About Fractured Line
I’m Nicholas J. Orcutt. I’m a father of two. I’m a husband. I’m a paramedic because I want to help put the broken back together. I’m a writer who started writing because silence stopped being a choice.
Fractured Line is the work of someone who watched the country he was raised to believe in start eating the people inside it, and decided he was no longer willing to look away. It is not a hobby. It is not a brand. It is not a side hustle for clout or a stepping stone to a podcast deal. It is the only thing I know how to do with the rage I carry from watching power crush the people who never had any.
I come from a line of people who refused to bow. Greek mountain bandits who would not live under Ottoman rule. An Irish great-grandfather who sent money home to the IRA because the British had taken everything else. My brain is wired the way theirs were. I think it always was. I think it always will be. I’m the same father who raises my children to know the difference between a bully and a person worth standing next to.
I work alongside my best friend Tyler, because the people who tell you the truth in your life should be the ones standing next to you when you write it down.
Fractured Line started with Alex Pretti. A VA nurse, a man doing the work of caring for veterans, shot dead by federal agents in the street while trying to help people he didn’t know. The government buried him once with bullets. Then they tried to bury him a second time by investigating the coworkers who showed up to mourn him. That is the country I write about. That is the country I refuse to let you forget.
I don’t write for the people in power. I write so my readers know exactly who they are. The senators who take AIPAC money. The presidents who take Saudi money. The agencies that surveil grieving nurses. The corporations that train you to blame the cashier instead of the CEO. I name them. I make sure the world knows exactly who they are.
I do not soften the language for comfort, and I do not calibrate my voice for reach. If a senator is behaving like a bag of dicks wrapped in an off the rack suit, the receipts will say so, and so will I.
I have been a paramedic and a first responder long enough to know what death looks like up close.
That part of my life is not what defines me. It sharpens me.
It is the lens through which I see what this country does to its working people, its veterans, its children, and its dead. It is why the receipts in my essays read the way they do. I have stood next to too many of the bodies this government is responsible for to pretend otherwise.
What Fractured Line is
Investigative essays about power and the people it crushes. Cultural commentary when the heavy gets too heavy. No clickbait. No soft takes. No charging for the truth.
This is the middle finger to the top 1%.
My fingers may be the one typing, but these are not my words. They are OUR words.
The Fractured Line exists because those of us who are here understand that they didn’t draw a line in the sand. They broke the goddamn ground and told us it was our fault.
What I will never do
Charge you to read. Soften a piece because it might cost me reach. Apologize for naming the people doing the harm.
What you get on paper is what you would get in person.
There is no playing nice when it comes to what is right and wrong. There is no gray area when it comes to morality.
Why subscribe
Because if you’ve read this far, then you understand why I do this.
Subscribe. Join the resistance. Welcome to the fight. The Fractured Line only can be mended with us all working together.
Welcoming our new illustrator Tyler Goff
When asked to describe himself: “My kids are all I care about and I accidentally discovered something that I’m actually decent at and enjoy doing that also brings smiles to their faces so that’s a trifecta I’ve decided to dive head first into. The better I get the more joy it brings them. If it can bring joy to others with what I do, then even better.
Plus, it’s a way to escape the endless pit of despair that is EMS. I’ve been doing it for so long that I forget that not everyone I meet has seen enough dead bodies to last a life time.
It is also important to know that I’m a Yankees fan and a Cowboys fan. That is how you can tell I lack any taste.”
The Fractured Line lives only because of our subscribers. If you don’t want a paid subscription feel free to Buy us a coffee. Everything goes back into making sure we can continue the work we do.
Founding Members:
Thomas Savarino: I recommend Steve Osborne. He wrote a book called The Job, and I think he’s another genuine voice, focused on the NYPD
