Part 22: Nosebleed Seats

If told that the EMT refresher course taught by Don Mackey at Arbutus Volunteer Fire Department did not go well for me and my new friend, Bill Brown, anybody who knows me would say this: “I’m not surprised.”

At this point in this story, gentle reader, I beg for a herculean suspension of disbelief. Give me the benefit of the doubt that this statement is the gospel truth: It wasn’t my fault.

And anybody who knows Bill – a paramedic from New Hampshire who is one of the warmest, gentlest, kindest and most sociable people you’d ever meet – would likewise be asked to accept this mind-boggling information as a fact: It was all his fault.

If you looked up “nice guy” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Bill Brown.

As incredible as this all sounds, it’s the truth. Even Bill admits that it was his fault.

Things soured on one of the first nights of the class. Maybe even the first night.

There was already a sense that Bill and I were outsiders. We were the only ones in the course not affiliated with a fire department or rescue squad.

The tipping point occurred over a matter of vocabulary.

Mackey was without question an extremely knowledgeable and experienced professional. He was an old-timer who knew his stuff.

But he mispronounced the medical word for nosebleed – epistaxis. Mackey pronounced it epaxis, dropping a whole syllable, which in retrospect may not be that unusual in a place where people go downey ocean. But the first time we heard it, Bill and I looked at each other quizzically.

“Excuse me,” Bill said, raising his hand. “I believe the word is epistaxis.”

I don’t recall Mackey’s exact response, distracted as I was by the floridly enraged redness of his face, but the gist of his comments was that the two of us were the scum of the earth lacking the sense God gave a bucket of gravel.

“He didn’t do anything,” Bill said, pointing at me.

Mackey further elaborated on his observation that neither of us were worth scraping off the bottom of his shoe.

I leaned over and patted Bill on the back. “Thanks so much for bringing me into this,” I said. “I needed that.”

I never said a word, but somehow I became one of the smartass outsiders sitting in the back row. Bill and I were pegged as troublemakers.

Whenever the subject of nosebleeds came up – which turns out to be uncomfortably often – everybody else in the course used Mackey’s preferred neologism of epaxis. It was amusing, the way sheep will jump over an invisible fence.

Bill always made a point of pronouncing epistaxis correctly. But he’d do it nicely, with a disarming smile.

I copped out and said nosebleed just to avoid making waves.