Chapter 3 Excerpt…
Nobody teaches you how to come down after the adrenaline.
They teach you how to assess, how to triage, how to make split-second decisions while chaos swirls around you. They teach you how to keep people alive, how to talk a mother through CPR, how to crack a rib without flinching. But they don’t teach you how to go home afterward. They don’t teach you what to do when the uniform comes off and the only thing left is your own mind, buzzing with the ghosts of sirens and screams.
They don’t prepare you for 3AM—when the world is quiet, but your brain isn’t. When the only thing running is the highlight reel of calls you wish you could forget. They don’t tell you how to sit in your own skin after a twelve-hour shift where you watched someone die and had to pretend it didn’t matter so you could keep going.
The war outside might end. The tones stop. The trauma bay goes dark. But the one inside? That war keeps fighting, long after the scene is cleared.
I’ve tried to outrun it.
God, I try. Every day, I try.
For years, I don’t run with my feet—I run with my schedule. I chase the clock like it owes me something. I volunteer for every overtime shift, say yes to every call, every time the radio crackles. I bury myself in the chaos, in the hum of diesel engines and sirens, in the weight of stretchers and the snap of gloves. I convince myself that if I just move fast enough, stay loud enough, maybe the silence won’t catch up to me. Maybe the memories won’t have the room to breathe, to claw their way back to the surface.
Then comes the double beep on the Nextel. That sharp electronic chirp cuts through the noise, and there she is—Kelli’s voice, steady and warm. Sometimes, it’s the only calm I feel all day. Just the sound of her voice, simple and measured, feels like a hand on my shoulder in the middle of a storm. Another call. Another chance to outrun the ache.
And then there’s Megan.
At first, just a partner—another set of boots in the rig, another voice on the radio. But it didn’t take long for that to shift. She became something more. Like a little sister in the passenger seat, A passenger princess, because she just doesn’t drive. Slouched in the worn fabric of a rig that’s seen too many miles and too much blood. We built something in those in-between spaces—between calls, between chaos, between the screech of sirens and the silence that follows.
We laughed in that cab like the world wasn’t falling apart outside the windows. Loud, reckless laughs that shook the heaviness off our shoulders, if only for a little while. We blasted old-school rock until the speakers crackled. Switched to new country when the road stretched too long. Bounced to hip hop with the bass rattling the glove box, letting the rhythm carry us somewhere—anywhere—other than where we’d just been.
She reminded me how to breathe when the air felt too thick. When my chest tightened and the weight of it all threatened to crush me. With her there, it never felt so heavy. The pain didn’t disappear, but it loosened its grip just enough for me to remember I was still alive.
And that kind of presence? It’s rare. A steadying hand in the storm. A voice that makes the silence bearable. Megan didn’t just ride beside me—she showed up, again and again, in the moments that mattered most.
And for that, she’ll always be more than just a partner.
The Berkshire 6-Pack—my crew, my family. Not just coworkers. Not just badges and uniforms. We became something tighter than protocol, deeper than procedure. A rhythm. A pulse. Six heartbeats moving in sync, steady through the chaos.
We ate shoulder to shoulder at metal tables stained with coffee and stories. Rode through sirens and stillness, chased ghosts down dark roads and came back with pieces missing—only to help each other fill in the gaps. We bled together, broke together, and in between the tones, we patched each other up with dark humor, shared smokes, and the kind of silence that says more than words ever could.
We were anchors in a storm that never quite passed—tethering each other to reality when the waves of trauma, grief, and fatigue tried to pull us under. We didn’t just survive shift after shift—we held each other through it.
For Torre and me, for Jordan and Sammy, for Rob and Austin—we are the 6-Pack. Not just a crew, but a constellation. Fixed points in each other’s sky, helping us find our way back when the night gets too dark.
And no matter how far we drift, no matter how the world changes, that bond doesn’t break. It’s forged in sirens and soot, in laughter and loss. It’s forever.
But even with all of it—the voices, the laughter, the music, the family—it still isn’t enough.
There’s a hollow place that no shift can fill. A silence that no siren can drown out. And some nights, when the adrenaline fades and the world gets quiet, I still feel it. That ache. That old familiar ache.
