Things You Save in a Fire(39)

“You mean, if they don’t survive.”

“Once I’ve left the hospital,” I said then, dead serious, “I always tell myself they survive.”

Other advice: Carry extra pens, because once a homeless guy covered in lice has used your pen to sign a waiver, you don’t exactly want it back. Never cut open a down coat with your trauma shears unless you want to be covered in feathers for the rest of the shift. And always cut pants off on the outside of the leg. A guy in Austin famously cut a patient’s pants off from the inside with a little too much enthusiasm—and he got called “the rabbi” for the rest of his career.

The rookie paid attention.

But not every part of the job came naturally to him.

I’ll give him this: He was one of the fittest guys on the crew, and he could lift anything. He was endlessly good-natured and very well-intentioned. He was decisive, and physically strong, and mentally committed. He was up for anything. And okay, fine. He was handsome, at least to me—though maybe that’s not a job requirement.

He also—with some frequency—fainted at the sight of blood.

The first time it happened—though certainly not the last—was the first time he started an IV on me.

The thing about blood is, you can’t overthink it. If you really focus on how odd it is to stick a metal tube into another human being’s vein, it will freak you out. The trick to doing anything well in medicine is to get so familiar with it that it doesn’t seem strange anymore.

But we could all tell from the rookie’s face on pretty much every medical call that he was not there yet. He needed a lot more practice.

His hands felt cold as he tied the tourniquet and felt for a vein in my arm.

“Great veins,” he said, giving me that smile of his and a quick glance up at my eyes.

“Sweet talker,” I said. Then, trying to get back to business: “They’re easy to find, but they roll.”

He frowned a little. “Okay.” Then he felt my other arm.

I could tell from his breathing he was nervous.

“Don’t be nervous,” I said. “I’m tough.”

“Maybe not as tough as you seem,” he said.

If it had been any other guy in the crew, I’d have argued. The rookie was the one guy I didn’t feel like I had to prove myself to. Partly that was because he was so inexperienced—I clearly had authority over him—but it was also just something about him, the way he was. The expression on his face when he looked at me always seemed to be some version of admiration. The things I was good at—he saw them.

He wasn’t competing with me, either. He didn’t mind when I was better than him, and he seemed to love it when I was better than the other guys.

I just always had this feeling that he was rooting for me.

But I still needed him to hurry up and jam that needle in my vein.

“Just get it over with,” I said.

“Sticks are not my strong suit,” he said.

“Don’t overthink it,” I said.

He looked up then, trying to read me. Then he unwrapped a needle, pressed it to the vein he’d chosen, pushed it in—and spurted blood all over both of us and the room.

“Oh, shit,” he said, taking in the sight of all the blood—then he wavered in his chair for a second before he collapsed and hit the floor.

“Rookie?” I said, peering down at him with the needle still in my arm.

People often come to just after fainting, because with a simple vasovagal attack, all that’s wrong is not enough oxygen’s getting to the brain. This happens all the time at weddings, for some reason. There’s a whole subcategory of videos on YouTube with people melting to the floor at weddings. But as soon as you’re down flat, the blood equalizes, and you’re back up pretty fast.

Sometimes, it takes a few minutes longer.

I pulled out the needle and cleaned up the mess, and then, when he still wasn’t up yet, I knelt down beside him. I meant to rouse him right away, but the opportunity to just gaze at him for a second was too appealing to skip. What was it about that face of his? Why did it have such an effect on me? I’d spent so much time trying to figure that out, but I still didn’t know for sure.

It had to be subjective. He wasn’t perfect. I tried to catalog his flaws. He had slight bags under his eyes—but of course it just gave him a sweet, puppy-dog look. He had an incisor that was darker than his other teeth. And he had funny earlobes, now that I thought about it. A little too plump for the rest of him. There. He wasn’t perfect. Just as flawed as the rest of us.

He should be nothing special at all.

But he just was.

My best guess was something about his eyes—how smiley and kind looking they were. I remember reading an article years ago about a study done on the shape of people’s eyes that found people with smiley eyes wound up happier overall. Statistically.

Maybe that was it.

I could have stared at him all day. But of course I didn’t. He had a lot more needles to stick me with before we were done.

I reached out to wake him. I meant to push on his shoulder, but my hand decided to cup his jaw instead. At the touch, his eyes blinked open and I yanked my hand away.

“What happened?” he asked, frowning and starting to sit up.

“You fainted. Take it slow.” I helped back him up to the chair.