My regular partner, Bronson, is out sick – actually he’s on vacation in Key West with Rachel, the triage nurse from Maimonides. Before he left he told me he’s going to propose. He even showed me the ring. It was pretty tasteful – a solitaire in a filigree setting – which is surprising, since he picked it out himself. His idea of a romantic dinner is chicken sandwiches at Roll-n-Roaster, followed by a beer at Buckley’s. I can picture him on the beach under a palm tree, getting down on one knee, and then losing the ring in the sand.

What this means for me is that I’m riding with a newbie. He’s 21 years old and fresh out of the EMS Academy. He’s sitting in the passenger seat, reviewing pulse rates and blood pressures for adult and pediatric patients, and I remember my first days with Bronson. We both didn’t know what we were doing. Gunshot wound? Um, try some gauze? Not breathing? Hey, should this ventilator piece pop off like that? Countless hours of easy camaraderie, quality jokes, comfortable silence, and shared confidences.

I sigh. The newbie’s name is Mitch. It’s his third day out, and he doesn’t have a clue. Since he’s not cleared to drive, he’s going to do patient care and the paperwork. Double bad news: He has zero experience with patients, and I have zero sense of direction. On top of it all, he’s got ants in his pants and he won’t shut up.

I grunt in reply, but he doesn’t seem to need an interlocutor; he’s a one-man hyperactivity disorder. “Hey, ADD-boy,” I say. “Shut up.” I’m thinking this is going to be a long tour, when we get a call to an elderly cardiac. I turn on the lights and sirens and fly down the street, weaving past cars, occasionally going left of center. Mitch holds on to his seat for dear life, looking like a deer caught in headlights. I remember that burst of adrenaline mixed with fear: not knowing what you were going to encounter, not knowing what was going to happen next; knowing only that it was up to you to correct the situation, to fix things, to make it better.

When we get to the apartment in Crown Heights, the patient’s home health aide tells us she came to work and found the old lady unconscious on the floor. From across the room I can see the woman is dead, with rigor mortis and dependent lividity. “Let’s 83 it,” I say, radio-talk for a dead on arrival.

Mitch clears his throat and politely disagrees. “Since I’m doing the paperwork, I’d like to do my own assessment.”

I’m dumbfounded. She’s clearly dead, in a new pink fleece nightgown that was probably an early Christmas gift. I take a deep breath and step back. “Sure,” I say. “Knock yourself out.” He prepares to lift the woman’s arm over her face and let it drop – what we do to “unconscious” drunks: If their hand instinctively avoids their face, they’re playing possum. If it smacks them in the nose, they’re truly unresponsive.

He raises the woman’s stiff arm with difficulty, releases it, and watches it slowly sink back to her side. If I had a camera, I’d take pictures. He checks for lung sounds on her cold blue chest, feels for bilateral radial pulses, and tries to take a blood pressure. He uncaps his pen and marks a circle with a slash in every box.

I’m amazed the Fire Department would hire somebody so clearly incompetent. And, given how nearly impossible it is to get fired from EMS, we’re now stuck with him. I watch as he feels the woman’s neck for a carotid pulse. Lucky for him, this patient is dead. I give him two weeks before his first civilian complaint from a live patient comes in.

After he’s done writing up the paperwork, I check it over. If he’s going down, I’m not going with him. “What the hell is this?” I shout, uncapping my pen and changing the narrative section so that it resembles the scene we actually have before us. I strike a line through all of his mistakes and initial each one. Then I radio for the cops. Police officers have to sit watch until the medical examiner comes to take the body to the morgue.

When they arrive, Mitch is kneeling on the floor, checking the woman’s pupils to see if they are reactive to light. I excuse my idiotic partner and give them the scenario. Then I turn to one of the officers and ask, “Can I borrow your firearm?” He chuckles. “I’m quite serious,” I say.

“Rookies,” he says, shaking his head.

I find the phone number of a relative on the refrigerator and leave a message on his answering machine. Ordinarily, this would depress me, a woman’s dying alone in the middle of the night in a new fleece nightgown. But Mitch is so amazingly incompetent that I’m more astounded than anything.

Mitch insensitively leaves the patient uncovered and walks across the room to pack up his equipment. I kneel beside the woman and cover her gently with a blanket. I turn around to find Mitch talking to the cops, their eyebrows rising in alarm as he puffs up his chest.

“I took the police test last week,” he says, proudly.

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.