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There are people who dream their whole lives of becoming firefighters. There are little kids who ogle fire trucks, and wear toy fire hats, and dress up in bunker gear for Halloween.
Anyway, that’s why I didn’t wind up an ER doc. You don’t want me just after the emergency. You want me during the emergency.
“And don’t talk too much, either. Remember: What women think of as sharing, men see as complaining.”
“Just be a machine,” she said. “A machine that eats fire.”
That’s how life is. Things happen. Lives get broken. Some people never can put themselves back together.
Of course, our parents get an extra dose of importance in our minds. When we’re little, they’re everything—the gods and goddesses that rule our worlds. It takes a lot of growing up, and a lot of disappointment, to accept that they’re just normal, bumbling, mistaken humans, like everybody else.
“Choosing to love—despite all the ways that people let you down, and disappear, and break your heart. Knowing everything we know about how hard life is and choosing to love anyway … That’s not weakness. That’s courage.”
DeStasio didn’t say hello. In a voice of pure dismay, he asked the captain, “Why is the new guy a girl?” The captain nodded, like, Good question. “I thought you guys could use a little surprise. Plus, she’s a hotshot medic. And we were desperate.” Then Six-Pack said, “I for one am all for it. I’m tired of looking at you ugly bastards.”
“Tell me you don’t have a puppy in your arms.” “I don’t have a puppy in my arms,” he said from behind me, pleased with his own restraint. “Good, because—” “I’ve got him in a basket.”
“Forgiveness is about a mind-set of letting go.” She thought for a second, then said, “It’s about acknowledging to yourself that someone hurt you, and accepting that.”
“Then it’s about accepting that the person who hurt you is flawed, like all people are, and letting that guide you to a better, more nuanced understanding of what happened. Flawed, I thought. Okay. Check. “And then there’s a third part,” she went on, “probably the hardest, that involves trying to look at the aftermath of what happened and find ways that you benefited, not just ways you were harmed.”
It was so good, it was bad. It was so wonderful, it was terrifying. It was so delicious, it was awful. And it just kept getting better—and worse.
I also taught him not to look into his critical patients’ eyes. Pro tip. “Why not?” he asked. “It haunts you,” I said, shaking my head a little. “It just haunts you.” “You mean, if they don’t survive.” “Once I’ve left the hospital,” I said then, dead serious, “I always tell myself they survive.”
After he delivered his first baby on the box, the guys said, “How was it?” And the rookie, shaking his head in disbelief, said, “It was like watching an avocado getting squeezed through an apricot.” That night, the guys hung a bag in his locker with a snorkel, dive mask, and flippers, labeled OB/GYN DELIVERY KIT.
“Stick me with all the needles you want, pal,” I said then. “But if you try to hug me? I will kick your rookie ass.”
“And I feel totally naked in this dress.” He stepped back like he was checking. “You’re definitely not naked. That, I would notice.”
But firefighters are basically good guys at heart. I’m not saying they don’t get into trouble, or have difficulty processing their feelings, or harbor a little unexamined sexism—or other isms. They’re human. They’re messy and imperfect and mistaken. At their cores, though, they’re basically good people.
That’s the thing I always love best about the human race: how we pick ourselves back up over and over and just keep on going.
Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn’t to never feel hope, or bliss, or love—but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came. The answer wasn’t to never love anyone. It was to love like crazy whenever you could.
It’s not the easy moments that define who we are. It’s the hard ones.
I do it because I believe that human connection is the only thing that will save us. I do it because I believe we learn empathy when we listen to other people’s stories and feel their pain with them. I do it because I know for certain that our world has an empathy problem with women, and this is one brave thing I can do to help fix it.