And I wonder how long I can keep running before I finally have to stop and face it.
Whiskey helped. For a while. Just enough to soften the edges. Just enough to make the nights bearable, to keep the dreams at bay. But it’s a short-term solution to a long-term wound, and deep down, I knew it. You can’t drown what lives inside you. You just teach it how to swim.
I told myself I was coping. That I was functioning. I showed up. I got the job done. I was good at it—until I wasn’t.
The body keeps score. And mine was tallying everything I refused to feel.
Eventually, it all started leaking out sideways. Anger, mostly. Irritability that came out of nowhere. I’d snap at people over nothing—friends, coworkers, strangers. I couldn’t sit still in restaurants anymore, couldn’t handle crowds. My back was always to the wall. I couldn’t focus. Couldn’t sleep. The sound of a child crying in the grocery store would send my hands trembling, my chest tightening like I was back in that living room again, watching a mother break in half.
I started avoiding people. Skipping out on plans. Turning down invitations. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to explain. I didn’t even want to pretend anymore. I’d sit in my car long after getting home, just staring at the dashboard, engine off, heart still racing. I’d tell myself I was just tired, but it was more than that.
I wasn’t living—I was surviving. Existing in the space between calls and memories, numb to everything except the dread of the next night, the next nightmare, the next moment something ordinary turned into a trigger.
That’s when I realized: the trauma hadn’t just stayed on scene. It had followed me home. It unpacked its bags and made itself comfortable in my life. It was in the way I flinched at sirens, in the way I hesitated to open up, in the way I scanned every room like it might turn into a battlefield.
You don’t get a protocol for this part.
There’s no field guide for how to admit that the job changed you. That it hollowed out parts of you and filled them with ghosts. That you’re afraid—not of blood or death or violence—but of yourself. Of what you might do when the mask slips. Of who you’ve become when the pager isn’t going off.
For a while, I thought I could handle it alone. That I had to. That asking for help was weakness, a betrayal of everything I’d built my identity on. We’re the ones people call when their world is ending. We’re supposed to be the calm in the storm.
But I wasn’t calm. I was barely keeping it together. And eventually, I couldn’t pretend anymore.
The breakdown is dramatic. There’s an explosion—a single moment where everything shatters. I walk away from the company and pick up part-time work, low call volume, just enough to stay afloat. And then it shifts. Becomes slower. Quieter. A gradual unraveling. A quiet confession in the middle of the night that I can’t keep going like this. That I’m tired—bone-deep, soul-heavy tired. Not just tired of the job, but of feeling nothing and everything all at once.
That’s when the real healing starts.
Not the kind you see in movies. Not the moment-of-clarity, fixed-by-sunrise kind of healing. No. This was slow, messy, and brutally honest.
It starts with talking. Just a little. A few quiet words, barely more than whispers, just enough to lift them out of the dark corners of my mind and release them into the air. Like smoke, like breath. I don’t pour it all out at once—it trickles, hesitant and fragile. But it’s something.
I start reaching out. Slowly. Carefully. To partners—new and old. To friends who get it. The ones who’ve ridden beside me, who’ve heard the same screams in the back of the rig, who’ve felt the same weight settle on their shoulders after the adrenaline fades. They know. They don’t need me to explain everything. They’ve lived it too.
Sometimes, saying their names out loud helps.
Chelsey.
The OG—the one who’s been there since the Perth days, back when we were younger and didn’t yet realize how heavy this work would get. She’d roll in with GAVAC while I was still finding my footing, already steady in the storm before I even knew there was one coming.
She was one of the first I called when things started to crack. Not because I needed answers, but because I needed her—that voice of hers, calm and sure, like steel wrapped in compassion. The kind of voice that doesn’t flinch when the ugly parts spill out. The kind that doesn’t fill the silence with pity or platitudes, just presence.
Chelsey doesn’t try to fix me. She never has. She just listens. Holds space. Reminds me—sometimes with a laugh, sometimes with a quiet truth—that I’m not broken beyond repair. That I’m still OK, even when I don’t feel it.
