Fuzzy Navel

1:38 A.M.
JACK

I OPEN MY EYES when I realize the ambulance has stopped. I look over my shoulder. The paramedics are gone.

I get a feeling – a bad feeling – and reach up to unbuckle my straps. I open the rear of the ambulance and see the parking lot is a tangle of emergency vehicles, most of them cops.

A paramedic comes up alongside me.

“You don’t want to see this.”

I push him off, hurrying toward the nexus of activity near the rear of the hospital.

A cop is setting up some crime scene tape.

Oh… no…

I grab a nearby uniform and yell, “Who is it? Who’s dead?”

He doesn’t answer. Two more cops see me and begin to walk over, but I duck under the tape and see the dead EMTs, and there, on the gurney…

“NO!”

I become another person. Someone without any control left. Someone overcome by emotion. I rush over to the bloody body, punching anyone who tries to stop me, screaming and screaming because I just can’t stop.

Someone jabs me with a needle, and my consciousness floats away, and all I can think is that I failed, I failed, I couldn’t protect everybody, dear God I’m so so sorry…