Kevin Hazzard

Young and hopeful, but trying to look the part

The end. My face says it all

The last state and national Paramedic licenses I was issued

A little love from a former patient and her family. The affection Atlanta showered on us was incredible

Tim O'Brien quote I carried in my shirt pocket for nearly a decade. I can think of no better advice for a medic to follow

Urban American is a bazaar, there is no substitute for its energy

The man in white pants has collapsed on a roof and is clearly quite sick, though it appears I've decided only to spectate

Yes it's noon on Tuesday and, yes, I'm in my underwear but I've just been released from Grady so I'm gonna dance

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A gift from Sabrina that I wore every day from the start of EMT school until New Year's Eve 2010. My partner and I were dispatched to a cardiac arrest just before midnight and when I tried to check for a pulse I found my watch had stopped. I have never replaced the batteries. The time displayed coincides with the patient's time of death

Much more than the medicine, what fascinated me was the strange world I'd accidentally stumbled upon. I snooped, I inquired, I talked, but above all I listened. And I wrote it all down on whatever was handy

Hazzard, pull over! I want you to take my picture with that genie

A little foreboding, perhaps, but we all have to die sometime

Brick from Bowen Homes, one of Atlanta's largest housing projects. Like the others, it's now a memory but at one time its presence could be felt along the entire length of Bankhead Highway

A young medic with an old ambulance

There are times when you feel like nothing more than a census worker, called out merely to record names, birthdays and last known location. Then again, sometimes it's not as bad as it looks

A .40 cal shell casing left behind at a crime scene. Two weeks after the scene was processed, I found this amid the bits of broken glass, crack baggies, and a small puddle of dried blood

Hope can spring forth from even the darkest corners...except here. No hope has ever sprung up from here

If that's a woman dressed like a pumpkin turn around. We're stopping for a picture

Atlanta is full of character and pride. I love these people

A friend and his girlfriend. They lived in a car not far from my favorite spot to wait for calls. I took this picture at their request but before I could develop it both vanished. I carried this photo for several months but never saw either of them again. At the time it was taken, they claimed this is the only photo that existed of them together.

The medic who requested this helicopter had three badly injured patients and, in his panic, screamed into the radio for dispatch to "Launch the bird!" He's never lived that down

I asked the driver -- alive but unable to work -- what he planned to do next. He shook his head and said "Gonna buy me a goddamn lotto ticket."

The back of my Grady-issued badge. Even the mundane becomes prophetic in the end