Sick people puke, dying people puke, excited people puke, people puke while they’re having heart attacks, they puke when their lacerated brains swell, they puke because they get carsick lying on the cot looking up at the dome lights.I got the puke christening early. I was in training, still doing ride-alongs as the third wheel on a two-man crew. The page came during a swampy stretch of weather—humidity and temperature readings had been crowding the high nineties for a week. I pulled open the apartment door, and the stench rolled out like warm fog. The living room was packed with family. As I trotted past the kitchen table, I saw piles of trash and dishes and a capacious tureen heaped with onion skins and potato peelings. The patient, Helen, was in the bathroom. The bathroom went about five feet by eight feet, and Helen went about five feet by 350 pounds. She was on the toilet, wedged between the sink and the tub. It was upward of 90 degrees in there, and she was wrapped in a voluminous flannel nightgown.
