Night shift on the ambulance slides by, rain-slick and sirenous. We run and run and run. Sometime after 4:30 AM I stumble through forest of metal bed-frames in the darkened bunk room to my mattress, and carve out a couple hours sleep.

The next day never quite manages to seem real. I drive home and climb into my own bed for a 15-minute reprieve from consciousness. Then Susan klunks an enormous decanter of coffee beside the bed and my day rebegins. It is time to go to EMT class.

Today we have a guest instructor who's a member of the DC police. She's short and thick, with a posture that looks like she's constantly doing an imitation of Joe Cocker. She initially strikes me as feisty and outspoken, but soon her teaching style turns imperious. She's one of those types of teachers for whom conferring knowledge to students isn't nearly as important as demonstrating her own superior skills and experiences. She is not happy when students ask questions, apparently perceiving the queries as slights to her authority and intelligence. The class reacts to her bluster with growing frustration. Compounding a deteriorating situation, the guest instructor makes several statements that are blatantly incorrect, or contradictory, and people begin to question her assertions. I watch the class unfold through a jazzy haze of coffee and gritty sleeplessness, holding my tongue as her control of the class slips quickly away.

The instructor is trying to explain her inconsistencies by implying that the information one learns for "the test" is often different from what one does in the field as an EMT. As an example, she points out "the book" tells us that once we start CPR, we do not stop unless 1) the patient regains a pulse, 2) someone else takes over the patient, or 3) we collapse from exhaustion. In the real world, the little Joe Cocker-esque bully claims, you might be doing CPR when you get in the ambulance with a patient and when you arrive at the hospital, but as for the ambulance ride...

Basically, she implied to a class of new potential EMTs (the people who will respond when you have that massive heart attack) that it's normal to breach medical ethics and cease CPR on a patient that we (with our basic medical knowledge) judge to be a goner. It is ridiculous and wrong. Shortly afterwards, the regular instructor moves in to restore order. The blustery teacher becomes incensed at this breach of her authority and storms out. Even from the classroom, we hear the concussion as she slams the front door of the building.

I feel a tremendous sense of relief, even pleasure, at her departure. It is proving to be much less difficult to stay awake through this class than I had anticipated. The regular instructor soon goes over some of the material she covered, and sets the record straight.

On the Metro home, the artificial darkness just seem to glide by me. I scarcely want to get off.