Stabbed EMT’s long nightmare

A New York City EMT stabbed eight times by an unhinged patient in the back of her ambulance nearly a year ago still hasn’t returned to work — and is plagued by nightmares.

“I thought I was going to die,” Julia Fatum told The Post of the July 19, 2023, attack that left her hospitalized for a week and walking with a cane for months afterward.

It was a typical night shift for Fatum (pictured above last week, and after being stabbed), 26, until she responded to a 9 p.m. call about a man having heart trouble on the Upper West Side. She and her partner picked up Rudolph “Rudy” Garcia (inset), a 48-year-old Bronx man, and headed to Mt. Sinai Hospital.

“We were a couple of blocks from the hospital,” she recalled in her first interview since the horrific attack. “He became agitated.”

The bald brute yelled “F--k you!” and pulled a kitchen knife from his sock, prosecutors said at his arraignment.

Fatum, who was in the back of the ambulance, shouted to her partner who was driving.

The driver skidded to a halt and Fatum attempted to escape through the back doors.

“The lock was jammed,” she said.

The 6-foot-1 Garcia — an excon whose rap sheet included two felony convictions for assaulting a cop — plunged the blade into Fatum’s left arm.

“You stop feeling things physically and you just go into your mind,” Fatum said. “It’s just, like, ‘Wow’ . . . I never thought it would happen to me, and now I think I’m going to die.”

Garcia stabbed Fatum seven more times — including in the chest, puncturing a lung.

He was charged with attempted murder and assault. He pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at Rikers Island.

Fatum still struggles with nerve damage in her left arm. The severed nerves “may never come back,” Fatum said. She also suffers from psychological trauma.

“With something like this, of course you’re going to have lingering PTSD, nightmares. It’s definitely there,” she said.

Fatum is going public now to fight for better protections for first responders. In 2023, there were 214 attacks on FDNY EMTs — up a disturbing 20% from the 179 in 2022.

“My main goals right now are to continue my recovery and finish school,” Fatum said. “Hopefully, in three years after school finishes I can start a new chapter of my life.”