I felt nothing but hate for the man. His body racked with tremors and his face slack from unimaginable pain. I could see the shared hate for the man in the officer who had taken this monster down.
Hate as pure as my own, if not tinged with a concern for that bastard’s well-being. I wished I could share in their remorse, but I had seen too much. I had been on the job for too long. Despite the man’s display of agony, I felt nothing for him.
Because it was all bullshit. I had seen it all before. The same song and dance that criminals used when they got caught. A simple ploy to delay their time from being placed behind bars. All those who bore the title of the First Responder knew what he was doing. They even had a name for it. A diagnosis.
Incarceritis.
Sudden onset of illness and pain upon realizing one was going to jail.
I looked at the vitals displayed across the screen of my monitor.
- Blood pressure of one-twenty over eighty-six.
- Blood oxygen at ninety-four percent.
- Heart rate just over a hundred.
All in the reasonable parameters of a healthy human being, even better than most. Under the sheen of sweat and blood, the man’s muscles were obvious. Lean and strong, a young man in his mid-twenties. No, this man was not dying. Only stalling, buying himself a few precious moments before he found himself behind bars.
The man could play all he wanted, that he was dying. The monitor didn’t lie. The Officers looked at me with a mix of concern and apprehension. The man, if you could call him such a thing, had been caught red-handed. The police had found him in the dugout of a park, stripped down to the waist, his hands around the neck of a little girl. They had been too late to stop him from beating the girl. From mauling her like the animal he was. But they had stopped him.
Stopped him before he had killed her. Stopped him before he can do any worse. He was caught from doing what he did — what his kind always did. Then he ran. He ran, and they chased. When he realized he was caught, when he was backed tightly into a corner, he tried to fight.
So they had chased him. He had fallen hard on his face, shattering his teeth on the pavement, and then he convulsed violently on the ground as the electricity tore through his body. He had been placed in handcuffs and that should have been it.
But the convulsing had never stopped. He went rigid, his large muscles taut and blood-tinged spittle spraying through the tightly clenched remains of broken teeth. So, the two officers did what they were trained to do.
They had called for us. They called for paramedics.
Two ambulances. One for the victim and another for the monster who had nearly killed her.
“He is faking. His vitals are fine, probably even better than mine.” I said, looking into the quivering man’s face. “Incarceritis. Plain as can be.”
I wanted him to see me. To know I saw through his bullshit, and it wasn’t going to work.
And then the officers said those damned words. Words I should have seen coming from miles out and yet they still hit me with the weight of a freight train.
“Are you sure?”
I looked up at the nervous face of the two police officers who had taken the man into custody. The man who had blurted the words that he was not trying to be condescending or rude. He wasn’t trying to shirk his duties or hoping to go down to the hospital to look at some nurse’s ass in tight-fitting scrubs while his prisoner was properly cleared by hospital staff.
No, it was the look I had seen before.
Fear, plain and simple and rightfully so.
Fear that they would be the latest amongst too many police officers who had let a man die in their custody. It was a fear I understood. These police officers were young. They had their entire careers in front of them. Men who had promised to protect and serve. Not cowards who took the badge to hold power over others. Not the monsters who used that power to abuse those they felt beneath them.
“I am sure,” I said, already knowing the words didn’t matter. The police had already made up their mind. They wouldn’t risk having a man die on their watch, no matter what horrible crime he had just committed.
“We need you to take him to the hospital. Just to get him cleared.”
It was the smart call. It was the one that freed them of liability. If the man was saying he couldn’t breathe, what was the risk of having a doctor ensure he was truly alright?
For them, the risk was nothing. For us, it was everything.
Mark brought along the gurney and, with the help of the officers, we loaded the man onto it. I watched wearily as the man was removed from strong metal handcuffs and replaced with the red and blue cloth restraints alongside the gurney. I prepared myself for the sudden flash of movement, watching the man’s unfocused eyes as I double-checked the straps.
He never moved, his breathing still shallow and weak, his eyes still unfocused. I looked again at the monitor, beginning to question my assessment. His vitals remained unchanged. All pointed toward the signs of a man in perfect health.
“You guys good to go?” The police officer asked as we rolled the man into the back of the ambulance.
“Yeah.” I said, “You going to follow us up?”
“Of course.” The police officer said, “We will be right behind you the whole way.”
“Good.”
I meant it too. I was not the type to scare easily, not after my two tours in Iraq. No, if the man was going to break free from his lie, I would do whatever was necessary.
I just didn’t want to. I was a civilian. A paramedic who had signed on to help people the only way I knew how. I had been a corpsman in the Navy, treating marines on the battlefield, but I had left that life behind me.
I wanted to serve. I wanted to help people.
I told myself I was done fighting.
Mark closed the doors and the old ambulance cranked to life as Mark turned over the tired engine. I started my chart from the chair behind the gurney so the man couldn’t see me. I tried to push away the anger I felt toward the monster who had lured and attacked a child.
I had been a paramedic for almost three years now. I had honed and grown the callous edge that one needs to work as a First Responder. And yet I couldn’t get the image of her face out of my head.
A small girl, with dark cacao-colored skin and black curly hair that fell past her shoulders. A yellow dress mottled with blood. The bruising and swelling of a face so utterly destroyed you could barely believe it had ever belonged to a child.
“Why am I here?” The monster who was my patient croaked out weakly.
I looked up from the chart, at the back of the man’s head of sweaty black hair. “Because you need to get checked out by the hospital before going to jail,” I said, not looking away from my computer. “You want to tell me your name and medical history, now that the cops are gone?”
“No, I really don’t.” The man’s voice seemed to change, deepening and becoming stronger as he spoke.
“And answer the question. Why am I here? I mean why am I going to jail in the first place. All I did was try to get a little pussy. You understand that. Don’t you, bro.”
I could feel the blood slow in my veins, a roiling tide of cold and heat billowing inside me. I had been right. The man had been faking. For what purpose I did not know, but for him, this had all been a game.
The calloused edge of experience boiled away in a mix of emotions. An intermingling of fear and the fury I had tried to bury away. Images of the girl flashed through my mind.
I was now trapped with the monster who had tried to rape and kill a little girl. Alone in a steel box with a rapist or worse. The police had not been able to get the man’s name. They hadn’t been able to run him through their system to see what kind of monster he was.
I had been played. An unwitting pawn in a madman’s game. And yet, deep down, part of me wanted to be nowhere else than where I was now.
I stood up from my seat and moved to the bench next to the would-be child molester, who was now mine to take care of. A look of calm, a look of patience and arrogance replaced the unfocused look in his eyes.
He took in a slow, deep breath, gently tugging at the restraint binding his wrists and ankles. He was slow in his movements, calculating as he tested the strength of his bindings.
“In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter.” He said, “Not really.”
A slight smile pulled at the corner of the man’s mouth as he looked up at me with his blue eyes. In a different light, you might have called them handsome. But all I saw were the eyes of a predator, a wolf still slick in the blood of his prey.
“What makes you say that?” I said, hate pouring out of me as I pointed toward the police cruiser tailing behind us.
“You see that? That is the man who caught you. Who teased you and watched you fall so hard you knocked your own fucking teeth out? You can act cool all you want. At the end of the day, you’re just a rapist piece of shit. You’ll rot in jail like all the rest. You can cut the cool guy act.”
The man stared at me, his expression blank and unreadable. His mouth was half-open, strings of blood hanging from his fractured smile. The expression made him look mentally slow. I would have thought the man was an idiot. A moron with a drug-cooked brain and a perversion. I would have, if not for those piercing blue eyes.
No, the man picked up on every word I said and more. He saw as much of me as I saw of him. Just as I saw the monster in him, he could see the one I struggled to contain in myself. The piece of me wanted nothing more than to bash his face in with the small metal tank of oxygen strapped next to me on the wall.
A monster can always spot another monster.
