My Name Is Iden | Put me in, coach
- Published: August 28, 2026
Bill was everything you’d expect from an emergency room frequent flyer — a real old-school wino straight out of central casting. He had a scraggly, unkempt white beard. He slurred, he shuffled, he stank — and because of that, we all treated him like he was shit.
I was 22 years old when I started working as a paramedic in the ER at Ohio State. I met Bill as soon as I started the night shift. Of course I did. Bill was in the ER a lot. Every. Single. Night. To be precise.
The local medic crews knew that, at some point in the night, they would get called for an unresponsive person near the south campus bars and convenience stores. They were so sure of having to run on Bill that they would drive around looking for him earlier in the day so they could get him arrested and he would be out of their district come nighttime. That way they wouldn’t have to wake up and deal with him.
That plan rarely worked out, and by midnight our radio would have crackled with, “OSU ER, Medic 7. Bill.” The charge nurse would give an exasperated “Copy” back to the medics, and I would find a bed to dump Bill on — he was too stinky to keep in the lobby — so we could stash him in some corner of the department.
Bill wasn’t actually a bad guy. He was a friendly enough drunk, and if it weren’t for the smell, he wouldn’t have been bad company. He didn’t even want to be there. Most times he was just minding his business, drinking himself to death in a parking lot, and some passerby would call 911. None of that mattered, though. There was never a thing wrong with Bill — besides, of course, his addiction, being unhoused and several untreated chronic conditions — and like every ER, everywhere, ever, we were overfull and understaffed. Bill was a waste of our time, whether he meant to be or not.
But as much as we wanted to ignore him, ER protocols dictated that we still had to interact with him, if only minimally. It was during these times that he would tell me his stories. He would slur on and on about how he was from a rich family in upstate New York. I didn’t believe that for a second. His favorite, though, was about how he played football for Woody Hayes. The exchange went like this:
“Have I ever told you how I used to play football for Woody Hayes?”
“Yes you have, Bill.”
“… then one day Woody says to me, ‘Bill, you like drinkin’ more than you like football. You’re off my team.’”
That one I believed.
Years went by like that. Every night we either ignored Bill or we made fun of him, most times right to his face. Then one night the medics called in with Bill, except this time they said he’d been hit by a car.
They arrived with him in a neck brace and fully immobilized on a backboard. The crew told us they found Bill how they always found Bill: unconscious in a parking lot. They said that he said he was hit by a car. The medics didn’t see any proof of that, but also they hadn’t really looked that hard.
The procedure for clearing someone off a backboard involves at least two people carefully rolling the patient onto their side while the physician examines their spine. Then the board is removed and the patient is carefully rolled back flat. Me and the doc modified that procedure slightly. We just dumped Bill off the board onto the bed, threw the board in the corner and walked away.
But, just as a matter of course, Doc did order some X-rays. Turns out ol’ Bill had indeed been hit by a car. Hard. Bill had a broken pelvis, internal bleeding and all four limbs fractured. He had graduated from annoyance to a Level 1 trauma alert faster than you could yell “Hike!”
Don’t worry. The story has a happy ending for Bill. He didn’t die, no thanks to us. He went to surgery, then to physical rehab. All that time in the hospital gave Bill the chance he needed to get sober, and that mythical rich family from upstate, they were real. They came and got Bill, and last I heard he was all clean and living with his family.
That all happened 20 years ago. I’ve had a long time to think about Bill, about how I treated him and about what he taught me. I often wonder now: What if we had just been nice to Bill? Not just us in the ER, but all of us all the way back to Woody Hayes. What if we had tried to get Bill into a rehab program instead of shoving him into a corner or getting him arrested? What if Woody had said, “Bill, you like drinkin’ more than you like football. It seems like maybe you could use some help”? What if we, as a society, stopped judging and punishing people as a reflex and instead started trying to understand them? How much suffering does our moralized cruelty and indifference cause in this world? What negative consequences does our casual cruelty lead to?
I’ve asked a lot of people those questions. They usually answer me by explaining how many bad, lazy, selfish people will use me if I am soft. How the liars and cheaters will take advantage of me. And they always say it with the same look on their face — like I’m a naive, sheltered little kid who doesn’t understand the world. I used to believe that kindness made me soft and softness made me weak. I believed that back when I was a naive kid. Now, I don’t think that could be further from the truth.
I have been a paramedic for nearly 30 years, and I know exactly how the world works. I’ve been neck-deep in poverty, crime, violence and addiction. I’ve been lied to. I’ve been insulted and assaulted. I’ve seen how terrible people can be to each other, and I know that that behavior is not limited to “them.” It’s all of us.
Bill wasn’t the only patient I treated like shit during my career, and he certainly wasn’t the only person I’ve judged during my life. And I wonder: What could I have changed in this world for the better if I had understood things then the way that I do now?
I’ve had plenty of teachers, most unacknowledged. Bill was one of them. Bill taught me that kindness isn’t naivety or weakness. Kindness is wisdom and softness is strength. I’ve seen a lot in my life as a medic. I’ve done a lot, and a lot of what I’ve done I am not proud of. I can’t undo past mistakes, but I can learn. I can get better and work to not repeat those same mistakes.
Bill wasn’t a young man, even back then, and I have no idea if he is still alive. I like to think so. And I like to imagine that the last 20 years have been kind to him. I like to imagine Bill back upstate, coaching a youth football team. Maybe he’s telling them about Woody. Maybe he’s teaching those kids something Woody Hayes never could have, and maybe he knows there was a young medic out there who remembered his story, and who grew up and did better because of his telling it.
*The author is an artist and writer. She lives in Yellow Springs with her wife and three children. You can follow her work at http://www.mynameisiden.com
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