Alison's Images

If you’ve ever had an annoying coworker you know what I feel like right now. In my line of work, sometimes you save a person and sometimes you kill them. Maybe you didn’t tighten their neck brace enough and that’s why they died or maybe they just needed to go to a chiropractor, at the end of the day, you just stop worrying about it.

My problem? My partner doesn’t shut up. The whole idea of a paramedic having a partner is for us both to be a team, to think in one mind, and the rest of the routine. But the problem with this chick, Miss she calls herelf, she belongs back in Woodstock. She’s irritatingly positive and is determined that she makes the perfect talking companion. Oh, and she has the worst habit of chewing gum.

But when I came home from work today, I tried not to bother worrying about that.

I was trying again.

Trying to kill myself I mean.

Jumping off a cliff hadn’t worked, and neither had shooting myself in the head, but there are other ways too. Tonight, it was time to try electricity. Maybe it would be poetic justice, after all. Frankenstein made his monster by harnessing electricity; maybe I could destroy a monster in the same way.

The plan was simple really, I hooked up some wires from my power outlines into the tub, and then filled up the tub with water. When I flipped the switch for the lights, I’d actually send electricity through the wires and into the water.

When I flipped the switch and got into the water, the first thought was that it was actually working. Searing pain filled my body, similar to the sensation of being on fire, I thought. I writhed and sunk below the water, opening my mouth to breathe and instead getting a mouthful of firey pain into my lungs.

Of course, it would have to be then that Missy, my irritating partner, decides to drop by my apartment with a plateful of brownies.

Discovering her fully clothed partner writhing in the bathtub she calls it in, sending an ambulance zooming to come save the ambulance driver. Ionic, yes I know.

I have to give her credit, she at least figured out to turn off the light switch before she yanked me out of the water.

When she stopped getting water out of my lungs, I could hear the sirens outside my apartment.

And that’s when I knew for sure.

I’m still not dead.

The Reaper lives to kill another day.