I’m opening the windows in the ambulance’s rear compartment and marveling at the Indian summer weather when the call comes in. My partner, Bronson, and I check the computer mounted on the dashboard and read: “33 y/o female with back injury.” The address is in East Flatbush.

We pull up to the dilapidated two-story brownstone to find a woman sitting on the stoop, squinting in the brilliant sunshine. She’s about 250 pounds, dressed in a tight, low-cut top and satin poom-poom shorts. We get out of our vehicle and approach her.

“Ma’am?” Bronson asks. “What’s wrong?”

She gestures to her lower back. “I got pain.”

“Can you describe it?” I ask.

“Bad,” she says. A gold-capped vanity tooth with a tiny filigree devil embossed on it glimmers in the sunlight.

Bronson sighs. “On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the worst. …”

“Ten.”

“How long have you had the pain?”

“About four weeks.”

Bronson looks up from his paperwork. “Why’d you wait so long to seek help?”

“I thought it would get better.” She explains that she just moved to New York from Philadelphia and that it’s been tough for her to get on her feet.

“Foot pain…” Bronson makes a note.

“Financially.”

He strikes it out.

“How’d it happen?” I ask.

She blushes and covers her face with her hands.

“Let’s go into the ambulance,” I say. “It’s more private.”

Inside, I strap her into the stretcher. Beside her, a cabinet of normal saline bags and packages of clear plastic oxygen masks glisten in the bright afternoon light.

Bronson says, “Now, just tell us everything.” But she doesn’t speak. He sighs impatiently. “You’re going to have to tell the doctor anyway.”

“Look,” I say, tightening the straps. “We’ve heard everything.” And we have. Everything.

The woman laughs. “Well, let’s just say I found myself in an … incriminating position.” She grows modest. “More than that I don’t want to say.”

“I get your drift,” Bronson says, and continues his paperwork. He fills out everything while I take the woman’s vitals and give her a brief physical exam, which reveals pain on palpation to her lumbar vertebrae, radiating to the left. Maybe a slipped disc.

Bronson comes to the final question, at the bottom of the paperwork, the box for worker’s comp marked: “Work Related? Yes or No.” It’s imperative that this box be filled out, for insurance purposes.

Bronson keeps a straight face. “Ma’am? Was this … uh … work-related?”

The bag of saline from the cabinet twinkles in a shaft of sunlight as it sails past Bronson’s head.

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.