Bronson and I fly to the Maimonides emergency room. Blood is dripping down his face from where a bird pecked him on his scalp on our last call. He’s also got a 1-inch laceration on his palm from where he dove into a pile of broken glass on the pavement while trying to escape the vicious bird.

But he’s happy. He’s going to be treated by Rachel, the beautiful triage nurse at Maimonides. She’s everything a good nurse should be: competent, assertive, calm, attentive to detail, and reassuring – all with a great bedside manner. Bronson can’t wait to get there.

Bronson has been coming to see Rachel for a number of weeks now. I know he gave her his phone number, and that they’ve seen each other after work once or twice – though Bronson refuses to talk about it. In these past few weeks, he’s changed. Though still a playful partner, he’s become less childlike, more mature. Not knowing the usual Bronson, some female EMTs and medics from other stations have been flirting with him.

“I hope it’s not busy,” he says, cutting through intersections in haste. “I want Rachel, not some ugly nurse with bad breath.”

We park in the ambulance bay, and before I can get out he’s passing through the sliding glass doors into the ER. Luckily for him, it’s slow, and Rachel is standing in white scrubs and rubber clogs, typing patient data into a computer terminal. When she looks up, she can’t help but grin.

“Well, well,” she says. “What have we got here?”

“Vicious bird,” Bronson says. “Attacked me.” He holds up his lacerated hand. “Also fell onto some glass.”

She laughs. “You klutz. Come here, let me have a look.”

He sits on a gurney and gives a self flattering version of what happened. “A deranged bird was going for an elderly man – I dove in to protect him, shielding him with my body. I pushed him to the ground and, steering him away from the broken glass, cut myself a little.”

Rachel smiles and takes Bronson’s vitals, noting everything on a chart. Then, because it’s slow, she treats him herself: cleaning his cuts with normal saline, swabbing them with an antibiotic solution, and bandaging them. “The good news is you don’t need stitches. But you do need a tetanus shot,” she says.

Bronson absorbs this for a minute. Then he starts to sweat. He didn’t expect this. “Oh jeez. I hate shots.”

Our unit is out of service due to injured personnel. I sit back and enjoy the show.

Rachel excuses herself for a moment. From across the ER, we watch her obtain the doctor’s orders. Then she comes back and prepares the syringe. She pulls fluid out of a clear upside-down vial, then flicks the syringe with her finger.

Bronson grows pale. He starts to breathe heavily.

Rachel lowers the syringe. “Oh, give me a break,” she says.

But he’s serious. He’s deathly afraid of needles.

“Big baby,” Rachel scolds. She grabs his upper arm and tries do it quickly, before he has time to register any of it, the way she would with a pediatric patient. But Bronson pulls away. She looks at me. “He’s kidding, right?”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

She attempts to inject him again, wiping his skin with an alcohol prep, but now he starts to hyperventilate in earnest. “Oh, for crying out loud,” she says.

Bronson is by now off the gurney and in a corner with his back to the wall.

“Want me to pin him down?” I ask, rising. I’d love to help torture Bronson. But when I try to catch him, he squirms out of my grasp. He’s a skinny guy, but tall, and I can’t win – not even with Rachel’s help.

Then, the fire in her eyes comes out. She stands close to him and puts a slender hand on his shoulder. She tells him to slow down his breathing. Given her height, she’s staring at him almost face to face, her green eyes shining with intelligence and compassion.

“If you let me do this,” she tells him evenly, “I think I can love you.”