Victor lacked Troy’s brilliance, but he did his best for each patient in his workmanlike manner. While at times he could be rash and hot-headed in his emotions, in his work he was thorough and bullheaded when he had to be. He didn’t take short cuts. A minor motor vehicle with a case of “oh, my lawyer hurts,” another medic might take the patient’s blood pressure by “The Seer” method. Without laying hands on the patient, the medic would study the patient a moment, and then write down on the run form, “Blood pressure 120/80, pulse –80, respirations 18.” Victor took everyone’s blood pressure. He listened to their lung sounds. He gave them all a full physical assessment. You were old or sick and you lived on the second floor, Victor insisted you were carried down the stairs in a stair chair. No buts. Victor used a Kendrick extrication device on most of his motor vehicle patients. The device was strapped on them while they still sat in the car. It was like a suit that completely immobilized their neck and back. If you were going to immobilize them, do it right. If they were standing when he arrived, he did standing long board takedowns.
People made fun of his by-the book method, but they respected him nonetheless. He wasn’t doing it because he necessarily thought they were hurt. He was doing it because that’s the way he practiced his medicine. His routine, his rigidity of method gave him strength. You couldn’t argue with that.
“When I was little boy and my grandmother was still alive, she had congestive heart failure,” he told me. “Her legs would get very swollen with edema. It was very painful for her to walk. She was a heavy woman. She liked to eat and cook. She believed food was love. She never let us go hungry when we came to visit, and when she moved in with us, she would sit in the kitchen and help my mother and sister cook or just talk with them while they did because she could not stand for long periods of time. One day the visiting nurse came and told her she needed to go to the emergency room. Her feet and legs were swollen. The ambulance came, and I will never forget the paramedic and his partner -- they made her walk. They said she was too heavy for their chair, and if she was able to stand, they would help her down the stairs. She was big, but she wasn’t too big for their chair. They just were lazy.
“She made it. But she cried all the way. They were very impatient with her, saying ‘Vamos, vamos, senora,’ when she paused to rest. You can be sure if she was a rich white lady living in West Hartford, they would have carried her because there they would have gotten a complaint if they didn’t. Here with the poor Spanish lady, whose eyes were there to see?
“My job is to help the patient, no matter what. Who am I not to take them seriously if they say they are hurt or sick?”
Victor seemed to always get into altercations with staff at the nursing homes and the triage nurses at the hospital. He was one of the few paramedics I’d seen who dared confront physicians if he felt the patient wasn’t getting the attention they needed. Most people who knew him accepted that as who he was and let it slide if he grated on them. He had the ability to cuss and swear at someone, and then the next time he saw them to smile and ask how their wife and kids were as if there had never been any problem between them.
One afternoon we got called priority one for a thirty-three year old man with chest pain at the Bellevue Square public housing complex. My reaction was it was going to be another bullshit call -- maybe a guy whose chest hurt because he’s coughing up yellow phlegm.
We found the man sitting in his apartment watching a big screen TV movie Dead Presidents. You could smell marijuana coming from another room. The man wore a Michael Jordon basketball jersey and had a beeper on his belt. He rubbed his chest with his muscled arms and said, “I just got this pain here.”
Victor had me check his pressure and pulse while he questioned the man. I reported his pressure was good 130/80, pulse 76, respirations 20, lungs clear. The man told Victor the pain had come on while at rest. He hadn’t felt short of breath. Yes, it hurt more if he moved. No, he hadn’t had a cold or been coughing up anything. No, he hadn’t done any heavy weight lifting -- nothing out of the ordinary. I had him pegged as a candidate for the waiting room.
“What exactly does the pain feel like?” Victor asked.
“It feels like someone is sitting on my chest.”
We exchanged glances. That wasn’t a good thing to say. Still the man was only thirty-three and looked perfectly healthy.
At the time we just carried the Lifepack 10, which was a three lead monitor that was good for getting a heart rhythm, but not for the more comprehensive 12-Lead electrocardiograph of the heart done by the most sophisticated machines at the hospital. I attached the leads on the right and left arm, and left leg, and ran a strip showing each of the three leads views of the heart, which I then handed to Victor.
He nodded. From the rudimentary EKG – it looked perfectly normal.
“Let’s do the modified chest leads,” Victor said.
It was a trick he had learned from his reading, one that only a few other medics, including Troy had picked up on. By moving the red left leg lead and placing in the same positions on the chest that standard chest leads were placed when doing a 12-lead, and then viewing those leads in Lead III on the monitor, you could closely replicate a 12-lead ECG. The point of this was it gave the paramedic a view of the anterior side of the heart, which was not seen by the basic three lead which saw the inferior and part of the lateral side.
As I moved the lead to the 4th position, I saw an anomaly. There was what we call a huge ST elevation, a tombstone pattern -- indicative of a massive heart attack.
Victor rechecked my placement, and then ran the 3rd and 5th leads himself. “Get the stair chair,” he said.
“I can walk,” the man said, but Victor, who’d already given him aspirin and put an IV in his arm, would not allow it.
We humped his two hundred twenty pounds down four flights of concrete stairs, and out to the ambulance where Victor ordered me to drive on a one.
He patched to the hospital requesting medic control -- to speak with a physician -- instead of just telling the triage nurse what we were coming in with. You requested a physician for consultation or for orders to give certain drugs such as morphine for which we did not have standing orders.
“I have a thirty-three year old, no previous medical history, experiencing substernal chest pressure. 5 on a 1-10 scale. He says he feels like someone is sitting on his chest. It came on at rest, increases slightly on movement. He’s alert and oriented, skin warm and dry, lungs clear. Vitals 130/80, pulse 76, respirations 18. Sating at 100%. I do have him on a cannula, have given aspirin, and two nitro, but with no relief. My major concern is his modified 9-lead shows massive ST-elevation across the anterior leads. Looks like a cath lab candidate to me. I’m six minutes out. I’d like permission to get him started with 2 mgs of Morphine IV, followed by another 2 in five minutes if his pain persists and his pressure holds. Any questions?”
“How old did you say he was?”
“Thirty-three. That’s 3-3.”
“33. Yeah, hold off on the morphine and hold the nitro as well.”
“Could you repeat please?”
There was no response.
“461, please repeat.”
A nurse came on. “The doctor says hold off on the drugs till we can evaluate the patient.”
“Hold off. He’s got massive ST elevation. Tombstone! He’s having an MI. He’s infracting! Hello? Hello?”
He slammed the phone down.
When we reached the triage desk, there was no one there. “Screw it,” Victor said, “They must be in the cardiac room.”
We started in that direction, but just then the triage nurse came out of another room. “Hold it. I need to triage you.”
“This is the C-MED call.”
“What’s your patient’s name?”
Victor showed her the strip. “Mr. I’m having an MI right now,” he said. “Mr. Get Me to the Cath Lab on Time.”
She looked at the strip. “What lead is that?”
“McL4. It’s a modified chest lead comparable to V4. Can we go to the cardiac room?”
“Hold on.” She spoke into the mike. “Dr. Bertell to triage.”
The doctor whom I did not recognize, was in his early thirties, a neatly groomed, bow-tied young man, who was new at the hospital.
He looked at the patient and you could tell he wasn’t impressed.
Victor handed him the strip.
“Its likely early repolarization,” the doctor said. “It’s common in young African American males. Look at your patient. Does he look like he’s having an MI?” He said to the patient. “You lift weights?”
The patient nodded. “But this doesn’t feel like that kind of pain.”
“Thirty-three, healthy looking, good vitals, early repol. Don’t rely on your monitor.”
He started away.
“Come back here and look at this,” Victor said. “Do your own 12-lead, but this man needs attention.”
The doctor turned around and put his finger right in Victor face. “Listen. There are lots of sick patients here who need my attention. The triage nurse will assign you a room. Now here’s some advice for you. Go spark out at some other hospital. Not this one.”
“Spark out? What are you an idiot?” He turned to the triage nurse who was standing on the sidelines with me. “Get Dr. Bond. Get this guy a 12-lead and get him to the cath lab before young Dr. Kildaire here gets his state license revoked for malpractice.”
I tried to step in between Victor and the doctor, but they were shouting at each other so loudly now, the nurse had to call for security.
“Oh, my god,” the nurse said.
Our patient was seizing, his head turning purple.
“Victor,” I said.
Victor broke free from the grasp of the security guard. I could see the squiggly lines on the monitor. Our patient was in ventricular fibrillation.
Victor pulled the paddles off the monitor, and pressed them against the man’s chest. “Clear!”
He zapped the man, who sat up quickly grabbing at his chest. “What the fuck.”
“Dr. Bond,” Victor said, recognizing the head ED doctor, who’d been drawn by the attention. “He just went into v-fib. He’s back in a sinus but he’s still got massive ST elevation.”
“You have access?”
“Two lines.”
“Let’s get him some lidocaine and get him up to the cath lab now.”
He grabbed the stretcher and started pulling it. The other doctor stood there like he’d been hit by a stun gun.
“Was I out of line?” Victor asked me in the EMS room, as he wrote the call up. “The guy almost killed my patient.”
“You’re not out of line, but you might want to think twice before going at a doctor that way. We all screw up, but they know a hell of a lot more than we do. You don’t want them to become your enemy because they can make your life miserable. Right or wrong. Shit runs downhill. They have the juice. We don’t.”
“He can’t take criticism, fuck him, just don’t kill my patient.” He stalked off.
I worried about Victor’s temperament. His quick fuse was going to lead him to trouble. He might forget an incident as soon as he calmed down, but other people wouldn’t, people who didn’t know him. To them he probably seemed like a macho hothead, when in truth he was a thoughtful and considerate guy.
I kept waiting for the call to come to report to a supervisor, but even after we’d turned in our run envelope at the end of the day, no one said a thing. The next day I was at the hospital when a nurse called me. “Hey, you remember that guy from yesterday who coded in the ED? They took him upstairs and cathed him. He had a hundred percent blockage of the LAD – the widowmaker. The angioplasty went great and he’s doing fine. Tell Victor that was a great pickup. You guys saved his life.”
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Chapter 10
“There he is against the telephone pole,” Victor said.
We’d been sent for an ETOH – a drunk on the corner of Park and Hungerford in front of the Immaculate Conception Church. The man wearing a Boston Celtics jacket lay on the ground, his back against the pole, snoring.
Victor gave him a gentle nudge in the side.
The man opened his eyes and smiled at Victor like he knew him.
“Hey dude, whass up?” he said to Victor.
“What hospital, Henry?”
“I don’t wanna to go to the hospital? I wanna go to ADRC,” he said. “I need rehab.”
“But you’re on the banned list,” Victor said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Remember you called yesterday and we tried to take you. They said you were banned. Every time you go there, you go AWOL on them.”
“They won’t take me?”
“Not today, they won’t.”
“Forget it then.”
“We can take you to one of the hospitals.”
“No, they’ll just tie me up. Leave me here. Is a nice day.”
“You don’t want to go, you have to get up and walk away.”
“Can’t I stay here?”
“No, because they’ll keep calling us. This is a busy street. People don’t want to be stepping over you. You have to move on.”
“Help me up.”
Victor gave him a hand to his feet.
“You got a dollar?”
Victor shook his head.
“I served my country.”
“I respect you for that.”
“Can’t hurt to ask.” He looked at me now. “How about you, big man? For a brother?”
“You want a sandwich?”
He shook his head. “No, I wanna a drink. I want to get shit-faced. You understand?”
“Sure do.”
“You want to lie down,” Victor said. “Just don’t lie where people can see you. You don’t move on, the cops’ll be next.”
“All right.” He help his arm up to me and I helped lift him to his feet.
We watched him wander off down Hungerford.
Victor spoke into the radio. “463 clear L-Lima.”
“Okay 63, got you clear.”
We sat in the ambulance while Victor wrote up the paperwork.
Just up the street I could see a short man in a pinstripe suit in front of the El Mercado, shaking hands with passerbys, while two young men in blue blazers and ties handed out flyers. A cameraman filmed as the diminutive man clasped his hand over an old woman’s. As she spoke, he nodded.
“That’s Senator Shrieb,” Victor said.
“I’ve heard of him,” I said. I’d seen him when I was out in California. He was giving a speech at a hotel I worked at briefly.”
“Yeah, he wants to run for President someday. See the man and woman standing with him,” Victor said. A Hispanic man in a suit and sunglasses and a tall extremely attractive Hispanic woman tried to steer people the Senator’s way. “The man is Perry Santiago. He is a city councilman -- big in the Democratic Party. His brother’s a lawyer for Champion Ambulance. The woman is Helen Seurat. Sidney Seuss’s daughter. Don Seurat’s ex-wife.
“She’s quite a story. She’s adopted. When Sidney and his wife started the business they were a one family ambulance service. One night they got called for an unknown behind one of the buildings in Rice Heights. It was a baby, not three hours old. No one claimed the baby. The Seuesss adopted her. Nice girl – Sidney spoiled her, particularly after his wife died. They brought her up in private schools, country clubs. Now she’s trying to hookup with the Hispanic community.”
“So they’re together?”
“For now. Santiago, like Don Seurat, is a ladies man as you can see. He likes to wear the nice suits and go to the parties and get his name in the paper. Helen works for the literacy program. She is a nice woman, but very high maintenance. With Don working so hard, and with his roving eye, their marriage went kaput. Even though Don gets plenty on his own, he’d take her back in a minute.”