“You don’t get it.” The man said, turning his face away from mine and staring at the fluorescent light overhead.
“What don’t I get!” I snapped back, feeling myself slipping and not caring to hold myself back.
“You just don’t get it.” The man repeated, “You don’t get that we were here before. ALL OF US.”
He swirled a finger through the air with his restrained hand. The point of his finger spun slowly, aimed at the different players in this man’s game. The cop, himself, and finally me. He turned those pale blue eyes toward me, and he smiled his jagged smile of blood and broken teeth.
“I am a bad guy. There is no getting around it. Though I don’t think my urges make me bad, society calls me a pervert. So, they call in the good guys. Men in uniforms with guns and duty belts and promises to protect the world from bad guys like me. I hurt a kid. Rape a kid. Kill. A. Kid. They stop me. I go to jail. And then I get out. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.”
Something dark moved beneath the surface of my psyche. Some part of me I didn’t want to acknowledge. I imagined the ways I would do it. The air tank by my side would be the most obvious.
Or the sheets in the back of the gurney twisted tight into a rope. Not to mention the countless drugs I had on board. Fentanyl pushed too fast and it would paralyze the muscles necessary for breathing. Too heavy a dose of nitroglycerine and his blood vessel would open so much his heart couldn’t pump blood effectively. Hell, any amount of my medications at the right dose could be lethal.
I thought about the ways I was going to kill this man. I thought about the girl who would live her life scarred and traumatized, all because she had trusted a stranger in a park. It was the first time I had ever wanted to kill. Not out of duty. Not because I was at war.
Simply because this man was right. He was a bad guy, and nothing was going to stop him from being a bad guy except one thing.
I had become a paramedic to help people. How was removing a rapist from the board not helping? How was it not the right thing to do? I could do it so easily, a simple mistake when measuring a dose of lifesaving medication. It would be so easy to do it.
And all it would cost me was my humanity.
“What about me?” I said, my voice low and filled with hate. “Yeah, you’re a bad guy and he’s a good guy. What about me? Where do I fall in your fucked up view of the world?”
“You?” The man spat out the word as it was unworthy to pass his lips. “You’re just the guy who cleans up my mess.”
“Fuck-” I started, the words barely passed my lips before he made his move.
His movement was practiced and quick. So fast I hadn’t even realized what had happened until his hand wrapped around my throat. A sudden jerk of his wrist forward, the meat of his forearm wrapping the Velcro, only a fraction of an inch bigger, before he yanked his arm back, ripping his hand free from the binding.
A gurgled sound escaped my throat as my head crashed into the clear plastic covering of the shelves on the other side of the ambulance. Boxes of medical supplies fell to the floor, my body landing amongst them on the floor as the man’s strong and firm hand released my neck.
“Cory!” Mark yelled from the front of the ambulance, the rig swerving to the side as the man ripped free from the rest of his restraints. I opened my mouth to speak, but only a strange wheezing sound escaped my throat.
“Keep driving or I swear I will kill you fuck buddy back here.” The man snarled at Mark, his face pressed against the small glass divider that separated the patient compartment from the driver.
Mark didn’t respond, but the old ambulance roared as the gas pedal was lowered to the floor. The man searched through the ambulance, ripping items off the shelves as he searched for God-knows-what.
Behind me, outside the ambulance bay doors, I could hear the sound of sirens as the police gave chase. They could see us through the glass windows in the back of the ambulance and the chaos that had just erupted inside.
The world spun and twisted as I pushed myself onto my elbows. I was familiar with the feeling. This wasn’t the first time I had been concussed. This wasn’t the first time I had been hurt.
And this wasn’t the first time I knew I had to act, despite every part of my very being telling me to do anything but.
I looked at the monster, seeing clearly now what he was looking for amongst the scattered items. He grabbed a piece of blood-stained plastic from the plastic divider he had thrown my head into and tried to rip it free. He was looking for a weapon. A way to make his threat to kill me into a promise.