She’s always been like that. Grounded. Unshakable. The kind of person who makes you believe, even on the worst days, that maybe you’re still worth the effort.
Cora,
She was the last person I fully trained before I left the company—a full-circle kind of moment I didn’t realize was happening until I was already on my way out. New to the job but sharp as hell, she stepped into the rig with wide eyes and steady hands, and I saw something in her—something that reminded me of why I started this in the first place.
We learned together in ways that went beyond the textbook. It was side-by-side, call after call, sweat and adrenaline and laughter in between. There were rough nights, sure. But there were also those moments of ridiculous humor that only EMS people understand—coffee-fueled shifts, bad gas station snacks, and inside jokes that were stupid but somehow sacred. She had this way of keeping things light without losing the gravity of it all.
Cora always listening—really listening—picking things up not just with her ears but with her heart. Watching her grow from a nervous rookie into a confident medic was one of the quiet honors of my career. I saw her find her rhythm, her voice, her strength.
And even though I was supposed to be the one teaching her, Cora reminded me of things I’d forgotten. Like how to stay grounded in the chaos. How to breathe when the world spins too fast. She never flinched at the ugly parts, never turned away when the stories got hard to tell. She simply stood there, with that calm presence of hers, holding space for whatever I didn’t have the words to explain.
She was my last trainee, but more than that—she became my reminder that the work we do, the bonds we build, the lives we touch… it still matters.
Even when we’re tired. Even when we’re broken.
It still matters.
Mason—God, Mason.
He’s the kind of partner who turns survival into something close to living. His humor isn’t just a distraction—it’s a lifeline. The kind that reaches into the wreckage of a bad day and pulls you out, just far enough to catch your breath and remember you’re still human.
We had our rhythm. Long-distance transfers that felt endless, engines humming beneath us, hours of road stretching out like some strange kind of therapy. The kind where conversations dipped between hilarious and heavy without warning. We cranked the music—anything and everything—from classic rock to ridiculous pop anthems that somehow became “our thing.” Fonda Stewart stops were our unofficial ritual, a pit stop for caffeine, snacks, and whatever inside joke was keeping us going that day.
And the calls… God, the calls. The chaos, the bizarre, the heartbreaking—we saw it all. We walked into scenes that didn’t make sense, situations that didn’t have neat endings, and somehow we made it through, usually with Mason tossing out a one-liner so perfectly timed it defused the tension like magic. That was his gift: finding the crack in the storm and letting in just enough light.
With Mason, even in the turmoil, the day could still feel bearable—sometimes even good. He had this way of bringing levity without making light. Of reminding me that yeah, it’s all heavy, but we don’t have to carry it the same way every shift. And when I’d forget how to laugh, he’d bring it back—loud, unfiltered, and absolutely necessary.
He made the worst days survivable. The long days passable. And the good days? Damn near unforgettable.
Then there’s Sammy.
Relentless in her empathy—like she carries a spare heart for the people who’ve forgotten how to feel their own. She never lets me forget that mine is still there, still beating, still worth something, even when I can’t feel it under the weight.
I think about that day often—the one I wasn’t there for. One of her worst calls. And I wasn’t beside her. I’d been sent home, pulled off shift. Left her hanging. It haunts me in a quiet, persistent way—not with blame, but with regret. I don’t know if she holds it against me. She’s never said. But I do. Because she was always there when I needed her. Always.
She had this gift—still does—for cutting through tension with humor so sharp it could slice through the darkest moment and leave laughter in its place. That kind of magic is rare. Besides myself, I think she’s the only one I’ve ever met who can do it like that. Make the chaos feel a little less catastrophic. Turn hell into something almost human again.
And if you ask her? She’ll tell you she’s 120 pounds—exactly. She told me so herself, grinning like it was the most important fact in the world. And somehow, in that moment, it was. It mattered. She made it matter.
Because Sammy doesn’t just show up. She stays. In the mess, in the silence, in the parts no one else wants to see.
And that’s the kind of person you don’t forget.
