A Real Emergency

Stories from the Ambulance

De: Joanna Sokol

Narrado por: Joanna Sokol, Araya Mengesha, Emily Nixon, Wayne Ward

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 listeners deep into the everyday reality of 911 first responders, offering insight, empathy, and a reminder of both the power and limitations of care.

©2025 Joanna Sokol (P)2025 Strange Light

Reseñas de la Crítica

"After a decade on the frontlines of a very broken system, Joanna Sokol has let loose one hell of a memoir: compelling, shocking, funny, galling, urgent, and beautiful. The best I've read in quite some time."—Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author

"A Real Emergency deserves a place among the great work memoirs. Compassionate, humourous, a flat-out fantastic book."—Caitlin Doughty, bestselling author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

“I would read Joanna Sokol’s grocery lists, her texts, her musings on anything. Her work is raw, poignant, and funny. She drops you into the rarely seen world of street medicine—Narcan and mending tools at the ready—in a way few other writers can. At a time when paramedics increasingly serve as safety-net bridges to care, A Real Emergency is a gift of understanding and, ultimately, hope.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus

Memorable stories!

A lot of really well told stories and gives you a ton to think about when it comes to the medical community. Very much worth the listen!

Insight into a crucial part of healthcare. I loved it.

This book is so much more than a paramedic’s journal entries over the course of her career. There is so much history of the first responder/mobile medicine field and the politics of how it’s operated today. I learned so much about homelessness, mental health and drug addiction. I loved the essays from other first responders. Parts of this book were stressful to listen to. I take it to heart that these stories are from an urban setting and not all paramedics have that kind of intensity.
I loved the ending of this book. A lot. It was thoughtful and insightful and educational and I hope that the industry can embrace the vision she has for it. First responders are such a vital part of our healthcare system. Personally I have so much respect and appreciation for Paramedics after I was able to say goodbye to my mother before she died because they gave her CPR after she had a heart attack while she was being transported to a hospital for dialysis. They brought her back and my sister and I got to be with her when she passed away the next day.

This book is not good for little ears and faint of heart. The explicit depictions in the stories, the F-bombs, and the intensity of this book isn’t light listening. But it’s worthwhile.

I decided to download this book because it turned up in my recommendations the same time a family member was finishing up his EMT training. I thought it would be interesting. Turns out that she is based in the same area that I grew up and have lived. I found her depictions of the Bay Area and Santa Cruz to be spot on.

If I have any complaint it would be that personally I’m not a huge fan of books read by the author. Often times I can’t listen to them. That said, the author did a good job and I liked that she got to literally tell her own story.

Wow!

These are such important stories to share. I’m so grateful to have been able to soak up these lived experiences. I hope that the right people listen and make necessary changes.

Lastly, loved Sokol’s narration!

Get out of my head!

This is spot on for what it’s like and what went thru my head working 911. Sokol’s artful prose with a liberal use of fuk paints the wild experience of ambulance life in such colorful and hard hitting vignettes. The listener gets to ride with Jo from her start to finish with EMS in Reno, NV to SF, CA. The addition of words from fellow EMS professionals broadens the experience to more than just her voice, showing the familiarity that all who work 911 EMS have.
Thank you Jo!!! Safe travels!

Curse words

I was met long before I became md. This account may be accurate but the disrespect and cursing is abhorrent! This author is a poor excuse of one I’d want to take care of a loved one or myself. There needs to be a warning for foul language before purchasing a book!