“He’d lost a ton of blood,” Vince said. “You had to basically splash through it to get to him. Obviously an ideal candidate for the emergency research protocol. There’s no doubt the transfusion saved his life.”

As we got back in the truck, I remarked on how astonishing it was that the hospitals wouldn’t service the south side.

“I think if you did your research, you’d find it’s not so unusual,” Gwen told me. “I’ve seen poor and homeless turned away from hospitals a million times. This is just turning them away before they even arrive, like, don’t even bother.”

“They keep putting those houses up,” said Vince, “and I bet you’ll start seeing service down here again.”

“This is why we need Common Dreams all across the country.”

Now began the punishing hours. There was hardly anyone on the streets in the afternoon heat. The hammers and drills of the Glades carried for blocks in every direction. It felt like there used to be a lot more people around, Gwen told me, when she first started working here.

I was barely listening. With the ambulance turning onto block after block, and the Whopper sitting uneasily, I was queasy. My head was light, my wrists went weightless. I hadn’t felt motion sickness in years, but we’d been driving around in this unrelenting heat for hours.

Gwen noticed. “You’re looking kinda green,” she said. “Why don’t you lie down in the back?”

“We do it all the time,” said Vince. “It’s the nicest room in the neighborhood.”

“No thanks.”

There was no way you could get me into the back of the ambulance, packed with the body of the dog. I closed my eyes and imagined cool white sheets draped over me, a moist towel on my forehead.

Soon we stopped again. Gwen and Vince went out to assist an elderly woman, her dress printed with sunflowers. She’d taken a seat on her walker, and Gwen gave her oxygen while Vince dabbed her head and neck with water. It looked nice.

Gas had a lot to do with how I was feeling, and I could let it out while they were working. A little lighter now, I took notes on the equipment in the back: surgical masks, intubation kits, electrodes, and a dozen sacks of white blood.

“Sunstroke,” Vince reported.

That was the most dramatic thing we encountered all afternoon.

7.

Over the next few days, my ride-alongs didn’t produce a trial subject. Not that Gwen and Vince cared. It was a good shift when the worst thing they dealt with was chest pains, asthma, or the shape-shifting symptoms of withdrawal.

As I was sitting in the shade one morning, watching them conduct blood pressure tests, I heard rustling in the dead grass behind me. My mind went to an alligator, if I should take off in a zigzag, but it was just two girls.