SHOULD I LAUGH? OR, SHOULD I CRY?

November 28, 2006

The call came in as a seizure. Mid-40s male, actively seizing at a convenience store downtown. We hit the lights, turned up the scanner, and rolled in hot—because seizures? Those still trigger some urgency. Especially when it's not just another frequent flyer putting on a show.

We get there and find the guy lying on the floor, twitching just enough to make it convincing—maybe. Maybe not. Hard to tell these days. He’s covered in soda and convenience store shame. The clerk’s yelling that he’s been stealing candy and collapsed by the freezer section.

We do our thing—check vitals, do the dance, load him up. On the way to the hospital, he suddenly “wakes up,” like Lazarus with a hangover and a sweet tooth. He slurs something about diabetes, then asks if we can stop and get him a cheeseburger. I'm not making that up.

A few minutes later, mid-transport, he starts faking another seizure—but forgets which side he was seizing on before. I look at my partner. He looks at me. We both know.

This job does something to your sense of humor. There’s a line between tragedy and comedy, and some nights it’s thinner than nitrile. That night, it felt like a tightrope—and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

So I did neither.

I just wrote about it, because writing is the only thing that still makes any damn sense.