Even from the distance of fifty yards I could see just how great her beauty was. She was tall with light brown skin and long raven hair.
“Don can’t stand Santiago,” Victor said. “Aside from taking his wife, Santiago keeps trying to get the city to give our territory to Champion.”
“Wouldn’t Helen be opposed to that?”
“I don’t know. Sidney’s partners are in a fight over what to do with the business. I think Helen wants them to sell. I don’t know. It’s hard to figure. I just come to work when I’m in the book and go where they tell me. As long as my paycheck clears at the bank, I’m not complaining.”
“That’s a good way to be.”
“The Senator wants to learn something valuable, he should talk to that old man over there,” Victor said.
A man with a weathered leathery face sat in a wheelchair in front of a bogata, smoking a cigarette watching the scene on the street.
“That’s Papi Ruiz. He started one of the first gangs in the city years ago when Puerto Ricans were being exploited. That changed. I used to be best friends his grandson Hector. Hector Ruiz, you’ve heard of him?”
“No, should I have?”
“You’ll hear of him you stay working here long enough. He’s the leader of the most powerful gang in the city. He’s in jail now, but he may win his appeal. Maybe you’ve seen him when he was on Sixty Minutes?”
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“He was on Sixty Minutes. He took over the gang when his older brother Ramon was sent to jail for murder. Hector was amazing at first. He had his boys doing community services projects, food banks, helping old ladies with their groceries, organizing athletic events for the kids. They are not a gang, but a social club, committed to cleaning up the neighborhood, teaching pride to young people. He had people fooled. He is charismatic. He was always on TV giving sound bites. For a while things did seem better. The shootings were down. He engineered a truce with rival gangs.
“The drug trade, while still going on, was off the street corner, making it harder for the cops to pin it on the gang. Then Hector’s brother Jaime got shot on the corner of Park and Lawrence. A drive-by -- he got hit fourteen times. We expected hell to break loose. The city flooded the streets with cops. The governor sent in state troopers. But there’s Hector out in the street, preaching peace. He seemed like a man transformed. They held a candlelight vigil. He got written up in Time magazine, profiled on 60 Minutes. The next thing you know Hector is going to win the Nobel Prize the way they’re talking about him.
“Then one night we’re sitting down at Capitol and Broad and we hear the pop pop pop sound of gunfire. ‘463, shooting, Park and Lawrence, multiple victims.’ ‘451, shooting Hudson Street.’ ‘472, Main and Capen.’
“Turns out he’s unified several of the smaller gangs into one, and coordinated an assault on their chief rival. Five fatalities, another ten wounded. One rival is thrown dead on the steps of 50 Jennings Road – the PD station. He’s been tortured. The trigger finger of his right hand is cut off. They found it in his rectum. The cops couldn’t pin any of it on Hector. Every time they got close to getting the story, somebody else got shot. They finally got him on a drug possession. I think they planted a joint on him. I know he was too smart to carry himself. He claims he is a political prisoner.”
“And you and he were friends?”
“We were like blood.”
“Yet he’s there and you’re here?”
“That’s how it worked out. At first, his older brothers and his grandfather tried to protect him. They wouldn’t let him have any part of the gang life. He was going to be the one that did well in school and went to college. One day when we were thirteen, some rival gang members had come down Hamilton, and were spray-painting their graffiti in our neighborhood. When they were spotted, they jumped back in their Camaro and took off. Hector’s little sister Maria was in the street. They slammed into her. She was killed instantly. The same thing as happened later; the cops knew there would be trouble so they locked down the neighborhood. They arrested his brothers just to get them off the street. Two nights later, the driver was found tied to the rear of a stolen car that was smashed driverless into the clubhouse of the rival gang, his corpse was dragged over a hundred yards. After that Hector was in the gang.”
“And you never joined.”
“I tried to, but Papi Ruiz wouldn’t let me. Maybe it was because he had known my father and felt he should look after me. He taught his grandsons to be tough -- to not back down. The gang thing he started was for protection, but it changed. Everyone fighting each other. He couldn’t save them – they were too much like him. So he chose me to save. ‘Little Bull’ he called me.”
He was quiet for a moment, then nodding toward the Senator, said, “This is a poor neighborhood,” he said, “but it is not about welfare and food stamps, it is about what you hold inside, how you see yourself. It is about pride. That is what Papi would tell the Senator.”
We watched as the Senator and his staff got into a black Lincoln that pulled up for them, and they were off, gone from the world of Park Street. Helen Seurat and Perry Santiago got into a white convertible and drove slowly back East on Park Street. Santiago had his arm around her like a high school boy around his Saturday night date.
Papi Ruiz lit another cigarette.
“I want to show you something,” Victor said. “Take a left on Zion.” He directed me around the corner and pointed to a billboard, overgrown with vines. “Check that out.”
There was a picture of the Senator, standing in front of the Capitol. “Joe Shrieb for Senate, Leadership for Connecticut.” The paint had faded and peeled. Someone had graffitied “Lolpop” on it. “You know what that means? Lollypop. It’s a dis. Gangs spray it over other gang’s graffiti. That’s been there for years. Nobody has told him. That’s how much the big politicians know this community. He has no eyes on this street.”
Our radio cackled, “483, Respond to Park and Spring, man shot in the leg. On a one.”
“Summer in the city,” Victor said.
I hit the red lights on.
We’d been sent for an ETOH – a drunk on the corner of Park and Hungerford in front of the Immaculate Conception Church. The man wearing a Boston Celtics jacket lay on the ground, his back against the pole, snoring.
Victor gave him a gentle nudge in the side.
The man opened his eyes and smiled at Victor like he knew him.
“Hey dude, whass up?” he said to Victor.
“What hospital, Henry?”
“I don’t wanna to go to the hospital? I wanna go to ADRC,” he said. “I need rehab.”
“But you’re on the banned list,” Victor said.
“No, I’m not.”
“Remember you called yesterday and we tried to take you. They said you were banned. Every time you go there, you go AWOL on them.”
“They won’t take me?”
“Not today, they won’t.”
“Forget it then.”
“We can take you to one of the hospitals.”
“No, they’ll just tie me up. Leave me here. Is a nice day.”
“You don’t want to go, you have to get up and walk away.”
“Can’t I stay here?”
“No, because they’ll keep calling us. This is a busy street. People don’t want to be stepping over you. You have to move on.”
“Help me up.”
Victor gave him a hand to his feet.
“You got a dollar?”
Victor shook his head.
“I served my country.”
“I respect you for that.”
“Can’t hurt to ask.” He looked at me now. “How about you, big man? For a brother?”
“You want a sandwich?”
He shook his head. “No, I wanna a drink. I want to get shit-faced. You understand?”
“Sure do.”
“You want to lie down,” Victor said. “Just don’t lie where people can see you. You don’t move on, the cops’ll be next.”
“All right.” He help his arm up to me and I helped lift him to his feet.
We watched him wander off down Hungerford.
Victor spoke into the radio. “463 clear L-Lima.”
“Okay 63, got you clear.”
We sat in the ambulance while Victor wrote up the paperwork.
Just up the street I could see a short man in a pinstripe suit in front of the El Mercado, shaking hands with passerbys, while two young men in blue blazers and ties handed out flyers. A cameraman filmed as the diminutive man clasped his hand over an old woman’s. As she spoke, he nodded.
“That’s Senator Shrieb,” Victor said.
“I’ve heard of him,” I said. I’d seen him when I was out in California. He was giving a speech at a hotel I worked at briefly.”
“Yeah, he wants to run for President someday. See the man and woman standing with him,” Victor said. A Hispanic man in a suit and sunglasses and a tall extremely attractive Hispanic woman tried to steer people the Senator’s way. “The man is Perry Santiago. He is a city councilman -- big in the Democratic Party. His brother’s a lawyer for Champion Ambulance. The woman is Helen Seurat. Sidney Seuss’s daughter. Don Seurat’s ex-wife.
“She’s quite a story. She’s adopted. When Sidney and his wife started the business they were a one family ambulance service. One night they got called for an unknown behind one of the buildings in Rice Heights. It was a baby, not three hours old. No one claimed the baby. The Seuesss adopted her. Nice girl – Sidney spoiled her, particularly after his wife died. They brought her up in private schools, country clubs. Now she’s trying to hookup with the Hispanic community.”
“So they’re together?”
“For now. Santiago, like Don Seurat, is a ladies man as you can see. He likes to wear the nice suits and go to the parties and get his name in the paper. Helen works for the literacy program. She is a nice woman, but very high maintenance. With Don working so hard, and with his roving eye, their marriage went kaput. Even though Don gets plenty on his own, he’d take her back in a minute.”
Even from the distance of fifty yards I could see just how great her beauty was. She was tall with light brown skin and long raven hair.
“Don can’t stand Santiago,” Victor said. “Aside from taking his wife, Santiago keeps trying to get the city to give our territory to Champion.”
“Wouldn’t Helen be opposed to that?”
“I don’t know. Sidney’s partners are in a fight over what to do with the business. I think Helen wants them to sell. I don’t know. It’s hard to figure. I just come to work when I’m in the book and go where they tell me. As long as my paycheck clears at the bank, I’m not complaining.”
“That’s a good way to be.”
“The Senator wants to learn something valuable, he should talk to that old man over there,” Victor said.
A man with a weathered leathery face sat in a wheelchair in front of a bogata, smoking a cigarette watching the scene on the street.
“That’s Papi Ruiz. He started one of the first gangs in the city years ago when Puerto Ricans were being exploited. That changed. I used to be best friends his grandson Hector. Hector Ruiz, you’ve heard of him?”
“No, should I have?”
“You’ll hear of him you stay working here long enough. He’s the leader of the most powerful gang in the city. He’s in jail now, but he may win his appeal. Maybe you’ve seen him when he was on Sixty Minutes?”
“I don’t watch much TV.”
“He was on Sixty Minutes. He took over the gang when his older brother Ramon was sent to jail for murder. Hector was amazing at first. He had his boys doing community services projects, food banks, helping old ladies with their groceries, organizing athletic events for the kids. They are not a gang, but a social club, committed to cleaning up the neighborhood, teaching pride to young people. He had people fooled. He is charismatic. He was always on TV giving sound bites. For a while things did seem better. The shootings were down. He engineered a truce with rival gangs.
“The drug trade, while still going on, was off the street corner, making it harder for the cops to pin it on the gang. Then Hector’s brother Jaime got shot on the corner of Park and Lawrence. A drive-by -- he got hit fourteen times. We expected hell to break loose. The city flooded the streets with cops. The governor sent in state troopers. But there’s Hector out in the street, preaching peace. He seemed like a man transformed. They held a candlelight vigil. He got written up in Time magazine, profiled on 60 Minutes. The next thing you know Hector is going to win the Nobel Prize the way they’re talking about him.
“Then one night we’re sitting down at Capitol and Broad and we hear the pop pop pop sound of gunfire. ‘463, shooting, Park and Lawrence, multiple victims.’ ‘451, shooting Hudson Street.’ ‘472, Main and Capen.’
“Turns out he’s unified several of the smaller gangs into one, and coordinated an assault on their chief rival. Five fatalities, another ten wounded. One rival is thrown dead on the steps of 50 Jennings Road – the PD station. He’s been tortured. The trigger finger of his right hand is cut off. They found it in his rectum. The cops couldn’t pin any of it on Hector. Every time they got close to getting the story, somebody else got shot. They finally got him on a drug possession. I think they planted a joint on him. I know he was too smart to carry himself. He claims he is a political prisoner.”
“And you and he were friends?”
“We were like blood.”
“Yet he’s there and you’re here?”
“That’s how it worked out. At first, his older brothers and his grandfather tried to protect him. They wouldn’t let him have any part of the gang life. He was going to be the one that did well in school and went to college. One day when we were thirteen, some rival gang members had come down Hamilton, and were spray-painting their graffiti in our neighborhood. When they were spotted, they jumped back in their Camaro and took off. Hector’s little sister Maria was in the street. They slammed into her. She was killed instantly. The same thing as happened later; the cops knew there would be trouble so they locked down the neighborhood. They arrested his brothers just to get them off the street. Two nights later, the driver was found tied to the rear of a stolen car that was smashed driverless into the clubhouse of the rival gang, his corpse was dragged over a hundred yards. After that Hector was in the gang.”
“And you never joined.”
“I tried to, but Papi Ruiz wouldn’t let me. Maybe it was because he had known my father and felt he should look after me. He taught his grandsons to be tough -- to not back down. The gang thing he started was for protection, but it changed. Everyone fighting each other. He couldn’t save them – they were too much like him. So he chose me to save. ‘Little Bull’ he called me.”
He was quiet for a moment, then nodding toward the Senator, said, “This is a poor neighborhood,” he said, “but it is not about welfare and food stamps, it is about what you hold inside, how you see yourself. It is about pride. That is what Papi would tell the Senator.”
We watched as the Senator and his staff got into a black Lincoln that pulled up for them, and they were off, gone from the world of Park Street. Helen Seurat and Perry Santiago got into a white convertible and drove slowly back East on Park Street. Santiago had his arm around her like a high school boy around his Saturday night date.
Papi Ruiz lit another cigarette.
“I want to show you something,” Victor said. “Take a left on Zion.” He directed me around the corner and pointed to a billboard, overgrown with vines. “Check that out.”
