“We all go a little mad sometimes.” -Psycho
-
I’m not getting any real sleep. I’m sleeping through life.
It’s better that way.
You don’t want to care. If you care, you go crazy.
The job. I’m tired of the job.
I drive an ambulance. I call it the Meat Wagon. Dean hates that.
Even the money doesn’t seem to matter anymore. God knows, I feel like I’m not helping anybody.
Dean is all smiles.
I’ve worked with him for nine years. God, it’s been a long time.
He’s really talkative tonight. He always is, but it’s more than usual.
I just want him to shut up.
-
We get a call, the lights go on, we pick someone up, and drop them off.
We turn around and do it again.
The last one we picked up was screaming when we got him into the back. The stink of him stayed behind. No human should smell like that, but most of the ones we pick up do.
Dean is tapping his foot on the backpack on the floor. He’s never brought a bag with him before.
“What is that?”
“My bag full of goodies.” He laughs.
It’s going to be a long shift.
-
We get something to eat after we drop off the putrid smelling man, but we get another call before we can even take a bite. No food allowed in the Meat Wagon, so mine ends up in the trash. Dean gives his to someone on the street.
I wonder if I should dig mine out of the rubbish and do the same.
I turn around and a ghost of someone is already beating me to it.
My good deed for the day.
-
I look over at Dean. He looks cheerful and full of vigor. I just can’t even deal with him some nights.
We don’t talk a lot, because I don’t want to anymore.
I used to be like him. I don’t know how he stays that way.
He talks a lot to himself.
“Did you hear me?”
“I’m sorry Dean, what did you say?”
“Static X, man. Have you ever heard of them?”
“Nope.”
“They got this song, Push It. Inspires the hell out of me. I’ll play it for you later.”
“That’s awesome Dean.”
“Hell yeah, it is.”
-
I pull down a street and I drive through puddles that smell like piss and vomit. Some of the people shuffle around. Some of them just stand still and sway back and forth.
Sores ooze.
Flesh rots.
No one cares. You go crazy if you care.
Dean talks.
Rows and rows of weather worn cardboard boxes, shopping carts, and a few strollers. All of them are packed with unwanted things gathered by unwanted people.
-
The next patient is a young woman. The life hasn’t aged her yet. Her lips are blue and she’s shaking. We get her stabilized.
As we load her in, she spits up. A small bit of it hits the front of my shirt. A yellowish brown spot.
We drive to the hospital. We drop her off in an ER that is chaos squared. We put her on a bed, and as I walk out, I watch them push her up against a wall in a crowded hallway and walk away from her.
They’re going to leave her there for a while.
“She looks healthier than the rest.”
“She’s not a priority.”
Give her time, Doc.
A year. Maybe less.
I drive away and Dean says something.
“What was that?”
“I said, I wonder how long she’s going to sit there before somebody looks at her.”
“I don’t know Dean.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Well… what’re you gonna do?”
“Yeah…what’re you gonna do?” He trails off. He’s looking out the window. Optimism is fading a little tonight, I guess.
Good.
Maybe he’ll shut the hell up and we can have some quiet.
-
We go some place nice.
A four star restaurant.
An important man inside is having a heart attack.
-
We’re in a restaurant we would never be welcome in if we weren’t on the clock.
He’s obese. Dean is having a hard time. I can’t help but stare at a half eaten plate of food that costs more than the life saving services we’re rendering.
Most of the people in the restaurant look on in concern. Now that everyone has a camera, you’ve got to be on, all the time. The support they show for this man of position, that they don’t even know personally, is impressive.
We heave him onto the stretcher, and then load him up into the Meat Wagon.
I drive.
I can smell the spot of mucus on my shirt.
-
We get the fat man into the ER.
The doctors rush him into a room. There are five people working on him.
I start walking back out of the hallway and I realize that I’ve lost Dean.
He’s standing in the hallway behind me.
He’s staring at the girl that we brought in earlier. She hasn’t been moved. She is one in a row of forgotten people.
Dean whispers something into her ear and then he catches up to me.
“What was that?”
“Just a little well wishing.”
-
“Hang on, I want to drive.”
“What?”
“I haven’t driven in so long. Come on, let me drive.”I
“Dean, if you want to drive, I don’t give a shit. Not going to hurt my feelings.”
