Black Flies #1

Shannon Burke's novel Black Flies is the story of Ollie Cross, a paramedic in Harlem in the 1990s. Ollie wants to go to medical school and be a doctor, but he does not have good enough MCAT scores to get in. In order to get some experience, Ollie works on an ambulance. He is shocked by what he finds. Ollie expected the medics to truly love saving people, however he learns not all the medics are the "good guys". They may treat patients, but they do not always do it with kindness and often abuse the people they are "helping". The patients are as diverse as the medics. Ollie encounters everyone from old homeless asthmatics to teenagers who have committed suicide to an obese man found rotting in his apartment. Black Flies recounts Ollie's experiences and how he responds to different emergency situations. When Ollie originally joins the Harlem medics, he is partnered with Rutkovsky, the veteran of the group. He immediately likes Rutkovsky because he is an excellent medic who does not abuse the patients or seek praise. So far in the novel Ollie is just adapting to the life of a paramedic and continues to be shocked by the people and injuries he comes in contact with.

Ollie's first real challenge comes when he is called to the scene of a teen suicide. A girl was found after jumping off a thirty floor building dead. It is not just the death that shocks him, it is the gruesomeness of it. Upon reaching the body Rutkovsky, "...bent and felt her neck and the back of her skill and lifted her shirt to examine her torso and saw what she'd done before she jumped - in rough, scraggly, red letters the words LIFE SUCKS were carved into her belly," (Burke 6). Ollie is just out of college and comes from a nice family. This is not something is he used to. Because the girl is obviously dead and does not require medical attention, Ollie is too stunned by what he is seeing to act. He watches his partner examine the body but does not participate. It must have come as quite a shock to discover the world is really so dark. I can relate to Ollie, coming from a nice family where I do not come into contact with death on a daily basis. This was disgusting for me to even read about! Just imagining the girl feeling so opressed by death that she would carve her stomach and jump of a building is enough to make me queasy. Reading this really made me decide not to go into medicine. Experiencing these things and having to be the strong person who acts and does not let the scene disturb them would not work for me. This scene broke my heart to hear of a girl so mad at life that she would kill herself, but also makes me squirm in disgust picturing the body.

I was also shocked to hear some of the terrible things the paramedics do. I would like to think that medics are the good guys who want to help everyone, but reading about these medics abusing their patients, leaving rotting dog carcases in each other's cars and taking pictures of them holding dead body parts really made me reconsider this thought. One of the medics that Ollie works with is LaFontaine. He likes to think of himself as the "big man on campus" who doesn't care about his patients and can take advantage of them. LaFontaine keeps, "... a snapshot of himself holding a fourteen-year-old girl's head like a bowling ball with his fingers in her nostrils, and in the alley in the background, forty-ouncers set up like bowling pins, as if he were about to roll her head at the bottles," (Burke 34). Ollie is once again shocked that a person he thought was a hero for saving lives could be so disrespectful to a dead girl. He is beginning to realize that things are not always as they seem to be. Someone may wear the medic outfit and save lives, but in actuality they are abusive to patients and disrespect them once they are dead. Picturing the photo is my head is very disturbing. Like Ollie, I like to think of paramedics as the good guys who like to help everyone as much as possible. I do think that one of the reasons these medics are so messed up is because of what they experience every day. They work in Harlem, so they see lots of nasty sights. After a while that takes a toll on a person and they become insensitive to it. I am hoping that Ollie does not fall into those habits and is able to remember that he wants to work in medicine to help others, not just make a pay check.

Black Flies is a very interesting account of life as a medic. I am hoping being a medic in Harlem is more gruesome than being a medic in most other places because if this is what is actually occuring all over the United States, that is a very disturbing thought. Hopefully Ollie is able to stand true to his morals and makes a difference in the lives of the people he helps.

Source
Burke, Shannon. Black Flies. New York: Soft Skull P, 2008.
*Black Flies should be underlined