http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8143733/Sirens wailing, Ed Wheat’s ambulance races through the streets of Newark en route to yet another GSW. In Wheat's world, that's shorthand for gun shot wound. Newark is a city so rough that no one but the state government is willing to take responsibility for emergency medical care. Wheat’s crew is often the first on the scene of traumatic accidents, stabbings and gun battles.
This time, the initial report is wrong — not a gun shot victim, just a 300-pound diabetic, former professional boxer whose hypoglycemic state has him flailing at those who have come to his aid. Wheat, a 6’4” 250 pounds former military policeman, is the perfect candidate to step in and subdue the man. With several police and firefighters, he moves in and takes a hard punch in the eye before the man is loaded into the ambulance for treatment.
“It’s like that some days,” Wheat says, showing off a burgeoning shiner. “It can be quiet sometimes, but a lot of times it’s run and gun, and you’re fighting to stay focused on your job, almost robotic, instead of thinking about what could happen around you.”
Coolness under pressure and his experience with gun and knife wounds makes the 34-year-old the perfect candidate for another job, one the Army and Marine Corps are more and more desperate to fill these days. A few months ago, Wheat and several of his colleagues here were approached by a Navy recruiter who promised a “tax-free $120,000 bonus” if they agreed to sign on as medical consultants with a Marine Corps unit in Iraq.