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

"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

"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

"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