He laughs.
“Do you uh…do you even have any feelings left?”
I just stare at him. I want him to know that I’m not in the mood for head games tonight.
He grabs his bag out of the passenger floorboard and I climb in. I sit down and close my eyes. He doesn’t get in right away. I hear a spraying sound.
I hear it again, but this time, I smell it too. I open my eyes and look in the rearview. Dean is spraying something on the side of the ambulance. I get out.
“Dean, seriously?! What the hell are you doing?!”
“You sound mad.”
He’s standing there looking at me like an idiot. He has a can of black spray paint in his hand. He’s spray painted the words, “MEAT WAGON” on the side of the ambulance.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“That’s your nickname for it! You’ve always called it that!”
“Yeah…but not in public! And I never painted it on the side of the damn ambulance!”
“This is the most animated I’ve seen you in years. What’s the problem?”
“You just…are you serious?!”
“We’ve watched people die for nine years together and I’ve never seen you this upset. Look, I’m senior here, right? I’ll take the heat for this.”
“Damn right you will. Did you spray it on the other side too?”
“It would look kinda stupid if I only sprayed one side.”
-
He isn’t really talking to me after that. He’s just talking. I can’t stop smelling the mucus on my shirt.
I can’t stop thinking about her.
Sixteen?
Fifteen?
She’s probably still lying in a bed in a hallway slowly dying. Even if you patch them up, they’re all still slowly dying. I’m left with the smell of that spot on my shirt. She’s rotting from the inside.
I can’t care. You go crazy if you care.
Dean yells my name.
“What?”
“I asked you a question.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“That’s your problem. Same as everybody else.”
“What was the question, Dean?”
“I asked you when you stopped caring. What was the reason?”
“Um…I have no idea why you’re even asking me Dean.”
“Ok.” He pulls over and grabs his backpack and opens it. He tells me to hold out my left hand.
I do.
He puts a small tube of super glue in my hand.
“What’s this for?”
“Open it and cover your hands with it.”
“What?”
“Open it and cover your hands with it.” He smiles. I laugh. He’s playing at something.
“Fuck off, Dean.” I keep laughing.
He pulls a handgun out of his bag and I hear it go off. My leg starts to burn.
I start screaming as I see blood from my thigh soaking through my pants. He raises the gun to my face.
“Dean! Wait! Wait, don’t shoot!”
“I just grazed you. Pick up the super glue and cover your hands with it or I blow your teeth out the back of your head. Do it now.”
I do as he says.
He’s gone crazy.
“The whole bottle. Come on, we’ve got things to do. Good. Now press your hands against the dash. Push them hard. Good.”
After a second, he reaches over and tugs on my arms to make sure I’m stuck. I scream as I feel my palms begin to rip.
“Oooh, yeah that worked.” He lets go of my arms and stares at me.
“Dean, what are you doing?!”
“It’s all part of the plan.”
“What plan?!”
“You’re gonna love it.”
He winks at me and smiles, but he keeps his head tilted down. I’m terrified.
He drives.
-
I beg him to let me go, but he keeps driving. The gun is in his lap.
He drives into the bad parts of the city. The dark parts. He settles on a long street full of people.
“What are you doing Dean?”
“Look at all of them. All on some drug or another. Doing nothing with their lives. Sitting there and rotting. Surrounding themselves with garbage. Why even look at them as people? All your words, right?”
“Dean, please…”
“Don’t feel bad. Everybody feels the same way you do, otherwise these people wouldn’t be here, right? They’d be getting help. Real help. But they’re never going to get help. Why let them suffer?”
He dials his phone. He identifies himself and gives the operator our location.
“I’ve taken my partner hostage and I’m about to kill a lot of people. You have two minutes to stop me before I begin.” He hangs up the phone and watches the clock. “Two minutes. You think they’ll be here?”
I don’t, but I don’t say anything.
“I don’t think they will. This part of town isn’t exactly a priority now is it?”
Dean opens a game of solitaire on his phone.
We wait…
“You think that girl is still in the hallway?”
“I have no idea, Dean.”
“Huh…” He clicked his tongue. “I’ll bet she is…”
We wait
and wait
and wait…
until…
“Well, I’m a man of my word. I clocked this location to the nearest police department. It’s a minute and a half away if you’re driving really fucking fast. I guess they’re taking their time tonight. Too bad.”
