FIFTEEN MINUTES. (PART ONE)

February 24, 2007

I wrote this one after a night that left me shaken—not because of blood or violence, but because I came face to face with something I’d never considered: someone impersonating me. Not me personally, but the uniform, the role, the responsibility. I was the real paramedic on scene when we found him—dressed like us, talking like us, walking into an accident scene like he belonged. And for a few terrifying moments, he did. At least in the eyes of the bystanders, and worse, in the eyes of the girl who believed he was a hero. I remember staring at him and realizing he didn’t just want to look like one of us. He needed to. The lie gave him identity, purpose, dignity—things he thought he could borrow with a pair of cargo pants and a Maglite. I wrote this not to mock him, but to process the strangeness of it all. Because when you’ve fought tooth and nail to become something real—and then you watch someone pretend their way into it—it messes with your head. And it makes you ask: what makes a medic? The gear? The patch? Or the scars we carry that no one sees?