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swimming cap. All the mannequins’ mouths gape open like sex dolls’. Many of them are just heads and torsos without arms or legs. These are for working on with chest compressions and mouth resuscitations. One mannequin, Rescue Randy, is dressed in real clothing and looks the most human. He is filled with sand and weighs 160 pounds, and is designed to duplicate an unconscious adult male. I tug at his legs to move him. He doesn’t budge.
    With the help of a classmate I haul Randy around the classroom, hitting his head on the desks and wooden baseboards. “You killed him!” Frank yells jubilantly at me. “He had a heart attack and now he has a fatal head trauma.”
    By the end of the class I am in my usual trembling sweat. The sheer physical exertion of becoming an EMT is something I never thought about. It seems we are always moving, stepping, squatting, pushing on someone. We have to be careful not to step on their arms or legs, to walk over their chest, to further damage the patient beyond what is already wrong with them.
    The big rubber mannequins look so inhuman it is easy to forget they are supposed to be people. I find myself pulling them around by their faces, or reclining against their armless torsos during the breaks as if they were toss pillows.
    It is always good to take a break. We are given one midway through the class. All the smokers run outside. I join them although I don’t smoke. Frank smokes. He tells us that one of the big stresses for EMS personnel is bad health habits as he drags on his second cigarette.
    I like it outside because the winter air is cold and dry and it wakes me up and dries off the sweat from working in the classroom. People still have not connected. There isn’t the usual stoop chatter one hears among coworkers. People smoke in silence.
    At the end of the class I get my coat from the hooks in the back of the room and leave. I am the last to leave because I have helped stack the chairs against the wall, something the cops demand we do. In the quiet parking lot I see someone standing alone by her car. It is Dot. She looks upset. I stop and talk to her. She tells me she thinks people in the class hate her. She seems so beaten down and miserable that I talk to her for what seems like an hour.
    My hands and feet are freezing but Dot seems to be unaware of the cold. “No one wants to work with me,” she moans. “When I join a group the guys completely ignore me or give me looks that could kill.”
    I don’t know what to say to her, so I am honest. I’m not sure it is the best policy but I am too cold to think of anything better. “Maybe you should not raise your hand so much, just keep your opinions to yourself.” Basically I am telling a bright person to act stupid. This is not going over well.
    She starts to argue with me.
    “Think of this like boot camp,” I say. “The medics are here to weed out the weak. They want to break us down, so just get tough and don’t take it personally.”
    As I am talking, one of the cops pulls out of the driveway in his patrol car. He yells, “Don’t park in our spaces!”
    Frank, who has packed up his lecture notes, pulls out in his SUV. “Good-bye, Frank,” I call out and wave. He doesn’t answer.
    Dot still looks miserable. I ask her what EMS service she is joining after we graduate.
    “Georgetown,” she says.
    The class is given its first test. I score an 80. I am devastated by how mediocre I am. I do nothing but study. This is a class filled with young cops and firemen, and I have a graduate degree from Yale. How can I be less than brilliant? I look at Dot’s paper; she has gotten 100. Frank has even scrawled “good job” on the top. I am wild with jealousy.
    Because Dot has claimed the seat next to me and she is left-handed, everything she has on her desk is aimed right at my line of sight or resting on my right leg. She is also a sprawler. I am anal about my textbooks, my pristine white notebook, the boundary lines of my desk