When very, very bad people die, they are condemned to a spend endless hours on the phone trying to find an Emergency Medical Technician training class in Montgomery County, Maryland. I have been to this hell, and it is a squalid and hopeless place.

Once upon a time, I was a fully accredited EMT, with patches blazing like blue six-pointed suns on my shoulders and a holster stocked with the geekware of my trade: trauma sheers, penlight, flashlight, clamps, a little rubber tourniquet, and pens featuring the logos of pharmaceutical manufacturers. I was fully certified to do that thing where you sling the stethoscope around your neck, and that thing where you tell someone to squeeze both your hands while asking them about their previous medical history. With this tremendous power came responsibility -- I was expected to log a certain number of continuing education classes every year. This usually meant going to an in-hospital presentation on a topic of dubious relevance to emergency care, like long-term therapy options for chronic incontinence. Not wanting to waste such an opportunity, my fellow ambulance crewmates and I used this as a chance to ingratiate ourselves with hospital staff by whispering, giggling, and passing notes satirizing the speaker's attire, physique, and perceived lack of romantic options.

During my sojourn in Senegal, where continuing education options were few, I applied to extend my EMT certification for the period I was overseas. Amusingly, the provision under which I made my case was supposed to be applied to people who are in the Army. I figured the Peace Corps was basically the same thing without all that killing, and the reviewers apparently agreed -- my extension was granted. But when I decided to stay for a third year, I stretched the deadline a little to far. On my return, I had only a few weeks to take a refresher course or lose my certification. I was far too busy with the task of eating Doritos and Clausen pickles nonstop, and so I soon found myself no longer an Emergency Medical Technician.

Now, as a member of my new rescue squad, I have to go through the whole certification process all over again. Worse, I have to do it in Montgomery County, where officials have apparently decided to test their recruits' mettle by making the classes as difficult to take as possible. Say all the nasty things one can (easily) say about Washington DC, but it's very easy here to get the training you may need to save a life. EMT classes are offered in hospitals as well as private training schools throughout the city. In Montgomery County, you may actually have to kill someone to get into one of the few classes offered at the Training Academy, or you might just elect to kill yourself because you can't fit your life around its monolithic schedule and must wait for another 6 months for your next shot at a class. If you don't like it, tough shit. If you want to be an EMT, the Academy is the only game in town.

I spent two days on the phone chasing down leads for alternate classes before someone told me, essentially, tough shit, the Academy is the only game in town. Two days with the phone jammed up against my delicate ears. I had the phone pressed to my head for such long periods of time that when I hung up it would pull reluctantly away from my ears with a horrifying sucking sound. All to discover that I'm helpless in the merciless hands of the emergency medical equivalent of Microsoft.

Because my schedule doesn't jive with the Academy's one interval of EMT classes, I'll probably take my class from a private company in DC. On the positive side, I'll be spared the hour-long drive up to Rockville two nights a week. I won't have to wait until the year 2000 to have a hope of becoming an EMT again. Unfortunately, I'll part with a few hundred bucks of my own money and still have to take a 16-hour "Maryland Refresher" class and written test to assure the good folk of Maryland that DC didn't bungle my training.

Whining is antisocial and leads to unsightly wrinkles. It is an acceptable indulgence once in a while, but must be carefully moderated so as not to become a lifestyle. It's not the kind of thing Ernest Hemingway would have done. It runs contrary to the spirit of the rescue squad, in which responsibility must be earned by hard work.

Ernest Hemingway, I remind myself. Do what Ernest Hemingway would have done. Buck up.