Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

Its been 6 hours since I sent my message. Seen, but no reply. Something must have happened. Maybe he’s hurt? It’s not unlikely that he tripped and hit his head. His apartment is a mess after all. I push my chair out, arising  into a panicked loop as I walk a figure eight around my room. My feet kick against bottles and cans, my foot swings and an old pizza box is sent flying, launching stale crusts across the room. Maybe he’s ignoring me? No, of course not. He’s not like that. I grab the keys to my car from their spot next to my laptop and head for the door, my foot slipping as I grab the handle. The…

When I was in high school, my friends and I had a peculiar pastime. Like any teenage delinquent, we liked to cause trouble. We weren’t vandals, we didn’t deal drugs, and we certainly didn’t bully kids in school. No, we liked to scare the living shit out of new parents by “hacking” their baby monitors. We were insufferable little punks who thought we were too good to get caught, and that our little acts of mischief would go unpunished. One night; however, I learned my lesson, and realized that I wasn’t quite as bulletproof as my tremendous adolescent ego made me out to be. Dimitri, Kurt, and I went to the same school, shared many of the same classes, and…