Bad Call

“Bad Call is a compulsively readable, totally unforgettable memoir that recounts a sensitive college student’s experience working on an emergency ambulance in hell, aka New York City.”–James Patterson”[A] fresh and powerful debut memoir…From accidental deaths to suicides, Scardino writes with the detail of a crime reporter…Scardino’s unsparing memoir offers an empathetic look at human pain and suffering.“–Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“A laugh-till-you-cry look at 1960s New York through the eyes of an ambulance driver who saw the city at its most vulnerable and bloody. Scardino, who worked in a Queens ambulance for four summers in the 1960s, encountered the grotesque and the ludicrous daily and shares his tales in hilarious and harrowing detail. A fun slice of NY life that is not for the squeamish.”–NY Post“In the late 1960s, Mike Scardino took a summer job on an ambulance crew in New York City, offering him a strange, macabre, and compelling insight into a part of city life seldom seen…Morbid and entertaining: a snapshot of life and death in the big city of a bygone era.”–CrimeReads“This remarkable memoir, a vivid and gruesome record of his experiences…are like a punch in the gut. Even when a patient survives, there is always suffering, which Scardino captures with empathy and outrage.”–National Book Review

Mike Scardino is a native of Elmhurst, Queens. In order to pay for college, he worked on a New York City ambulance as a teenager, which led to his decision not to pursue medicine as a career. Mike eventually found his way into advertising, where his ambulance experience proved to be an unexpectedly useful fit. He is married to the woman he met his third day at college and has three daughters. He currently resides in South Carolina.

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