The Boston Celtics are back in the championship hunt. As a kid, I was a huge Celtics fan. I watched them on our small black and white TV and then I'd go out in the driveway and dribble around and shoot against the hoop my father had nailed over the garage door. I pretended I was on the team. Havlicek, Russell, Sam and KC Jones, Satch Sanders and me would battle the Lakers of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain.
I watched them for years. I remember the Dave Cowens and JoJo White days, and then on to the great Larry Bird teams. Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Kevin McHale, Robert "The Chief" Parish, Cedrick Maxwell.
Oh, the great matchups. The Sixers. The Lambier/Isiah Pistons. And of course the Lakers with Magic and Kareem and James Worthy.
I used to go to a great bar in Iowa and watch the championship games on the big screen TV in the back room as we drank pitchers of beer and lived and died with every shot.
My girlfriend at the time became a huge Celtics fan. I bought her Celtics jacket for Christmas and even bought her a single share of Celtics stock when they became a publicly traded company. She loved those gifts.
Then the Celtics fell on hard times. It started with the death of Len Bias (cocaine overdose), who I used to watch play when I lived in Virginia and he played for Maryland. The kid was a physical Michael Jordan. And then their All-Star captain Reggie Lewis died (heart arrhythmia). The Celtics leprechaun luck seemed gone for good. They were miserable. A rotten team with rotten coaches and players who didn't know basketball was a team sport. I stopped following the team altogether.
And then this year happened. Somehow Celtics GM Danny Ainge, managed to get old Celtic great and Minnesota GM Kevin McHale to trade superstar Kevin Garnett, and they signed aging All-Star Ray Allen to join All-Star Paul Pierce, and in one year they went from the cellar to the best record in the league with "The Boston Three-Party." Could the home team hoist another banner to the rafters of the Garden? This prodigal fan returned.
The Celtics played the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the playoffs this year, but instead of sweeping them as many expected, while they clobbered them in home games in Boston, they lost three hard fought road games in Atlanta and were now in Game Seven, back at home and I was at work, but able to watch the game on the big screen TV at the ambulance bay.
It's the third quarter, the Celtics have a nice lead going, when their point guard Raja Rondo is slammed to the ground while trying to score on a breakaway. A dastardly foul! But just then the tones go off and I have to go on a call for back pain. Damn!
The man is lying in bed with back pain (sciatica). He weighs three hundred pounds and lives on the second floor up a narrow windy staircase with furniture and newspapers lining the narrow hall. My partner is on the small side so I ask if the patient is able to walk. He can't even get out of bed the pain is so bad. I ask him if he can sit in a chair, and he says no way. My partner says maybe we'll have to strap him to a board and drag him down the stairs. I look at him like he can't be serious. Our first responder help -- the local police have just left for a fight in progress. There is no way the two of us are going to be able to carry him.
That leaves us with plan M. I give the man five milligrams of morphine, and tell him we'll wait five minutes and see if he can get get up then. Five minutes go by, and he still can't move. I give him another five milligrams. While we are sitting there waiting for the drug to work its magic, I find myself watching the John Travolta movie, Civil Action, on his massive plasma TV screen. This man lives in a dump of a house, but this is some fine TV. But what I'm really thinking it, just how interested in this movie is this man? I mean, if he was really interested, wouldn't he have waited until it was over, until he called for the ambulance?
I debate. I consider saying, I have a deal for you. How about I give you some more morphine and while we wait for it to achieve its full affects, you change the channel for me and we watch the rest of the Celtic game. Got any cold drinks in the fridge? Any chips or wings down in the kitchen?
Aahhhh. I can't bring myself around to asking. It seems somehow improper. I suppose if it was the Red Sox and the World Series, I might get away with it. I stare blankly at the TV. It looks like a really boring movie. I know I must have seen it many years ago, but I don't remember a thing about it.
After ten minutes, I ask the man if he is able to move now, and he sits right up. He says he thinks he can walk, and he stands with help and with barely a grimace. And then with my partner giving him a hand, he walks all the way down the narrow stairs and out to the front steps where our stretcher awaits.
At the hospital, the nurse gives me a hard time about all the morphine I gave him. Why are you always giving so much morphine? she asks. Why don't you just give them Motrin?
He's (f-ing) on Motrin and Flexoril already, I say. (The f-ing part, I only say in my mind right up there with asking to turn the channel). He couldn't get out of bed. Plus, its all about pain relief now days, you know that. (Get with the f-ing program.) How the hell were we going to get him out of his bed on the second floor? He weighs 350 (f-ing) pounds. He was dying, he couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't sit in a chair. I took his pain away.
The patient overhears our conversation, and says, "Miss, you should know these are fine fellows, they took good care, good care of me. They treated me right."
"I assume, you're not feeling any pain anymore," the nurse says.
"That's right. They're good folks."
She shakes her head, and then assigns us a room.
***
Just think how she would have reacted if I had answered. "I gave him the morphine in exchange for a cold Coke, a bag of Doritos, a batch of his Mama's famous recipe buffalo wings, and front row seats at his big screen plasma TV to the last quarter of the Celtics game. You got a problem with that?"
***
After the call I found out the Celtics won by a wide margin. Tonight, in the second round of playoffs, they face Lebron James and the Cavaliers in a game that starts at 8:00 P.M. I'm on duty until 10:00 so I may again face on scene temptation. Hope for no calls for me.
Let's go Celts!
