Bronson and I are deciding what to eat on one of our rare evening shifts. We both hate these tours: the rush hour car accidents, people overeating at dinner and having chest pain, people getting drunk after dinner and getting into fights, sometimes with weapons.

It’s the worst time frame for glimpsing humanity in any neighborhood, affluent or crumbling.

Bronson is thinking aloud. “Cold cuts and potato salad,” he is saying as the call comes in for a “priority 1,” the most urgent of calls, almost always either a cardiac or respiratory arrest. Bronson gets excited since neither of us has done any CPR for a while. Now that he’s a paramedic student, he loves assisting medics on these calls.

I’m less excited. It’s no fun to do CPR in this kind of heat. I also note that the computer screen mounted inside the ambulance indicates that the male patient, lying on the sidewalk unconscious and apparently not breathing, is only in his 30s.

I sigh. “Probably a drunk,” I say.

It’s rare for young people to have heart conditions — these usually develop after years of bad eating and lack of exercise, combined with certain genetic factors — and unless the man was physically assaulted or struck by a car, I’m ready to wager that he’s indeed breathing but that someone panicked and called 911.

Bronson quickly points out — as he’s driving — that the text a little farther down says the male looks dead and that he has a weapon in his hand. Plus, there are two callers, a male and a female, who corroborate the story.

“So the call must be real,” he says, and puts the pedal to the floor.

“Know what?” I ask. “Let’s get there in one piece, okay?”

I click my seatbelt and hold on to the hand grips mounted above the passenger side door. “No reading the computer while you’re driving toward oncoming traffic.”

Miraculously, we arrive safely at the job on a quiet, dark, tree-lined street off Ocean Parkway. I look around but don’t see any action. Suddenly, a fire engine company, acting as CFRs — certified first responders — pulls up a block away. We drive over and find a heavyset male lying on the sidewalk under a large tree. From the look of him, he’s sleeping. And the stench of alcohol permeates the air, a sour unmistakable odor that I personally can’t stand.

I put my ear close to his head.”Snoring!” I say, wishing I could get my hands on whoever dialed 911 for this.

Bronson bends over the guy. The weapon in his hand? An egg roll with a bite or two taken out of it. I laugh as Bronson curses.

The firefighters are musing about the great spot the drunk picked to pass out: under a nice tree on a warm and humid evening, a fine breeze blowing. “Idyllic, actually,” one of the firefighters says.

Bronson wakes the man up, first by jiggling his shoulder, then by pinching his eyebrow.

The man stumbles to his feet, dropping the egg roll. We ask him three questions, and in a heavy Russian accent he’s able to tell us his name, where he is, and what day of the week it is, so we decide he’s mentally fit and was simply napping after having one too many. Were he unable to answer any of those questions, we would take him to the hospital as someone not competent to refuse our medical assistance.

It’s everyone’s personal business whether they want to get plastered or not. But if you pass out and someone calls 911, we’re not leaving the scene until we know you’re either with it enough to weave your way home or safely in the back of our ambulance on the way to sober up in a hospital bed, at the mercy of a bunch of overworked ER nurses who will try make your stay a living nightmare.

“You sure you’re okay?” I ask the drunk.

“Da, da,” he assures us.

I raise a hand in farewell, and say sarcastically, “Go with God.”

Bronson cancels the paramedics. The drunk picks up his mangled egg roll and staggers off across busy Ocean Parkway, probably to find another nice big tree to fall asleep under. He passes through the speeding cars like that scene in “Little Big Man” where the blind old Indian meanders across the prairie during a massacre, magically avoiding the soldiers’ bullets.

I shake my head. “Drunks — oops, I mean ‘public drinkers’ — really are an amazing breed.”

When Bronson and I get back into our ambulance, I clap my hands and say, “So. What about dinner?”

We look at each other, cracking grins. “Egg rolls,” we say in unison, and burst out laughing. “Definitely egg rolls.”

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