I returned to my patient and looked at him. His breathing, temporarily relieved by the oxygen increase was now worsening once again. "Mr. Li?" I asked him, speaking loudly in case he was hard of hearing. "I have a doctor's order not to assist your breathing mechanically. Do you understand?"
Looking in my eyes, he nodded his understanding.
"Is that your wish Sir?" I asked him. "For me NOT to do anything?"
He smiled slightly. "Yes." He panted. "It's… " A pause to breathe. "My time."
"As you wish." I told him
We loaded him onto our gurney and wheeled him out to the ambulance. Once in the back I hooked him up to my EKG machine in order to allow me to watch his heart rate. I put my pulse oximeter on his finger, looking at the display for a reading. The pulse ox registered the amount of oxygen saturation in a person's blood. A normal reading for a person breathing room air was around 99%. Mr. Li was breathing one hundred percent oxygen and his reading was 74%. Yes, he was dying fast.
"Mr. Li?" I addressed him. His eyes creaked open to look at me.
"I'm gonna start an IV on you." I told him. "Maybe they can give you something at the hospital to, you know, help you with the pain and the discomfort."
He smiled, nodding at me.
I went to work, setting up a bag of saline and hanging it from a hook on the ceiling of the ambulance. His veins were so fragile that I was forced to use the smallest needle that we carried, the kind that is meant to be used on infants, in order to establish the line. I threaded it in slowly, cognizant of the fact that advancing it at this rate was probably painful for him.
"I'm sorry Mr. Li." I told him when I finally secured the line. "I don't like to do it that slow but your veins are not in the best shape. It's better to do it that way than to miss it and have to try again."
"Thank… " A pause. "You."
"No problem." I told him.
While I adjusted the drip rate I noticed him staring at me, a queer smile on his face. He took a few deep breaths, as if he was storing up oxygen, and then started to speak.
"You're a… good boy." He said, panting. "You treat me… with… respect… where… others don't."
"I'm just doing my job." I told him, returning his smile.
He shook his head. "Been taken… before… " He said. "Not all… like you. Not at… all".
"Well." I shrugged. "I try."
"What… " He asked. "Is your… greatest… wish?"
"My greatest wish?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. He nodded.
I laughed, thinking of my life. I was a thirty-two year old private paramedic that had been doing the job too long. I wasn't a dirtbag by any means but I wasn't at the pinnacle of success either. My job was constantly in jeopardy of being taken away by the Spokane Fire Department, who were just itching to get into the ambulance business. Like many fire departments around the country, they had initiated so many fire codes and regulations over the years that they no longer had any fires to put out. They knew that it wouldn't be long before the tax-payers started wondering just what they were paying these guys for anyway and, as such, their mission for the next century it seemed, was a take-over of the medical aid business. Private ambulance companies, who didn't have the political clout or the hero reputation to exploit, had already fallen to them in cities and counties all around the United States. It was a nationwide trend. Spokane FD had already tried twice, getting voted down by the city council once and then, having the same body approve them later, they were stopped by a superior court judge. At my age, I was too old to get picked up by them when they were eventually successful and I didn't know how to do anything else. I had an ex-wife and an ex-kid to pay money to each month. In short, I was in a rut that I saw no way out of and had been dwelling on that, as I'm prone to doing, that shift. For that reason I answered Mr. Li the way I did.
"I'd like to be fifteen years old again." I told him truthfully. "Knowing what I know now. How about you Mr. Li?"
He smiled, not answering my question. He simply said "Not bad." And then his eyes closed.
His breathing became rapid for a moment and then ceased entirely. I looked at him in alarm, knowing that I could do something about it but forbidden to by a doctor's order. I'd encountered this situation before in my career but it was never easy. I watched the heart monitor after his breathing ceased. His heart rate accelerated to more than one hundred and sixty for a few moments and then began to slow down. It slowed to less then twenty and then ceased entirely, leaving a squiggly line tracing across my EKG machine. The squiggles soon turned to a flat line. Mr. Li was dead.
I finished out my shift, not thinking too much about Mr. Li once I'd dropped him off at the hospital. I ran a few more calls, ate dinner from a greasy fast-food joint, and then went home to my cheap apartment in South Spokane. Once at home I drank a few beers while I watched a movie on HBO. I then put myself to bed, falling asleep and anticipating another twelve-hour shift the following day.
Music woke me up; the blaring of my clock radio. The song was "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. That was strange, I realized immediately. My clock radio was always tuned to a modern music station, the sort that played Matchbox 20, Alanis, Goo Goo Dolls, and other contemporary musicians. I hadn't heard "Heat of the Moment" in years, since I was a kid. I didn't remember tuning the radio to a classic rock station and, since I lived alone, no one else could have done so. I opened my eyes and froze solid in my tracks.
I was not in my bedroom; at least not the apartment bedroom I was familiar with. This was the bedroom of my parent's house in West Spokane, but at the same time, it WASN'T. I'd visited them just the previous week and I knew damn well that my old bedroom had long since been converted to a guest bedroom, complete with new carpet, new bed, and new wallpaper. This room was set up just like it had been when I'd lived there; wood-grain paneling on the walls (my parent's had done that back in the 70's), posters of rock musicians on the paneling. My old stereo, 8-track player was sitting on a shelf near a black and white television set. Dirty laundry was scattered everywhere along with record album covers (Van Halen, Journey, Led Zepplin) and other debris. I stared at this, wide-eyed.
Was I dreaming? I must be, I figured. But it sure didn't feel like a dream. I sat up suddenly and realized that I felt physically very strong and energetic. There was no ache in my lower back like usual. There was no congestion in the back of my throat from too many cigarettes. There was no faint headache from the beer I'd drank last night. I even, I realized, had a morning hard-on, something I rarely experienced anymore. I turned my eyes downward, taking in a sharp intake of breath. My chest, bare as always when I slept, was hairless, as if it had been shaven smooth. My stomach was flat, without a trace of the beer-belly I'd begun to develop. What in the hell was going on here?
I pulled myself out of bed, feeling almost high with youthful energy that I'd long since forgotten about. Behind my bed was a mirror with the emblem of Aerosmith etched on it. I'd won it, I remembered, at the county fair when I was thirteen (NINETEEN years ago! Part of my mind screamed). I looked into it. Instead of a face with a scruffy growth of beard and bleary red eyes I saw a smooth, unlined face with a tangled mess of long hair atop it. I barely recognized the face before me. It was ME when I was a teenager.
I stared at myself (and yet NOT myself) in this mirror, transfixed. What the hell was going on here? I was not dreaming, I could not even begin to convince myself that I was. Reality was too firm around me, too detailed. With a start, I remembered the old Chinese man last night. What is your greatest wish? He'd asked and I'd told him to be fifteen again, knowing what I know now. Well I was looking at a fifteen year old's face in the mirror right now. But that was crazy, impossible. Wishes weren't granted. Time travel wasn't possible. Was it?