“Jesu est la,” the man keeps saying to the woman on the bed, clutching her hands in his. “Jesu est la.”

“Jesus is here,” my partner Bronson translates for me.

I elbow him in the ribs. “I took high school French,” I say.

The call had come in for a “woman unable to walk.” She’s on the bed on her side, moaning, with eyes closed and tears streaming down her face.

“It came on sudden,” the man says. He turns out to be her brother. Also in the room are two teenaged boys, both with tear-streaked faces and each one holding onto the woman’s shoulders, begging her, pleading, saying, “Mama … Mama …”

We learn from the brother that she has breast cancer, diagnosed four weeks ago at Kings County Hospital, requiring surgery.

“When is the surgery?” I ask her.

“She no have surgery,” the brother says.

I’m dumbfounded. Mastectomies save lives. “Why not?”

The woman looks me squarely in the eye. “I come into this world with everything God gave me, I go out with everything God gave me.”

“But Ma’am,” I protest. “Surgery will save your life.”

“God saves my life,” she insists.

It’s hard to argue with her, so we fix up the stretcher and prepare to take her to the hospital. Her pressure is a little high and her pulse is a little fast. Not reason in itself for a trip to the hospital, but the brother did call 911, so I assume they still want to go.

“I want to pray first,” the brother says.

Bronson and I blink. We’ve been called to a 911 job. That means “emergency.” There are other calls constantly coming in, serious calls for cardiacs and asthma attacks, requiring ambulances to drive clear across Brooklyn to get to them. The system is abused, EMS workers are overworked, and this family wants to take the time out to pray before getting in our ambulance?

Bronson and I look at each other. Fighting with them would take up just as much time. “Okay,” we shrug.

The brother, the woman, and the two teenaged boys all clasp hands, and the brother turns his face to the ceiling, closes his eyes, and starts to pray in Creole. The woman has her eyes winched tight, and tears leak out of the boys’ closed eyes as they sway.

Bronson and I fix the sheet on the stretcher though it doesn’t need fixing. I brush invisible pieces of dust off my perfectly clean uniform.

Finally, they’re done. We move in to assist the woman to the stretcher. But she pushes us away. She practically springs up from the bed and, on stiff but perfectly serviceable legs, begins to walk across the floor. “You see? I can walk!” she shouts.

The brother repeats, “Jesu est la.”

We get her onto the stretcher and roll the stretcher into the ambulance.

At Kings County, the triage nurse asks her the basic intake questions: Allergies? Medications? Do you drink? Do you smoke? Are you sexually active?

The woman pauses. “Not since I found Jesus.”

The nurse reviews her history. “When are you scheduled for surgery?” she asks.

“No surgery,” she says.

The nurse is as dumbfounded as I was. A Haitian nurse is called over. She speaks Creole to the woman, explaining why she should opt for the mastectomy.

“Non,” the woman insists.

The Haitian nurse gives up pretty quickly. “There’s no arguing with these types. Trust me.”

“I go with God,” the woman says.

“But Ma’am,” I say, pointing to the doctors walking by with stethoscopes around their necks. “God is also here in this hospital.”

She looks at me, and I think maybe I’ve gotten through to her. Then she turns away.

Ms. Klopsis is an emergency medical technician for the FDNY. This column details her observations and experiences on the job. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients.