"Vomit was his personal nemesis"

The man in charge of accepting EMT applications was in his seventies, hard-nosed and gruff. His name was Charlie. He looked at me and said, "Lady, I don't think this is for you," then went into a long soliloquy about vomit.

Vomit was his personal nemesis, the world's worst and most abhorrent thing. He looked at my silk outfit. "They'll vomit all over you," he said, trying to scare me. He did. I hated vomit too. In fact, vomit was high on my scale of things that made me panic. I was so afraid of vomiting myself that it never occurred to me that I might be the target of someone else's spew.

--Jane Stern, Ambulance Girl: How I Saved Myself by Becoming an EMT