Old and cranky. And rightfully so.

The narrow downtown street was framed with parked cars. Bumper to bumper they sat crowding the passing traffic along the one-way street. Trees, developing new, green leaves, sat majestically along the uneven concrete sidewalk. The hilly front yards were turning from patches of brown and rust, to a dark, green luscious grass. Spring had arrived and, as the sun shined through the thick cotton-ball clouds above my head, my partner parked the ambulance behind the old fire engine sitting in the middle of the street.

The one-way street was cluttered with brownstones converted into multiple occupancy apartments. Each had their own set of worn steps that broke away from the city concrete sidewalk. Inviting names like "Aspen Home" and "Mountain Place" hung above the double-entry security doors. Some in neon, some formed out of ornamental iron.

I slowly exited the ambulance and took in the view of the mountains. This was my first call on my first day back from my three days off, and my mind was elsewhere. I could see the apartment building, the double doors propped wide open by fire's wooden wedges, and figures inside the long hall shuffling around. I rounded the corner and narrowed my thoughts.

Four steps up, a small landing, and another four steps and I was standing in the entrance of the aptly names apartment building. The white doors, three on one side and three on another, sat invitingly to all those who entered. Numbers nailed to the center were accented by personal affects of the residents inside. Stickers from local bands, flowers from their garden, and grease stains from a hard days work all forecasted what may be inside that white door to all those who passed.

The door I saw had nothing on it.

Lying on the worn carpet, wrapped in a white blanket with two blue stripes, was an elderly man. Firemen stood wiping their brows over the elderly man struggling to get comfortable on the dirty, uncomfortable floor. They had just carried him out from his apartment that reeked of urine and feces. The naked man was wrapped like a butterfly in a cocoon and squirmed as he cussed everyone around him.

I approached and was greeted by a pungent smell. One that smelled like sour eggs boiled in gym socks. A smell that was sharp, like a French cheese, and assaulted your senses like a car salesman on crack. I choked back my attempts to gag and quickly took report from the firemen. As he talked, my mind reminisced about the last few days away from work.

"Do you want to see?" asked a fireman.

"Well, not really. But, I suppose I half to."

The fireman opened the blanket and the grumpy, naked man grumbled obscenities. I looked down at his waist, where his legs met his hips, and saw a gaping, infected, hole-dripping white clots of infection. The hairs on my arms stood at attention and my mouth quickly lubed itself with sputum in preparation of me vomiting. The hole seemed bottomless. It was at least 6 inches long and was cavernous as a spelunkers dream. I quickly covered him up, I had seen enough, and he continued to slander all standing near.

"I hate paramedics and I hate doctors," he spat as he tried to make himself comfortable in the makeshift swaddle.

I attempted to talk to him but he continued to berate me. "You killed my mother," he argued.

We loaded him into the ambulance and the firemen fled like immigrants crossing the border illegally. I opened all the windows in the back and attempted to circulate the stale ambulance.

"You killed my mother!" he screamed.

"Did I kill her?" I asked. "Was I the one personally responsible for the death of your mother?"

"No, not you specifically, but it was you paramedics. You guys, and the doctors, killed my mother."

I attempted to talk to him more but he just wiggled under the layers of white blankets. Rotting skin contained bilious fluid that leaked from his groin and saturated the white sheets. The smell lingered in the moving ambulance like lead smoke, reminding me of the disease and infection trying to kill this old man.

We bounced down the road and he grunted with every pothole. Slander dripped from his tongue as his evil eyes stared through my soul. I sat there, with his left arm resting on my knee as I taped the IV, and tried to communicate with him. Anger and hatred enveloped him and despair radiated like heat on a blacktop highway.

"All this anger is going to kill you," I said. "It's going to drive you to your grave."

A snarl and roll of the eyes. A flinch of the shoulder and he turned on his side, his back facing me. His bony, pale white shoulder protruded from the blanket. He quivered a little and grunted under his breath.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

"No response. He closed his eyes in disgust and ignored all of my gestures.

I slid down the blue bench seat and reached into the cabinet where we keep the blankets. He snarled and cussed me once more. I opened the blanket and wafted it over him like fresh linen on a pillow top bed. It landed on him precisely and I tucked in the edges to prevent the draft from chilling his infected body. He continued to ignore me.

As we pulled into the ambulance bay and bounced the rear wheels off the yellow parking block I began unplugging all the equipment from the ambulance interior. I switched the lights off, grabbed my information and made my way to the back doors. I passed on his left and whisper broke the infected air.

"Thank you for the blanket. You were very nice."