A Double Life: A paramedic/actor's view of flashing lights and footlights in NYC.

Working on the streets of New York as a paramedic for Long Island College Hospital provides the perfect counterbalance to my second career as an aspiring actor in the Big City of Dreams. Acting and emergency medical services (EMS) are at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Can two completely diametric vocations find a home in the same person? Absolutely.

New York EMS is unlike any other healthcare setting: it is clinical medicine practiced under the most extreme conditions. The city is congested, angry, difficult, chaotic, brutal. Several years ago, after intubating three patients on an anesthesia rotation, I joked to my supervising anesthesiologist that his instruction was good practice for the real world. When he asked me to elaborate, I said, "Well the OR is nice, but for a more realistic experience you have to turn out the lights; put some broken glass on the floor; add a bunch of screaming family members; team me with a resuscitation team I've never met; get out a stopwatch; and put a mosquito on my nose – then I can practice for the field." We had a good laugh.

With unstable patients, unstable careers, and unstable practice settings, this is one tough job. Too often, jobs in clinical medicine require us to bury those things that make us human: our emotions. But we are human, and feelings of sorrow, joy, or hope can't stay buried forever. Emotionally, many paramedics never leave work – the consequences can be devastating.

In 1995, after many years in EMS, my work left me feeling burnt-out, empty, alone, and emotionally vacant. I realized that I wanted to have the full spectrum of human experience; I wanted to feel passion, while still feeding my need for adrenaline and real-world action. I looked around. I saw that characters in good dramatic literature, whether on stage or screen, are always in crisis, their passions are revealed, and we see them as incandescently human. I simply had to become an actor.

I began in community theaters outside Boston. I took parts that paid nothing, studied singing, and got an acting coach. I had fun. Acting offered the opposite of street realities – pure escape to live briefly as another. In 1998, I left my job as a flight paramedic to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in acting at the University of Texas, Austin (UT). I had emotional barriers that I needed to strip away. Walls I had created to insulate myself from the human tragedy of street work had crushed my ability to experience the extreme shifts of a stage character's emotions. Self-control is mandatory on the street, but, on stage, actors surrender to their emotions at every turn. For obvious reasons, the vulnerability that is absolutely necessary while acting doesn't work well during a resuscitation or when handling a complex extrication at an accident scene. The incredible faculty at UT rescued me from an unbalanced life that was cold, all business, and lacking in emotion.

For an actor, EMS is an ideal place to observe the human condition. In times of extreme crisis people reveal what is truly important to them. Just as with great acting, at these times, people's actions show an implicit honesty, which is unclouded by the filter of social correctness. When the chips are down, humans are primal in their need to be heard, to show emotion, and to survive. EMS has given me an endless stream of raw material to power my characters on stage and screen. When I play a character who rails against injustice, I recall the eight-year-old girl with a fatal brain aneurysm or the 21-year-old spinal-injury patient who kept asking me if he would be able to move in time for his softball game on the weekend. To play rage? The time I came face-to-face with the person who had beaten my four-year-old patient into unconsciousness. Joy? The day I got the helicopter job. Loneliness? The AIDS patient who asked me to hold his hand so he wouldn't die alone. Love? I see a parent's face when they realize their kid is going to be OK. Patients have taught me to say yes to life. They have been my most important and influential acting teachers.

EMS provides the visceral real-life experiences that feed my acting career. My stage life allows me to experience my own life fully, and, as such, I can provide more humane care to those who I'm privileged to serve in times of crisis. The search for balance in this cycle is a full-time job in itself. But I would not trade it for anything. Until Mr. Spielberg calls, I have the best day job in the world.

Murray divides his time equally between acting and EMS. In June 2002, he played the role of Father O'Connor in a new play called Belles of the Mill at New York's Midtown International Theatre Festival. Other recent roles include appearing as Sir Walter Raleigh in The Lost Colony at the Waterside Theatre, in Manteo, NC, and as Tom in The Glass Menagerie at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre, in Lewisburg, WV. Murray has appeared on television in roles on Guiding Light and As The World Turns. Murray recently completed his first leading role in a feature film, playing Detective Frank Lupo in a dark romantic comedy called Happy Ever After, which was shown at film festivals in May 2003.

A Double Life

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Joseph E Murray, Paramedic

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