The Subtle Art of Brutality

A note on Jeremiah Cross: while there is a broad range of burnouts in the world, my personal favorites have to be burnt-out medics.

No one comes close. Think about it: a burnout on an assembly line starts not putting things together right. They don’t tighten their bolts, they intentionally forget their gaskets. They make a game of risking their customer’s lives in poorly constructed vehicles.

A burnt-out 911 operator takes nothing seriously. Kids call and request help and the operator demands to speak with a parent. They refuse to believe that the parent is dying and the kid is trying to save mommy.

But a burnt-out medic? Why, they wave severed limbs to gawkers driving by, slowing down to catch a glimpse of the wreck. They steal dope from their drug kits. They steal prescription pads and write their own medications. They’re the ones who make saving your life a funny little game in the back of a cramped ambulance while you’re racing down a bumpy road.

Jeremiah was a paramedic in Savannah for years before he went over the edge. He said i

t was one hell of a thing. “Richard, it was the kind of thing that, when it’s over and the dust settles and you’re lookin at all the bridges you’ve burned, you realize you’re not in prison, on skid row or dead and you get the fuck outta Dodge. It was that kinda thing.” That’s all he’d say about the event that ended his career there.

Over beers one night he did tell me about how he wandered from city to city, paying the fees to get his EMT license reinstated. Eventually he realized the burnout followed him from ambulance to ambulance, no matter where the city is located. Macon, Chattanooga, Gulfport, Fort Worth.

Demons are like that. When they find something tasty they’ll follow the scent wherever the tasty thing runs.

So he wound up here, in Saint Ansgar. Far west from where his demons where born.

“Yeah?” Jeremiah says.

“Hey. It’s RDB.”

“What’s up! RDB. You never call anymore. You just use me and go somewhere else!”

“I know. I should send you a flower bouquet or something.”

“More than that.”

“Listen, I need something. And fast.”

“I know better than to get involved with you again, but you had me at hello. What is it?”

“Two things,” I say, staring through the glass at the redhead. I decide she might look good naked. “Number one: stop talking to me like we’re homos.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Two: I need your car.”

“Sorry, I’m busy right now.” I can hear him start to hang up and I shout to keep him on the line.

“C’mon. My car is in the shop and I’m on a case.”

Quiet, quiet. Then: “So?”

“So there is a time limit involved. Missing persons case.”

“Then what you need to do is go consult a genie or a palm reader or something. My Auntie Janel found a baby she put up for adoption twenty years ago with the help of a palm reader. There’s this Indian chick—Indian with a dot, not Indian with a feather—who works about three blocks from here that screwed me out of seventy bucks but I swear she knew things about me that no one would—”

“Drop what you’re doing and hook me up, please.”

“What I’m doing right now is administering medications and spraying shit out of the seclusion room.”

“So a break would be nice,” I say. “A smoke break.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. Tell you what, you fight some coked-out bitch who needed a damn spit mask and restraints and enough Halidol to kill a horse and then see how generous you feel. Then, that coked-out bitch took a shit all over the—”