I’ve got a drawer at home that won’t close anymore. I open it and it’s just — boom — “Happy EMS Week 2012,” “Heroes Work Here 2016,” some neon monstrosity from 2019 that could guide aircraft in reduced visibility. Half don’t fit. The other half feel like sandpaper after two washes.
I keep them anyway. Habit. Guilt. Too tired to throw anything out.
And yeah — I grab the food. Always do.
Because I’m hungry. Always hungry on shift. That particular hollow, forgot-what-a-real-meal-feels-like hungry. The kind where a free sandwich and a bag of chips feels like somebody actually did you a solid.
That’s the part that lands. Not the swag. Never the swag.
I’ve been on long enough to know what matters when you’re halfway through a twelve — or a twenty-four that’s already come off the rails — and you finally get ten minutes to sit. Boots off, radio still chirping, sweat dried into your shirt. You just want something normal. Something human.
A ten-dollar gift card? Yeah. That hits different.
Walk into a sandwich shop. Sit down. No sirens, no monitor alarming, nobody needing anything from me for twenty consecutive minutes.
But here’s the one that actually stayed with me.
Spring of ’21
I was running Medic 09 — one of the busiest units in the city. Our zone covers several housing projects and three homeless shelters. It is not a slow zone. Slow is not a concept Medic 09 has ever been introduced to.
We had run six calls before noon.
Six. Before lunch. Before most people have refreshed their email twice.
Nothing glamorous either. That’s not how Medic 09 works. It’s the steady grind — repeat callers, genuinely sick, genuinely desperate, and people who just need somebody to show up and give a damn. You learn fast out there that those categories overlap more than the textbooks let on.
By the time we cleared that sixth call at Centennial Medical Center, my partner and I were spent. The kind where the 0500 caffeine has worn off and nobody has the words for it yet, and that’s alright because words aren’t really the point.
We saw it when we pulled in; but we gave it a closer look now that the call was over. A food truck — and not just any food truck… A Taco Truck!
A real one. Not foil trays on a folding table. Not sandwich wraps going dry at the edges. A legitimate food truck smelling like grilled onions and seasoned meat and something that reminded me what actual food tastes like.
The HCA powers-that-be had arranged it. A genuine thank-you to the crews rotating through.
I walked up still half in my own head — the way you get after a morning like that — and the guy just handed me a plate. No ticket. No wristband. No proof of anything. Just looked at me, saw exactly what I was, which was a medic six calls deep before noon, and nodded like he already understood.
I stood there leaning against the side of Medic 09 and ate that thing like it was the finest meal I’d had in recent memory.
It might have been.
What Actually Stands Out
EMS Weeks come and go. Most of them blur together after a while — same gestures, same speeches, same drawer getting harder to close.
But that one stood out.
Not because of what it cost anybody. Because somebody understood what the morning had actually looked like before they decided how to say thank you.
That’s the whole thing, right there.
Feed me. Give me ten minutes where nobody needs anything from me. Show me you have some genuine idea what the day looks like out here before you send the congratulatory memo.
Because the job doesn’t change just because there’s a banner in the hallway.
You’ll still get the 3 AM chest pain that turns into a full code before you clear the neighborhood. Still get the “simple fall” that’s anything but. Still get the families, the documentation, the radio going before you’ve finished the last run report.
And then somebody will hand you a shirt.
…yeah.
Take it. Nod and say thank you and mean it, because you’re tired, not ungrateful, and you appreciate and understand the gesture.
But me, I’m thinking about that taco truck. About leaning against Medic 09 in the late spring sun with something that tasted like somebody put actual thought into it, while the radio stayed quiet for about four consecutive minutes.
Which Brings Me to Right Now
I’m with Ambulnz by DocGo in the Nashville market these days. And I’ll say this plainly because it’s true and it deserves to be said out loud —
The people running this organization — Nina Mothershed & Brian Griffin — have been in the back of a unit. They know what the seat feels like. They know what six calls before noon feels like. They are not sending thank-you emails from a conference room somewhere and calling it a week.
They are feeding the field crews. Every single day of EMS Week.
And yes — the shirts too.
Which, look. I’ve got thoughts about the drawer situation. We’ve established that.
But when the people handing you the shirt have actually worn one? When they understand that a hot meal mid-shift is worth more than a trophy and a speech?