“Dean…please don’t…” He revs the engine of the Meat Wagon while he scrolls through his phone.
He starts to play music. Am awful, angry noise.
“This is that song I was telling you about. This is going exactly as I thought it would.” He revs the engine and turns on the siren.
“Dean…please don’t do this…Dean…they’re people…” He smiles at me.
“Are they now?”
Dean floors the ambulance. At first, I’m sure that no one thinks anything of it. Ambulances approach these places at high speeds all the time.
Some of the people start watching us and shielding their eyes from the headlights, and then Dean jerks the wheel to the right and hops the curb.
He drives through tent after tent, cart after cart, person after person. I push into the dashboard and kick at the floorboard. I scream.
Several people try to run to the other side of the street and Dean corrects and mows them down under the wheels of his Meat Wagon. The windshield cracks.
He drives around a corner to the next street, and he starts all over again. There’s so much blood, he has to turn the windshield wipers on.
I see in the side mirror that there is a police cruiser behind us. Dean notices as well.
“They’re finally here!” Dean keeps driving through as many people as he can and the cops start firing, trying to blow out the tires. Dispatch is trying to reach us through the radio. Dean grabs the radio and screams, “You better get a lot of people down here to help! I’ve got a full tank of gas!” He throws the radio down.
It seems to go on forever. Turn after turn. It’s obvious that Dean has planned his route. All dark streets and alleys. All filled with people who live on the street.
Eventually, I feel the Meat Wagon buckle and realize that the cops have managed to shoot out the back tires. Dean starts laughing and floors the gas pedal once more. The Meat Wagon begins to swerve and several people are hit and thrown forward by the sides of the ambulance as it fishtails down the street.
Everything around us lights up as a helicopter shines down a light on Dean’s dark deeds. Bullets start raining down from above and tearing through the top of the ambulance.
“Shit! Now they don’t even give a shit about you! Ironic!” Dean howls with laughter as he tries to keep the ambulance under control, but it swerves hard to the right and smashes into the side of a building.
My arms break as I’m thrown forward. I feel the flesh of my palms give way and I’m free from the dashboard.
Dean’s face took the impact hard. His nose is broken and blood pours out of his forehead. He smiles at me.
“You ok?”
I don’t answer. He grabs his gun and points it at my head. This is it.
“Don’t ever forget Richard. Don’t forget what I did here tonight.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope. He gives it to me.
“You read it before you give it to them. You understand?” He pulls the hammer back on the gun. I close my eyes and nod.
“Dean, I’ll do whatever you want. Please don’t kill me.”
He smiles again and puts the envelope in my hand.
“You read it. Just in case they decide to keep this quiet. I don’t see how they can, but I think they’ll try.”
I can hear the cops screeching to a halt behind us. I hear doors opening. I hear yelling.
Dean struggles to get out of the Meat Wagon. I hear the cops yelling at him to put the gun down.
He stands up just outside the driver’s side door. He’s breathing heavily.
He stands there for a moment.
He screams.
He raises the gun and then I see him turned into hamburger as the cops open fire.
-
I’m taken to the ER, I’m wheeled past a girl I have seen before. She’s still lying in the hallway. I try to tell them to see her first.
They don’t listen.
-
As the days went by, I heard one story on the local news. One.
An ambulance driver who was about to be fired was high on drugs and drove through a few homeless people.
That was it.
It was forgotten the next day.
I gave them Dean’s note, but I never heard anymore about it. They never released it to the public.
They told me at my company that it was best to keep quiet about the whole thing. “No one wants to make people paranoid about crazy ambulance drivers. The “situation” with the homeless was very unfortunate. They were probably not long for this world anyway.”
I’m going to lose my job by writing this.
I still remember exactly what he wrote. I’m not condoning his actions, nor am I condoning my own. I just thought people needed to hear why. I decided to write it here.
“You, the public, will no doubt be shocked and outraged by what I’ve done. I’ll be called a monster, but we are the same.
I have killed many people tonight, people who were slowly being killed by most of you already. The difference between me and the rest of you, is that I did it quickly with an ambulance while you do it slowly with apathy.
There is no difference between us. In the end, the outcome is the same.
We’re all monsters in this horror story.”