'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

December 24, 2006

I wrote this on Christmas Eve after coming off a shift that felt anything but festive. The city was quiet, but not in a peaceful way. It was the stillness that settles in right before something breaks.

We’d run a handful of calls—nothing catastrophic, just the usual holiday fare: an elderly woman alone with chest pain that turned out to be anxiety, a domestic dispute that ended with a guy in cuffs and a toddler crying under the tree, and a welfare check on someone who hadn’t answered the phone in three days. She was fine. Just drunk and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on loop.

Somewhere around 11 p.m., we parked near a church that was holding midnight mass. I remember watching people file in—scarves, candles, music drifting out onto the street. Families. Laughter. That warm, soft light spilling out into the dark. And then there was us. Sitting in a diesel-scented rig, sipping gas station coffee and waiting for the next shoe to drop.

That night, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even bitter. I just felt distant. Like the world was happening to other people.

It’s hard to explain to civilians what holidays feel like in this job. It’s not just that you’re working—it’s that you’re working the worst of it. You’re seeing people at their loneliest, their ugliest, their most broken. And you’re doing it while trying not to think about your own family sitting around a dinner table somewhere wondering if you’re safe. If you’re eating. If you’ll make it back before the leftovers are cold.

I wrote that post not as a complaint, but as a record. A reminder that behind every peaceful night, there’s a medic quietly making sure it stays that way.

It wasn’t merry. But it was real.