The buildings at the dead end of the street were squat brick structures with no ornamentation whatsoever, definitively ugly, aggressively functional. They were the kind of places where aluminum siding wholesalers would locate their warehouse space and florescent offices: cheap and on the margins of public view. Although I could not see it, I guessed that a railroad must run somewhere nearby. This looked like the side of town the railroad typically runs through.

I drove around through the complex for several minutes before I finally located the testing location. No number appeared over its plate-glass doors set in the grubby brick walls. You just had to know where to look, and I had been told. Welcome to the Narnia of the Maryland Emergency Medical System.

I was the first person to arrive, and was told to wait in the small conference room. An odd assortment of chairs encircled the small veneer table, from a puffy faux-leather seat that looked like it was pilfered from a TGIF restaurant to an austere metal folding chair. I fell into the former and was rewarded with the faint flatulent whoosh of the stuffing deflating. The small table was cramped between a wall of file cabinets and what appeared to be the office's basic kitchen. Other people arrived, and while we waited for our test we shared stories of what had brought us here. Most, like me, were Emergency Medical Technicians from other states who were sitting for their exam to get reciprocity in Maryland. We were all 100 questions away from the end of the long and ugly road which Maryland forces its applicants to travel.

The guy next to me had been a Paramedic for seven years, but when he applied for reciprocity he was told he would have to go back and get Basic EMT reciprocity first. He was wondering if he would remember his basic protocols well enough to muddle through the test. I had to admit that his story trumped my own four-month effort to get reciprocity.

A hundred questions, rechecked once, took a little for than an hour. Then the trek back through strip-mall reality to the tune of air conditioning and facsimile FM. The city, for all its miseries, has a measure of character. I felt happy to reenter its density as I flew down 16th Street on a collision course with the center of the free world.

Six days later, my new Maryland EMT card and patch arrived in the mail. The patch is useless to me; we don't wear Maryland patches on our uniforms at my rescue squad. We're much to individualistic to get with all that State symbolism. We're pretty confident of ourselves without that colorful regalia. The card a full-color printed plastic job, like a credit card for saving lives. It contrasts amusingly with my old DC card, which really looked like it was xeroxed on colored paper at the Department of Health and then laminated by someone who was in a great hurry to complete the job. I mean, damn, if I knew how easy to fake the card was I could have saved myself all that time in the class.

This card means a lot to me. Now, after months of anticipation, I can start pre-aiding at the rescue squad. Basically I can begin the process of becoming fully certified to run an ambulance unit. Only when I get my "aidperson" status can I become a full member of the squad. I have volunteered there for well over a year, and I am quite ready to leave my proletarian "Active Active" status in the dust. This card allows me to enter the future. Perhaps it is a future in which I don't have to clean the "men's upheads" quite so often.