It was another classic 24—the kind where your body starts to forget what sleep feels like and your uniform smells like a mix of coffee, sweat, and poor decisions. Sammy and I had already been through the ringer that day: cardiac calls, lift assists, a near-miss vomit situation. You name it. The city was chewing us up and spitting us out, and we were barely halfway through.
So of course, at 12:47 AM—prime REM cycle for anyone not in EMS—we got hit with the one call we all dread:
“Unknown injury from a fall. Bathroom. Elderly female.”
Translation: It’s your turn to suffer.
We rolled out, past the station where the other crews were sleeping peacefully, likely spooning their radios with smug grins, while Sammy and I strapped in for whatever fresh hell was waiting. It was quiet on the ride over, just the hum of the road and the occasional sigh as we mentally prepared for what we both knew would be… not great.
And boy, were we right.
The house greeted us like a haunted frat party—lights off, porch light flickering like it was auditioning for a horror film, and the unmistakable aroma of regret wafting from the open front door. But it wasn’t until we stepped onto the lawn that the true scope of our suffering revealed itself.
“Land mines!” I shouted over my shoulder, just as my boot squelched into something that definitely wasn’t grass.
Sammy froze mid-step, looked down, and let out this perfectly timed, “Oh HELL no,” like she was walking onto a game show called Guess That Substance. Dog poop. Everywhere. Lawn, porch, entryway. It was like someone had walked a pack of German Shepherds through the house on a protest march.
Inside, the air was thick. You could taste the bad decisions.
We made our way upstairs, stepping over what I can only describe as the floor version of a Jackson Pollock painting done entirely in pet waste and crusty fast food wrappers. And there she was—our patient—wedged like a cursed Tetris piece between the toilet and the wall, drunk off her ass and wearing about as much fabric as a sock.
She blinked up at us, grinned, and slurred, “Are you the angels?”
No, ma’am. We’re the janitors of the apocalypse.
Getting her out was a full-blown operation. Sammy and I pulled off the kind of teamwork that should qualify for an Olympic medal. We tried to dress her with whatever we could find—some mystery hoodie, maybe a shirt that was technically clean—and gently guided her limp, giggling body into the Reeves.
It was a tactical extraction, a strategic ballet of don’t-touch-that and please-don’t-fall-again, while avoiding more land mines as we carried her down the stairs. At one point, Sammy whispered, “I swear I saw that pile move,” and we both knew she wasn’t joking.
Once we got her into the rig, the real show began. She sang. Or maybe it was humming. Whatever it was, it was off-key, mostly gibberish, and involved something about a fish and her ex-husband.
Sammy sat up front, laughing into her sleeve while I tried not to gag in the back. At one point, I wanted to open a window in winter just to get some kind of circulation going. We dropped her off at the hospital, handed her over with the kind of look that says “don’t ask,” and shuffled out.
But the kicker? The cleanup.
Back at base, we opened the back doors and just… stared. Poop prints. Mysterious smears. Something sticky we never did identify. Sammy looked at me, dead serious, and said, “I feel like we need a priest, not disinfectant.”
It was disgusting. It was hilarious. It was the kind of moment that forges partners in the fire—and dog shit—of EMS.
That night, we didn’t just do a job. We survived a war zone. Sammy, with her humor and hustle, had my back the whole way. And even though the call was foul in every way possible, it gave us a story we’d retell a hundred times, always ending in tears of laughter and the shared trauma of stepping where no man should step.
Torre.
One of my closest friends in this chaotic world of sirens and split-second decisions. When I reach out, she answers. Always. No questions. No judgment. Just a quiet, steady presence that grounds me in the noise. There’s a rare kind of genuineness in her that doesn’t ask for attention—it just is.
She came in young—half my age—but there was something about her from the start. A calm maturity, a kindness in the way she spoke to patients, even the ones most would give up on. I saw it early on, that spark of something real. So I took her under my wing—not out of obligation, but because I wanted to. Because I knew she was the kind of EMT who could carry the weight and still keep her soul intact.
We ended up riding together for over a year. Call after call, shift after shift—we shared laughter and silence, frustrations and triumphs. We fought the clock, the odds, the system. We picked each other up after the bad ones and made dumb jokes after the ridiculous ones. We knew when to talk, when to be quiet, and when to just sit in the hum of the rig between tones.