There was a picture of the Senator, standing in front of the Capitol. “Joe Shrieb for Senate, Leadership for Connecticut.” The paint had faded and peeled. Someone had graffitied “Lolpop” on it. “You know what that means? Lollypop. It’s a dis. Gangs spray it over other gang’s graffiti. That’s been there for years. Nobody has told him. That’s how much the big politicians know this community. He has no eyes on this street.”
Our radio cackled, “483, Respond to Park and Spring, man shot in the leg. On a one.”
“Summer in the city,” Victor said.
I hit the red lights on.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Chapter 9
The thing of it was: Troy’s diabetic episodes were almost entirely preventable. We all need sugar to survive. A diabetic lacks insulin that breaks the sugar down and transports it to the cells. Troy gave himself daily shots of insulin and carefully monitored his blood glucose level. He tried to keep his in the 80-120 range -- on the low end. 80-120 is fine, except some sudden bursts of energy and you could go down to 50, and 50 was where Troy started to loose control. At 40, he was cold and diaphoretic. At 35 he was unconscious. Other diabetics kept their level higher in the 120-160 area. The higher the sugar level, the less likely you were to be affected by missing a meal or a sudden rush of energy. But the higher you maintained it, the sooner the disease would advance its nasty handiwork. Troy wanted his low because the lower he kept it, the better for his long-term health.
“I’m really looking forward to the day my first toe falls off,” he said, as he pricked his finger with a lancet. “Then my foot, then the leg up to my knee, then I’ll go blind, I’ll need dialysis. I’ll get killer bed sores, open seeping pus filled wounds. You’re in such good shape, you’ll still be here to cart me around, pick me up at Trinity Hill three times a week.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
He squeezed a drop of blood onto the test strip. “Yeah, I’ll have orderlies wiping my butt. Then my heart will fail, and they’ll find me cold in bed. You’ll be working with Linda, and after a quick initial exam of my corpse, she’ll tell you to go back to the ambulance to get a crow bar.”
“A crow bar?”
“Yeah, because after I’m gone, even though my toes and fingers have fallen off, they’ll still need the crow bar to beat my dick to death.”
“You’re demented.”
“Sugar’s 53. Better give me one of those Baby Ruth’s.”
I already had it in my hand.
“Walking the thin line,” he said.
“Eat your bar.”
Troy always played it close to the wire. That might have been all right if he took better care of himself, but that wasn’t his style.
“That man does two things,” Victor Sanchez told me. “He works and he parties. Him and his buddy Pat Brothers -- the dynamic duo. Those two, they don’t go down to the corner for beers, they drive to Atlantic City or catch a plane to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras or Miami Beach or wherever the action is.
“Three years ago they ran with the bulls in Pamplona. New Year’s -- they’re at Times Square. Once they went down to Jamaica for some reggae festival. They come back and Pat’s got a picture of them smoking foot long spliffs, hanging out with Rastafarians. Troy’s got his hair in miniature dreadlocks. Last year they went to the X-games -- you know the ones on ESPN. Troy comes back with his wrist in a cast and a medal. It’s not a gold or bronze or silver. It just says “Participant” on it. Still it was a medal. He was very proud. He entered the skateboard competition. Finished next to last, but he still participated. They’ve surfed the pipeline in Hawaii, gone scuba diving with sharks off the Great Barrier Reef, and hunted mountain goat in the Rockies. Most years they go to the Super Bowl.
“One time one of our medics Kim Dylan was vacationing at Caesar’s in Las Vegas with her sister and her kids. The casino’s hosting an Elvis karaoke contest. She looks up at the stage and there’s an Elvis look-a-like dressed in a white leather jacket, with a scarf around his neck, down on one knee, singing “You Gave Me a Mountain.” She looks at him closer. She can’t believe it. It’s Troy. Not only is it him, but he wins. She runs into him again that night. He and Pat and two busty showgirls are at a craps table. He’s still in his Elvis suit along with his fake sideburns. They’ve parlayed the $500 he’d won in the karaoke contest into over $25,000, every penny of which they lose, but not until they enjoyed two days of comped suites, shows and ringside seats at a heavyweight title fight. They even got Kim’s rooms comped for her and got her tickets to Siegfried and Roy.”
“That’s funny. Troy as Elvis. I can see it.”
“Living large. The two of them can pack away the liquor, too, though Pat has tapered off lately now he’s got a steady girl. I drink it goes right here on my belly. They stay lean; still it’s got to take a toll. You reach an age, well, you know, how’s that song Nestor is always singing go? ‘Hangovers hurt more than they used to.’”
Thursday mornings when our shift started, Troy always looked pale and haggard. He was a giant white candle, his eyes the burnt wicks.
“You ever thought about maybe going a little easier,” I finally said one day after driving behind the Mobil Station on Washington Street so Troy could puke for the third time that morning.
He wiped his mouth as he leaned against the dumpster, then said, “Go to hell. Okay?”
“What could I have been thinking?” I said.
If he wanted to party and drink for days, it was his life. He knew what the disease was all about. He knew the complications and its inevitable course. We saw its handiwork nearly everyday.
The address was a single-family home in the city’s South end across from a public housing complex. The white paint on the house was dull and peeling. The side boards were rotting. The front gutter had fallen off and lay in the tall grass next to the garage. The cement walk that led to the front door was buckled and uneven, and made a rough ride for the stretcher. A sign by the door said “The Smiths.” A neatly dressed woman in her sixties met us at the door. “He’s in the den,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve been here before. He’s a diabetic. I came home early and found him.”
We could hear him snoring as we walked down the hall. He sat in an arm chair with torn upholstery. He was cold and diaphoretic to the touch. I repositioned his head so his tongue wasn’t partially obstructing his airway, while Troy pulled out his IV kit. The man had one leg missing at the knee; half his other foot was gone. On the floor was a pair of thick-lensed glasses with tape around the frames. There were several Old Milwaukee beer cans scattered on the floor and TV tray. On an old TV set with a wire coat hanger attached to the antenna John Wayne’s battleship took heavy fire from the Japanese Navy.
I spiked a bag of Normal Saline and got out the glucometer. Troy handed me the needle in exchange for the IV line. I put a drop of blood from the needle on the glucometer strip, then handed Troy the bristo jet of D50 after he’d taped down the IV. He already started pushing it when the reading came up. “21,” I announced.
“Oh, dear,” the wife said. “I should never have left. I knew this would happen.”
“Do you think he did it on purpose?”
“He just doesn’t care anymore,” she said. “I have to watch him.”
The man opened his eyes and saw Troy. He looked disgusted.
“Your sugar didn’t register,” Troy said. “You were barely breathing.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s six-thirty,” his wife said. “I wasn’t going to come back till later tonight, but you wouldn’t answer the phone, so I came back early.”
“You should have stayed away,” he said.
He stared grimly at Troy’s hat. “A Yankee fan, huh? Wouldn’t you know it?”
“You don’t like the Yankees?”
“What are you a comedian? You wouldn’t know the Red Sox score would you?”
“They lost,” I said. “5-4”
“And I’m not dead yet.”
“You’re still here,” Troy said.
“I thought for a moment I’d be spending my time with him.” He nodded grimly at Troy.
“It’s not our time yet,” Troy said.
The man laughed without humor. “Fucking Yankees.” He said to his wife again, “You should have stayed away. Let a man have his peace. This is no kind of life.”
“You want us to take you to the hospital?” I asked.
Troy gave me a glare.
“No, I’ve been that route before,” the man said. “No thanks.”
“Just sign here,” Troy said, producing a run form and drawing an X for the man’s signature on the refusal line.
“You sure you don’t want to get looked at?” I said.
“The man said no,” Troy said. “His sugar should be back to normal.”
“Where do I sign?” the man asked. “I don’t see so well.”
“I’ll make certain he eats,” his wife said to me. “And call if I have too. Thank you for coming.”
As we wheeled the stretcher back to the rig, I said to Troy, “Maybe we should have had him committed. Don’t you think he needs a psychiatric evaluation?”
“He’s not crazy,” Troy said.
“You don’t think he was trying to kill himself?”
“He’s just trying to live the way he wants. If he wants to die, fine. If I get there in time, I’ll save his life. If not, well then at least he’s at peace.”
Annie Moore was thirty years old, but she looked forty. She was skinny with long stringing hair, lines around her eyes and mouth, and brown teeth, but her green eyes still could shine when she cracked a smile, when she was trying to get money out of you.
We were parked outside Dunkin’ Doughnuts at Capitol and Broad. Annie came up to Troy’s side of the ambulance. “Got five bucks so I can buy a lottery ticket? I’m feeling lucky. I win, I’ll split it with you.”
“Now, there’s a deal. What kind are you going to buy?” I asked.
She hesitated. “The $5 kind.”
Troy laughed. “Here’s a fiver. Put it on Old English.”
“You’re all right,” she said. “You’re a generous man.”
“Old English?” I said.
She was gone before I could convince him to take it back.
“You’re just enabling her,” I said.
“To have a good time and enjoy herself before she kicks.”
She’d been on the street for eight years, according to Troy. Capitol Ambulance picked her up nearly everyday. We’d find her passed out behind the High Street Liquor Store, or in a doorway off Broad Street, or standing against a telephone pole on Capitol Ave. She wasn’t always drunk. Sometimes she was beat up. Troy had to intubate her a couple times she was so unresponsive. Every now and then Troy said he’d run into her when she was sober after a long hospital stay, and she could be quite pleasant. She knew she had a disease and she knew it was going to kill her. That fact didn’t keep her from trying to go straight. It just helped her to savor being sober when she was. Sometimes I gave her food to eat, a package of crackers, half a sandwich. If she wanted money for coffee, I went in and bought her the coffee and a sometimes a doughnut too. Troy only gave her money.
Some EMTs would yell at drunks and treat them roughly. They resented their stink, their vomit, their very existence that at times made the EMTs seem like human garbage men. When they were having a crappy day, it was easy to feel no compassion for someone who had brought their own troubles on themselves. Troy wasn’t like that. He seemed to have an affinity for those crushed by alcohol, or mental illness. He never lectured anyone on mending their ways. While others often quickly resorted to restraints to control troublesome patients, leave Troy alone with a psych or a drunk and more often than not, he could get them to come along peacefully. “He speaks their language,” David Nestor said. And maybe he did. He let them smoke before getting in the ambulance, and then again at the hospital outside the ER doors before taking them in to the psych ward. Same thing with drunks. What others might turn into a physical confrontation, Troy defused. With Troy it was like Troy and the patient were sitting next to each other on bar stools commiserating about women, work and the weather. I’d drive to the hospital listening to Troy singing duets with them on country songs like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” or “I Got to Get Drunk.”
The only thing Troy had a low tolerance for was bullshit, and working in the city, we saw plenty of it. In Hartford, as often as not, people used the ambulance as a taxi service. Difficulty breathing turned out to be a four-year-old with a runny nose for two weeks. Abdominal pain was just stomach cramps from too much beer and greasy chicken. Someone would go to the ER, get a prescription, and then call back the ambulance the next day because they still weren’t feeling better. You have to take the full seven-day course of medicine, we’d say. It doesn’t work after one pill. We’d go to motor vehicle accidents and find people claiming neck and back pain who hadn’t even been in the car. It tended to put a cynical edge on you.
It was a busy day. We were flat-out nonstop, racing back and forth across the city, all for bullshit. We cleared Saint Fran after bringing in an earache and were sent priority one across town to Wethersfield Avenue for a woman passed out.
“Oh, great,” Troy said as we pulled up to a funeral parlor. “An I-I-I.”
“Maybe it will be legitimate.”
“Dream on.”
A line of mourners wound out the door and back through the parking lot. Denny Creer met us outside and said, “It’s BS. You know that kid who got shot on Spring Street two days ago. It’s his funeral. His girlfriend pulled a fainting fit. They’re all gathered around her, paying homage right now.” He led us to a parlor where the boy’s girlfriend and mother of one of his two children lay on a couch. Anxious family members surrounded the girl, who wore a black sun dress. An older man held a wet towel on her forehead.
“She saw the casket and she fainted. Now she can’t speak and her eyes roll back in her head,” the man said.
Troy held her hand up over her head and let go. The hand moved and fell harmlessly to the side. He opened her eyelids, and she rolled her eyes back. He felt her pulse. “This is bullshit,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?” the man said. I could see the veins in his neck fill with blood.
“Nothing is wrong. She’s fine,” Troy said. He rubbed his knuckles into her chest. She moved against his hand, but kept her eyes closed. “See, she reacts.”
“You’re hurting her,” the man said.
“This is not a medical problem,” Troy said.
I was cut off from Troy by several on-lookers. I tried to get to him in time.
“What do you mean? Can’t you do anything? Can you take her to the hospital?”
“She’s faking. There is nothing wrong with her. She wants attention.”
“Can’t you do anything? Look at her.”
“She just needs a good slap.”
“What?”
“Not too hard. You don’t want to hurt her -- just bring her back to reality.”
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping between them. “That’s enough, Troy.” I shoved a candy bar in his hand. “Go back to the car.” I pushed him backwards.
“No, Lee, this is bullshit. People have to learn.” He shouted at the woman. “Get up! Nap time is over!”
“Get out of here. Go sit in the car.”
“Easy, Troy,” Denny Creer said, grasping his arm.
“Fine, you deal with it,” Troy said angrily. “It’s BS and you know it.”
