021: Service Before Self

November 02, 2026

The family asks whether there’s anything else you can do. You’ve already answered, but they ask again. A minute ago, you were working. Equipment was coming out of bags. People were moving. Now you’re taking the pads off and putting things away. They ask you to keep trying. You have to look at them and say their loved one is dead.

You choose those words carefully. Somebody in that room is going to remember how you said it. They may ask you to explain what happened again. You do. They’re trying to understand how the person they were talking to this morning can be dead before lunch.

I’ve seen my fair share of dead people. Some die alone. There’s nobody to call who hasn’t been gone for years. The crews who ran on them every day may be the only people who notice when those calls stop. Others leave a roomful of people who called because they thought you might be able to throw a block in God’s plan. You know how to do the work. Finding the words afterward never gets easier. Sometimes they come out sounding rehearsed. You’ve just had to say them too many times.

Then you leave. You still have a report to finish. Monitor needs cleaning. Drugs need restocking. Before you’ve gotten through it, another call drops.

At that house, somebody with a cold is unhappy with your customer service. They don’t like your tone. You apparently haven’t shown enough concern. You’re asking them about the “emergency” they called for today. Instead, you’re getting a story that started 20 years ago, and now you’re being reviewed like you were supposed to be their emotional support dog.

Ma’am, you’re a patient, not a customer. You called 911 because apparently blowing your own nose has become a team effort. You don’t say it. You check them out, ask what else is going on, make sure you aren’t missing something. They get your attention. You’d just like to get through the assessment without having to apologize for your face.

And yes, they don’t know where you just came from. Sometimes I don’t think it would even matter. I’m the one who has to walk through both doors.

The person in the first house wanted something I couldn’t give them. The person in the second wants a better attitude. By the time we get back in the rig, I’m pissed off enough that somebody says something stupid and I laugh harder than it deserves.

That helps. Those people beside you know why it’s funny. They were in both houses, too. You can sit there for a minute without explaining yourself. Then the tones drop again.

Later, somebody asks how the shift was. “Busy.” You could tell them more. Some of it you don’t even know how to explain. Some of it you could, but they’re making dinner. The kids are around. They don’t need those pictures in their heads, too.

So you eat. Ask about their day. Try to follow the conversation. You were looking forward to this table. Now you’re sitting at it, wishing you could go somewhere else, and feeling like an asshole because these are the people who wanted you home and the people you wanted to come home to.

You finish before everybody else. At work, dinner gets interrupted, shoved in the microwave, interrupted again. By the third trip back, you’re eating it standing up. At home, nobody’s going to take your plate. You’re halfway through it before you notice how fast you’re going.

You put off taking a piss. Put off a shower. Put off sitting down. When you finally do take a seat and somebody walks in, you blurt out you just finished checking the rig. Nobody asked. Apparently, the chair requires an approved excuse.

We laugh about that stuff. It’s familiar. Everybody does it. And some of it comes with the work. A child can’t breathe, you leave the plate. Somebody’s house is burning, you get dressed. Most of us worked damn hard to get here. Nobody has to explain why we’re going.

It’s everything we carry back that gets harder to account for. There are calls you can still talk through, step by step, and others that come back as one thing. A sound. A room. Something a kid said. Somebody’s hand holding on to your sleeve. You can go hours without thinking about it while you’re working. Get into bed, finally, and there it is.

You check the clock. Roll over. Start calculating how much sleep you could still get. Now you’re angry because you’re wasting the chance to sleep. Wonderful. That ought to help.

Lost sleep can mess with your mood and floor your testosterone, too. Around the table, somebody hears you got three hours and says, “Must be nice.” Same answer for a sore back, a bad night, trouble at home. Find somebody worse off and yours can wait.

Then your day off goes to the couch. There’s a bag by the door for somewhere you were supposed to go. A kid comes over and asks if you’re getting up. In a minute. You meant it when you said it. An hour later, the bag is still there.

You feel like a lazy bastard. You’ve got things to do. People to see. You were looking forward to being home, and now somebody asking a perfectly reasonable question is getting on your nerves. You hear yourself answer. Hear how it sounded. Spend the next few minutes wishing you’d kept your mouth shut.

The people at home start working around it. They let you sleep. Take the kids somewhere. Quit asking about the thing you said you’d get to. You’re grateful, until you realize how much they’ve learned to do without you. You wonder how much more your wife is going to take before she starts thinking about divorce. Or whether she already has.

You tell yourself you just need a few days off.

Sometimes you don’t even get those. Your forty-eight turns into a ninety-six. Sometimes a hundred and twenty. You call home. There’s a pause. It’s the sound of somebody working through everything your phone call just changed. Pickup. Practice. An appointment. “Okay. I’ll figure it out.” You’ve heard that enough times to know it isn’t always okay. At home, somebody is putting a second child to bed alone, canceling a reservation, moving your name off another ride to school. We count the hours we stayed. They’re looking at the hours we didn’t come home.

Then you’re standing in your kitchen, sick, staring at your phone. Before you call in, you go through the names. Who’s already out. Who’s getting held. Who promised their kids they’d be home. Whose day is going to get fucked. You start bargaining with a fever.

You know the person who’ll have to stay. You know what they’re missing. You make the call, explain more than you need to, apologize before hanging up. Then you lie down and spend part of the day wondering whether you should have gone in.

We don’t make it any easier on each other. Somebody says they can’t stay and “must be nice” comes out of your mouth before you think about it. You’ve heard it enough times yourself. We can get pretty good at making each other feel like shit for needing the same things.

Then you get injured. Getting dressed takes some figuring out. So does getting in and out of the car. Picking something up off the floor. You catch yourself reaching for something and stop. You already know what that’s going to feel like.

There’s always retirement. You’ll sleep then. Take the trip. Use the fishing gear. Spend a morning somewhere without having to figure out whether you have time to take a leak. You keep adding things to that list while another year comes off the calendar. You’re counting on the same heart that’s been having the shit kicked out of it to get you through it all. The kid asking whether you’re getting up won’t stay that age.

What’s not to love? I know how that sounds. There are mornings I’m driving home thinking about how badly I need a break, and I know damn well I’d choose it again.

A lot of people go through life wondering if they are who they think they are. You get an answer in this job. Sometimes it’s what you want to hear. Sometimes it’s what you need to hear. And the answer changes. Sometimes you need to do more, do better. Sometimes you need to throttle down. Either way, you hear the same thing in your head: “Embrace the Suck.” Somebody needs help. You knew what you were signing up for.

There are people walking around who weren’t going to be. The real saves. The ones where you know what was happening when you arrived and what changed because your crew got there. You spend years learning something, practicing it, getting corrected, doing it again. Then somebody needs every bit of it, right now, and you have it.

And there are fires you’ll talk about until you retire. Everybody at the table knows which one you mean before you finish the first sentence. You remember who was beside you. What you walked into. The work it took. For all the hours you’ve spent wanting to go home, you wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. Miss that one and you’re pissed you weren’t there.

You don’t always get the save. Sometimes you don’t even make a dent in something that’s already gone to hell. You still have to finish the work. Stand in that room. Find the words. Somebody called for help, and this is all you have left to give them. So you give it.

I’ve had days on this job I couldn’t replace with anything else. When I step over the threshold and into a person’s home, they’ll never know what it took to get me there. They won’t know what happened on the call before theirs. And that’s okay. In this moment it’s not about me. It’s about them.

Service before self. I still mean it, even when I’m broken down, beat up and defeated.

I picture my crew at the firehouse table, the person forced to work behind me, and the saves I might still be part of. Then I reach for my keys.