As a first responder, do you have ghosts? Not the kind you see on Halloween, but the kind that creeps in when you least expect it—when the lights are off, when the sirens fade, when you’re finally alone with your thoughts. The kind that crawl out from the corners of your mind, whispering memories of "the bad calls"—the ones that never quite leave you.
I am not ashamed to admit that I do. For me, it starts innocently enough. Maybe it's a flash—a fleeting image of a face I couldn’t save, a name I never learned, a hand that reached for me in desperation and was lost before I could grab it. And then, suddenly, it’s there. That feeling creeping down my spine like a cold, clammy hand. The sensation that I could never outrun. The nagging thought: Did I do everything I could? You know the ones. The calls that seemed to stretch time and forever burned into your brain so deeply that even years later, your body tensed at the thought of it. Hell, you might feel it now as you read these words!
They never announce themselves. The ghosts. They don’t knock politely on your door. No, they lurk in the silence, stillness, and shadows of your thoughts. And once they find their way in, they don’t leave. At night, they whisper—when your mind is vulnerable and your body is too tired to fight them off. A flash of an image in your dreams, a sound in the dark that jolts you awake. And for a second, just a second, you're back in the chaos, the blood, the hopelessness. The person you couldn’t save is there again, and you’re just as powerless as you were in that moment.
It’s the *bad calls* that linger the longest. The ones that twist in your gut, knotting up your insides. You know the ones… I mean—the ones that make you feel like you’re drowning, even though you're standing perfectly still. They stay with you, hiding in plain sight, disguised as fleeting thoughts, until one day, they creep up on you from behind, cold fingers brushing your shoulder. “Remember me?” they seem to whisper, “You didn’t save me.”
How do you exorcise those ghosts? How do you confront them without losing yourself? You can’t, not really. They don’t vanish because you wish them away. They just… hang around. But here’s the thing—what you can do is keep moving. Keep going. Because every time you hear a siren, every time you run toward the danger instead of away from it, you’re telling those ghosts you’re not afraid. You’re telling them, “I’ll carry you with me,” but you won’t stop. You won’t let them win.
The hardest part? It’s not just the calls. It’s the knowledge that there will always be more. More lives to save, more hearts to break, and more ghosts to chase. But you're a first responder. You don't run from ghosts. You run straight at them, flashlight in hand, ready to face whatever nightmares are lurking in the dark.
Because the real horror? It’s not the ghosts themselves. It’s forgetting how to keep moving forward despite them.
So, how do you process the calls that don’t end in a fairy tale? The ones where the hero doesn’t get to ride off into the sunset or even make it to the damn hospital? The calls that leave you standing there, staring at a life lost, wondering if you could’ve done just one more thing to change the outcome. How do you make sense of those moments? Spoiler alert: you probably don’t. But you try. You try by stacking those ghosts in the back of your mind, where they quietly hover, waiting for the right moment to come out and haunt you—usually around 3 AM when your brain decides that now is the perfect time to remind you of that one call you couldn’t fix. Thanks, brain. Real helpful.
You might also seek therapy because—surprise!—talking about it helps! Sure, that’s the advice you’ve heard a thousand times, and you’ve probably dismissed it a thousand times. But somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it’s true. The ghosts don’t just vanish because you ignore them. They stick around, waiting for your guard to drop, because that's what ghosts do—they love a good crack in the armor. And, if you continue to ignore the signs, you will always be primed and ready for a scare.
So, what have I done to confront my ghosts? Boy, there are so many that sometimes their faces blend together. Twenty-six years is along time for them to gather in the confines of my mind.
As I said, therapy works… but it’s not the magic fix everyone hopes for. It wasn’t some quick cure that made everything better or made the ghosts leave me alone. No, for me, therapy was just the start—a place to begin the slow, painful process of learning to live with what I couldn’t change. I thought I could outrun my ghosts. Literally.
I mean, I ran *a lot*. Twice a day for a year, sometimes pushing myself to around a hundred miles a week or more. Eventually, I found myself running ultramarathons, hours of endless pavement and dirt stretching out in front of me, my legs screaming, my body breaking down, and my mind… well, my mind was free, or at least that’s what I thought. In the agony, the sweat, the blisters, and the unbearable loneliness of it all, I realized something important. The mind plays tricks on you. It doesn’t just help you forget. It finds new ways to haunt you.
One night, around 2 a.m., I was deep into one of those insomnia runs. The kind where the world feels like it’s paused, where there’s nothing but the rhythmic pounding of your feet on the pavement and the harsh gasps of your breath. I’d been battling insomnia for months, the kind of sleepless nights that stretch on forever, twisting your thoughts until they feel like they’re going to choke you. So, when I couldn’t sleep, I ran. It was the only thing that worked—at least, it burned off the anxiety of it all.
A few miles in, lost in that meditative state, my feet moving without thinking, something shifted in the woods off to my right. A shadow. A figure. And it moved.
Now, you can be the toughest person in the world, but if you’re running through the woods in the dead of night and you see something shift in the dark that shouldn’t be there, your body reacts before your brain even has a chance to process it. That cold, icy grip of fear tightened around my chest like a vice. My heart skipped. A shiver ran through me, and suddenly, I wasn’t just running anymore. I was back.
Back to that night. Back to the road. Back to the moment, I couldn’t outrun—the death I couldn’t stop.
I don’t care how many miles you’ve run, how many races you’ve finished, or how much pain you can tolerate. In that instant, when the shadows seemed to stretch toward me like the hands of the dead reaching from the past, my mind slammed me with the image of a life slipping away. The face of a young man, stuck in the road, eyes wide, waiting for help I couldn’t give. The screech of the tires, the frantic calls for help, the utter helplessness of standing there, knowing there was nothing more I could do. I failed. And that failure—well, it doesn't just vanish. It follows you. It haunts you.
I wanted to stop, wanted to turn around, and sprint back home, away from the memory, away from the guilt. But in the silence of the night, in the quiet stretch of road, I couldn’t escape. It was like the ghosts were running right alongside me, their cold fingers brushing against my neck, reminding me of the things I couldn't fix, the people I couldn’t save.
And that's when I learned—the mind doesn’t let you outrun it. Not completely. The ghosts don't disappear just because you're fast or strong or determined. They follow you. The more you run, the more they’re there, waiting, like shadows that never leave.
So, yeah, I confronted my ghosts that night, but not in the way I expected. I didn’t outrun them. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with them, breathing hard, covered in sweat, the cold night air biting at my skin as they stood, staring, waiting for me to acknowledge them.
It wasn’t the end of the story, though. It never is. But it was a moment—maybe the first moment—where I understood that you don’t get rid of the ghosts. You learn to share space with them, to run beside them. Because they’re never going to stop haunting you. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe, as first responders, we are not supposed to forget the lives we have crossed.
It’s been three years since that night, and I’m still learning to accept my ghosts. I don’t run from them anymore. When they show up—and they always seem to pick the most unexpected moments—I don’t push them away. I don’t shut the door. Instead, I let them in. They’re part of me now, and I’ve come to understand that I don’t need to fear them. They’re not here to torment me. They’re just reminders of the journey I’ve walked, of the lives I’ve touched, of the pain I’ve faced. And while I still carry them, I’ve learned how to move forward with them, not against them. The weight’s still there, but it’s not as heavy as it once was.
As always, watch out for each other and stay safe, Dr. M