“Go,” I said.
“What do you say we get you something to eat?” Denny said, walking Troy away.
“I’m not hungry. I’m just pissed.”
I turned to the man. “I’m sorry, sir. He means well,” I said, and then using a phrase I had come to rely on said, “He’s having a bad day.”
“Bad day. He shouldn’t be doing this job.”
“He just lost his best friend in a car accident. He’s out of his mind, but we can’t get him to take time off. I apologize profusely”
I got him to sign a refusal, then went back down to the car, praying that Creer had taken care of Troy, that I wouldn’t find Troy passed out, beat up, or running around naked in the garden.
He sat in the passenger seat reading the paper, eating the candy bar. He said nothing to me when I got in.
“You didn’t have to go at her like that,” I said as we drove away. “That was pretty rude. You’re lucky her brothers didn’t beat the crap out of you.”
“Like you wouldn’t have helped me.”
“You know your sugar isn’t an excuse for treating people that way.”
“Your Red Sox lost again,” he said.
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Yankees up by seven.”
“Remind me to get a new partner.”
“482, take 23 Dorothy Drive in Bloomfield, Apt G for the unconscious diabetic. Visiting nurse on scene.”
“Shapiro,” Troy said. “Great.”
Alan Shapiro was a bloated fifty-year old diabetic with pasty white skin. He’d gotten gangrene from an infection on his foot, and had slowly lost half the leg to progressive amputation. He never wore more than his boxers and a white sleeveless tee shirt. He never left his apartment.
“Same old story,” the visiting nurse said when we arrived. “You’ve been here before.”
We found him in the bedroom, sprawled across his bed. The room was dusty and cluttered with girlie magazines and adult videos. As Troy made a half-hearted look for a vein, I opened up his med kit and took out a vial of glucagon powder, a vial of sterile water and a syringe. Shapiro was a bitch to get an IV into; his veins were all used up. The three previous times we’d been there Troy had to give him intramuscular glucagon instead. An injection of glucagon right into the muscle enabled the body to convert the glycogen stores in the liver into a temporary sugar supply. It took a little longer to work – sometimes up to twenty minutes -- and was always a second choice because if you used glucagon one day it would be several more before the body could build back up the body’s supply of glycogen so it limited your choices if his sugar were to drop again. Troy unsnapped the tourniquet from the man’s arm, and picked up the syringe and vials I’d laid out next to him. He stuck the syringe in the sterile water vial and pulled back loading the syringe. He then injected the fluid into the vial with the powder, shook it up, and then again, pulled back on the plunger, loading the now reconstituted drug. He wiped Shapiro’s thigh with an alcohol wipe, then stuck in the syringe and injected the glucagon.
While we waited for Shapiro to come around, I looked at the photos on the wall. A young man with a crewcut stood bare-chested in army fatigue pants in front of a bunker, dog tags around his neck. With long hair and mustache, dressed in a 70’s suit, he looked sheepish as a girl with glasses kissed his cheek in front of a wedding cake. He stood with the same woman and two young girls in Mickey Mouse shirts, the Magic Kingdom in the background. There were no pictures more recent. He complained to us once bitterly about his wife’s lawyer.
“Check this out,” Troy said, holding up a prescription bottle he’d found by the bedside. “Viagra.”
Troy stared at the label. I wondered if maybe he wasn’t having a vision of himself sitting there thirty years from now with his own bottle and girly magazines. He set the bottle back down without saying anything more to me. He looked glum.
“I’m really looking forward to the day my first toe falls off,” he said, as he pricked his finger with a lancet. “Then my foot, then the leg up to my knee, then I’ll go blind, I’ll need dialysis. I’ll get killer bed sores, open seeping pus filled wounds. You’re in such good shape, you’ll still be here to cart me around, pick me up at Trinity Hill three times a week.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
He squeezed a drop of blood onto the test strip. “Yeah, I’ll have orderlies wiping my butt. Then my heart will fail, and they’ll find me cold in bed. You’ll be working with Linda, and after a quick initial exam of my corpse, she’ll tell you to go back to the ambulance to get a crow bar.”
“A crow bar?”
“Yeah, because after I’m gone, even though my toes and fingers have fallen off, they’ll still need the crow bar to beat my dick to death.”
“You’re demented.”
“Sugar’s 53. Better give me one of those Baby Ruth’s.”
I already had it in my hand.
“Walking the thin line,” he said.
“Eat your bar.”
Troy always played it close to the wire. That might have been all right if he took better care of himself, but that wasn’t his style.
“That man does two things,” Victor Sanchez told me. “He works and he parties. Him and his buddy Pat Brothers -- the dynamic duo. Those two, they don’t go down to the corner for beers, they drive to Atlantic City or catch a plane to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras or Miami Beach or wherever the action is.
“Three years ago they ran with the bulls in Pamplona. New Year’s -- they’re at Times Square. Once they went down to Jamaica for some reggae festival. They come back and Pat’s got a picture of them smoking foot long spliffs, hanging out with Rastafarians. Troy’s got his hair in miniature dreadlocks. Last year they went to the X-games -- you know the ones on ESPN. Troy comes back with his wrist in a cast and a medal. It’s not a gold or bronze or silver. It just says “Participant” on it. Still it was a medal. He was very proud. He entered the skateboard competition. Finished next to last, but he still participated. They’ve surfed the pipeline in Hawaii, gone scuba diving with sharks off the Great Barrier Reef, and hunted mountain goat in the Rockies. Most years they go to the Super Bowl.
“One time one of our medics Kim Dylan was vacationing at Caesar’s in Las Vegas with her sister and her kids. The casino’s hosting an Elvis karaoke contest. She looks up at the stage and there’s an Elvis look-a-like dressed in a white leather jacket, with a scarf around his neck, down on one knee, singing “You Gave Me a Mountain.” She looks at him closer. She can’t believe it. It’s Troy. Not only is it him, but he wins. She runs into him again that night. He and Pat and two busty showgirls are at a craps table. He’s still in his Elvis suit along with his fake sideburns. They’ve parlayed the $500 he’d won in the karaoke contest into over $25,000, every penny of which they lose, but not until they enjoyed two days of comped suites, shows and ringside seats at a heavyweight title fight. They even got Kim’s rooms comped for her and got her tickets to Siegfried and Roy.”
“That’s funny. Troy as Elvis. I can see it.”
“Living large. The two of them can pack away the liquor, too, though Pat has tapered off lately now he’s got a steady girl. I drink it goes right here on my belly. They stay lean; still it’s got to take a toll. You reach an age, well, you know, how’s that song Nestor is always singing go? ‘Hangovers hurt more than they used to.’”
Thursday mornings when our shift started, Troy always looked pale and haggard. He was a giant white candle, his eyes the burnt wicks.
“You ever thought about maybe going a little easier,” I finally said one day after driving behind the Mobil Station on Washington Street so Troy could puke for the third time that morning.
He wiped his mouth as he leaned against the dumpster, then said, “Go to hell. Okay?”
“What could I have been thinking?” I said.
If he wanted to party and drink for days, it was his life. He knew what the disease was all about. He knew the complications and its inevitable course. We saw its handiwork nearly everyday.
The address was a single-family home in the city’s South end across from a public housing complex. The white paint on the house was dull and peeling. The side boards were rotting. The front gutter had fallen off and lay in the tall grass next to the garage. The cement walk that led to the front door was buckled and uneven, and made a rough ride for the stretcher. A sign by the door said “The Smiths.” A neatly dressed woman in her sixties met us at the door. “He’s in the den,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve been here before. He’s a diabetic. I came home early and found him.”
We could hear him snoring as we walked down the hall. He sat in an arm chair with torn upholstery. He was cold and diaphoretic to the touch. I repositioned his head so his tongue wasn’t partially obstructing his airway, while Troy pulled out his IV kit. The man had one leg missing at the knee; half his other foot was gone. On the floor was a pair of thick-lensed glasses with tape around the frames. There were several Old Milwaukee beer cans scattered on the floor and TV tray. On an old TV set with a wire coat hanger attached to the antenna John Wayne’s battleship took heavy fire from the Japanese Navy.
I spiked a bag of Normal Saline and got out the glucometer. Troy handed me the needle in exchange for the IV line. I put a drop of blood from the needle on the glucometer strip, then handed Troy the bristo jet of D50 after he’d taped down the IV. He already started pushing it when the reading came up. “21,” I announced.
“Oh, dear,” the wife said. “I should never have left. I knew this would happen.”
“Do you think he did it on purpose?”
“He just doesn’t care anymore,” she said. “I have to watch him.”
The man opened his eyes and saw Troy. He looked disgusted.
“Your sugar didn’t register,” Troy said. “You were barely breathing.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s six-thirty,” his wife said. “I wasn’t going to come back till later tonight, but you wouldn’t answer the phone, so I came back early.”
“You should have stayed away,” he said.
He stared grimly at Troy’s hat. “A Yankee fan, huh? Wouldn’t you know it?”
“You don’t like the Yankees?”
“What are you a comedian? You wouldn’t know the Red Sox score would you?”
“They lost,” I said. “5-4”
“And I’m not dead yet.”
“You’re still here,” Troy said.
“I thought for a moment I’d be spending my time with him.” He nodded grimly at Troy.
“It’s not our time yet,” Troy said.
The man laughed without humor. “Fucking Yankees.” He said to his wife again, “You should have stayed away. Let a man have his peace. This is no kind of life.”
“You want us to take you to the hospital?” I asked.
Troy gave me a glare.
“No, I’ve been that route before,” the man said. “No thanks.”
“Just sign here,” Troy said, producing a run form and drawing an X for the man’s signature on the refusal line.
“You sure you don’t want to get looked at?” I said.
“The man said no,” Troy said. “His sugar should be back to normal.”
“Where do I sign?” the man asked. “I don’t see so well.”
“I’ll make certain he eats,” his wife said to me. “And call if I have too. Thank you for coming.”
As we wheeled the stretcher back to the rig, I said to Troy, “Maybe we should have had him committed. Don’t you think he needs a psychiatric evaluation?”
“He’s not crazy,” Troy said.
“You don’t think he was trying to kill himself?”
“He’s just trying to live the way he wants. If he wants to die, fine. If I get there in time, I’ll save his life. If not, well then at least he’s at peace.”
Annie Moore was thirty years old, but she looked forty. She was skinny with long stringing hair, lines around her eyes and mouth, and brown teeth, but her green eyes still could shine when she cracked a smile, when she was trying to get money out of you.
We were parked outside Dunkin’ Doughnuts at Capitol and Broad. Annie came up to Troy’s side of the ambulance. “Got five bucks so I can buy a lottery ticket? I’m feeling lucky. I win, I’ll split it with you.”
“Now, there’s a deal. What kind are you going to buy?” I asked.
She hesitated. “The $5 kind.”
Troy laughed. “Here’s a fiver. Put it on Old English.”
“You’re all right,” she said. “You’re a generous man.”
“Old English?” I said.
She was gone before I could convince him to take it back.
“You’re just enabling her,” I said.
“To have a good time and enjoy herself before she kicks.”
She’d been on the street for eight years, according to Troy. Capitol Ambulance picked her up nearly everyday. We’d find her passed out behind the High Street Liquor Store, or in a doorway off Broad Street, or standing against a telephone pole on Capitol Ave. She wasn’t always drunk. Sometimes she was beat up. Troy had to intubate her a couple times she was so unresponsive. Every now and then Troy said he’d run into her when she was sober after a long hospital stay, and she could be quite pleasant. She knew she had a disease and she knew it was going to kill her. That fact didn’t keep her from trying to go straight. It just helped her to savor being sober when she was. Sometimes I gave her food to eat, a package of crackers, half a sandwich. If she wanted money for coffee, I went in and bought her the coffee and a sometimes a doughnut too. Troy only gave her money.
Some EMTs would yell at drunks and treat them roughly. They resented their stink, their vomit, their very existence that at times made the EMTs seem like human garbage men. When they were having a crappy day, it was easy to feel no compassion for someone who had brought their own troubles on themselves. Troy wasn’t like that. He seemed to have an affinity for those crushed by alcohol, or mental illness. He never lectured anyone on mending their ways. While others often quickly resorted to restraints to control troublesome patients, leave Troy alone with a psych or a drunk and more often than not, he could get them to come along peacefully. “He speaks their language,” David Nestor said. And maybe he did. He let them smoke before getting in the ambulance, and then again at the hospital outside the ER doors before taking them in to the psych ward. Same thing with drunks. What others might turn into a physical confrontation, Troy defused. With Troy it was like Troy and the patient were sitting next to each other on bar stools commiserating about women, work and the weather. I’d drive to the hospital listening to Troy singing duets with them on country songs like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” or “I Got to Get Drunk.”
The only thing Troy had a low tolerance for was bullshit, and working in the city, we saw plenty of it. In Hartford, as often as not, people used the ambulance as a taxi service. Difficulty breathing turned out to be a four-year-old with a runny nose for two weeks. Abdominal pain was just stomach cramps from too much beer and greasy chicken. Someone would go to the ER, get a prescription, and then call back the ambulance the next day because they still weren’t feeling better. You have to take the full seven-day course of medicine, we’d say. It doesn’t work after one pill. We’d go to motor vehicle accidents and find people claiming neck and back pain who hadn’t even been in the car. It tended to put a cynical edge on you.
