Before I leave for my ambulance shift I have a bad feeling, an extremely keen inkling that the future is going to be ugly. I know better than to try to fight these sensations -- I surrender to them. I retreat to a far corner of my mind and observe as they wash adrenaline through my physiology. All that is important in this situation is to keep one portion of yourself unaffected, a sane anchor preventing the frightened animal from drifting too far. Preserve that single focal point of perspective and the rest will be nothing more than an amusement ride. Lose it and you're falling out of a tall tree.

I don't want to leave Susan for the evening, not knowing what this bad feeling presages. Could be that something terrible is about to happen to her, or me, or it might be prevision of a grisly scene awaiting me on the ambulance. It is stupifyingly hot in the house, and we lay on the bed in the one air-conditioned room like panting animals on the sweltering veldt. I get up to shower and prepare for my shift at the squad. Strangely, putting on the uniform calms me. This is the self that remembers how to seal off bleeding. This is how I look when I am barely shakable. I'll bet cops particularly know this feeling. I wonder if cops start to feel more at ease when they're in uniform than at any other time, because in uniform one's relationship to the universe seems more clear and defined.

In my uniform I am somehow protected. In the beginning I felt the strange suit as something foreign -- a template laid over my personality, partially obscuring it. Now I feel the uniform mimicking and conforming to the topography of my skin. It is becoming my armor.

For this shift, I volunteer to go up to Ambulance 40, which is a single EMS unit based in a fire station elsewhere in the county. Through some Byzantine arrangement, my squad keeps an ambulance there to bolster coverage of that region, so two or three people from every shift have to go up and staff it. It's a very small station, and things there are pretty mellow. The first time I went to Ambulance 40, I worked with fellow Oberlin alum Heather and an earnest firefighter type nicknamed Fitz. They're about my age, and seem relatively free of the tacit endorsement of paramilitary rank that is the norm on the squad. Our shift together was quite amusing.

I drive to the fire station, and quickly discover that I'm the only person there. Both the ambulance and the engine are out, leaving me alone in the building. Just as I settle in to watch some TV, a man comes wandering in through the ambulance bay doors. His family was driving past the station when one of the members seemed to have some kind of an attack. [I'll leave out most medical details out of respect for this person's privacy.]

I usher them into the lounge and perform a basic assessment to verify that there is no immediate danger to life or limb. Nonetheless, I am concerned and would like to get the patient to a hospital. I'm a little unnerved at handling this one myself and would like to have some backup right now. I tell them them that the ambulance is currently on a call but should return soon. In the meantime, I would like to call my squad to see if there's another unit in the vicinity. I project calm assurance. I'm privately anxious about leaving the patient to go make a call, but I go across the the hall to the station control room where there's a phone. I can keep an eye on the patient through the open door.

It's only my second time here, and I have never really checked out the control room before. I find a listing of phone numbers for area rescue stations out on the desk, and I quickly look up my squad. I dial the number, but am interrupted by a buzzing noise before I can get through all the digits. At the squad, I have to dial "9" to get an outside line, so I try this. Again I get the harsh buzz part way through the number. I methodically try each of the digits, 1-9, to see if one will get me a dial tone. No dice. I peer back into the lounge at my patient, who appears to be in no worse condition than moments before. I realize that I have no idea how to communicate with the outside world from this control room, short of walking out the door and shouting as loud as I can.

At this moment, I hear the beep-beep-beep alarm as the ambulance backs into the bay. It sounds like my own heartbeat amplified for everyone to hear. I confidently head back to the lounge to tell the patient and family that there's a unit arriving now, implicitly taking credit for what now feels like an act of a merciful God. We're soon on the way to the hospital with our patient.

This only seems like the first taste of my evil premonition. The foreboding stays all around me like a stink. I wait for the inevitable worsening. There are more runs that night, but none of them come close to what I am expecting.

And the thing never comes. I can hear the machinery of the universe ticking like a giant bomb waiting to go off. It keeps going... boom, boom, boom, but there's no sudden rush of detonation. Perhaps my precognitive gear is malfunctioning. There's no way to be certain but wait. I want to keep my uniform on while I find out. I know that sooner or later I will have to strip off its protective shell and be exposed and helpless again.