Achievement Unlocked

I got the notification just before I walked into work. Congrats, the bubble read. New milestone reached! A little arrow prompted me to swipe open the message, but I already knew what it would read: 

You have been nicotine free for 1 month! 

I ignored the popup as I slumped into dispatch, unable to muster even the barest enthusiasm. It was looking like a long night already. 

Quitting nicotine had seemed like a good idea at first, before the side effects started to get really bad. I'd expected most of them. Migraines, nausea, anxiety, lethargy, cravings-- I'd been through them before, when I'd experimented with quitting. Never more than about fourteen days, though, which is probably why I wasn't expecting what hit me around week three: a complete loss of joy.

Day bled into listless day, and I started to forget what it felt like to be motivated by the desire to create. Drafts sit in my queue, half-finished and collecting cobwebs. The urge to write-- something as essential to my life as breathing or parmesan truffle fries-- had gone dormant. 

Gabe suggested I try to make some new additions to my most recent sticker series, the "achievement unlocked" collection, which celebrate career-defining call types while paying homage to the nerdy majority that makes up this job field. 

Another friend had suggested that, dispatch junkie that I was, what I needed was a hot call, something totally bizarre and dramatic to give me a different kind of high. Tonight could bring all kinds of excitement-- after all, you never knew what shift would be the one that defined your career.

I said that I doubted it. 

The call came in on the business line a bit after midnight. Picking it up was like a reflex, and a familiar feeling came over me, like all of my pieces were suddenly snapping together.

My greeting was met with a crisp male voice advising of a transfer from the highway. "I've got a caller on the line who is in active labor," he said. "It sounds like delivery is imminent." His cool, calm tone was pierced by a screaming that made me double back almost as much as his words.

Imminent was an understatement. As soon as I had dispatched the ambulance, I heard the wailing turn to cries of, "Catch him! Catch him!" 

And then it happened. A sound, clear and pure as rain, suddenly pierced through the static. His first cries were strong, and I knew even as I went though the steps of clearing his airways that this little guy had some healthy lungs on him. 

It was strange, talking a new mother through her first moments of parenthood. I felt, for the first time, entirely unqualified to be doing what I was doing. I felt a bit of the terror this brand-new mom must've been feeling as she took on the title on the side of a busy highway. But those moments were precious, too, as I listened to the first few moments of a whole life.

That morning, I went to the store after my shift, wanting some way to mark the occasion. I thought about sending a bouquet to the hospital, or buying a cigar like they do in the  movies-- but one way seemed maybe like an invasion of privacy, the other a recipe for nicotine relapse. 

Instead, I bought a single cupcake, lit a candle, and said a little blessing, meditating on life and new beginnings. I let myself appreciate what a strange and wonderful job I have that I got to be, in a small way, part of that magical moment. 

Just as I had started to lose my spark, just as I'd forgotten the magic of emergency response work-- the Dispatch Gods were there to remind me there's magic in it still. It's hard to be apathetic, even in the middle of extreme dopamine withdrawal, when you get to help deliver babies on the side of the road.

There's an old first responder tradition where, if you help deliver a baby in the field, some agencies will award you a commemorative stork pin. I can't speak for EMS directly, but among dispatchers, that pin is coveted like no other accolade. 

My agency doesn't participate in the stork pin tradition, but that's okay. I doubt I'll ever forget that night. As I fight my way through the remnants of this depression (as well as the resulting creative dry-spell), I'll remember that call as the example of what makes this job so worthwhile.