It was a busy day. We were flat-out nonstop, racing back and forth across the city, all for bullshit. We cleared Saint Fran after bringing in an earache and were sent priority one across town to Wethersfield Avenue for a woman passed out.
“Oh, great,” Troy said as we pulled up to a funeral parlor. “An I-I-I.”
“Maybe it will be legitimate.”
“Dream on.”
A line of mourners wound out the door and back through the parking lot. Denny Creer met us outside and said, “It’s BS. You know that kid who got shot on Spring Street two days ago. It’s his funeral. His girlfriend pulled a fainting fit. They’re all gathered around her, paying homage right now.” He led us to a parlor where the boy’s girlfriend and mother of one of his two children lay on a couch. Anxious family members surrounded the girl, who wore a black sun dress. An older man held a wet towel on her forehead.
“She saw the casket and she fainted. Now she can’t speak and her eyes roll back in her head,” the man said.
Troy held her hand up over her head and let go. The hand moved and fell harmlessly to the side. He opened her eyelids, and she rolled her eyes back. He felt her pulse. “This is bullshit,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?” the man said. I could see the veins in his neck fill with blood.
“Nothing is wrong. She’s fine,” Troy said. He rubbed his knuckles into her chest. She moved against his hand, but kept her eyes closed. “See, she reacts.”
“You’re hurting her,” the man said.
“This is not a medical problem,” Troy said.
I was cut off from Troy by several on-lookers. I tried to get to him in time.
“What do you mean? Can’t you do anything? Can you take her to the hospital?”
“She’s faking. There is nothing wrong with her. She wants attention.”
“Can’t you do anything? Look at her.”
“She just needs a good slap.”
“What?”
“Not too hard. You don’t want to hurt her -- just bring her back to reality.”
“Excuse me,” I said, stepping between them. “That’s enough, Troy.” I shoved a candy bar in his hand. “Go back to the car.” I pushed him backwards.
“No, Lee, this is bullshit. People have to learn.” He shouted at the woman. “Get up! Nap time is over!”
“Get out of here. Go sit in the car.”
“Easy, Troy,” Denny Creer said, grasping his arm.
“Fine, you deal with it,” Troy said angrily. “It’s BS and you know it.”
“Go,” I said.
“What do you say we get you something to eat?” Denny said, walking Troy away.
“I’m not hungry. I’m just pissed.”
I turned to the man. “I’m sorry, sir. He means well,” I said, and then using a phrase I had come to rely on said, “He’s having a bad day.”
“Bad day. He shouldn’t be doing this job.”
“He just lost his best friend in a car accident. He’s out of his mind, but we can’t get him to take time off. I apologize profusely”
I got him to sign a refusal, then went back down to the car, praying that Creer had taken care of Troy, that I wouldn’t find Troy passed out, beat up, or running around naked in the garden.
He sat in the passenger seat reading the paper, eating the candy bar. He said nothing to me when I got in.
“You didn’t have to go at her like that,” I said as we drove away. “That was pretty rude. You’re lucky her brothers didn’t beat the crap out of you.”
“Like you wouldn’t have helped me.”
“You know your sugar isn’t an excuse for treating people that way.”
“Your Red Sox lost again,” he said.
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Yankees up by seven.”
“Remind me to get a new partner.”
“482, take 23 Dorothy Drive in Bloomfield, Apt G for the unconscious diabetic. Visiting nurse on scene.”
“Shapiro,” Troy said. “Great.”
Alan Shapiro was a bloated fifty-year old diabetic with pasty white skin. He’d gotten gangrene from an infection on his foot, and had slowly lost half the leg to progressive amputation. He never wore more than his boxers and a white sleeveless tee shirt. He never left his apartment.
“Same old story,” the visiting nurse said when we arrived. “You’ve been here before.”
We found him in the bedroom, sprawled across his bed. The room was dusty and cluttered with girlie magazines and adult videos. As Troy made a half-hearted look for a vein, I opened up his med kit and took out a vial of glucagon powder, a vial of sterile water and a syringe. Shapiro was a bitch to get an IV into; his veins were all used up. The three previous times we’d been there Troy had to give him intramuscular glucagon instead. An injection of glucagon right into the muscle enabled the body to convert the glycogen stores in the liver into a temporary sugar supply. It took a little longer to work – sometimes up to twenty minutes -- and was always a second choice because if you used glucagon one day it would be several more before the body could build back up the body’s supply of glycogen so it limited your choices if his sugar were to drop again. Troy unsnapped the tourniquet from the man’s arm, and picked up the syringe and vials I’d laid out next to him. He stuck the syringe in the sterile water vial and pulled back loading the syringe. He then injected the fluid into the vial with the powder, shook it up, and then again, pulled back on the plunger, loading the now reconstituted drug. He wiped Shapiro’s thigh with an alcohol wipe, then stuck in the syringe and injected the glucagon.
While we waited for Shapiro to come around, I looked at the photos on the wall. A young man with a crewcut stood bare-chested in army fatigue pants in front of a bunker, dog tags around his neck. With long hair and mustache, dressed in a 70’s suit, he looked sheepish as a girl with glasses kissed his cheek in front of a wedding cake. He stood with the same woman and two young girls in Mickey Mouse shirts, the Magic Kingdom in the background. There were no pictures more recent. He complained to us once bitterly about his wife’s lawyer.
“Check this out,” Troy said, holding up a prescription bottle he’d found by the bedside. “Viagra.”
Troy stared at the label. I wondered if maybe he wasn’t having a vision of himself sitting there thirty years from now with his own bottle and girly magazines. He set the bottle back down without saying anything more to me. He looked glum.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Chapter 8
We were called for a violent psych, and dispatch hadn’t been kidding.
“All you motherfuckers look out. I am the archangel. I’m a bad motherfucker!”
Six nine, three hundred pounds of prison muscle, naked except for a jock strap – the screaming man stood in the middle of the street whirling a child’s bicycle around and round over his head.
There were two cops already on scene and they were calling for backup.
“Come and get me. I’m on TV. I’m a bad man!”
“You got any ideas?” Officer Denny Creer asked Troy. Creer used to work for Capitol Ambulance and had been one of Troy’s early partners. He had a shaved head and a weight-lifter’s physique.
“Shoot him in the knees,” Troy said.
“What?”
“If he charges, you’ll have to go for a shoulder shot.”
“Forget I asked.”
“We could try to reason with him.”
“I think he’s out of his mind.”
“Come on you motherfuckers! I am the archangel and I am a bad man!”
Troy whispered to me, “Get the dart gun.”
Just then the madman stopped spinning. His eyes gleamed. He spun around twice more, and launched the bike like a discus. The cops and Troy watched it sail up into a tree. The man charged. “Look out!” I shouted.
He knocked the stunned cops over like he was Jim Brown running through a high school JV team. Troy tackled him hard around the waist, but didn’t bring him down. The man grabbed Troy and lifted him up. Troy punched him in the face. The man lost his grip. The cops were on the man now like dogs on a bear.
“10-0! 10-0!” I called on the radio just before a third car skidded into the intersection. One cop took a punch to the head. The man rose. Troy and Creer hauled the man down. He almost made it up again, but this time I joined the fray, driving my head and shoulder into his flank. I bounced off, scraping my arm on the asphalt. I looked up to see they had him contained now, a man on each limb, as the third cop had come to their aid.
I got up slowly, feeling like I had no business playing the linebacker.
“Rodney King! Rodney King!” the man screamed. “I’m on video! I know the score!”
The recent arrival hit him with his night stick to no effect.
“Easy,” Creer said, “You never know.”
“I’m a bad mother fucker! Get the video! I’m on TV!”
“Hey, Butkus,” Troy called to me, “Get my narc kit and med pouch.” He was sweating. To the cops, he said, “This guy’s strong.”
“I am a bad motherfucker! I’m on TV! I’m on video!”
“Hurry up with it,” Troy said.
Two more cops arrived. They relieved Troy on the man’s arm. They tried to flip him over and cuff him. He got in a few more shots and a head butt before they were able to get the cuffs on. Still they had to sit on him to keep him from kicking or gaining his feet.
I handed Troy the narc kit. His hands shook as he opened it, took out a vial and drew up a drug with a syringe.
“This’ll calm him down.” He swabbed the man’s bicep, then jabbed a syringe into the man’s skin.
Within a minute, the madman was snoring. It took the cops several minutes to realize the man wasn’t playing possum. It took four of us to lift him up onto the stretcher.
“I got to get some of that. Give it to my wife,” Creer said. “You want me to ride in with you?”
“No, he’s not waking up any time soon,” Troy said. “You can uncuff him.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s a sleeping rockabye baby. You could put a diaper on him, stick a rattle in his hand and take his lullaby picture.”
I drove to Hartford Hospital on a three, no lights, no siren. I backed into the ambulance entrance, got out, walked around and opened up the back doors. There was the patient, snoring away on the stretcher. Troy was laid out across the bench seat, snoring just as hard. I gave him a little shake, thinking he might be just putting me on, making fun of our patient’s three stooges sawing the wood act. He didn’t rouse. I touched his forehead – cold and diaphoretic. I looked out the side window. There were no other ambulances in the lot. A security guard leaned against the wall, smoking.
I was perspiring just as hard as Troy had been as I wrapped the tourniquet around his arm. I spiked the bag of saline, and hung it from the ceiling hook. I rubbed an alcohol wipe on the vein I intended to stick, then took out a 20-gage catheter. I aimed straight for the vein, and did as Pat taught me, went right in, no wussy stuff. I felt the vein pop. Blood flashed back into the chamber. I was in.
I carefully advanced the catheter over the needle, hooked up the saline line, and then taped it down. I hooked up the D50 and slowly pushed the thick syrupy water into his vein.
When it was done, I looked at Troy. He was still out, but his color was better. I wiped off my brow with a towel.
The back door opened. It was Pat. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
Troy raised his head and squinted at us. “Fuck,” he said, and then lay back down.
“Good work,” Pat said to me. “What do you have here?”
“A violent psych. Troy sedated him before he crashed himself.”
“You have the paperwork?”
I looked at Troy’s run sheet. The patient’s name and date of birth were legible, the rest looked like it had been written by a kindergartener.
“Look we’ve got a drunk in our rig. I’ll help you bring him in. Jim’s got our guy in a wheelchair. This guy’ll be my patient. Give Troy some time to take it easy.”
When we came back out Troy was eating a hot dog and drinking a coke, talking to Denny Creer about the madman.
“He’ll never acknowledge you helping,” Pat said.
It was true. Every time I gave Troy D50, he’d wake up with that brutal look of disappointment that his own body had let him down. “Fuck you,” he’d say, and then sulk off.
“Weakness isn’t easy to admit,” Pat said that day. “Especially for Troy.”
“All you motherfuckers look out. I am the archangel. I’m a bad motherfucker!”
Six nine, three hundred pounds of prison muscle, naked except for a jock strap – the screaming man stood in the middle of the street whirling a child’s bicycle around and round over his head.
There were two cops already on scene and they were calling for backup.
“Come and get me. I’m on TV. I’m a bad man!”
“You got any ideas?” Officer Denny Creer asked Troy. Creer used to work for Capitol Ambulance and had been one of Troy’s early partners. He had a shaved head and a weight-lifter’s physique.
“Shoot him in the knees,” Troy said.
“What?”
“If he charges, you’ll have to go for a shoulder shot.”
“Forget I asked.”
“We could try to reason with him.”
“I think he’s out of his mind.”
“Come on you motherfuckers! I am the archangel and I am a bad man!”
Troy whispered to me, “Get the dart gun.”
Just then the madman stopped spinning. His eyes gleamed. He spun around twice more, and launched the bike like a discus. The cops and Troy watched it sail up into a tree. The man charged. “Look out!” I shouted.
He knocked the stunned cops over like he was Jim Brown running through a high school JV team. Troy tackled him hard around the waist, but didn’t bring him down. The man grabbed Troy and lifted him up. Troy punched him in the face. The man lost his grip. The cops were on the man now like dogs on a bear.
“10-0! 10-0!” I called on the radio just before a third car skidded into the intersection. One cop took a punch to the head. The man rose. Troy and Creer hauled the man down. He almost made it up again, but this time I joined the fray, driving my head and shoulder into his flank. I bounced off, scraping my arm on the asphalt. I looked up to see they had him contained now, a man on each limb, as the third cop had come to their aid.
I got up slowly, feeling like I had no business playing the linebacker.
“Rodney King! Rodney King!” the man screamed. “I’m on video! I know the score!”
The recent arrival hit him with his night stick to no effect.
“Easy,” Creer said, “You never know.”
“I’m a bad mother fucker! Get the video! I’m on TV!”
“Hey, Butkus,” Troy called to me, “Get my narc kit and med pouch.” He was sweating. To the cops, he said, “This guy’s strong.”
“I am a bad motherfucker! I’m on TV! I’m on video!”
“Hurry up with it,” Troy said.
Two more cops arrived. They relieved Troy on the man’s arm. They tried to flip him over and cuff him. He got in a few more shots and a head butt before they were able to get the cuffs on. Still they had to sit on him to keep him from kicking or gaining his feet.
I handed Troy the narc kit. His hands shook as he opened it, took out a vial and drew up a drug with a syringe.
“This’ll calm him down.” He swabbed the man’s bicep, then jabbed a syringe into the man’s skin.
