Not long after starting my new job on the ambulance, I was partnered with another graduate of the Bureau of Training’s Cadet 6 class. At best, we had only about five shifts between us, all with more experienced partners, at least. Although the ink had barely dried on our EMT certifications, we were handed the keys to a $250,000 vehicle and set loose on the residents of Manhattan. It was a glorious time to be in EMS.

When I first started, it was not uncommon for two people from the same class to work together immediately after graduation. There were some lieutenants who frowned upon it and tried to divide established partners for a shift so they could impart their knowledge on us novices, but more often than not, they’d cave to the objections of people who did not want to be split up to “babysit” the newbie.

It’s probably good that our service moved towards an internship type of system that would have prevented this, but back then the impetus was really more on filling vacant seats with anyone they could get. The patients would probably be OK, they reasoned. We were both EMTs, they reminded us, so we should know what we are doing. And as new EMTs, our knowledge was even better than our seasoned cohorts because it was still fresh in our minds.

At the start of our shift, we loaded our brand-new helmets and pristine, newly-stocked tech bags onto, possibly, the worst vehicle in the fleet.

It spewed black smoke out of the tailpipe. The then-standard carpeting on our center console was covered in long-expired foodstuffs. Since the cabinets in the patient compartment slid open as if they had been greased, our supplies were all over the floor. But we checked and cleaned up our ambulance and headed out for what ended up feeling like the longest shift in eternity.

We decided to take turns driving because none of our other partners had let us do it before and we had no idea when we ever would again. Our ambulance for the day had terrible handling and seemed to veer toward the left all the time. It was also incredibly loud and would randomly backfire. Now that our service has switched over to diesel vehicles, it’s one feature I look back on fondly.

Our first patient was a 19-year-old man who lived with his girlfriend on the top floor of a four-story walk-up. (This kind of building dynamic would become a standard theme for me for the next 30 years).

The man’s neck was hurting after sleeping in an uncomfortable position in a drafty room. For some reason, we ended up carrying this guy down those four flights of stairs on a backboard with a cervical collar. The board and collar was standard procedure for a neck injury but technically, some trauma should have been involved.

I remember him clutching his teddy bear the whole way down those grueling stairs. I don’t know what we were thinking. Days and months later, whenever we saw each other after this shift, my Cadet 6 partner and I would always bring up how stupid we were for doing this.

“Remember the teddy bear carry down?” one of us would say. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

We did all kinds of stupid things that day, things we would never think to do three months later when we would officially pass the delineation point where we could finally be called “seasoned” EMTs.

We took patients to the hospitals they insisted on, even if the hospital they wanted didn’t have the services they needed. (There were no computer terminals in our vehicle that gave us up-to-date information on hospital availability back then.) And we spent far too much time trying to park in ways that wouldn’t inconvenience other motorists.

As the day went on, it became more and more difficult to ignore the wheel issues that were plaguing our driving efforts. So we got out and did something much more idiotic than carrying a teddy-bear-clutching 19-year-old down four flights of stairs for no legitimate reason. We went out mechanical for a flat tire.

The tire, we figured out later, had probably been flat for weeks, having been conveniently overlooked by the more experienced (smarter) crews. But because we were stupid, we called for the tire truck.

The way the procedure was meant to go was that a tire truck would arrive at your location and hand you the tire and the tools. Then he’d lean against his truck and watch you change the tire while he smoked a cigarette and thumbed through pornography.

I remember the fat, bald, “Tire Mechanic” snickering as he handed me the tire iron. Part of me wanted to show him up. In my head, I thought “Fuck you asshole, just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t do it!”

I had changed tires on my own car a few times; I knew I was capable. But the other part of me was thinking about how the “mechanic” was making three times my salary and he was just going to stand around and watch. I seriously considered ways I could mess the whole operation up.

It wouldn’t be hard to screw up the tire procedure, I quickly learned. I was pretty sure I zoned out during the tire-changing demonstration during our Emergency Vehicle Driver Training class anyway. Hopefully, my partner had paid attention.

It was a hot June day and we were getting filthy and tired. But we muddled our way through it. It was arduous work just to get the lug nuts off. It had been ridiculous to equivocate my car tire-changing skills with this behemoth. It wasn’t like changing a regular tire because they were bigger and two of them were loaded onto one axle.

Then, when we started loading the new tire on, the fat, bald guy suddenly noticed that he’d given us the wrong kind. He had to put down his Hustler magazine and go through his stock again.

Since we had inconvenienced him, he made some snarky comments under his breath as he went through his supply. After he gave us the new, correctly sized tire, he resumed his leaning position on his truck and found the previous spot in his porn rag. He made sure that I could see what he was looking at and gave me a disgusting wink. I had no doubt that this man’s only sexual outlet was porn.

One important thing I did learn, finally, was the art of time management. At one point, I reminded my partner what time it was and how much time was left in our shift. He instantly understood that we were going to make sure this activity would be the last thing we did on our shift together.

So, we took our time and worked to ensure that everything we did was done methodically, slowly, and re-examined. Our tire truck guy kept checking his watch with a sigh as if we were delaying an impending meal break. He stopped giving me snickering winks and started getting impatient, which gave me some inner satisfaction.

When we were finished, our white shirts, which had already gotten a little dirty earlier, were now covered in grease and soot. They would never be truly white ever again. My hair had a new shape and had expanded further outward (it was the 80s). My partner’s hands were cut up and his glasses were askew. Our new cavalier attitude towards our appearance did not go unnoticed by our coworkers.

“But you survived, didn’t you?” they said.