by Luke Boyd

I take a swig of my now-cold coffee and wince a little bit at the taste. The cop just glares at me. I’m wondering if he’s mad because I’m standing there an hour late and drinking coffee, or if he’s mad because I didn’t bring him any. Either way it’s lousy coffee by this point.

I feel something tugging at my pants leg so I look down and there’s this dark snakepit of hair staring up at me. This girl can’t be more than six or seven years old and she’s already at her first crime scene. She’s standing on my heavy boot and has her arms wrapped around my leg. Her soiled little jumper is riding halfway up her body and her hair is twisted into about a dozen braids that skew off her head at all angles.

“Hey misser, you drive the am’blance?”

“Uh huh.”

“You takes people to hop’sital?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“What if they ‘ready dead?”

“Well. If they’re already dead then I take them straight to heaven.”

She must like that answer because she starts giggling into my pants leg. I try to start heading back to the ambulance but she’s clinging to me and standing on my boot. I make a few awkward steps carrying her along, then I stop and reach down and pry her off.

“Sorry, sweetie but I have to go. I have to take more people to the hospital, and maybe a few to heaven.”

She seems hurt and retreats a few feet.

“Misser, ken you take me to heav’n? I don’ like it here.”

She catches me off-guard and I don’t know what to say. I crouch down and motion her to come closer.

“It’s okay. To tell you the truth I don’t like it here either. Most people don’t. You just have to find something to pass the time. Wait here a second…” I run to the van and grab the bag of cigarettes from the gas station. “Take these. But don’t open them. Keep them in the bag but carry them around. If anyone gives you trouble about them, you tell them the nice ambulance driver gave them to you. They’ll make you look sophisticated. And when you’re old enough you can start smoking, and if you smoke real good I’ll be back before you know it to take you to heaven. OK?”

She takes the bag from me, looking puzzled, and wraps the loose ends around her hands. I stand up and make for the ambulance, hearing her muttering from somewhere behind me.

“Sofis’cated?”

So I get fired a few weeks later.

I think because I just stopped showing up for calls. I mean I’d answer the radio and confirm that I was on my way and all, but then I’d go pick up Bill and have breakfast or do some laundry or something. It wasn’t that I was lazy or anything like that—this was just a much more efficient use of the vehicle and the time. Nobody else agreed with me though, not even Bill. And he was even getting free breakfasts out of the deal.

The Mercy Hospital ambulance job pretty much translates over to what I’ve still been doing—driving an ambulance. Technically.

Only not for Mercy Hospital, or for the dead and dying. After all, what can really be done for them? It’s the rest of us that need the help.

So that’s what I do. I help people who have other emergencies besides dying. Dying isn’t an emergency—living is. And these people appreciate it more, too. They appreciate the sirens, the lights, the suicidal driving, the sense of urgency. Because for these people, whatever is emergency enough for them is emergency enough for me. And that’s what we all want. We want to feel like our life’s catastrophes are just as important to someone else.

So I flip the switches, hit the lights. I make people’s hair stand up on the back of their necks as I go careening by at ridiculous speeds. I’m the driver. I’m the captain. I’m God, Jesus, and UPS all at the same time. I get things done. And I make my own hours.

Sometimes I drive around and someone will flag me down—a flat tire and they’re late for a flight, or a traffic jam and they need to be at the office in fifteen. Most of the time people call though, from their cell phones sitting in traffic or from bed just having realized they’ve overslept.

And just like that I’m off in my own ambulance, or what used to be one anyway. You can still see where the decals were on the sides. It’s an ’84 Chevy van that must have been part of the Mercy fleet before they went to the bigger ambulances, the ones I drove. It’s white with spots of rust that send streams of red metal down the body whenever it gets wet.

I first saw it down on Seventh street at Carlo’s Pre-Owned.

“EXPERIENCED cars for EXPERIENCED drivers”