Part 14: Nowhere to Go

The letter from UMBC arrived inviting me for an interview for acceptance into the Emergency Health Services program.

I was scheduled to meet with Bill Hathaway. Like nearly all of the EHS faculty, Hathaway had worked at Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS). His area of expertise was management, administration and systems development.

Hathaway was the quintessential image of an academic, bearded and wearing a tweed jacket, tamping sweet-smelling tobacco into his pipe while he browsed through my file. His office on the third floor of Academic IV was lined with books, and his desk stacked with papers.

Hathaway’s soft-spoken demeanor at put me at ease while also making me feel as though I were in a psychotherapy session. He explained that UMBC was accepting 24 students into the second class of the EHS program, and half of those students are from within Maryland.

Of the remaining dozen slots, about ten had been filled, he said. There were only one or two openings left, and the purpose of our meeting was for him to decide whether I was more deserving of the opportunity to join the program than some other out-of-state candidate.

Having gone through the process before, I knew the red flags to avoid in an interview like this. Never say that you want to help people, for example. It isn’t a believable answer. It suggests that the speaker is naïve or thinking simplistically about what lies ahead.

In EMS, there is a certain mindset that they try to avoid. They try to weed out people in it for the wrong reasons – the cowboys and hot dogs, the thrill-seekers and adrenalin junkies, people who enjoy being near the center of excitement and death, the rush of leaning back into those deep black leather bucket seats with that overpowered engine growling, hurtling down darkened streets, flashing lights throbbing off the buildings and traffic as we fly past, Dennis’ quadraphonic speakers cranked up so we can hear Peter Frampton through the siren screaming overhead; “…do you feel…do you feeel like I do….”

“Mr. Goldfarb,” Hathaway said.

“Yes?”

“Why are you here?”

“MIEMSS is the leading edge of trauma care, and I want to be a part of it,” I said.

I told him about spinning my wheels in Memphis, the folding seats at the firehouse, being unhappy with nursing school, learning about Shock Trauma, selling all my stuff and moving to Baltimore. I explained about having this feeling that I should be doing something else. Not medical school; that isn’t want I’m talking about. I want to build things, create things, contribute to a body of knowledge. Based on what I’d been learning about MIEMSS, it seemed like a place where thinking would be appreciated and put to work.

He asked about my background, my work experience, my volunteer teaching of first aid and CPR. He listened thoughtfully through clouds of pipe smoke.

Hathaway held up the snapshot I sent in with my application, the picture of me caked in volcanic ash and with my face obscured.

“We had a good laugh over your picture around the department office,” he said. “This isn’t your typical application photo. Does it reflect confidence, or cockiness?”

I shrugged and attempted a smile.

“I guess we’ll take you,” Hathaway said. “You have nowhere else to go.”