Holding Still for as Long as Possible Read Online Free

myself say, “You did the right thing calling 911, Kevin. Good job. Where’s your dad? We’re going to take care of him now.”
    Kevin led us to the elevator and pressed seven. He spoke with almost no pauses. “Mydadcameinfromsmoking and ( gasp! ) fellonthecouch! ( gasp! ) Hewastwitchingand ( gasp! ) thenIcouldn’twakehimup! ( Gasp. )”
    Diane and I rolled the stretcher down the hallway. Kevin ran ahead towards the open door of 7B, his cape flying behind him. I heard Diane stifle a giggle. That’s another reason I liked her — the inappropriate laughter. We followed Kevin through the door, which opened into an L-shaped living room. A shirtless man who looked like an aging raver and wore threadbare track pants lay starfish on a couch. Still. I assumed, VSA . The room was furnished with a TV blaring the same ER episode we’d been watching at the station, and a coffee table strewn with glasses and ashtrays. This likely had happened fast but had felt really slow.
    Kevin turned to me. “Can you just call my mom? Can I go to my mom’s house now?” He was done playing this boring game of Dad Killing Himself.
    Diane responded, “Go find your favourite toy in the other room, okay? I know you’re scared but soon we’ll call your mom.” She was good with kids, and that was a plus. I could handle the crying families, she could talk “child.”
    I took the dad’s radial pulse and found it full and bounding. Happy that he wasn’t circling the drain entirely, I rubbed his sternum with a gloved fist, attempting to arouse him from unconsciousness. Just then, he opened his eyes. Screamed. We both jumped back as he kicked his muscled legs in the air.
    The 10-2s and Fire arrived with movie-like timing. Calls were rarely this cinematic — I’d yet to witness a moment that could be punctuated with symphonic crescendos. It was just one of those days.
    I asked the cops to restrain dad while I got the oxygen ready, and automatically repeated the same words we always do: “We’re paramedics and we’re here to help you. We’re paramedics and we’re trying to help you. Tell us what happened. What did you take?”
    The guy continued to scream, and when the cops strapped him down he started muttering: “Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy.” Fire stood around like a circle of trees providing shade. Let me tell you, it was incredibly weird to have a huge tattooed guy gorked out of his head on drugs, probably capable of killing you without remorse, screaming for his mother.
    Kevin poked at me with the antenna of a cordless phone. “Can you call my mom now? I want to go home.”
    I brought him over to one of the cops. At this point I tried to summon the detached exterior I’d cultivated in order to be a medic. There were calls you laughed about later, ones you learned not to care about despite the abject misery. There were only so many drunk guys you could pull out of their puke before you started to feel not much of anything besides annoyed. Like, Stop fucking whining already and let’s go get you a sandwich. Stop drinking the hand sanitizer and get in the truck already.
    But looking at Kevin, I felt the images begin to save themselves in my memory. Bouncing curls, hands shaking around the phone, tiny chapped lips. Fuck this. This is fucked up . My brain was a jumble of expletives and terrible thoughts about how so many people just shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. But I guess I wouldn’t be here, if that were the case, right? My mom was barely seventeen when she had me. My dad was twenty and loved drugs more than anything else, and still did. They both still lived like they were twenty-five, just like this crackhead, who moaned on and on. I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, to kick him in the middle of his useless chest. I tried to summon compassion but came up dry.
    Instead, I went back to asking questions. Getting him