I was tired.
Too tired.
I pressed the red button on the instrument panel and the machine’s cockpit opened. It was a strange machine that somewhat resembled a tanning bed but much, much, more useful. There was a slight whirring noise as the machine anticipated my arrival. I set the machine for one hour and climbed into the machine. Once inside, I grabbed the mask and tried to strap it over my face. Mine never seemed to fit quite right.
After a minute the blinking yellow light above my head turned green. This was the worst part, a noxious, foul hydrogen sulfide gas poured into the mask. I don’t get why they can’t come up with something better.
Soon, the gas effect, like someone was pulling the plug. Things got slower. I felt an icy tingle, as it got colder. With each breath, the world slowed down a little more. My thoughts foggy, my hands and legs no longer working, I was slowly freezing to death. My body was shutting down. On the tiny monitor next to my head, it held all my info. My respiratory rate dropped, I went from 20 breaths a minute to 2.
The scary part is the temperature. Watching yourself drop from 36 degrees Celsius to just 2 is pretty disheartening. I was now cold-blooded, essentially a reptile, a lizard. This new predicament clouded my mind just as I felt the dark circles at the edge of my vision. I felt myself spiraling down, no longer thinking. I was just, there. And it all went black.
Beep. Beep. Beep. It was all I heard. A whirring noise kicked in the background and the door of the compartment lifted. Oxygen flooded over my body. My eyes snapped open. It took awhile for my hands to work. This part felt a little strange. Instead of waking up, you felt like you were being born. Life just materialized around you. One minute I wasn’t here and the next I was.
The clock said 11:19 AM. Perfect. I was only out an hour but it felt like I had just slept for twenty. The best part of the system is that while the world around me passes, I stay the same. The whole world aged an hour, and I stayed exactly the same.
It was a short walk to work. I was in the locker room when Chet, my partner, walked up behind me.
I was pulling on my jumpsuit when Chet tapped me on the shoulder. “You’re late again.”
“Sorry,” I said, as I zipped up the front. “I had to get my hour in.”
“An hour?” he said. “No one needs an hour.”
“I do.”
We headed to the ambulance bay. One of the other shifts was coming in as we geared up. “Tough day?” I asked the other driver.
He laughed. “There aren’t tough days anymore,” he said. “It’s not like how it used to be.”
He was from before, a paramedic, back when they did things. He remembered the old days. I looked at Chet. “Is this us?”
He looked at the call log “12–82,” he said. “Yeah, this is us.”
We climbed into the still running ambulance. Mike called back to us, “Good luck.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Em Dash by Matthew Donnellon to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.