Dark. Heavy. Hilarious. This book made me lose sleep–a trainwreck I could not stop watching. I stayed up too late reading and then thinking about this book. I love learning about the underbelly of different industries. Kevin Hazzard’s memoir tells the daily story of EMTs and paramedics in gory detail. Hazzard’s career is based at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s public hospital. The hospital serves an inner city population and regularly encounters crazy people and significant trauma events. 

 A Thousand Naked Strangers makes you appreciate and worry about our first responders. They see and address unimaginable tragedy every day. They are not well compensated, and their training and resources are minimal. The job is thankless with heavy burnout. Hazzard finds a balance telling this story–its equal parts informative, terrifying, and sad. There are parts you don’t want to read, but he includes plenty of grim humor to lighten the text. 

Hazzard leans into the absurd nature of first responders’ day-to-day lives. A mundane shift to him and other paramedics would be one of the darkest days for 99% of the population. His reflections on death, trauma response, and the messy parts of humanity are worth reading.

Quotes

“Medicine’s great magic trick is how it convinces us we’re here saving lives when more often what we’re doing is witnessing death.”

“Grady Memorial Hospital looms large in Atlanta’s consciousness. To many, it’s a place of horror stories and ghost stories, of lawless halls teeming with the poor, the crazy, and the critically ill.”

“The shithole he’s referring to is an area known locally as the Bluff—five square miles of drug houses, flophouses, abandoned buildings, squatters, drugs, violence, desperation, and the constant woop-woop of sirens. The Bluff is Atlanta’s answer to Compton, to Chicago’s South Side, and to the Heartland’s countless and nameless meth-riddled trailer parks. It is where all of Atlanta’s heroin is sold and most of its crack is consumed. People here live in aging projects or derelict bungalows; when they aren’t getting into trouble, Pike says, they’re calling 911. He stomps on the gas and tears open the air with a long, loud burst of siren. Wake up, motherfuckers!”

“Zone Four is known for being quiet—two-calls-a-shift quiet—and attracts the lazy and the burned out. The coolest zone by far is Five. It includes Fulton Industrial Boulevard, which is nothing but factories, truck stops, strip clubs, and cheap motels. The factories and warehouses provide plenty of trauma, and the truck drivers provide everything else imaginable.”

“I learn, for instance, to leave the room immediately when a rookie cop starts to roll a bloated body, because it’s guaranteed to burst.”

‘Two beers, incidentally, is the magic number. Every staggering homeless man, every puke-covered lawyer, every passed-out college girl, they all have one thing in common: They’ve had exactly two drinks today.”