She's Watching Me

It all started a few years ago, when I became an EMT and started working for one of the local ambulance services. Everything was great, I made good friends, and I loved my job. Then, we got the call. It came out as a standard nine-echo: that's a dead body, transfer to the meat locker. Total eye roll. Ah the joys of working for a private ambulance service. Or that's what we thought.

We never visually ID the bodies on pickup. Instead, we let the nurses at the hospital load a black-bagged body into the rig, and then drive away. So we pull up to the morgue out on the rez (the stiff was Native American) and the security guy opens the gate. We watched as what appeared to be a little old lady walk out through the open gate and wave at us as she went. That's odd, we thought, that there would be anyone like that here. Especially at this time of night. But whatever, we thought, and pulled up to the doors.

The attendant came out, greeted us, and we hung around to bullshit for a few minutes. Pull the body out, roll the gurney over to the fridge. . . Yada yada. Yawn. And then he unzips the bag to check the ID tags. It was the little old lady.

So my partner and I geek out about it once we're on our way, laughing nervously. We thought that was the end of it. Oh no. Not even close.

Every time I've had to work a code since, the little old lady is there, watching me, judging me, silently standing by. I don't know why. I can't figure it out. It's not like I killed her. Or fucked up and let her die. Wasn't even in the vicinity. And it scares the shit out of me. Nobody else notices her. Except my partner. He sees her too.

Comments • 0

Loading comments...