A Real Emergency: Stories from the Ambulance

Introspective, richly layered, and surprisingly hopeful, A Real Emergency is a love letter from a paramedic to the best and worst parts of her career.

For fifteen years, Joanna Sokol filled private notebooks with her confusion, humor, and anger toward the strange world of emergency street medicine. As her career on the ambulance progressed, she found herself taking notes on scraps of paper, the backs of gloves, and in the margins of EKG printouts. She listened to her patients' stories, left food out for their pets, and turned off the stove under their oxtail stews. Once, she read half a poem left in a dead woman's typewriter. She learned about the history that brought ambulances into their current role as the caretakers of society's forgotten and spoke to her colleagues about their own experiences and perspectives.

Those reflections are collected here, in a series of raw, powerful essays about the state modern healthcare.

Sokol's life as a paramedic took her to three different counties: the casinos and trailer parks of the Nevada desert, the cozy beach town of Santa Cruz, and, eventually, the crowded tenements of San Francisco's Tenderloin district. There are no clear villains or heroes in Sokol's world, only a group of patients and medics who are doing their best in a deeply broken system. 

Combining impactful research, compassionate reflections on her most memorable patients, and the strong voices of her fellow paramedics, Sokol takes readers deep into the everyday reality of 911 first responders, offering insight, empathy, and a reminder of both the power and limitations of care.

Author: Joanna Sokol
Publisher: Strange Light
Published: 06/03/2025
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 8.12h x 5.59w x 1.01d
ISBN: 9780771006579

About the Author
Joanna Sokol has worked on a 911 ambulance for ten years: along the beach in Santa Cruz, in the high desert of Reno, and on the steep streets of San Francisco. Before that, she spent time as a ski patroller, wilderness EMT, and medical stand by for raves and music festivals. She holds a paramedic license and a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz. During her time at the San Francisco Fire Department, she received an award for Clinical Excellence and served as a member of the Street Crisis Response team. Her literary work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Epoca, and Hazlitt, and she received a Sidney Award in 2019. Born and raised in Oakland, California, Sokol currently lives in Santa Cruz with her boyfriend and a very stubborn dog.