Within a minute, the madman was snoring. It took the cops several minutes to realize the man wasn’t playing possum. It took four of us to lift him up onto the stretcher.
“I got to get some of that. Give it to my wife,” Creer said. “You want me to ride in with you?”
“No, he’s not waking up any time soon,” Troy said. “You can uncuff him.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s a sleeping rockabye baby. You could put a diaper on him, stick a rattle in his hand and take his lullaby picture.”
I drove to Hartford Hospital on a three, no lights, no siren. I backed into the ambulance entrance, got out, walked around and opened up the back doors. There was the patient, snoring away on the stretcher. Troy was laid out across the bench seat, snoring just as hard. I gave him a little shake, thinking he might be just putting me on, making fun of our patient’s three stooges sawing the wood act. He didn’t rouse. I touched his forehead – cold and diaphoretic. I looked out the side window. There were no other ambulances in the lot. A security guard leaned against the wall, smoking.
I was perspiring just as hard as Troy had been as I wrapped the tourniquet around his arm. I spiked the bag of saline, and hung it from the ceiling hook. I rubbed an alcohol wipe on the vein I intended to stick, then took out a 20-gage catheter. I aimed straight for the vein, and did as Pat taught me, went right in, no wussy stuff. I felt the vein pop. Blood flashed back into the chamber. I was in.
I carefully advanced the catheter over the needle, hooked up the saline line, and then taped it down. I hooked up the D50 and slowly pushed the thick syrupy water into his vein.
When it was done, I looked at Troy. He was still out, but his color was better. I wiped off my brow with a towel.
The back door opened. It was Pat. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
Troy raised his head and squinted at us. “Fuck,” he said, and then lay back down.
“Good work,” Pat said to me. “What do you have here?”
“A violent psych. Troy sedated him before he crashed himself.”
“You have the paperwork?”
I looked at Troy’s run sheet. The patient’s name and date of birth were legible, the rest looked like it had been written by a kindergartener.
“Look we’ve got a drunk in our rig. I’ll help you bring him in. Jim’s got our guy in a wheelchair. This guy’ll be my patient. Give Troy some time to take it easy.”
When we came back out Troy was eating a hot dog and drinking a coke, talking to Denny Creer about the madman.
“He’ll never acknowledge you helping,” Pat said.
It was true. Every time I gave Troy D50, he’d wake up with that brutal look of disappointment that his own body had let him down. “Fuck you,” he’d say, and then sulk off.
“Weakness isn’t easy to admit,” Pat said that day. “Especially for Troy.”
Monday, June 22, 2009
Chapter 7
We came in off the road at ten. I refueled, cleaned, washed and restocked the ambulance, while Troy turned in the paperwork and narc keys. Troy’s pickup was usually long gone from the parking lot by the time I punched out, but tonight he and Pat, their uniform shirts off, stood sharing a six-pack, while the stereo in Troy’s pickup played Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. “Lee, old pal,” Troy called. “You worked hard today. One of these Buds has your name on it.” He tossed me a can, which I caught, bobbling it slightly.
“Thanks anyway, I don’t drink.”
“Bullshit. I bet you could drink us both under the table. Come on out with us. We’ve been waiting for you. We’re all meeting at the Brickyard Pub.”
“It’ll be good for you,” Pat said. “They’ll be a lot people there.”
“Girls too,” Troy said, “You have a 100 percent chance of getting lucky.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, as I tossed the can back to him with an underhand toss. “But I need my beauty sleep. You two have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Another time then,” Pat said.
“Maybe. Have a good night.”
“I told you he wouldn’t go,” I heard Troy said to Pat as I got into my car.
“Always worth a try,” Pat said.
I was staying in a small furnished apartment over a barn in Granby, a small rural town, a half hour north of Hartford. In return for keeping the yard up and doing minor house repairs for the elderly widow who lived in the farmhouse, I paid no rent. I liked it out there. It was quiet -- a good contrast with the lights and sirens of the city. And it was dark enough that you could see the stars.
Tonight I walked up the side stairway to my apartment. I stripped to my shorts, skipped some rope, and then did bench presses, rows, lunges, squats and curls, followed by the same hundred pushups and sit-ups with which I started my day. In just a few months, I’d toned my body hard. After I showered, I drank some cold water from the fridge, and then lay in bed.
I couldn’t say I didn’t have regrets about my life. No family left, living by myself -- no true friends, much less even a close acquaintance. But it could have been worse I supposed. One thing about the job in EMS was it showed how people had it tougher than you did – people wracked by cancer, paralyzed by trauma, or barely able to draw a breath through scarred lungs, or even otherwise healthy people crippled by mental torment. Life had a hard kick so maybe I shouldn’t complain because it had banged me up. Everyone had their griefs. I knew I’d indulged mine more than enough.
Usually I went to sleep right away. But tonight I thought about another life for me, about drinking just a few beers with my coworkers, maybe dancing with a pretty woman, feeling alive again, feeling a part of something.
“Thanks anyway, I don’t drink.”
“Bullshit. I bet you could drink us both under the table. Come on out with us. We’ve been waiting for you. We’re all meeting at the Brickyard Pub.”
“It’ll be good for you,” Pat said. “They’ll be a lot people there.”
“Girls too,” Troy said, “You have a 100 percent chance of getting lucky.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, as I tossed the can back to him with an underhand toss. “But I need my beauty sleep. You two have fun. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Another time then,” Pat said.
“Maybe. Have a good night.”
“I told you he wouldn’t go,” I heard Troy said to Pat as I got into my car.
“Always worth a try,” Pat said.
I was staying in a small furnished apartment over a barn in Granby, a small rural town, a half hour north of Hartford. In return for keeping the yard up and doing minor house repairs for the elderly widow who lived in the farmhouse, I paid no rent. I liked it out there. It was quiet -- a good contrast with the lights and sirens of the city. And it was dark enough that you could see the stars.
Tonight I walked up the side stairway to my apartment. I stripped to my shorts, skipped some rope, and then did bench presses, rows, lunges, squats and curls, followed by the same hundred pushups and sit-ups with which I started my day. In just a few months, I’d toned my body hard. After I showered, I drank some cold water from the fridge, and then lay in bed.
I couldn’t say I didn’t have regrets about my life. No family left, living by myself -- no true friends, much less even a close acquaintance. But it could have been worse I supposed. One thing about the job in EMS was it showed how people had it tougher than you did – people wracked by cancer, paralyzed by trauma, or barely able to draw a breath through scarred lungs, or even otherwise healthy people crippled by mental torment. Life had a hard kick so maybe I shouldn’t complain because it had banged me up. Everyone had their griefs. I knew I’d indulged mine more than enough.
Usually I went to sleep right away. But tonight I thought about another life for me, about drinking just a few beers with my coworkers, maybe dancing with a pretty woman, feeling alive again, feeling a part of something.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Incredibly Nimble
We were sent today for a lady too dizzy to get out of bed. There were elaborate instructions given about where the key was in the garage. We searched for about fifteen minutes with no luck. It was dark in there and dusty and there were mouse traps everywhere. We saw two neighbors come over and hoping they had a spare key we stopped searching. They didn't have a key.
We are standing in the breezeway then between the house and the garage. I look and see the kitchen window is open about ten inches. Very easy to stick my hand in and open it all the way.
One of the neighbors says, "I'll climb in, I'm smaller than you."
I am about to say okay because I have to admit lately, I have been deferring on some of the lifts to younger partners and first responders. If they want to lift, why not. I'm fifty years old, let them break their strong young backs. But then I think one of the great joys in this job is the chance to legally break into houses. I love going through windows. This one is easy. It doesn't even require a boost up other than standing on a low table. Through the window, onto the counter top, spin my legs around, and down to the floor, then go open the door. "No, I've got it," I say. "Thanks, though." I'm not ready for retirement.
Piece of cake. Goes just like I thought. I open the door and let eveyone in and we all go to find the dizzy lady.
She is in the back bedroom. "You found the key?" she says.
"No," I say. "We couldn't find it, so I came in through in the kitchen window." (No I didn't say the last eight words like Joe Cocker doing the Beatles).
"Wow, you must be incredibly nimble."
"Yes, Mame, all part of the job."
We are standing in the breezeway then between the house and the garage. I look and see the kitchen window is open about ten inches. Very easy to stick my hand in and open it all the way.
One of the neighbors says, "I'll climb in, I'm smaller than you."
I am about to say okay because I have to admit lately, I have been deferring on some of the lifts to younger partners and first responders. If they want to lift, why not. I'm fifty years old, let them break their strong young backs. But then I think one of the great joys in this job is the chance to legally break into houses. I love going through windows. This one is easy. It doesn't even require a boost up other than standing on a low table. Through the window, onto the counter top, spin my legs around, and down to the floor, then go open the door. "No, I've got it," I say. "Thanks, though." I'm not ready for retirement.
Piece of cake. Goes just like I thought. I open the door and let eveyone in and we all go to find the dizzy lady.
She is in the back bedroom. "You found the key?" she says.
"No," I say. "We couldn't find it, so I came in through in the kitchen window." (No I didn't say the last eight words like Joe Cocker doing the Beatles).
"Wow, you must be incredibly nimble."
"Yes, Mame, all part of the job."
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Chapter Six
“Troy Johnson’s a punk,” Nestor said. “Good for entertainment, a few yucks, but that’s about it. He thinks being a medic is a gag, a gig for himself to strut his hoodoo.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t know where he’s from. He’s got no sense of history -- the people who came before him. We deserve some respect for the path we forged.”
I was driving us back from Hartford Hospital where we’d gone to pick up a Kendrick extrication device -- left by a crew who’d brought in a trauma earlier -- along with extra backboards that were overflowing the hospital’s EMS locker. It was Troy’s day off and Victor had to take his wife to the doctor, so I didn’t have anyone to work with until the afternoon when Andrew Melnick was going to come in on overtime. Nestor, bored with his paperwork, had invited himself along for the ride.
“Hartford was a great city once. It’s all crack houses and burned out buildings now. I’m glad I’m not out on the streets anymore, though I would be if the company would let me. Maybe in another year the doctors will give me the go ahead again if I can just drop some weight, though fuck my hip hurts just walking. Too god damn many carry-downs. Takes a toll on the body. All that lifting. I worked seven days a week. Everybody knew me. People were always coming up saying ‘Remember me. You took care of me. You took care of my mother. You took care of my grandfather. You delivered my sister.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, how’s everybody doing?’ I didn’t remember them. After awhile the people -- the calls -- they all flow together. I delivered twenty-seven babies. Called the time on a cemetery full of people. I’ve got stories.”
I could see being in an ambulance lifted his spirits.
“Let’s go see Sidney,” he said. “You been introduced to him yet?”
“Sidney?”
“Sidney Seuss -- the Boss -- the man who started it all. May he rest in peace. Not likely.”
He directed me to the Zion Hill Cemetery. We drove through the gates and up to the crest of the hill. We got out and walked across the grass to a site he pointed out.
A big marble tombstone. “Sidney Seuss, Beloved Husband and Father, Founder of Capital Ambulance.” By its base were nearly thirty matchbox ambulances of different types and styles.
Nestor reached into his pocket and took out another small ambulance and laid it down beside the others. “Another car for your fleet, old man,” he said. “You’re still the King.”
He stared at the tombstone. It was quiet except for Nestor’s wheezes and the faint hum of traffic.
Nestor laughed then. “The old bastard’s still watching over us. ‘How come you’re not out humping a stretcher right now, Davey, boy?’” he said in an oddly high voice. “’I don’t want to see you slacking today. There’s money to be made out there.’” He laughed, and then sighed deeply.
From the gravesite, you could see downtown Hartford below, the capitol dome, the downtown skyscrapers, Bushnell Park.
“Sidney owned this town,” Nestor said. “Some people thought it was an embarrassment to work for him, but I admired him. You had too. He was one of a kind. You know how he started? He was a tow-truck driver. He’d listen to his police scanner for accidents. He always beat the ambulance to the scene. He did it so much; he started carrying medical supplies in his truck. He felt bad standing there not being able to help. This was back in the late 1960’s before there were EMS systems. There was no regulation, no EMTs. Sidney saw a business opportunity. He went out and bought himself an ambulance, then two, then three. Next thing you know he was running the town.
“Other people got in the business. But they couldn’t compete with the old man. He lived it day and night. It was the Wild West then. They didn’t have assigned responder areas like they do now. It was first come, first serve. The unwritten rule was first company to pull their stretcher got the patient. It wasn’t unheard of to have fistfights over who got the transport. You didn’t think you could lick the other crew you let the air out of their tires.”
“You let the air out of their tires?”
“Ever see the movie Mother, Jugs and Speed?’”
“No.”
“You should check it out. It’s based on EMS in this town in those early days. Raquel Welch is in it. Larry Hagman. He plays the Sidney part. And Bill Cosby. The Bill Cosby character – you wouldn’t know it by the color of my skin, but he was based on me. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Can’t say that I did. Who did Raquel Welch play?
“They just threw her in there to add some sex appeal, not that there haven’t been any ambulance babes working these streets. You know, Hollywood --they changed things. Take my character. Made me a black man if you can imagine that. Then they set us all in California. Still the movie captured the spirit of EMS in the old days. It was about craziness and making money. We had to live by our wits in the early days of EMS. Sidney – that man knew how to make money. He’d give fruit baskets and prime steaks to nursing home administrators and their nurse supervisors. Get them to call us instead of the competition when they needed to send a patient out. Sidney used to drive around the city handing out bottles of Mad Dog and Thunderbird to the local drunks. Then he’d send the ambulance by to pick them up. Take them to detox at $100 a pop. We’d put four or five in the same ambulance. Talk about a racket.
