In Transit

In Transit

I am not where people end up.

I am where they pass through.

That distinction matters.

I am designed for movement, not resolution. My doors close so other doors can open. My purpose is temporary by design. If I do my job well, no one remembers me for very long.

Dispatch gives me coordinates, not context. An address and a tone that means now. I don’t ask what happened. What happened is rarely useful once I’m moving.

I move because I am told to move.

Traffic reacts to me in predictable ways. Some drivers pull over early. Some too late. Some freeze, as if stillness might count as cooperation. I account for all of it. I am wide enough to be noticed and narrow enough to slip through the spaces people leave when they realize something urgent is happening that is not about them.

Inside me, nothing floats. Everything is strapped, latched, secured. People imagine emergencies as chaos. They are chaotic outside. Inside, things get quieter. Voices flatten. Movements become economical. Humor sharpens into something small and dark that fits in the mouth without getting in the way.

The medics step inside me and change shape.

They are not brave. They are practiced. There’s a difference. Bravery requires fear. Practice replaces it with sequence. Gloves. Questions. Touch. Numbers. They speak in a language that sounds like reassurance but is really calibration.

They do get frustrated.

No one likes to admit that part. The patient who won’t answer questions. The one who insists nothing is wrong while actively proving otherwise. The one who fights the straps, the monitor, the idea of help. Frustration doesn’t mean they care less. It means they care under pressure, which is messier.

Sometimes they rush. Sometimes they miss something small because three larger things are happening at once. Systems are run by people, and people are not precision instruments.

I hold all of it without commentary.

The patient arrives incomplete. Something wrong. Something missing. Something that will not wait. They bring the room with them: the smell of whatever happened, the tension of whoever found them, the silence of whoever didn’t.

They are loaded quickly. Dignity is adjusted, not preserved. The medics explain just enough to keep panic from escalating. Panic interferes with data.

I start moving again.

This is the part people misunderstand. They think this is when something happens. It’s not. This is when we try to keep additional things from happening.

The patient asks a question no one answers directly. The medics respond with tone instead of truth. They say things like you’re doing okay and we’re almost there and stay with me. These are not promises. They are anchors.

I am good at anchors.

I have carried every kind of person you can imagine and several you would rather not. People who apologize for bleeding. People who complain about the siren while benefiting from it. People who go very quiet in a way that makes everyone move faster without discussing it.

There is a moment — there is always a moment — when everyone inside me knows whether this will be handed off cleanly or not. No one says it. Saying it would waste time.

Mistakes live in that silence.

Not dramatic ones. Small ones. A decision made too quickly. A frustration not fully swallowed. A calculation that made sense thirty seconds ago and doesn’t anymore.

Once, between calls, someone took me.

Not ceremonially. Not cleverly. Just impulsively, like an idea that didn’t pause long enough to understand itself.

The medics had stepped out for less than a minute. Gloves off. Doors open. One problem handed over, another already waiting. This is how gaps form.

I was still running.

Lights on. Engine warm. Radio alive with instructions meant for someone else.

The person who climbed into my driver’s seat did not know what any of it meant. The switches. The pedals. The weight. They pressed things until noise happened and moved forward with confidence unrelated to skill.

I traveled approximately ten feet.

That was all the road allowed.

I met the hospital head-on — not violently, not dramatically, just decisively, like two systems realizing at the same moment they were never meant to overlap.

Everyone stopped.

There was a pause long enough for someone to ask a question no one answered. Then laughter broke out in the wrong place, sharp and brief, the way it does when the alternative would be worse.

Paperwork followed.

It always does.

Words like unauthorized operation and minor collision appeared. Someone asked how this could happen. Someone else explained how it always happens: a moment, an unlocked door, a person mistaking availability for permission.

I was turned off. Restarted. Inspected. Declared functional.

The medics climbed back inside me without ceremony. No one made a speech. Humor, like oxygen, is rationed in places like this.

We returned to service.

Because the rule is not nothing goes wrong.

The rule is keep going anyway.

Sometimes the medics sit inside me for a moment after the doors close, hands resting where they don’t need to be yet. They stare forward. They breathe. No one speaks. Then the radio interrupts, as it always does, and whatever was almost acknowledged is put back where it belongs.

The hospital appears the way it always does — suddenly and not soon enough. Doors open. Responsibility transfers. Hands release what they were holding too tightly.

I do not stay to see what happens next.

That is not avoidance.

That is design.

My doors close. The radio crackles. Another address is spoken. Another urgency is assigned. There is no ceremony between one life and the next.

I move.

I am not the hero of these stories. I am not the villain. I am the hallway between moments that matter more than I do. I am the place where systems try their best under impossible conditions and sometimes fall short.

I do not promise safety.

I promise motion.

And when I fail — when something goes wrong despite procedure and intent — I do what I was built to do.

I clear the way for what comes next.