A Real Emergency
Stories from the Ambulance
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A Real Emergency
Narrated by:
Joanna Sokol, Araya Mengesha, Emily Nixon, Wayne Ward
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Joanna Sokol
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Araya Mengesha
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Emily Nixon
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Wayne Ward
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By:
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Joanna Sokol
About this listen
For fifteen years, Joanna Sokol filled private notebooks with her confusion, humor, and anger toward the strange world of emergency street medicine. As her career on the ambulance progressed, she found herself taking notes on scraps of paper, the backs of gloves, and in the margins of EKG printouts. She listened to her patients’ stories, left food out for their pets, and turned off the stove under their oxtail stews. Once, she read half a poem left in a dead woman’s typewriter. She learned about the history that brought ambulances into their current role as the caretakers of society’s forgotten and spoke to her colleagues about their own experiences and perspectives.
Those reflections are collected here, in a series of raw, powerful essays about the state modern healthcare.
Sokol’s life as a paramedic took her to three different counties: the casinos and trailer parks of the Nevada desert, the cozy beach town of Santa Cruz, and, eventually, the crowded tenements of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. There are no clear villains or heroes in Sokol’s world, only a group of patients and medics who are doing their best in a deeply broken system.
Combining impactful research, compassionate reflections on her most memorable patients, and the strong voices of her fellow paramedics, Sokol takes readers deep into the everyday reality of 911 first responders, offering insight, empathy, and a reminder of both the power and limitations of care.
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Editorial Review
Run in the shoes of an EMT
Joanna Sokol documents the heart-pounding, gut-wrenching, sweat-inducing moments facing paramedics in the field through a series of memories that will test your nervous system and leave you wondering—how did she do it? How do any health care workers do it? Beginning each day before the sun rises and scarfing down cold food (if you’re lucky) in between filing paperwork and saving lives, EMT work is not for the faint of heart. Sokol’s raw retelling of action-packed emergencies is a testament to the sacrifices first responders and health care workers make each day, and the profound change we can make in others’ lives in just a moment. With multiple narrators taking us along in the back of each ambulance ride, the performances in this anthology are truly as memorable as the stories they tell. —Rachael X., Audible Editor
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