There were highs—those rare moments when things went right—and lows that tested everything. But somewhere in between it all, a bond formed. One of those unspoken, unbreakable ties forged not in ease, but in fire.
Even when we go weeks without talking, there’s never distance. We’ve seen too much, been through too much. There’s comfort in knowing that when the storm hits, we’re still in each other’s corners. Friends forged in the turmoil, and not going anywhere.
That’s Torre. Quiet strength, unshakable loyalty, and heart stitched right into her uniform.
Rob and Austin—brothers in every way but blood.
They’ve stood beside me through the unraveling, through the quiet breaks and the loud ones. They’ve seen the worst of me—heard the silence I didn’t have words for—and they never flinched. Never walked away. They’re the ones who remind me of who I was before the cracks started to show. Not just the EMT, not just the survivor, but the man underneath it all.
Rob—God, Rob. Another veteran, like me. There’s a quiet understanding between us that doesn’t need words. He’s seen war in a different desert, carried different ghosts, but the weight is familiar. As a medic from Arizona, he came into our chaos with a steadiness that grounded the rest of us. He’s sharp—always pushing us to stay sharp, too. Teaching, guiding, laughing, swearing when necessary, and making sure none of us slip too far into complacency. He keeps us learning, keeps us leveled. And somehow, he makes it fun—like, really fun. Whether we’re running calls or kicking back on the boat on our off days, there’s a freedom in those moments. A reminder that life isn’t just pain and patches. It’s also laughter, lake water, and stories shared under open skies.
Then there’s Austin—the rookie, but with a heart that fits the crew like it’s been there all along. He came in wide-eyed, eager, ready to prove himself. But more than that, he came in willing to learn, to show up for the hard stuff. And somewhere along the way, he earned his place—not just as a partner, but as a brother. He’s got that fire, that raw potential, and every shift with him feels like watching someone becoming exactly who they’re meant to be.
Together, the three of us move like a unit. Like something forged, not assigned. They’re not just coworkers. They’re family. The kind that doesn’t have to say “I’ve got you”—because they show it. Every damn day.
Austin—the young gun. The rookie with the big eyes and the bigger ambition, the kind of kid who still believed the weather app over the gut instinct of a seasoned EMT.
He joined me after the shift change debacle—the one where management had us bidding on permanent schedules like we were at some sort of dysfunctional EMS auction. I ended up on nights, of course, and Austin, bless him, snagged his first permanent shift like a badge of honor. He had no idea what he was in for. He was green, eager, full of “yes, sir”s and energy drinks—and that first night? That was baptism by blizzard.
Forecast said “a couple inches.” You’d think by now we’d know better than to trust it. The snow started soft, gentle, almost innocent—like a lie whispered in the dark. Then it turned on us. Fast. The roads vanished under 25 inches of heavy, wet chaos. Plows were nowhere to be found—probably hiding somewhere warm with hot cocoa and Netflix.
And there we were, drifting through the backroads in the rig like we were auditioning for Tokyo Drift: EMS Edition. “I’ve never seen an ambulance fishtail like that.” Austin’s knuckles were white on the dash, eyes wide, mouth somewhere between prayer and panic. But laughing like he had never laughed before. I told him to relax—we were just “sledding with purpose.”
We finally reached the scene—nearly an hour for a trip that should’ve taken fifteen minutes. The roads were a whiteout maze, but somehow, we made it. NYSP was already on scene. Turns out the patient didn’t need us after all—no medical emergency, just someone needing a ride for mental health. So they took her. Austin and I exchanged that classic “all this for that?” look, turned the rig around, and started heading back, worn out but riding the high of survival.
Until we didn’t.
Still in full Tokyo Drift mode, we made it back to the station—only to get stuck in the parking lot. Like, seriously stuck. We rocked the rig, tried different angles, pleaded with the snow gods—nothing worked. Finally, I hit the “screw it” point, drove the ambulance out into the untouched snow around the building to build up momentum. Then, in one glorious, reckless maneuver, I swung that rig broadside and drifted it into the bay like it was the final round of an EMS street race.
