21 January, 2009 6:32 PM.

I step into Matt’s room, glancing first at his bed and second at his desk, where he is standing with a silly smile on his face. “Guess what I forgot?”

The radio and pager clipped to his belt, the secondary bag on the floor behind his chair, and the BEMCo logo on his shirt all clearly indicate the answer. I groan softly and move into the room, pulling him into a hug and gently tugging him toward the bed. I do my quick check to make sure that I don’t end up with a radio to the stomach and position myself accordingly on top of him. We cuddle for a bit—he has a meeting at 7 and so did I. We go off to our meetings, and I meet up with a friend at BORG. I look out the window and see what looks like him running down the hill towards the Village. I send a text to wish him luck—an unnecessary text, since I later learned that I was imaging that it was him. He shows up at my meeting, an event which is followed by much squealing, jumping out of my seat, and hugging him in front of everyone. Cue Bernie making a medic comment and Matt correcting him that in fact, he is not a medic. Until I met Matt, I, like most people, used paramedic and EMT interchangeably, when in reality, it’s the square/rectangle problem.

Matt started getting sick last night—nothing too bad, a sore throat that proceeded to get progressively worse. We were up for much of the night as the sore throat turned to coughing. I left him in my bed while I went to class, and found him later, definitely not doing well. Normally I wouldn’t worry so much with him on, but by the time his shift started, he was definitely sick. At some point, he mentioned the desire to tell his next call, most likely an intoxicated midyear, “Shut up, I’m sicker than you are,” if he hadn’t just attended a meeting of professionalism.

Kass and I are going to Usdan for food, and Matt decides to join us. It’s cold out, and he’s declined the jacket for the shift. We walk quickly and find a table in the dining hall, away from the doors. He puts his bag down goes off to find something to drink while I go find dinner. When I return, he’s got some carrot juice and I have a cookie and a veggie sub. Kass and I eat, Matt has some of my cookie, and then Kass and I go to a corner of the room to talk about a few things—as our conversation winds down, I can see that Matt is collapsed on the table, occasionally picking up his head. I can see dark circles under his eyes.

I tell Kass that it’s time I take my sick EMT back to his room. We walk silently and quickly—back in his room, we put our things on the floor and get in bed. He’s shivering, still, and I do my best to keep him warm. His temperature’s up to 101 by now. I don’t remember if we fell asleep or not, but I remember being awake around 10:30 when his pager goes off. He jumps out of bed, swearing, somewhat tangled in the comforter. I curl up out of the way on the bed as he gets his things together and runs out. The call is not an intoxicated midyear. I get my things together and leave soon after.

Back at my building, I meet up with Dina and Jake, and we talk about housing for next semester. It’s nice to have something to distract me while he’s on call. Around 12:30 he calls, that he tried to call sooner—doesn’t matter. I head over with my things for the night. I think he’s in bed when I get there. He’s still really sick, clearly, although, as he pointed out later, he was fine when he got the call. Adrenaline? Professionalism? Meh.

We go to bed together—he’s shivering for parts of the night, but then takes his sweatshirt off later. He feels warm to me the whole time. When we wake up in the morning, he tells me that he feels a bit better, inasmuch as he’s stopped seeing things in Arabic.