I didn’t grow up thinking I’d end up in EMS.

When Melissa and I were just starting out, we didn’t have much money. We found ourselves renting the Methodist church parsonage in her hometown of Miller—small, quiet, the kind of place where everyone knows everybody… and thinks they know everything, too.

The house was a little two-bedroom on the corner of Main and Johnson. It smelled old and funky at first—the carpet was ratty and loose, like it had been donated and tossed down without much thought. Underneath it was original hardwood. I ripped that carpet out, cleaned the floors up, and for the first time it felt like we were building something real. A home. A life.

Melissa stayed home with our kiddo. I switched dealerships and started working for the Chevy dealership in Aurora—closer commute, better pay, and enough stability for us to keep moving forward.

And then the town fire department blew up… over cabinet doors.....

No, seriously.

From what I heard, the firefighters wanted custom cabinet doors in the new station, the city wanted prefab, and the whole thing turned into small-town politics and ego. I laughed at it at first—like something you’d see on Jerry Springer—until the entire fire department quit. Just walked away.

That’s when it stopped being funny.

Because when you live in a small town, you don’t get to “opt out” of emergencies. If your family needs help, you need someone to show up.

So I started thinking about volunteering. I had every excuse in the world not to. I didn’t know the first thing about firefighting. I was nervous. But the need outweighed the fear.

One day I drove by the station and the doors were up. A couple guys were standing around a truck talking. I stopped in and asked who I needed to talk to about joining.

They pointed at a skinny guy by the pumper.

That’s the day I met the fire chief—Gerald, but everybody called him Bullet. Over-the-road truck driver, avid gambler, and a quality bullshitter in the best and worst ways. He told me to come to the next meeting and we’d go from there.

I showed up.

They explained the department was basically a handful of different “entities”—city, rural association, and a rescue/medical side too—but the reality was simple: when tones dropped, whoever could respond would respond.

They asked if I wanted fire, medical, or both.

I said, “Sign me up.”

They voted, handed me a pager, and just like that… I was on the fire department.

The first pager tones changed everything

For anyone who’s never carried one: a fire pager isn’t just a device. It’s a switch that flips your whole life.

Dispatch hits a button. Tones go out—usually a high/low two-part set. Your pager “wakes up,” and then you hear the dispatcher’s voice. Calm voice. Serious information. Your brain tries to catch up while your body goes straight to adrenaline.

My first fire call hit in the middle of the night.

House fire. Possibly someone inside.

My heart rate had to be through the roof. I threw on clothes, jumped in the truck, and ran to the station. I didn’t even have bunker gear yet—I was supposed to observe. I wasn’t allowed to drive. I waited for someone to tell me which truck to get in.

We rolled out.

House fires have a smell. If you know, you know. And it got stronger the closer we got—until we crested a hill and saw the glow in the night sky. Smoke drifting up like it had a mind of its own.

It was a trailer house. Heavy dark smoke. Fire breaking through windows. I watched how fast it changed once the windows failed and ventilation fed it.

The crew moved fast—pulled hose, knocked the bulk of it down quick. I was impressed. Then I heard hollering from the back side and wandered over.

A firefighter was in a bedroom, calling out to the others.

He said he found a body.

I’d never seen a burned body before. My stomach turned. I walked toward the window and looked in.

The room was cooked. The bed was nothing but springs. And there, on those springs, were the remains of a person. A long gun nearby.

His torso was mostly intact. Limbs were burned down to bony nubs. And I still remember the part that shouldn’t stick with you but does: his eyeballs—bright white—reflecting back in my flashlight beam. No facial features left. Just those eyes.

That was my first fire call.

Then, while we were still working hot spots, the tones dropped again—this time for a shooting south of town.

I sat in the rescue truck trying to warm up (I’d forgotten a coat), staring at the dashboard, and thinking: What did I just sign up for? Is every night going to be like this?

That night was the first of many where I got little to no sleep and still had to go to my regular job in the morning. You don’t really “adjust” to that. You just get used to functioning tired.

The medical side grabbed me

Training came next—basic firefighter class, first responder class, and then EMT school. The fire training taught me enough to not get myself killed. The medical training, though… that was different.

It was fascinating.

CPR felt like magic in class. I thought I was going to save everyone.

Then I did ambulance ride time. Then ER clinicals at St. John’s in Springfield.

Real life has a way of stripping off the TV version of emergency medicine.

I saw overdoses. I saw trauma. I watched a bull rider come in with a pneumothorax after a bull stepped on his chest, and I watched a chest tube get shoved in like it was just another day at work—because for the people who do this every day, it is.

On Thanksgiving during ride time, we ran an unresponsive patient in a store—cardiac arrest.

I did compressions on a real person for the first time and learned what CPR training can’t teach you: the way the chest feels when it starts cracking and popping. The way your body hits fight-or-flight and your brain has to override it.

We got pulses back. I felt proud.

Then someone explained what a “clinical save” can mean, and I learned the difference between the book and real life—the part of EMS nobody wants to talk about until you’re standing in it.

Why I’m writing this now

I’ve been in emergency services a long time. Long enough to know most calls are routine and monotonous… and long enough to know the rare ones can change you.

This blog series—Life as a Paramedic: 25 Years on the Box—is where I’m going to tell the truth about the job:

the calls I’ll never forget

the black cloud and white cloud shifts

the coping that works (and the coping that doesn’t)

the lessons nobody teaches you in class

and the weird, dark, hilarious human moments that happen in the middle of chaos

If you’ve worked EMS, fire, dispatch, the ER, or any emergency service role—you already know: the best stories aren’t the ones you can tell anywhere.

You can tell them here.

If you’ve got a “first tones” story, a call that stuck with you, or a lesson you learned the hard way—drop it in the comments. Just keep it respectful and keep it anonymous (no patient identifiers).

Welcome to the series.