Chinese or Pizza?

Chinese or pizza? That is the most crucial decision of the night. Not what size tube I'm getting ready to place in this guy's airway.

Well, shit, should I use a 7.5 instead of an 8?

Nah, he's a big man. An 8 will be fine. Big Mike is pounding the guy's chest, his gloved hands disappearing into the thick chest hair.

That's a lot of chest hair. Is the patient married? Does his wife run her hands through that chest hair? I should shave my chest, now that I think about it. What's his name? John? Too easy. I'm going to have to remember his name when I give my hand-off report. Big Mike grunts and beads of sweat dot his forehead. As I prepare my intubation equipment, I watch a drop of sweat fall from Big Mike's face onto the chest hair.

Huh. Chinese or pizza? What did we have last night? I can hardly hear myself think. The siren is wailing; the air horn is ungodly loud. Jake has rock music blaring from upfront. Fitting. Rock tends to be the best. Running a code to AC/DC or some Zombie. We have a whole playlist, me and Jake. Jake hits a bump.

"Watch it dude - I'm intubating."

"Dirty deeds done dirt cheap!" Jakes yells in response.

Chinese or pizza? I think we had sushi last night. I think I still have soy sauce on my jacket. I look down… yeah, I definitely still have soy sauce on my jacket. I bag the patient up, watching the monitor for capnography readings. Big Mike grunts some more. He's a big guy, that Mike. Appropriate nickname. But no one does compressions like Big Mike in this town. He's like the giant Energizer Bunny from your nightmares.

"Eh, let's give another round of epi," I say to the other firefighter. What the hell is her name? Alexa? Alexia? Some millennial-type name. She's cute, though.

Chinese or pizza? It's like when you're at a wedding and the waiter guy in the penguin suit asks if you want chicken or beef. Big decisions. Am I dancing later? Am I getting laid tonight? How much am I drinking? It turns into the most critical decision in the world at that moment, and inevitably, you wind up wishing you had chosen the other option.

I think I'm supposed to go to a wedding next month. Maybe I should ask Alexa to be my date. I glance at her hands as she draws up medications… no ring. Hmm. Also, why can I see her finger? Where are her gloves? There is goo, for chrissakes.

Chinese or pizza? That pizza place is pretty good. Cheap too. But Chinese is a lot more bang for your buck.

Holy crap, is that sinus? I tell Big Mike to stop compressions for a second and feel for a pulse.

Well, my my, John with the hairy chest has a pulse. Alright. I get the dopamine drip out and hand the end to Alexa to screw onto the IV. I check John's pupils as he gazes up at me, unseeing, the glazed-over look of the dead. Both are fixed and dilated. I groan.

Chinese or pizza? Fried dumplings do sound really good right about now. I wonder what John had to eat today. Honestly, from what was all over his shirt and the bottle on the floor, not much besides whiskey. His house was filthy with cigarette butts overflowing the ashtray on the coffee table. Rotting chicken on the floor. His wife was tiny, fragile, her eyes bright with fear and tears. She knew - she knew what the outcome was going to be after all of this. Maybe she has always known.

Chinese or pizza? What a question! I get to decide this, the most important decision of my shift while John's wife has to decide what funeral home to call for her husband of forty-five years. I know it has been forty-five years because she told me so, right as we were leaving. She grabbed my arm, probably touched the soy sauce, her eyes and face wet from crying, and told me.

"We've been married forty-five years, sir. He has lived a good life. Take care of my Johnny."

Sir. She called me sir. I am thirty years her junior. I gaze over John and the back of the rig. John still has a strong pulse, okay blood pressure. I squeeze the bag every six seconds or so. Big Mike is staring out of the back window. The day is almost over and the light outside is gray. Alexa is picking at her chipped fingernail polish. Where the hell did her gloves go?

Chinese or pizza? Did John's wife ever ask him that? Or did he make all of the decisions about where they were eating? Or did they ever actually eat out? Maybe years ago, in the beginning, when they were strong and could take on the world. Maybe she always cooked. Maybe he always cooked. What happened to them, I wondered. I looked down at his left hand and could see the wedding ring tight on his swollen finger, the skin ballooning around it, almost like his finger was trying to absorb the ring into its very fabric. When did it all go so horribly wrong?

Maybe it didn't. Maybe this is how they have always lived and they were happy. Because who am I to judge? I fully intend to get off at three am and drink a six-pack in front of the television. I will probably wake up on that same couch in the morning. The days just kind of run into each other when you spend them seeing people at their worst.

"We're here, brother," Jake says as I feel the ambulance slow to a stop, then hear the backup alarm as he slides it in between other rigs.

This will not be one of those 'hooray look at us we got pulses back' kind of hand-offs. This is going to be a lost cause. This is going to be a quiet post-arrest work-up, followed by a short stint in the ICU. I wish I knew his wife's name. What was her name? Betty? Barb? Started with a B. I hop out onto the pavement as Jake pulls the gurney out. We go inside, and while I'm talking, telling the staff about this man with a hairy chest named John who, potentially lived a good life, but has been going downhill for a bit now, John's sinus rhythm fades into bradycardia, and then he loses pulses. Probably for the last time. I slip out of the door quietly, and head outside.

Jake is squatting in the back of the rig, wiping the random goo up off the floor. He looks up at me and asks -

"So? What did you decide? Chinese or pizza?"