Bronson and I are driving around Surf Avenue in the cold, watching the trash blow along the windswept streets, trying to imagine what this place will look like when it’s developed.

“I hope the Shooting Gallery will stay,” I say.

It’s where my husband took me on our first date, killing varmints and other Wild West critters with a plastic rifle, popping off fake rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, and saloonkeepers.

“I like the Freak Show,” Bronson says, pointing to the artsy murals painted on the side of a building: a sword swallower, a man hammering nails into his nose, and a woman eating insects.

I note the shacks with their flea market trash spilling out onto the sidewalks, the loud techno beat of the amusement parks, and the general unwholesomeness of the place, and say, “But could you really imagine bringing your child here?”

He looks at a bum buying a hot dog from one of the few vendors still open. “This place was great when my parents were young, but it’s gone to seed.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I say, “level everything except the landmarks. The new generation will make its own memories.”

We’re parked by the Cyclone when we get a call for a “major burn” — a 78-year-old woman on the second floor of a private house. “Speaking of the old generation,” he says. We pull up to a sagging wooden structure and see a fire truck parked outside. “The heroes are here,” Bronson says. Upstairs, three firefighters are talking to an elderly woman sitting up in bed with second-degree burns to about 30% of her body: her back, one arm, one breast. The skin is red and blistered. She says she wants no help; it doesn’t hurt; all she needs is some Dannon yogurt. “To cool it off,” she says. “Not the blueberry. Get me the plain.”

Bronson unpacks a couple of burn sheets from his medical bag. “What happened?” he asks her.

She explains, “I was smoking a cig. Threw it into that ashtray there —” she points to an ornate brass thing standing beside her night table. “But really it landed on my pajamas.” She points to a heap of sodden, burnt flannel lying on the floor. “My granddaughter put me out with some water.”

A younger woman, about 30, is visibly upset. “I doused her, and I’m just glad I was home to do it. A year ago she burned down her apartment and came to live here. But I can’t have this. I have three baby children. The whole house could have burned down.”

The elderly woman continues,”I ain’t in no pain. I don’t want no hospital.”

Bronson says to her, “Ma’am, you have second-degree burns. You have to go to a hospital.”

She gives him a wary look as he rips open a sterile burn sheet package, pours a liter of saline into it, and removes the moist burn sheet from the wrapper with his fingertips. He unfolds it and goes to drape it over her burns.

She recoils. “What’s that?”

“Yogurt,” he says, and drapes it over her skin. She immediately sinks into the pillows and closes her eyes. Together, we wrap her in a clean white sheet and place her on the stair chair. On the sidewalk, she says, “The cold air feels good.”

We’re inside the ambulance when medics show up. They spike a bag of fluids and start an IV. I hook her up to our portable oxygen tank as Bronson gets behind the wheel and heads for the Staten Island University Hospital’s burn center.

As we ride, I gaze out the windows at the passing scenery.”You know, they’re thinking of renovating this whole place,” I tell the old woman. “Tear down everything and make it a year-round amusement park, for all ages. Wholesome. The kind you could bring your grandkids to.”

She reminisces. “Walking on the boardwalk, going for a ride on the parachute jump. I went on the Wonder Wheel my first date with my husband.”

I practically shout, “I came here with my husband on our first date, too!”

She nods knowingly. “Lots of people do.” Then she sighs. “It sure would be nice to see it nice again.”

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