“We had any problems with the city, Sidney took care of it. A councilman had a complaint; Sidney would take him out to Carbones. Wine and dine’em. No problem too big a veal marinara and some wine couldn’t solve.
“He bought out all the competition – Eastern, T&C, Ace -- all except Champion. I think he kept them in business just so no one could accuse him of having the monopoly. He had forty ambulances, fifty wheel chair vans and ten livery cars. We’re barely running half that now. We had this town locked down. We had all the 911s, ninety percent of the nursing homes, and forty dialysis patients – talk about cash in the bank. And Sidney was out there on the road every night, being driven around in his Cadillac with the red lights in the grille. You could hear his voice on the radio, ‘Where are you going Davey Boy? You’ll be in China before you get to Clark Street the way you’re headed.’
“He could be a bastard, but people liked working here. Every week, he took the crew that did the most calls out for a steak dinner. You had a sick kid at home, he’d palm you a fifty. Every Christmas he threw a big party -- open bar, lavish buffet everything from leg of lamb to chocolate covered strawberries, door prizes like TVs and Caribbean vacations, and nice party gifts with the company logo. It was a big deal. He might not have paid us the best wages, but he knew how to make us feel special.
“And he was the one who first brought paramedics to the city. The other companies were all running just EMTs, but he went out and got paramedics. I was in that first class. I worked the first ALS code in this city. I got a save too. Sidney put the paddles in my hand. He was ahead of his time. Now his legacy is on the verge of being obliterated up by the big corporations.
“It’s funny, you think you’re going to be on these streets forever, but then before you know it, its over. If only he’d lived. He’s got to be banging on the lid of that fancy box they’ve got him nailed in, wanting to get out and straighten this place out. A fine mess it’s in now, with all the bullshit going on. New rules and regulations, fucking with our schedules, fucking with people’s lives, fucking up the place.”
He stared at the tombstone. “I guess that’s how we’ll all end up -- leaving behind a fucked up world as if we’d never been here. Nothing to do but let the bugs eat us. A hell of a reward for your life’s toil.”
I was driving us back from Hartford Hospital where we’d gone to pick up a Kendrick extrication device -- left by a crew who’d brought in a trauma earlier -- along with extra backboards that were overflowing the hospital’s EMS locker. It was Troy’s day off and Victor had to take his wife to the doctor, so I didn’t have anyone to work with until the afternoon when Andrew Melnick was going to come in on overtime. Nestor, bored with his paperwork, had invited himself along for the ride.
“Hartford was a great city once. It’s all crack houses and burned out buildings now. I’m glad I’m not out on the streets anymore, though I would be if the company would let me. Maybe in another year the doctors will give me the go ahead again if I can just drop some weight, though fuck my hip hurts just walking. Too god damn many carry-downs. Takes a toll on the body. All that lifting. I worked seven days a week. Everybody knew me. People were always coming up saying ‘Remember me. You took care of me. You took care of my mother. You took care of my grandfather. You delivered my sister.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, how’s everybody doing?’ I didn’t remember them. After awhile the people -- the calls -- they all flow together. I delivered twenty-seven babies. Called the time on a cemetery full of people. I’ve got stories.”
I could see being in an ambulance lifted his spirits.
“Let’s go see Sidney,” he said. “You been introduced to him yet?”
“Sidney?”
“Sidney Seuss -- the Boss -- the man who started it all. May he rest in peace. Not likely.”
He directed me to the Zion Hill Cemetery. We drove through the gates and up to the crest of the hill. We got out and walked across the grass to a site he pointed out.
A big marble tombstone. “Sidney Seuss, Beloved Husband and Father, Founder of Capital Ambulance.” By its base were nearly thirty matchbox ambulances of different types and styles.
Nestor reached into his pocket and took out another small ambulance and laid it down beside the others. “Another car for your fleet, old man,” he said. “You’re still the King.”
He stared at the tombstone. It was quiet except for Nestor’s wheezes and the faint hum of traffic.
Nestor laughed then. “The old bastard’s still watching over us. ‘How come you’re not out humping a stretcher right now, Davey, boy?’” he said in an oddly high voice. “’I don’t want to see you slacking today. There’s money to be made out there.’” He laughed, and then sighed deeply.
From the gravesite, you could see downtown Hartford below, the capitol dome, the downtown skyscrapers, Bushnell Park.
“Sidney owned this town,” Nestor said. “Some people thought it was an embarrassment to work for him, but I admired him. You had too. He was one of a kind. You know how he started? He was a tow-truck driver. He’d listen to his police scanner for accidents. He always beat the ambulance to the scene. He did it so much; he started carrying medical supplies in his truck. He felt bad standing there not being able to help. This was back in the late 1960’s before there were EMS systems. There was no regulation, no EMTs. Sidney saw a business opportunity. He went out and bought himself an ambulance, then two, then three. Next thing you know he was running the town.
“Other people got in the business. But they couldn’t compete with the old man. He lived it day and night. It was the Wild West then. They didn’t have assigned responder areas like they do now. It was first come, first serve. The unwritten rule was first company to pull their stretcher got the patient. It wasn’t unheard of to have fistfights over who got the transport. You didn’t think you could lick the other crew you let the air out of their tires.”
“You let the air out of their tires?”
“Ever see the movie Mother, Jugs and Speed?’”
“No.”
“You should check it out. It’s based on EMS in this town in those early days. Raquel Welch is in it. Larry Hagman. He plays the Sidney part. And Bill Cosby. The Bill Cosby character – you wouldn’t know it by the color of my skin, but he was based on me. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Can’t say that I did. Who did Raquel Welch play?
“They just threw her in there to add some sex appeal, not that there haven’t been any ambulance babes working these streets. You know, Hollywood --they changed things. Take my character. Made me a black man if you can imagine that. Then they set us all in California. Still the movie captured the spirit of EMS in the old days. It was about craziness and making money. We had to live by our wits in the early days of EMS. Sidney – that man knew how to make money. He’d give fruit baskets and prime steaks to nursing home administrators and their nurse supervisors. Get them to call us instead of the competition when they needed to send a patient out. Sidney used to drive around the city handing out bottles of Mad Dog and Thunderbird to the local drunks. Then he’d send the ambulance by to pick them up. Take them to detox at $100 a pop. We’d put four or five in the same ambulance. Talk about a racket.
“We had any problems with the city, Sidney took care of it. A councilman had a complaint; Sidney would take him out to Carbones. Wine and dine’em. No problem too big a veal marinara and some wine couldn’t solve.
“He bought out all the competition – Eastern, T&C, Ace -- all except Champion. I think he kept them in business just so no one could accuse him of having the monopoly. He had forty ambulances, fifty wheel chair vans and ten livery cars. We’re barely running half that now. We had this town locked down. We had all the 911s, ninety percent of the nursing homes, and forty dialysis patients – talk about cash in the bank. And Sidney was out there on the road every night, being driven around in his Cadillac with the red lights in the grille. You could hear his voice on the radio, ‘Where are you going Davey Boy? You’ll be in China before you get to Clark Street the way you’re headed.’
“He could be a bastard, but people liked working here. Every week, he took the crew that did the most calls out for a steak dinner. You had a sick kid at home, he’d palm you a fifty. Every Christmas he threw a big party -- open bar, lavish buffet everything from leg of lamb to chocolate covered strawberries, door prizes like TVs and Caribbean vacations, and nice party gifts with the company logo. It was a big deal. He might not have paid us the best wages, but he knew how to make us feel special.
“And he was the one who first brought paramedics to the city. The other companies were all running just EMTs, but he went out and got paramedics. I was in that first class. I worked the first ALS code in this city. I got a save too. Sidney put the paddles in my hand. He was ahead of his time. Now his legacy is on the verge of being obliterated up by the big corporations.
“It’s funny, you think you’re going to be on these streets forever, but then before you know it, its over. If only he’d lived. He’s got to be banging on the lid of that fancy box they’ve got him nailed in, wanting to get out and straighten this place out. A fine mess it’s in now, with all the bullshit going on. New rules and regulations, fucking with our schedules, fucking with people’s lives, fucking up the place.”
He stared at the tombstone. “I guess that’s how we’ll all end up -- leaving behind a fucked up world as if we’d never been here. Nothing to do but let the bugs eat us. A hell of a reward for your life’s toil.”
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Chapter Five
David Nestor was one of the city’s original paramedics. Now at forty-eight, he weighed over three hundred pounds. He’d been taken off the road due to his arthritic hips and cardiac problems, not helped by his three pack a day cigarette habit. Others said the hospital had quietly yanked his medical control to practice because he had been unable to adapt to changing protocols and techniques. His job now was to read through the previous day’s run forms, sort them by number, and make certain all the signatures and insurance numbers were in place before the forms were sent on to the billing department. He often came to work unshaven. His uniform no longer fit. His prodigious gut hung over his belt. He looked like a broken tusked walrus. Instead of sitting at the desk in the back office, he sat on two chairs at a table in the crew room where he liked to hold court.
“Melnick, how can you wear that medic patch on your sleeve?” Nestor said. “I’m looking at this form. You write this guy had rales and you didn’t give him lasix? Didn’t they teach you anything in school?”
“I thought he might have pneumonia.”
“You can’t tell the difference? Didn’t they teach you assessment?”
“Yeah, but you need an x-ray.”
“An X-ray? Bullshit. All a medic needs is a good head on his shoulders and a twenty-dollar stethoscope. A medic doesn’t need an x-ray to see the patient’s in failure. Just reading the form, it’s clear he’s in failure. He’s got JVD, no fever, pedal edema, rales, Bp’s up, he’s tachycardic, Sat’s in the low 90’s despite your non-rebreather.”
“He’s got a pneumonia history. He wasn’t that bad, I didn’t want to take a chance and dehydrate him.”
“Are you a paramedic? You gave him nitro, go ahead and give the lasix. He’s on 60 a day, give him 120 and hand him a urinal. Case closed.”
He turned to see what everyone else in the room was looking at.
Troy, sweat on his brow, stood in the doorway with that demon gleam in his eye. “Nestor, you worthless slug,” he said.
Nestor narrowed his eyes suspiciously like he wasn’t sure whether Troy was serious or just toying with him.
“Nestor, I wouldn’t let you get within ten feet of me with a placebo.”
One moment the EMTs in the crew room had been checking their equipment and strapping on their bulletproof vests. The next they were silent, watching, waiting.
Nestor looked confused and irritated.
“You old paramedics don’t know half what the newest medic coming out of school today knows,” Troy continued. “There’s a new breed on the street. Fifty dollars says Melnick knows all his pediatric doses off the top of his head, and that you would only know them by pulling out your field guide unsticking its pages and putting on your bifocals.”
“Listen to you,” Nestor said to Troy. “Go take your medication.”
“That’s right, Melnick,” Troy said to the young medic. “It would do you some good to take some lessons from a real paramedic, not some washed up old dinosaur like Nestor who has killed more people than Son of Sam.”
“You wouldn’t know a medic if you saw one,” Nestor said. “When I first worked the city medics were special -- they were giants of the street. You had to earn the patch. Now days all you need is a pulse and you get hired. Medics are a dime a dozen, but they’re not worth the paper their card is printed on. Shake and Bake medics. Chia Pet medics. No wonder no one respects us anymore.”
“You make a good case for the giant part. The size certainly attests that they were exceedingly large, but like the stegosaurus they had tiny brains and made large shits wherever they went. When’s the last time you took a bath?”
“Psycho,” Nestor mumbled. He looked down at his run forms.
The EMTs in the room smiled like jackals and grinned at Troy, like they’d just crowned him lion king. Nestor was red-faced.
“Atropine .02 milligrams per kilogram,” Melnick said. “Epi...”
“Shut up Melnick,” Troy said.
I went out to the car. Troy might have been a phenomenal paramedic, but he grated me. We all traveled our own roads and took our own hard lessons. I guessed his were ahead of him.
“482, You available to sign on yet?”
“Just about,” I answered. “Give us a couple minutes. Troy’s in a meeting.”
“Tell me once he’s finished his paperwork, I need you to sign on and cover Newington.”
“Understood,” I said.
I went back into the crew room. “Have you seen Troy?” I asked Nestor.
He shook his head without looking up from his run forms. “I’m not his keeper.”
I looked in the bathroom, but no one was there. I glanced in the supply room. I saw no one. Then I did a quick double take. Troy lay on the floor in the corner of the room, half hidden by several stacked crates of IV fluids. He wasn’t moving. When I approached I saw his eyes were glassy. His skin was gray and beaded with sweat. I shook his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
He was unconscious, his skin cool to the touch.
I turned for help just as a tall broad-shouldered medic came in the door. He was about Troy’s age, blonde and fair-complected, wearing a Boston Red Sox hat. He went right for Troy. “Yo, bro!” He rubbed his knuckles into Troy’s sternum.
Still no response.
“Don’t worry,” he said to me. “He does this all the time. It’s his sugar. Now go close the door.”
