On Saturday I took part in an emergency-preparedness drill for various rescue agencies in the area. The drill was designed to test medical, fire, and police response to a large mass-casualty chemical or biohazard event. Like it or not, my adopted Washington DC sits at the center of the revenge fantasy bullseye for a bunch of anti-government chip-implanted psychopaths out there, and having a plan to deal with it is important.

The drill was originally designed to take place in a Metro station, which would have been almost excessively cool. But Metro got cold feet and backed out. Maybe they didn't want to give some bomb nut a bright idea, or perhaps they didn't want to suggest to the members of the subway-riding public that they're all just sitting ducks waiting to be picked off by some moron with a chemistry set.

Instead, the event was held at Navy Medical Center. All the various emergency services folk met at a nearby school to wait for the drill to begin. I had never seen such an array of fire and rescue equipment outside of a Die Hard movie. We had no idea what the simulation would be like, other than it would likely involve a chemical spill or other biohazard. Just before it began, we were all given the basic rules: people who were wearing red tags were running the show and evaluating our response; we were to ignore them completely. The volunteers playing victims each had a red card. If one showed a red card, then the next statement they made was not part of the simulation (i.e. "I think I am having a real heart attack"). A few minutes later, the first units, including my ambulance, were dispatched on the "call" for an explosion at a school.

Smoke still billowed from the building as we approached, and a few people sat out by the side of the road cradling wounds. Ahead we could see at least a dozen people laying on the grass and pavement, some visibly burned and bloodied. The fire crew head of us waved us back until they could secure the scene. Even from fifty feet away, we could see some of the victims' bodies jerking spasmodically, as if exposed to some kind of nerve agent. The fire crew broke out their breathing apparatus. We pulled on gas masks and began donning thick biohazard suits. One of the red-tagged evaluators, holding a camcorder, came over and began taking footage of us getting suited up.

The realism and gravity of the scene around me were having a significant effect on my adrenaline levels. Only the individual with the camera tended to break the spell, but since he was recording for posterity my efforts to wriggle into the silver suit, his presence wasn't exactly calming either. The seams of the suit have to be sealed (with good old duct tape!) and doing this while wearing two pairs of rubber gloves ends up looking more like something from "I Love Lucy" than "Outbreak."

Nonetheless, the fact is that donning a biohazard suit as one of the first medical personnel to approach this massive scene was an extremely wild sensation. Once in the "hot" zone, I was sent to attend to a male patient and his young son. This guy was almost frighteningly real -- he had worked up a good head of spit and was foaming from the corner of his mouth as he tried to talk to me. His son, who was about eight, seemed visibly upset. I was a little surprised to see someone so young taking part in the simulation, since it involved a fair amount of frightening imagery, including his dad drooling and a bubble-headed me trying to be reassuring while talking through a gas mask filter. I couldn't tell how much of his agitation was a result of him going along with the pretend nature of the exercise, and how much was genuine anxiety.

I had to figure that the dad would red-card me and take the boy out of the drill if he really thought it was scaring him, but I still felt bad. When I was told to take the unhurt kid out into a safer area, it was pretty clear that the boy was unwilling to do so. In a real event, I wouldn't have hesitated to drag him kicking and screaming away; he might have lived many additional years to get over it. But in this case, I quietly ignored the order and helped them out together some time later. Why subject some poor kid to nightmares and years of therapy because he got a heavy touch of reality in a biohazard drill?

By this time, temperatures inside my impregnable bio suit were approaching infernal. The gas mask felt claustrophobic. The incoming air was indistinguishable from that which I'd just exhaled, and the small faceplate prevented me from seeing much more than what was directly in front of me. When I had to support the man and walk him into the evacuation area, the exertion made me want to keel over. I was assigned to monitor several patients who were next priority for transport. They were placed on a stretch of asphalt in direct sunlight, and I began to consider exactly how uncool it would look if I fainted away from heat exhaustion. It one be one of those things that I could count on my new crewmates to remember for years to come.

Eventually I was shifted back to a group of critical patients who were, fortunately, located in the shade. Here I was back with the rescue crew from my squad, who had similarly been suited up since the whole situation began. We spent a fair amount of time resting on our knees while waiting for more equipment and people to evacuate the patients. The volunteers continued to twitch and jerk obligingly, even occasionally making horrific barfing sounds. It came as something of a relief when we took out the last of the patients, and were rotated out of the area.

We walked in single file down the road to where the command center and decontamination unit were set up. A couple of folks by the side of the road were taking pictures, and I realized what a dramatic photo op we were: a line of figures in cinematic looking suits, emerging from the scene of destruction. It must have looked very heroic, if not entirely silly. I felt a twinge of simulated heroism.

After a somewhat desultory spray-off at the decontamination area, we were allowed to rip off the duct tape and get out of the thoroughly unpleasant suits. I was so sweaty that I fully expected an explosive plume of steam to burst out of my outfit at the first breach. Instead, I was simply drenched on the inside -- like I had been thrown in a lake, or a lake had been thrown out of me. I was really stunningly gross, in stark contrast to my photogenic moment only minutes earlier. I'd been working for only an hour, but the intensity had made it seem like considerably more. With my crew, I retired to the sidelines to throw back some Gatorades and watch things wind down. About a half-hour later, there was some brief talk about having us suit up and go back in -- causing us to look with considerable alarm at the soaked and stinky suits -- but it never went anywhere.

In all the unique events of the day, one odd little memorable moment stands out. When we were still in our gear at the "hot" zone, one of my colleagues noticed my suit's hood was starting to pull loose. He pointed it out to a man next to me, who fixed the flap again, then thumped me on the chest and gave me the thumbs-up sign. In that moment I felt like I belonged. I saw that these strangers might somehow eventually be friends, that I might learn to trust them, and they to trust me. It seems kind of ridiculous when described in retrospect, but it was real.

Now, considering it, I think about my friendships with crewmates when I was an EMT in Ohio. Looking on death together with them bonded us in a way I'd never known with other friends. It's funny that all the time I wanted to be an EMT again, I thought it was only for the experience of being that close to to bare bones of life and helping others through sudden suffering. I thought it was about all the things that made the drill fascinating, not for the one brief moment when I remembered what it's really like being part of a team. I somehow never realized that I missed those friendships perhaps as much as anything else about the job.