Something About a Man in Uniform
Korey Wallace
A vicious dog bite down to the bone is just another day for an EMT and his partner as they try to separate the constant grief from the small joys in life.
The sound of these sirens will stay with you.
- The Editors
“It’s the uniform, brother!”
They both laughed. He looked down at his boots. The radio on his wide thick hips. His arms, bulging and rounded coming out the sleeve of his shirt. The man who had spoken was standing at the end of the line and was nothing but smile. He could smell alcohol and weed. The cashier licked her lips. Her eyes all glow, all hunger. He could feel the lust, tight in the air, and her fingers were long, thin, and quick. She handed him his candy bar.
“Here’s your receipt.”
Her number was on the front in big bold black scrawled over the small print. She smacked her gum, smiled again, gave a slight wink, and as he rounded the end of the counter where the man stood, she let out a slight delicious moan, and said, “See ya soon, sexy.”
He stuffed the receipt in his pocket. Made his way out of the store. The weather had shifted. It was getting colder, and the wind had picked up. He swung open the passenger door of the ambulance and stepped up and in. His partner was still inside the store. He unwrapped the candy bar, took a huge bite, and leaned back in the seat. He pulled the receipt out. Stared at the number. Imagined her lips against his.
“Jesus.”
The driver side door swung open.
“Fucking place. Damn people.”
Steve grunted as he settled behind the steering wheel.
“Man, I can’t believe how busy that place is.”
Steve turned the ignition over and the ambulance rumbled awake.
“I got a phone number. Look.”
He held the receipt up and Steve grinned, shook his head, “You sexy bitch.”
*
The address was wrong, and a woman came bounding down the sidewalk toward the ambulance carrying a small child. He opened the side door, and she handed him a boy. He put the boy on the cot and started yelling out questions to the woman and Steve jumped up onto the ambulance through the back doors.
“I got a dog bite left arm. It’s deep.”
“Get his clothes off. All the way down. Gentle!”
They stripped the kid to his diaper. He was two and the woman was some aunt and the kid had been dragged by a dog and mauled. The kid never wailed. Never fought them. No tears. They found bites on his two fat squishy legs. Both down to the bone. One on each arm. Ripped open to adipose tissue. No blood. Nothing on the face and the boy just stared and watched as they examined him and wrapped the bites in trauma gauze.
“You guys need help?”
It was a firefighter from the engine.
“Need you to drive. Going to St. Andrew’s.”
The firefighter slammed the back doors and made his way up front to the driver seat.
At the hospital, Steve made sure the police were contacted. The boy’s femur was snapped. They delivered him to the trauma bay where the ER doctor and his team took over.
“We need to contact DHS. We are going out of service after this and heading back to the station.”
He agreed and remade the cot in the area between the doors. He watched the gray light of evening chew away at the sun and behind him the ER leaked its tragic bruising sounds.
*
“They’re telling me there’s not enough info to start an investigation.”
He stood in the doorway and watched Steve’s rage pound out his eyes, from his mouth, and through his skin.
“I’m fucking done.”
He left Steve to his rage and walked down the dark station hallway to the kitchen. He pulled the receipt out of his pocket, studied the number, recalled the cashier’s eyes, her loud thick lips and all the tension between their bodies. The station was quiet, and nobody seemed to be around which was odd. He figured the other ambulance crew were in their bunks and the fire crew staffing the engine were probably working out or upstairs in the dayroom watching TV. He sat down at the kitchen table, took out his phone, opened YouTube and scrolled his home page. He couldn’t focus and kept thinking about the cashier, the boy, the aunt and her sketchy words and behavior, the city and its noise, Steve and his attitude, the deep anxious taut silence and dark station.
“Hey, I need you to fill out what you witnessed on this report and what you were told.”
He turned in his chair and saw Steve leaning around the corner of the doorway. He looked old, tired, half-mad. His uniform dirty, ragged. The colors faded in the shirt and pants. His big belly tight against the material and slipping over his belt. He made his way back to the report room and sat down in front of the computer farthest from the door. He stared at the box on the screen where he was to write his take about the boy and the aunt and the dog that mauled him and dragged him down the sidewalk and tore his skin and snapped his tiny femur bone in its jaws.
*
He stumbled half-awake to his truck. The morning air was crisp and the sun spit through the sky looking to lick and lap its yellow heat across the concrete and asphalt and all the skin. He had texted the cashier before he fell asleep in his bunk, half-hard from imagining her exposed body, and they were meeting for coffee, breakfast, probably something more, after when they both understood it was lust and only lust and he was too tired for more, too tired from the fentanyl overdose and chest compressions, the DHS fight, the boy chewed by a dog left unattended by a family too busy with their bullshit. His partner and his burned-up mind. All the weight from the years beneath the sirens and their dangerous delectable enticing roar.
-30-
Korey Wallace’s flash fiction has been featured on the podcast NoExtraWords. His story “A Way” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his work has been published in Helix, From Whispers To Roars, and the Ocotillo Review. He lives in Des Moines, IA.