It’s early in the morning, still dark out, when the call comes in for a “seizure” in a second-floor apartment on Flatbush Avenue.

Bronson yawns. I’m not fully awake yet, despite the cup of tea I’m drinking. I nestle it between the computer terminal mounted between our seats and the radio on the dashboard, jamming in wads of napkins to secure it. The keyboard is sticky with untold numbers of spilled beverages, and the radio no longer works.

“Great,” Bronson scolds me. “Destroy what little working equipment we have left.”

We used to have “cup holders” we had made out of splints and the cardboard canisters paramedics carry for depositing used sharps. Bronson had taped them to the dashboard with surgical tape. They broke.

I shrug, snap the lid over my tea, and fasten my seat belt. “This ambulance is so old, I’m just hastening the inevitable.”

“I like a clean machine,” he says.

“It’s held together with dirt,” I say. “Clean it too much, it’ll fall apart.” During downtime, when I’m usually engrossed in a good novel, Bronson is often busy wiping down the front cab with ammonia and paper towels. I sigh, and secure the tea more firmly. “Better, Felix?”

We park, keep the bus running with the heat going, and grope our way up along the dark staircase to the second floor. It’s a dirty little apartment with a sad, lit-up Christmas tree standing in the corner, slumped to one side. The dry needles fall to the floor as we walk past it to get to the heavy middle-age guy who’s sitting on the couch looking zonked. A plastic jug of Georgi vodka and an overflowing ashtray the size of a dinner plate sit next to him. A fat woman is standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a can of beer. There’s noise from the other end of the apartment, and someone stumbles across the hallway to the bathroom.

“We were partying,” the woman says. “And Shortie here had a seizure.”

Bronson and I kneel down beside the man. He looks post-ictal, glazed and docile. His eyes open for a moment, then close again.

“Shortie?” I say. “What’s going on?”

Eyes closed, he responds, “Okay, I got it.”

“Shortie-“

“Okay, I got it.”

I can smell the alcohol on his breath – sour. He’s a long-term alcoholic. “Do you take medication, Shortie?”

The woman hands me his bottle of Dilantin, an anti-seizure medication. “He hasn’t taken it in two weeks,” she says.

I tell Shortie I have to take his blood pressure.

“Okay, I got it,” he says. But he doesn’t give me his arm.

I tell him we have to go to the hospital.

“Okay, I got it.” He doesn’t get up.

“Shortie,” I say, “if you don’t get up, I’m going to have to call my lieutenant.” Since he’s drunk, he can’t legally RMA: refuse medical aid. “Shortie?”

Shortie doesn’t move, so I key up the radio.

The lieutenant is nearby and responds quickly. Upon arrival, she sees Shortie’s clearly post-ictal, and that he’s drunk. “Look, Shortie,” she says. “We can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way. The easy way is we go to the hospital. It’s early, not crowded, they’ll check you out and you’ll be home in a couple of hours. The hard way is we call the cops and they take you there in handcuffs.”

Shortie’s eyes fly open and he leaps off the couch, amazing considering his weight and post-seizure state. “No!” he shouts, knocking over the Georgi and the ashtray.

“Shortie!” the woman yells. “I want you outta this house! You’re not gonna have another seizure here and fall down on my floor!”

Shortie leaps to a nearby chair.”No!”

“Okay,” the lieutenant says, keying up her radio. “I’m calling the cops.You can tell them you don’t wanna go.”

Shortie yells, “I ain’t talkin’ to no cops!” He jumps off the chair and runs out the door, down the dark stairs, and into the street.

“Halt,” I say, sarcastically. “Stop. Freeze.”

“Dammit,” the woman says. “He forgot his slippers.”

We head out after him, but he’s gone. When a patient refuses our help and flees the scene, we usually don’t run after him. It’s a free country. We code it a “10-93 Refused All.”

I shrug. “Ninety-three?” I ask the lieutenant, and tear in half the paperwork I had started.

She sighs, nods, and covers her eyes. “See no evil.”

Bronson claps his hands over his ears. “Hear no evil.”

The woman comes out of the apartment building, cursing. “Well, hell. At least you got him outta my apartment.”

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.