Ambulance Girl by Jane Stern Page A

deranged patients, where a huge black man sits on the edge of a chair behind a glass screen.
    The guard fills me in. “He is a professional karate teacher, he is schizo . . . tried to strangle his mother this morning.”
    “Oh,” I say, at a loss for words. I watch him rock back and forth, talking to somebody in his head. The cops who brought him in have taken the handcuffs off and are now leaving.
    “He needs to be taken up to the psych ward,” the nurse tells me. I find a wheelchair and roll it up to the locked glass door. The guard opens his holding pen for me.
    “Hi, I’m Jane,” I say.
    There is no response. He is too deeply engaged in talking to the voices in his head.
    “I am going to take you for a ride upstairs to another department,” I tell him as I roll the chair into the holding room. He stands up and sits down in my wheelchair. He is at least six feet four. He is wearing shorts and a tank top. His biceps are huge. I see he is drooling and working hard to keep up his side of the conversation with his inner demons. I roll him out of the locked room. I realize I have no idea where the psych ward is.
    I roll the man through the ER. I ask the guard at the door where the psych ward is. “Four,” he says.
    I don’t know where the elevators are. I find them. I don’t know if I should use the elevators that are for the public. As they are the only elevators I see, I push the button and when the doors open, I roll him in. There are four other people in the elevator. Two hold bouquets of flowers; they are visiting sick people. One has a balloon that says IT’S A GIRL. My homicidal schizophrenic karate expert has taken this moment to play with his genitals. He rams a hand into his shorts and starts to masturbate. I smile at everyone in the elevator as if I am the perfume spritzer in a department store. “Four, please,” I say to the man with the balloon.
    All three people in the elevator jump out on two as soon as the doors open. I am now alone in the elevator with this crazy person. He has tired of his penis and now seems to be aware of my presence. I smile. I am terrified. “So you’re into karate,” I say. “That must be fun.”
    We get to four. I roll him out on the chair and push as fast as I can to the locked psych ward door. I knock. A nurse buzzes me in.
    “Who is he?” she asks.
    “He tried to kill his mother this morning,” I answer. I have forgotten to take the pad with me with his name and stats on it. “He is psychotic,” I pronounce.
    The nurse gives me a withering look. “What is his name?” she asks.
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    “Well, go downstairs and get the paperwork, and why wasn’t there a guard with you?” she asks.
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    She shakes her head. “It’s your ass,” she says as if to tell me that only a total idiot would get in an elevator with a crazed would-be murderer with no guards or restraints.
    By the time I have gone back down to the ER, given the admission sheet to the psych nurse, and returned, all hell has broken out. A teenage boy and girl have been brought in by the paramedics. One of them is in very bad shape.
    The trauma started out as the most routine of events. The pair were driving along a wooded road in a neighboring town. A deer jumped out, they braked hard, swerved, and their car came to a halt against a small stone wall. The impact forced the driver against the steering wheel. He was not wearing a seat belt. When the police arrived after a passing motorist called 911, the boy was standing by the side of the road, assessing the damage to the car. He was furious that his car was smashed in, but told the police that physically he felt fine. An ambulance had been dispatched and when it arrived the boy started to sign a refusal. He did not want to go to the hospital. In a few minutes he began to feel odd. It was hard for him to breathe. He thought he was having an attack of nerves. The paramedic put a stethoscope to his chest