Austin stared at me, jaw half-dropped. I stared back. Engine smoking, tires hot. Then we both lost it—full-on, unhinged laughter echoing off the garage walls. The kind of laughter that only shows up on nights like that. Our first shift together, no less—me, the weathered EMT; him, the rookie just trying to keep up.
But of course, it wasn’t over.
Dispatch dropped another call on us—severe difficulty breathing. Time-sensitive. No break, no regroup, just “go.” We didn’t even make it off the property before the rig sank—this time in a snow drift so deep it felt personal. Tires spun. Nothing. We rocked it, cursed it, and ended up on our knees in the snow, digging it out with our bare hands because—of course—we didn’t have a shovel.
Thirty minutes later, soaked, freezing, and completely over it, we finally got moving again.
Almost.
The ambulance suddenly stopped mid-swing and just sat there—parked itself sideways in defeat, like it was done participating. Austin turned to me, wide-eyed and already learning, and asked, “Now what?” Sammy exiting the bunk room, Oh did I mention it was 5:30 in the morning. Screaming “Will somebody tell him to stop! Oh my god, he is going nowhere!”
And that’s EMS in a blizzard. Welcome to the crew, kid.
Cue Rob. Our desert medic turned upstate cowboy, jumping into a second rig with Austin while I stayed behind to dig out the first one. The two of them barreled off into the blizzard like some EMS buddy-cop movie—“Snow Duty: This Time It’s Personal.” I swear if we had used the camera footage, we could’ve gone viral.
That night was hell. But it was also the night Austin became one of us. He didn’t complain. Didn’t quit. Just grabbed the gear, climbed into another rig, and went back into the storm.
He learned a lot that night—not just about winter driving, but about what this job really is. It’s grit. It’s absurdity. It’s heart and hustle and a ridiculous amount of snow. And he handled it like a pro.
Well, a pro who probably needed to change his socks after.
And Nikki. Her strength is quiet, but it’s there, fierce and unwavering. She doesn’t let me sink without a fight.
There are more. Too many to name. But these—these are the people I turn to when the guilt gets loud, when the ghosts get close.
I ask them for redemption—not with those exact words, but in the way I talk, the way I listen, the way I let them see me when I feel unworthy of being seen. And they give it, in their own ways. In their encouragement. In their reminders that I’m not the sum of my worst nights. That even in the chaos, even in the brokenness, there’s still good in me.
And somehow, hearing it from them makes it feel a little more true.
Then it was therapy. Not the quick-fix kind, but the real kind. The sit-in-the-uncomfortable-truth kind. The kind where I had to peel back the armor and look at what was underneath—every cracked piece of me I’d tried to hide.
It was ugly.
There are setbacks. Nights when the nightmares still come, when the guilt wraps around my ribs like a vice. Days when I don’t want to talk, don’t want to be seen. But there are also small victories—moments when I laugh and it doesn’t feel forced. Nights when I sleep without waking up in a panic. Days when I feel like myself again—not the uniform, not the rank, just… me.
I’m learning to breathe again. Not those shallow, survival-mode breaths, but real ones. Deep ones. The kind that stretch your chest and remind you that you’re alive—not just existing, not just reacting, but living.
The healing isn’t over. I don’t know if it ever truly will be. Some things leave marks that never fade, only soften with time. But I carry it differently now. I’ve learned that strength isn’t in how much I can bury—it’s in how much I can face and still choose to move forward.
The war inside me still flares up. There are days it tries to reclaim ground I’ve fought so hard to take back. But now, I know how to fight it—not with denial, not with distraction. With truth. With connection. With the quiet courage to say, “I’m not okay today—and that’s alright.”
Because healing isn’t linear. It’s not a straight shot from broken to better. It’s a spiral. A messy, complicated, beautiful spiral that weaves through pain and peace, through relapses and recoveries.
And in that spiral, I’ve found something I never expected—hope. Not the naive kind. The kind born of battle. The kind that says, “I’ve been through hell, and I’m still here.”
Still standing. Still breathing. Still healing.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s enough.
Continue reading more about Quiet After the Sirens