We have to go back to Sin City. I hate going to Sin City. It’s like a circus for the criminally insane. You see things there that are not normal; it’s like insanity in slow motion only it’s narrated by you. If the whole world is a stage then these are some seriously fucked up players.
It’s 100-degrees outside with the kind of humidity that kills old people. Most of the people that live here are F4L (Fucked-4-Life). Many of them look like runners-up in the annual Charles Manson look-a-like contest…if Charles was brain dead and suffering from Aids and post traumatic stress disorder.
There is a little old black lady that sits out front next to the statue of green-rusted Jesus. The sign underneath him says: “all are welcome in His kingdom“. If this is God’s kingdom, I’ll pass.
The black lady has the 1,000-yard stare and says the exact same phrase over and over and over…while clapping her tiny hands together in the air like a hummingbird’s wings
“Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase, lord! Ple-ase lord! Ple-ase, lord!”
Wheeling the stretcher through the automatic doors the scenery is right out of Jacob’s Ladder, complete with disfigured midgets and convulsing, screaming people strapped to chairs. The smell is a mixture of curdled milk and shit with piss-stained sheets and vomit mixed in for good measure. And of course, there is the scent of death in the air to contend with.
On this particular day an Elvis impersonator is performing for the horde of Charles Manson look-a-likes. He’s a big fat guy wearing a blue -sequined costume with tassels and white cowboy boots. He has more gel in his hair that I have ever used in my entire life. It looks like motor oil. He’s singing “A Big Hunk o’ Love” and doing a really bad job of it. He can hardly breathe and you can hear him gasp for air between verses. No one notices. I’m not quite sure his audience is even breathing.That would be funny: a whole room full of dead people being serenaded by fat Elvis. Maybe not.
The floors are dirty and my unzipped boots stick to the tile. I have to wonder what I am stepping on. Of course the nurse does not speak English and her henchmen are too brain dead to be of any help. So it’s a big guessing game again.
Our patient’s mother is in the room. She is hovering over him, audibly praying to “the Lord” and fumble-fucking with his prosthetic leg, which is now coated with piss. No matter how hard she tries she just can’t seem to get it back on her son’s stump. There isn’t a nurse to be found. The patient is flailing and thrashing around on the bed and I’m staring at my partner because a.) we haven’t eaten lunch and b.) they don’t pay us enough money to deal with this kind of shit by ourselves.
Hey baby, I ain’t askin’ much of you
No no no no no no no no baby, I ain’t askin’ much of you
Just a big-a big-a hunk o’ love will do…
After prying the guy’s mother off of him and tipping over a bucket of piss we manage to load the guy on to the stretcher and make a break for the ambulance. His mother makes it a point to stuff the plastic leg on top of him as we go – never mind that I am bagging him or that his heart rhythm looks like shit.
Don’t be cruel…
to a heart that’s true…
And right as we pass by the Elvis extravaganza on the way out the guy codes.
All Hookers are not Created Equal
By SJR
There is nothing quite as satisfying as eating a bag full of greasy fast-food in a parking lot amidst the ambiance of a city run amok by blood lust and bloated news headlines. Welcome to Jacksonville, Florida – where the murder rate, the drug dealers, the hookers and the homeless make the fatty food taste all that much more succulent somehow during an otherwise uneventful lunch hour.
From the forthcoming book, 912: The Private Side of EMS by S. Joaquin Rivera
The night stretches into day with the sun and moon blurred by the streetlights and cold stares of passersby. I do not sleep any longer. I cannot. I drift in and out of people’s nightmares, sometimes as a spectator and others as an active participant. They never know my name and I rarely bother to mention it. It’s not important.
I spill blood on the floor only to clean it up in an endless ritual that serves to benefit no one. I wander the same hallways and look at the same portraits on the walls – the same stale corporate art. I walk past the same grieving rooms every night and hear different families sobbing over the same death.
I see them all lying there beyond the walls and doors, beyond plain sight, waiting to be catered to and carried away. Everyone that bursts through the doors is on their own planet. Some of them I recognize and others I do not. We are all the same and we are all different. We are all on the same collision course and we all dance with death.
I’m fat now, washed up, doped and glassy-eyed from an overdose of fast food and too many Cokes and coffee. Despite the fact I have easy access to narcotics and sedatives it seems the only thing that will do is a hit of the most powerful drug: sleep, but I have long given up on that elusive whore.
I am confused and beaten down. I feel greasy and unfettered. I deal with liars and monsters and the living dead. There is of course the occasional “patient” but they are too few and far between to matter. There are far too many needful parasites that crave attention like a drug and they all seem to crave it in the middle of the night.
I can see them for what they are underneath the surface of their skin. They only want me for what I can give them and for where I can take them. It’s like a slow-motion revolving door. When all the giving is done they depart back into the night and I forget them just as quickly as I discovered them.
The emergency room is bathed in a sanitized fluorescent light that reflects off of the blood puddles on the tile below. There is a cacophony of curse words and medical jargon; prayers and last rites. Death hides behind every curtain with a dagger in one hand and a consolation prize in the other.
Though I’ve walked through this place a thousand times it always manages to look just a little different. There are always new faces with the same old stories to tell. I watch as the double doors swing open and two large policemen haul a broken and bloody pulp of a man into the room. He is shirtless and still has barbs and small wires sticking out of his chest, fresh from who knows how many jolts of electricity.
The two men slam him down into a chair and handcuff him to a rail on the wall. “This one’s just begging for more,” one of them says. They high five each other and walk out the doors again. I can hear their laughter and footsteps fade just as the sound of a helicopter from above drowns them out.
The bleeding man sits there with his chest heaving and face swollen. He spits and curses at anyone dumb enough to pay him any attention.
The fan swirls above everything in slow motion, carrying with it the scent of death and failure from the people lying in beds that no one gives a fuck about. No one notices the dead leaving the room. They are motionless and silent underneath the sheets.
Another man sits in the corner, handcuffed to a chair, awaiting his fate but he already knows what’s coming. I have seen him before. I have seen him often in my dreams. He is the key-holder to the morgue downtown. He is black as burned leather and with eyes a mixture of white and red. His smile reveals receded gums and rotten teeth. His skin is a stark contrast to the white shirt he wears and the blood red cowboy boots.
He grins at me and laughs to himself in a high-pitched giggle; the kind of laugh that tears at the fabric of sanity. He does not stop for the entire time we are there. You can hear his laughter down the hallway and out into the bay.
The janitor next to the man drags the mop across the floor endlessly into the morning and we all wait until the ritual is through. We all wait among the laughter and dried blood. We wait until we can walk away and forget the last few hours. We all wait until it starts again.
© S. Joaquin Rivera, Broken Sword Publications, 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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