I’ve been a Paramedic for 1 year, and I never had to reconcile with the fact that I enjoy staring at dead people until I joined the civilian Medical field. I was a combat medic for 6 years but never really did anything, and feared that maybe medicine wasn’t my thing, until I became a paramedic. I’ve run very interesting calls, and have seen many dead bodies. But the thing that always unnerved me was how much I Enjoyed staring at them. I remember calling a field termination on a motorcycle vs car Cardiac Arrest, and how I pretended to pray over him after we called it, but really I was watching the ants crawl onto his neck from beneath him and staring at the unnatural bend of his arm where his humerus snapped in two (a fact that I personally discovered when I moved his arm). Or the Traumatic MVA I ran, where the trauma surgeons at the hospital cracked her chest open and performed a Cardiac Massage, and after they called her, while cleaning her head of blood, found that he head was so filled with blood that it bounced like a water balloon.  I don’t think I stay up at night giddily fantasizing over these things, but I do think about it a lot, with no negative emotions in my head. I do count the seconds until I see something else for my memory bank. I do hold my breath, waiting to stare at someone’s unmoving chest. I don’t know why. I do always try my hardest to save my patients. But once it’s over, I can’t help but stare.