One month later

At each week’s end, Dragun remembers how one mundane Sunday became the day that changed a city.

“Every Sunday, you have the same routine. You show up to work and you do your job, and 12 hours later you go home,” he said. “Every Sunday feels different now.”

Then, Nov. 1 came. One month had passed.

“It’s like, is Dec. 1 going to feel different because it’s the first (of the month) again?”

Maybe. But as the days, months and years mount, the feelings will subside, Dragun said. After all, that’s what happened after each FEMA deployment. hours after terror hit the Strip that Dragun won’t forget. He pulled in at 10:16 p.m., just one minute after the Metropolitan Police Department reported the shooting stopped. He saw a man pushing a shot concertgoer in a wheelbarrow down the Strip, along with a pickup truck unloading 10 victims with bullet wounds.

“There’s times when it definitely gets to you,” Schilling said. “Most paramedics try to sit there and say it’s part of the job … but every so often, you face that one call, or those couple of calls, and say, ‘I just wasn’t ready for that.’”

There is no “ready” for something like the shooting, Dragun said. Even though he studies the history of emergency response as an American Military University graduate student in homeland security and emergency management, no two incidents are the same.

After first responders return from a crisis, AMR makes peer and professional counselors available for debriefing, Schilling said. Therapy dogs stopped by the station after the shooting, Dragun remembered.

Watching television with his wife, Teray, or taking his kids, Lincoln, 4, and Channing, 2, to the park also helps.

And the friendships he forms with colleagues after each disaster deployment helps make the job easier.

“I’ve found myself to be more compassionate, more wanting to do good,” Dragun said.

Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@ reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.