“Glucagon, buddy. How are you doing?” A paramedic answered a question that I did not remember asking. He was pulling a needle out of me when my eyes began to open. Again, I reached to feel for my teeth, but now found that my arms, legs, chest, and head wouldn’t move. “Don’t try to do anything. Just relax for now.” Mr. Glucagon and his merry medics had strapped me down to what was beginning to feel like the world’s biggest cheese grater, and had wheeled me into their ambulance. I double-checked for missing chicklets, this time using my toungue.

Through the vehicle’s open rear doors, flashes of blue and red light pulsed in a rhythmic cadence identical to the beat of Huey Lewis’ “Heart of Rock n Roll,” illuminating cabinets full of emergency medical supplies within my limited field of vision.

There was no question that the young fellow in the blue uniform knew his job, and did it well. His foremost concern at the present time was getting my incapacitated carcass safely to a place where people even more well-qualified than he was could examine and evaluate any possibly hidden damage I might have done to my stupid self. Still, staring at the ceiling of his antiseptic ambulance, I could not help but see myself as the subject of some evil, though oddly humorous, interrogation. I also had to pee.

“Vaught iszh yaw name?”

“Jeff. What’s yours?” I muttered.

“Kon you viggle zee toez.”

I viggled.

“Iszh dayer zomevon you vish vee zhould call?”

In a moment of brilliant, extraordinary hypoclarity I realized that Nancy, my wife, would have left work already for her half-hour drive home, and she often stopped at the gym to exercise or to pick up some things at the grocery store. This was before we began carrying cell phones. It made no sense to have an EMT call my house; no one would be there. And I did not want Nancy coming home to an answering machine message that, for all I knew, could possibly leave unmentioned the fact that I had not assumed room temperature. So I gave them my parents’ phone number. I knew they were home because that was where I had just come from. They would be able to contact Nancy, or at least leave a proper message on our machine. It made sense. Utterly logical, hypoclarified, sense.

NOTE: For all you guys who are happily married, and want to stay happily married, listen up. Next time you’re strapped into a paramedic’s gurney in a hypoglycemic stupor, rationalizing like an imbecile that, just because you know your lovely bride is not at home to take a call from an EMT , maybe the EMT should call someone else, make him call your bride, even if she’s not home. Bride comes first. Bride first. Always. Bride. Then, and only then, anyone else.

My paramedic friend now asked me if there was anything in my truck that I wanted to take with us. Still ensnared within the mangled cab were my briefcase, test kit, and Igloo cooler. As I lie there tied to that God forsaken board of torture, I considered, for a flittering moment, a little self-depricating remark about leaving the test kit behind. What the hell, if I had used it when I should have, I wouldn’t be feeling like a piece of shredded Il Villagio Grana Padano on a house salad. But this was no time for jokes.

“My Rolex.” I still had to pee.

The EMT retrieved my test kit and briefcase from the wreckage, and said that we would be on our way shortly. “Are you still doing ok, Jeff?” he asked. “Do you have a preference where you’d like to go?”

“Heaven, if you can set it up.” He was making it too easy.

“What hospital would you like us to bring you to?” He withdrew and rephrased.

Something about bouncing around inside a truck like a human Rustoleum agitator ball makes you get religion. “St. Anne’s,” I requested. It was where I had gone through diabetic boot camp in ’82, and it was closer than any alternative. I also knew they had a bathroom.

Check back tomorrow for Part IV