I helped an a**hole

Lying on the carpet, staring up onto the skylights of the ceiling, was a reasonably dressed man being tended to by a paramedic and a lovely, concerned wife. She was peaceful and calm; her hip glasses framed her aging face and allowed room for her botoxed cheeks to move when she smiled. She attempted to hold his hand but was rudely refused that courtesy. She stepped back, wished he wasn't always like this, and allowed us to step forward.

He wasn't old, but he wasn't in his twenties. He wasn't fat, but he had been in better shape in past years. He wasn't disheveled, but his dress signaled he, and his wife, had been traveling for the majority of the day.

He wasn't nice, and I don't know if he ever has been.

My partner approached and his wall went up. He flared his back, puffed his tail, and showed his teeth. The polite greeting from my partner was quickly rebutted with a snarl of the lip and anger in his voice. The twenty minutes the medic had spent gaining confidence with the angered man was lost. The hate inside of him swelled and he snapped at his wife and the paramedics.

He raised his leg and marked his territory as we continued with our job. We, with the firm assistance of his wife, talked him into going to the hospital. Every concession made, every polite gesture given, and every statement said was to keep the volcanic eruptions simmering in his soul from erupting. Nothing was good enough or quick enough to keep his demons at bay.

The fifty-something man with chest pain was loaded up and wheeled out. Anger radiating from him like the rays of the sun bouncing off hot pavement in the distance. I grabbed the front of the bed and wheeled him out to the ambulance, accidentally hitting each corner of each wall and each bump in the concrete path with fighter pilot accuracy.

He crossed his arms, closed his eyes, and feigned sleep. Not saying a word for the thirty-minute transport, he sat quietly screaming in his head. Why was he going? He didn't need to go! He told the paramedics he didn't need to go! The pot was beginning to boil over. Foamy hatred and anger slowly broke the seal and ran down the sides. Each bump of the ambulance made him angrier and angrier. Each bump, accidentally aimed for, and squarely hit, like that concentrated fighter pilot from above.

As I drove I realized his anger was seeping forward like a black fog. It tried to strangle me and made my eyes water. I sat there; aiming for bumps in the already battered highway road, and began hating him. I hated his brown loafers with no socks and his polo golf shirt. I hated his condescending attitude and his sense of entitlement. I hated the fact that I attempted to talk with him on a personal level and he answered like a robot. I hated his whiney affect and his stupid, little face. I hoped he was having a heart attack and I hoped it was the big one.

We unloaded him and gave him to the ED staff. As we exited, his first semblance of speech in thirty minutes broke his chapped lips.

"I didn't want to come. THEY made me. I don't need to be here and I want to go home," he spouted with an evil slur trying to intimidate the nurse.

I, briefly, thought about going back in there and telling him how I felt but decided to leave. His anger was encompassing and too strong to fight.

We left and continued our night. It took me all evening to break those constraints of madness that had lurked from him to the front of the ambulance. But with the help of my partner, I realized that it wasn't worth wasting my time on.

He was an a**hole and will always be an a**hole.

Someday, maybe, he'll realize that all that being an a**hole will get you is an angry death on the carpeted floor staring up at empty skylights.