My partner, Bronson, complains that things are falling apart between him and his current girlfriend.

“I’m not surprised,” I say.

He looks at me. “Why?”

“You’re a ladies’ man.” Bronson never cheats, but he flirts a lot.

We get a call for an EDP – an emotionally disturbed person – at a group home on Kings Highway. Group homes are residences for mentally challenged people whose families cannot care for them at home but who are not disabled enough to be placed in a hospital. Some homes are for the severely disabled, others for the mildly afflicted. The homes can be city-run or privately funded, secular or religious.

This one is for Orthodox Jews. We arrive to the smell of kasha varnishkes cooking on the stove and a kugel bubbling in the oven. A woman with a long denim skirt and a scarf covering her hair is busily setting paper plates at the table. Eight young Orthodox men will shortly be seated for dinner.

We’re told by the home manager, a kind-looking man in his 50s with red hair and a beard, that one of the members, who has a violent psychological history, is having a breakdown and needs to go to the psych ward.

“Maimonides,” he says, sounding tired. “Not Kings County.” He doesn’t want his charge to be brought to the G-Building of the largest city-run hospital in Brooklyn, but rather a nearby Jewish hospital, where the care is better. “But you should wait for the cops.”

The home, a three-story brick building, has recently been renovated with fresh sheetrock, double-glazed windows, freshly varnished floors, and new wooden doors on all the bedrooms. Homey touches abound, such as needlepoint samplers in Hebrew script and pictures of Jerusalem on the walls. Though this is a place for adults, a magazine rack holds a year’s worth of Ranger Rick, and the end table is heaped with construction paper and crayons.

“Why the cops?” I ask.

The patient is in a back bedroom of the house with the door closed. We hear a rhythmic thumping from inside as if he’s banging his head against a wall. We’re never supposed to enter a scene unless it’s safe, and Bronson reminds me that a psych patient with a violent past who’s banging his head is not safe.

While we wait for the police to arrive, we write down the patient’s name and age, the three different anti-psychotic medications he takes, and the fact that he’s been institutionalized since he was 13. He’s got a history of schizophrenia and of bipolar disorder. His parents live in Monsey, an ultra-Orthodox settlement upstate, but visit once a week.

The cops arrive, and we let them open the bedroom door.

Inside stands a stocky young man of about 25, dressed in khakis and a plain beige shirt, leaning against a wall banging his forehead gently against it.

“What’s that on his head?” Bronson asks. It’s wrapped with a black band of some sort.

“It’s tefillin,” I tell him. “It’s for praying.”

But on second glance, I see I’m wrong. It appears to be an electrical cord and is wound tightly around his head from crown to chin, reminding me of those old “Little Rascals” films where the guy with a toothache wraps his head with a rag. The wire is wound around his face, the socket part dangling from his chin, the excess cord trailing behind him. A red circular bruise is forming where he’s banging his forehead.

“Look out before you touch him,” the manager says. “He’s punched people out in the past.” He rubs his tired face. “We just can’t handle him anymore.”

The police try and talk the patient down. They get him to stop banging his head, but he refuses to unwrap the cord or go to the hospital. After 10 minutes, they convince him. They’re going to escort us, even though the patient is not in cuffs. He may turn violent at any time and I’m scared of him. An EDP off his meds is a wild card and can easily have the strength of three men.

The police lead the patient to our ambulance, and we sit him on the bench seat. I gingerly click a seatbelt across his lap and stand back as he begins rocking again. “Sir?” I ask. “May I take the electrical cord off your head?” When I try to, he glares at me. “Okay,” I soothe him, pulling my hand away. “You can keep it on.”

We pull into the Maimonides ER ambulance bay and are met with a line of patients before us, all brought in on stretchers in varying stages of medical crisis. EMTs lean against the walls, finishing up paperwork. Our patient leans against a wall with them.

“Should we get him a chair?” I say. Maybe if he sits down, no one will notice him.

“No!” the police officer warns me. “You never give an EDP a chair. He may throw it at you.”

I look at the patient’s eyes and hope he doesn’t choose this place to freak out in. There are medical carts and supplies everywhere. An oxygen tank could become a weapon.

Bronson, the cops, and the manager all stand around, getting in everyone’s way. I approach the triage nurse, explain the situation to her, and ask her if we can go directly to the area where the psych patients are processed.

She’s a beautiful young nurse with dark hair in a chignon and snapping green eyes. “We don’t have a special room,” she says, up to her ears in triage. “He’ll have to wait out here.”

“But ma’am,” I say, “he may let loose.”

She looks over my shoulder at our patient, a steely glint in her eye. She marches over to him.

“Sir,” she says bluntly. “Why do you have an electrical cord around your head?” Without waiting for an answer, and as though she’s seen it every day, she expertly unwraps it and throws it into a wastebasket. To my surprise, the patient remains docile.

The triage nurse was able to do, solo, what two cops, the manager, and both Bronson and I failed to do. She took control of the situation. Even the cops are impressed.

“It’s because she has no fear,” Bronson says, awed.

“He smelled the fear on the rest of us,” I agree. EDPs often can tell when you’re scared of them, and when you’re in control. The triage nurse leads the patient by the hand toward a vacant room, where she tells him he will sit and wait until the psychologist can be paged.

Bronson’s eyes light up. “That’s my kind of woman.”

But the nurse doesn’t acknowledge this. She’s already back at her triage desk, faced with another crisis case, typing new patient information briskly into a computer terminal.

As we get her to sign off on our paperwork and prepare to leave, Bronson tries to catch her eye, but she doesn’t even look up at him.

“Whoa there, Burt Reynolds,” I say, as we exit through the automatic glass doors. “You’ve got a girlfriend, remember?”

He reluctantly gets into the ambulance and places both hands on the steering wheel, too stunned to turn on the ignition. He turns his head and looks at me, and it’s a Bronson I don’t recognize.

“I think I’m in love,” he tells me.

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.