Baptism by Blood: My First Gunshot Call in Trenton
Trenton isn’t just rough — it’s a battleground. The city pulses with tension, like a live wire stretched too tight. The houses lean with age, windows dark and hollow, like eyes that have seen too much. It’s the only place I’ve ever worked where you wear a ballistic vest as standard gear. Except I didn’t — not for the first four months. They were out of stock.
I stood behind the guys who had them, hoping that if bullets flew, they’d catch the metal before I did. That’s how you operate in Trenton. You take your chances.
During training, they told us about a “Code 5.” If you found yourself in a fight with a patient — like a real, hands-on fight — and were losing, you called it in. Cops, fire, EMS — everyone would drop what they were doing and haul ass to get to you. But there was a warning: “If we get there, and you’re not getting your ass beat, we’re gonna beat your ass.”
They said it with a smile, but it wasn’t a joke.
The call came in as a double shooting. Two victims, one inside, one outside. We pulled up to the house — crumbling brick, boarded windows, police lights casting long shadows across the sidewalk. Officers stood with weapons drawn, eyes sharp.
I looked at my captain, a young guy — too young, really. He turned to me, eyes wide but steady. “You go with the guy from the other truck,” he said. “I’m going inside.”
I didn’t argue. Didn’t ask why. You don’t question orders when bullets are involved.
The woman was sprawled on the front steps, her back against the rusted railing. Blood covered her like a second skin — thick and glistening, pooling around her feet. A cop had slapped a tourniquet on her upper left arm, so high it almost touched her shoulder. Way too high. But she was still conscious, screaming like the sound was being torn from her throat.
I glanced at my new partner. We didn’t speak. We just grabbed her. I took her legs, he took her arms, and we carried her like she weighed nothing. Her blood smeared across our gloves, dripped onto the pavement, left a trail like breadcrumbs.
Inside the ambulance, it was pure adrenaline and muscle memory. I snapped on gloves, pulled out my shears, and started cutting. Her shirt fell away, fabric soaked and clinging to her skin. I didn’t even notice the first wound until the medic shouted, “Holy shit! Chest seal!”
I saw it then — upper left chest, just below her clavicle. A bullet hole, jagged and leaking, her breath bubbling through it like a broken valve. I grabbed a chest seal, slapped it over the wound, and pressed down. The skin hissed, and I pressed harder.
Her screams hit a pitch I didn’t know existed. High and thin, like glass about to shatter.
I kept cutting. Trauma naked, that’s what we call it. Strip away everything so you can see the damage. Her bra came off, and I found another wound, just below her ribs. It was leaking air — a sucking chest wound. I shouted it out. The medic nodded, already preparing another seal.
Her pants were next. Blood smeared down her thighs, pooled in her socks. I peeled them away and counted — two, three, four more holes, leading all the way down to her foot. In total, she had nine bullet wounds. Nine.
“Go,” the medic said, and I didn’t need to be told twice.
The sirens screamed as we tore through the streets, lights casting flashes of red and white across the windshield. She was thrashing, moaning, her eyes rolling back. I grabbed her hand. I didn’t think about it — I just did it. Her fingers locked around mine, squeezing hard enough to bruise.
We blew through the ER bay doors, and the trauma team descended on her like a swarm. Hands flew — gloved, steady, moving with terrifying precision. I stepped back, catching my breath. My gloves were slick, stained dark with her blood. It was on my sleeves, my boots, drying in streaks down my arms.
And then I saw him. Her boyfriend. They wheeled him in right behind us. Blood streaked down his face, pooling in his lap. A hole in his cheek where the bullet had entered, shattering his teeth, slicing off part of his tongue before tumbling down his throat. His eyes were wide, unblinking. He tried to speak, but it was just air and blood and noise.
The trauma room was chaos. Controlled, beautiful chaos. Two bodies, side by side, bleeding out on twin gurneys while doctors carved and stitched with the grace of a maestro. I’ve never seen hands move that fast. It was like watching someone build a plane in mid-air. No hesitation. No wasted motion.
I stepped back into the hallway, my partner right behind me. We both looked down at ourselves — blood smeared across our uniforms, tacky and drying. I could feel it crusting around the edge of my neck, flaking off my hands. One of the EMTs from the other truck — six months pregnant and still running calls — just nodded. She handed me a rag without a word, and we started wiping each other down. The backs of our elbows, the places we couldn’t reach.
It’s funny, they train you to be terrified of blood exposure. The protocols are burned into your brain. But you can’t scrub off the feeling of someone else’s life staining your skin. It sticks.
We went back outside. The rig was a horror show. Blood streaked down the doors, puddled on the floor. It took twenty minutes to clean it out, scraping and wiping, the smell of bleach cutting through the copper tang of iron. No one spoke. The others lit up vapes, blew clouds of nicotine and exhaustion into the night air.
“Dispatch, we’re back in service.”
We climbed back into the ambulance, buckled in, and waited for the next call. Because in Trenton, there’s always a next call.
Both of them survived. I found out a few days later. She was sitting up in a hospital bed, arm in a sling. He was alive, but he didn’t speak much anymore.
In Trenton, that’s enough. Survival is enough.
But I can still hear her screams, still feel the wet slap of her blood on my gloves, still see the hollow look in his eyes as they wheeled him past.
And I know that I’ll go back. Because there’s a kind of peace in that chaos. A stillness that cuts through the noise. And once you find it, you don’t want to let it go.
