Becoming
Numb
Five Years of Life, Death, and Everything in Between
"The reaper doesn't take your patients. He takes your sleep. He takes your innocence. He steals the soft parts of you that you didn't know were vulnerable until they were gone."— From the book
About the Book
When Saving Lives Costs Your Own
EMS is more than flashing lights, sirens, and the split-second fight to keep death from winning. It is a life lived on the edge of other people's worst moments — and the quiet aftermath no one sees.
In this raw and unflinching memoir, Abigail Hallock pulls back the curtain on what it really means to work in emergency medicine. From fatal crashes and overdoses to fragile miracles, impossible goodbyes, and the relentless weight carried home after every shift, these pages reveal the human cost of being the person everyone calls when the world falls apart.
This is not a polished hero story. It is an honest look at exhaustion, trauma, numbness, faith, fear, identity, and the strange ache of continuing to care when caring hurts. It is about the calls that stay, the pieces of yourself the job takes, and the stubborn hope that keeps first responders climbing back into the ambulance anyway.
For anyone who has worn the uniform, loved someone who has, or wondered what happens after the emergency ends, this book is a powerful reminder that survival is not the same as being untouched. It is a tribute to the courage required to remain human under constant pressure.
Themes
Identity
Who you were before the job, and who you become inside it.
Burnout
The slow erosion that happens call by call, shift by shift.
Numbness
Not a choice. A defense. A way to keep moving when feeling everything would stop you.
Grief
The calls that stay. The patients you carry long after the paperwork is filed.
Persistence
The stubborn refusal to let the job take the parts of you worth protecting.
"Racing the reaper isn't about winning forever. No one ever does. It's about winning today. Winning that call. Winning that moment. Winning long enough to give someone a chance."
Abigail Hallock
Abigail Hallock is a licensed paramedic who began her career during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She has worked across volunteer, municipal, private, and interfacility ambulance services in both urban and rural settings, gaining experience in a wide range of prehospital environments.
She started working in healthcare at fifteen, but it was in EMS that she found her purpose. Over time, she came to understand that this work is not just about treating illness and injury, but about showing up for people on some of the worst days of their lives — a responsibility she does not take lightly.
Becoming Numb was written to offer a perspective often missing from the field. While much of the existing literature reflects on careers from a distance, Hallock writes from within the experience — still in the early years where identity, burnout, and growth are unfolding in real time. Drawing from journals kept since the beginning of her career, she presents an unfiltered look at the emotional weight of the job and the ways it reshapes those who choose to stay.
Her hope is that readers will find a sense of recognition in these pages and feel less alone in what they carry.
Still Running.
Still Choosing to Feel.
Order Becoming Numb and read the story that first responders, their families, and anyone who has ever carried something heavy will recognize.