Known as cheerful but sometimes hot-tempered, Idris would come home from clashes in an altered state, relatives said. "Usually when she came back from work, she would tell us stories about the injured people she had treated and she looked affected," said a sister, Wisam Idris. "She used to say, `If I die, I want to die as a martyr.'" Her marriage soured when it emerged that she could not bear children. Her husband divorced her after eight years, and she moved back in with her mother and other relatives in a cramped Amari home made of concrete blocks.
So she was depressed. Paramedics' marriages are notoriously unstable, as much because of the hours as anything else. And the nature of the work is conducive to either moodiness or goofiness. But never once when I was working as an EMT did one of my co-workers explode. |