Spitting Image by Patrick LeClerc Page A

I’m gonna sweep the floor after the day we had.”
    “You tell him that?”
    “More or less. I unzipped my pants and told him to state his complaints clearly into the microphone.”
    “So long as you kept it classy,” I groaned as I stood. Half an hour’s sleep hadn’t made much of a dent in the fatigue of the day. The numb, cold feeling in my chest reasserted itself as my mind cleared. I had more important things to worry about than Armstrong.
    I pulled on my boots and clomped out to the garage. I saw Big Juan and gave him a smile and a handshake. He pulled me in for a one armed hug. “How’s it going, Homes?”
    “You know,” I said, “if the city is gonna screw us, you’d think it would buy us dinner and give us a kiss first.”
    “Rough night, ‘mano?”
    “Four calls after midnight.”
    He whistled. “Go home and get some sleep.”
    “On my list. Here,” I unclipped the narcotics keys from my belt loop and held them out to him.
    “I got Pete’s already,” he said.
    I sighed. I had really hoped to avoid his partner.
    I walked to the truck and stuck my head in the open side door. “Narc keys.”
    Adam took the keys, then started his carefully rehearsed rant. “I already yelled at your partner,” he said. “Now I’m gonna yell at you.”
    I sighed and braced myself.
    “This truck is disgusting.”
    “We did seventeen calls yesterday,” I said as calmly as I could. “Four after midnight. We got back at six thirty. We replaced the equipment. You’re operational.”
    “It’s a disgrace.”
    “You’re a disgrace,” I pointed out. “At least the truck has an excuse.”
    I heard laughter from the back of the ambulance. Looking around Armstrong’s suety form, I saw Samantha, the same new EMT who had been riding with Nique and me. Great. Squabbling in front of the rookie. Way to set an example.
    “There are electrode backings all over the floor, the trash barrel needs to be emptied, and the whole thing needs to be washed.”
    Really? He was worried about the peel-off backing from the electrodes? “Dude. We got raped all shift. I’m not sweeping a truck at six in the morning. This is Philips Mills. This truck gets hammered. Especially at night. It was trashed yesterday when I came in, and the crew was unconscious.”
    “So do your job and check the truck and clean it,” he said.
    I saw red creeping into the edges of my vision.
    “Do my job? Do you know what I did yesterday? First of all, I got here early, because I give a shit about the exhausted crew I’m relieving. Then, since I was coming in fresh, I cleaned and stocked the ambulance. And I ran around all day doing calls, more than you’ve ever done in a day because I clear from the fucking hospital when I drop off a patient and don’t sit all day milking my report and leave the other trucks to take up my slack.”
    I realized I was getting heated, and that never changes things for the better, just gets me in trouble. I tried to force down my anger. In many times and many places, smacking him for pushing my buttons would have been accepted, tacitly if not explicitly, but in this day and age it would mean at least a suspension, maybe loss of my job, maybe even charges. I swallowed and tried to focus, to be reasonable.
    “I’ll even hang out for half and hour and help you wash this beast. We fueled it. We restocked the supplies. If it had been bloody I’d have mopped it out. But there’s no way on God’s green Earth I’m going to sweep up the backings from the EKG stickies after twenty-three hours of getting my ass handed to me.”
    “Well, then you better get used to being written up every week,” he said.
    Something broke inside me. A red mist filled my vision. Armstrong was stupid and lazy and full of himself and no medic with less than five years on the streets has any business barking at me like that, and it was the worst type of spoiled brat cowardice to threaten to run to management with a write up for something that