I thought of the girl. I thought of the countless girls he undoubtedly hurt in the past. He was a monster who ruined the lives of those he came in contact with.
I thought of those I had hurt. I thought of the boy I couldn’t save in Iraq. I thought of the woman I had asked to marry me, knowing I would leave her for war. I thought of the brother I had sworn to save and failed. I thought of Maldonado, the girl I had loved, then gotten killed.
I looked at all the ugliness locked inside of me. Their names rushing past as the abyss swirled within.
People I had failed. People I had let down. A wife I had betrayed and the woman I had loved then got killed. I was a paramedic. I was a veteran. I so wanted to be nothing more than a good man.
I looked at the man before me, gripping a jagged piece of plastic tight in his hand, his back turned toward me. And as I dove into the darkness inside me. This man was a monster. And I would have to be one too.
I leaped to my feet, ripping the binding free of the heavy metal canister of O2 and sending it crashing into the side of the man’s head. He slammed into the ground, howling as he pressed a hand against the crescent-shaped gash that splitting his ear in two.
With both hands, I brought the tank on the back of the man’s back between the shoulder blades, then again on the man's ribs. He swirled around, the jagged make-shift knife glancing off my chin, opening a line of fire just below my jaw.
I didn’t allow the paint to register in my mind as I brought the metal cylinder down again on the man's head.
And again.
And again.
I beat the man until he went limp on the floor.
I beat him until blood flecked my white uniform shirt and mottled the green paint of the tank as the blood had mottled the young girl's dress. I beat him until my breath came out in ragged gasps.
“Stop…the ambulance.” I panted.
I could see Mark’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Eyes wide with fright and fear. As I looked past him and at the reflection of myself, I saw why.
The man in the mirror was speckled with blood and gore. His eyes, a verdant fire of green hate, sunken into dark circles of exhaustion. It was the face of a monster. A monster who had laid waste to another like him.
The back doors of the ambulance were ripped open as the police rushed inside. Police swarmed the ambulance as I staggered out.
In the cacophony of sirens and the flare of blue lights, the world spun, and the ground lurched upward. I don’t remember the point when the world faded to darkness, only that when I woke, I was lying in a hospital bed staring at fluorescent lights.
I had managed to walk away with a concussion, a couple of stitches from the shattered plastic, and numerous cuts to go along with an already extensive collection of scars. A supervisor walked me out, telling me how he was glad I was okay and that he would send me the worker’s compensation paperwork in the morning.
As I made my way out of the ER, I paused at the bed of the man who had been my patient. His face was stitched from where I had hit him with the O2 bottle, his right eye swollen shut, the top piece of his ear gone. Deep purple bruises line his exposed chest. Steel handcuffs tied him to the rails of the hospital, replacing the cloth ones he had so expertly slipped. I looked down at this man, this beast — the one who had deemed me as nothing more than the person who cleaned up his mess.
And in his one opened blue eye, there was fear. I was his monster. His personal boogieman.
I would be a monster to many men over the following years.
The following day, I would put in my two weeks’ notice as a paramedic. The same day I would apply for the police academy.
I never believed I was a good man after that day. I had embraced the darkness inside of me. I allowed it to give me strength.
I believed in what the badge represented. I engrained the beliefs and values of being a police officer into my very being, using it as a guiding path for the monster I knew myself to be.
I just wished in the end that those values had been enough. Enough to keep those I cared for safe. But in the end, the world, my world made of three city blocks, was torn apart by a monster. A monster named Malcolm Smith.
Sometimes, the only thing to stop a monster is another monster.
More exciting reads —
Next Chapter 13: Memorial Day
https://readmedium.com/memorial-day-a2a074047c3
Previous Chapter 11: When The “King” Returns
For other paramedic fiction: How A Dog Named 205 Save My Hardened Heart
For quick access to other chapters: Go here
Merlin Troy writes fiction inspired based on his time as a police officer, paramedic, and veteran. He is working on his first novel which will be available for readers when published on Kindle. Expected release: July 2021 Subscribe to receive his stories and updates.