I knew Troy was a diabetic. I’d seen him checking his sugar with his pocket glucometer, pricking his finger to produce a drop of blood for the test strip, but certainly I hadn’t expected to see Troy Johnson like this. The medic talked gently to Troy as he put a tourniquet around his arm. “Sometimes he resists, so you have to be careful. He’s being good today.” He took an alcohol wipe and rubbed it over a large vein in the crook of Troy’s arm. He stuck a needle in. I saw the blood flash back. “Get me some D50 from the shelf.”
I handed him the blue box. He took out a large bristo jet and a glass ampule of Dextrose, screwed them together, and then stuck the Bristo jet needle in the rubber port of the IV line. He pushed the ampule deeper into the jet, pushing the sugar water into Troy’s vein.
Troy’s eyes were still closed, but his skin was less diaphoretic.
“Shit,” he said, groggily. He looked up at us. “Gimme some gauze."
“You know you have to eat,” the medic said.
“I got a headache. Don’t push it so fast, you know that.” Troy grabbed the four by four dressing I offered, placed it against the IV site, then ripped the line out of his arm, and bent his elbow. “That hurts.” He got to his feet. “What’d you use? A sixteen?” He walked out of the closet and went into the bathroom across the hall.
“Nothing better than a grateful friend,” the medic said. “I’m Pat Brothers.”
“Lee Jones.” We shook.
“I’ve heard about you. I guess no one gave you the spiel on Troy. I’ve been on vacation or I would have.”
“I’ve got part of it. Not this part.”
“He’s a brittle diabetic, and you’ve got to watch him constantly. As long as his sugar stays above 70, he’s got your back. It dips below; you have to have his. Are you any good at IVs?”
“I’m not IV certified.”
“That’s all right. I’ll teach you.
“This happens frequently?”
“Yes, it does, though it runs in spurts. He can be fine for months, and then it’ll happen every day for a week. The company knows he has a problem, but not to the degree it happens. There isn’t a medic here that hasn’t had to sit on him once or twice or five times to get some sugar in him. If you’re going to work with him, you’re going to have to learn how to do IVs.”
I could have answered that I wasn’t an IV tech, but from looking at the light blue of the EMT rocker on my shoulder he already knew that. I saw how things were, and I’ve done worse deeds than look out for a co-worker.
Pat grabbed two EMTs out of the break room, and despite their protests, had them roll up their sleeves. He gave me a quick course. I stuck each of them twice, and Pat three times, getting veins in the crook of the elbow, the forearm, wrist and hand. “Excellent, you’re a natural,” he said. “You’re all set.”
Troy came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, looking hung over, his hair out of place. He put on his Yankees cap and walked right past Nestor like nothing had happened between them.
“A pity the young are so frail,” Nestor said.
I thought Troy would go home for the day, but he sat in the ambulance, and we went out on the road. He said nothing about the incident.
“You’ll learn to see it coming on,” Pat said to me that day. “He starts doing crazy things. Make him eat. Don’t take anything he says personally. He just needs a little sweetening from time to time.”
“Melnick, how can you wear that medic patch on your sleeve?” Nestor said. “I’m looking at this form. You write this guy had rales and you didn’t give him lasix? Didn’t they teach you anything in school?”
“I thought he might have pneumonia.”
“You can’t tell the difference? Didn’t they teach you assessment?”
“Yeah, but you need an x-ray.”
“An X-ray? Bullshit. All a medic needs is a good head on his shoulders and a twenty-dollar stethoscope. A medic doesn’t need an x-ray to see the patient’s in failure. Just reading the form, it’s clear he’s in failure. He’s got JVD, no fever, pedal edema, rales, Bp’s up, he’s tachycardic, Sat’s in the low 90’s despite your non-rebreather.”
“He’s got a pneumonia history. He wasn’t that bad, I didn’t want to take a chance and dehydrate him.”
“Are you a paramedic? You gave him nitro, go ahead and give the lasix. He’s on 60 a day, give him 120 and hand him a urinal. Case closed.”
He turned to see what everyone else in the room was looking at.
Troy, sweat on his brow, stood in the doorway with that demon gleam in his eye. “Nestor, you worthless slug,” he said.
Nestor narrowed his eyes suspiciously like he wasn’t sure whether Troy was serious or just toying with him.
“Nestor, I wouldn’t let you get within ten feet of me with a placebo.”
One moment the EMTs in the crew room had been checking their equipment and strapping on their bulletproof vests. The next they were silent, watching, waiting.
Nestor looked confused and irritated.
“You old paramedics don’t know half what the newest medic coming out of school today knows,” Troy continued. “There’s a new breed on the street. Fifty dollars says Melnick knows all his pediatric doses off the top of his head, and that you would only know them by pulling out your field guide unsticking its pages and putting on your bifocals.”
“Listen to you,” Nestor said to Troy. “Go take your medication.”
“That’s right, Melnick,” Troy said to the young medic. “It would do you some good to take some lessons from a real paramedic, not some washed up old dinosaur like Nestor who has killed more people than Son of Sam.”
“You wouldn’t know a medic if you saw one,” Nestor said. “When I first worked the city medics were special -- they were giants of the street. You had to earn the patch. Now days all you need is a pulse and you get hired. Medics are a dime a dozen, but they’re not worth the paper their card is printed on. Shake and Bake medics. Chia Pet medics. No wonder no one respects us anymore.”
“You make a good case for the giant part. The size certainly attests that they were exceedingly large, but like the stegosaurus they had tiny brains and made large shits wherever they went. When’s the last time you took a bath?”
“Psycho,” Nestor mumbled. He looked down at his run forms.
The EMTs in the room smiled like jackals and grinned at Troy, like they’d just crowned him lion king. Nestor was red-faced.
“Atropine .02 milligrams per kilogram,” Melnick said. “Epi...”
“Shut up Melnick,” Troy said.
I went out to the car. Troy might have been a phenomenal paramedic, but he grated me. We all traveled our own roads and took our own hard lessons. I guessed his were ahead of him.
“482, You available to sign on yet?”
“Just about,” I answered. “Give us a couple minutes. Troy’s in a meeting.”
“Tell me once he’s finished his paperwork, I need you to sign on and cover Newington.”
“Understood,” I said.
I went back into the crew room. “Have you seen Troy?” I asked Nestor.
He shook his head without looking up from his run forms. “I’m not his keeper.”
I looked in the bathroom, but no one was there. I glanced in the supply room. I saw no one. Then I did a quick double take. Troy lay on the floor in the corner of the room, half hidden by several stacked crates of IV fluids. He wasn’t moving. When I approached I saw his eyes were glassy. His skin was gray and beaded with sweat. I shook his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
He was unconscious, his skin cool to the touch.
I turned for help just as a tall broad-shouldered medic came in the door. He was about Troy’s age, blonde and fair-complected, wearing a Boston Red Sox hat. He went right for Troy. “Yo, bro!” He rubbed his knuckles into Troy’s sternum.
Still no response.
“Don’t worry,” he said to me. “He does this all the time. It’s his sugar. Now go close the door.”
I knew Troy was a diabetic. I’d seen him checking his sugar with his pocket glucometer, pricking his finger to produce a drop of blood for the test strip, but certainly I hadn’t expected to see Troy Johnson like this. The medic talked gently to Troy as he put a tourniquet around his arm. “Sometimes he resists, so you have to be careful. He’s being good today.” He took an alcohol wipe and rubbed it over a large vein in the crook of Troy’s arm. He stuck a needle in. I saw the blood flash back. “Get me some D50 from the shelf.”
I handed him the blue box. He took out a large bristo jet and a glass ampule of Dextrose, screwed them together, and then stuck the Bristo jet needle in the rubber port of the IV line. He pushed the ampule deeper into the jet, pushing the sugar water into Troy’s vein.
Troy’s eyes were still closed, but his skin was less diaphoretic.
“Shit,” he said, groggily. He looked up at us. “Gimme some gauze."
“You know you have to eat,” the medic said.
“I got a headache. Don’t push it so fast, you know that.” Troy grabbed the four by four dressing I offered, placed it against the IV site, then ripped the line out of his arm, and bent his elbow. “That hurts.” He got to his feet. “What’d you use? A sixteen?” He walked out of the closet and went into the bathroom across the hall.
“Nothing better than a grateful friend,” the medic said. “I’m Pat Brothers.”
“Lee Jones.” We shook.
“I’ve heard about you. I guess no one gave you the spiel on Troy. I’ve been on vacation or I would have.”
“I’ve got part of it. Not this part.”
“He’s a brittle diabetic, and you’ve got to watch him constantly. As long as his sugar stays above 70, he’s got your back. It dips below; you have to have his. Are you any good at IVs?”
“I’m not IV certified.”
“That’s all right. I’ll teach you.
“This happens frequently?”
“Yes, it does, though it runs in spurts. He can be fine for months, and then it’ll happen every day for a week. The company knows he has a problem, but not to the degree it happens. There isn’t a medic here that hasn’t had to sit on him once or twice or five times to get some sugar in him. If you’re going to work with him, you’re going to have to learn how to do IVs.”
I could have answered that I wasn’t an IV tech, but from looking at the light blue of the EMT rocker on my shoulder he already knew that. I saw how things were, and I’ve done worse deeds than look out for a co-worker.
Pat grabbed two EMTs out of the break room, and despite their protests, had them roll up their sleeves. He gave me a quick course. I stuck each of them twice, and Pat three times, getting veins in the crook of the elbow, the forearm, wrist and hand. “Excellent, you’re a natural,” he said. “You’re all set.”
Troy came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, looking hung over, his hair out of place. He put on his Yankees cap and walked right past Nestor like nothing had happened between them.
“A pity the young are so frail,” Nestor said.
I thought Troy would go home for the day, but he sat in the ambulance, and we went out on the road. He said nothing about the incident.
“You’ll learn to see it coming on,” Pat said to me that day. “He starts doing crazy things. Make him eat. Don’t take anything he says personally. He just needs a little sweetening from time to time.”
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Chapter Four
“456, Chest pain 85 Vine, on a one. 454, Rollover Whitehead Highway. Person ejected.”
Troy and I were on the second floor of Saint Francis Hospital waiting in the hallway while a nursing home patient we’d brought in from Mediplex of Greater Hartford had an x-ray on his hip. Troy’s first day back at work from his hunting trip and here he was working with me again, and all they’d given us were basic transfers.
“We should be out there,” Troy said.
“Why don’t you turn the radio off?”
“I’ve humped more basic transfers today than I’ve humped in the last three years. The least they could do is give us time to get a meal. Fucking Seurat brothers, the both of them. They’re probably sitting back in the office cackling every time dispatch calls our number. Thinking about how good they’re boning me. ‘482, CB-6, going to Glastonbury Health Care.’ ‘482, Pickup up Steady at Saint Fran Dialysis, then grab Edith next.’ ‘482, Alexandria Manor going to the Cancer Center, wait and return.’ I can’t take it.”
I’d worked enough to know when a dispatcher had it in for you, or when they were told to stick to you, and clearly that was the order of the day for us. “The more you complain, the more you let them see they’re getting to you, the more they are going to mess with you.”
“They’re messing with me plenty. Don’s already asked Linda and her kids out on his boat. I saw that coming a mile away.”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Linda is free to do what she wants. Her kids love his boat.”
“You two were never a couple?”
“We were just partners. We had fun. We understood each other.”
Sanchez had told me when Troy and Linda worked together, they often drove down behind the college at night and parked in the empty lot by the river. People knew enough to leave them alone.
“471, shooting to the head, Park and Zion. On a one.”
Troy swore. I noticed his hands were shaking. He looked pale.
“You all right?”
“Give me fifty cents,” he said.
I dug into my pocket and gave it to him.
He came back with a Baby Ruth bar.
“It’s not right,” he said. “Paramedics doing basic transfers.”
“I’ll do anything they tell me to do,” I said, “as long as they sign my paycheck at the end of the week.”
“If it was about money, I wouldn’t be here.” He unwrapped his candy bar and took a big bite. “All I ask is a chance to use my skills.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
“I wish no harm on anyone,” he said. “But if harm shows up, call my number. Let me be the cavalry.”
Not an hour later, he got his wish. We’d cleared a transfer at Brittany Farms and were headed on New Britain Avenue toward Avery Heights for a dialysis run when dispatch called. “482, disregard that transfer. I need you to back up 463 on Overbrook. Their radio’s breaking up, but it sounds like they need help.”
“Overbrook,” I repeated. “What’s the nature?”
“Came in as a child with abdominal pain.”
Overbrook was in the Charter Oak public housing complex just a few blocks away from our location. Two story brick buildings built during World War II were laid out around several oval roads. The buildings looked in disrepair, the grass was burned. Shirtless children shouted and waved at us as we approached. Ahead we saw a parked police car and 463, its lights on and back door open.
The stretcher was outside the building in low position with the straps undone and the sheet spread out.
“They upstairs,” a young boy said. “Davey’s sister sick. She got the shakes.”
I followed Troy up the narrow staircase to the second floor. He took the steps three at a time, easy as walking.
We entered the apartment that smelled of rancid hamburger.
“Let them do their jobs!” I heard someone bark.
A man and woman were yelling at a police officer in the room at the end of the hall.
“Just take her to the hospital!” the man shouted.
“Calm down or I’m going to have to arrest you,” the officer said.
“That’s my daughter!” the man said.
“She’s sick! Lord, she’s sick!” the woman cried.
We pushed into the room. “Coming through,” Troy said.
A young woman lay on the bed convulsing, arms and legs jerking together. She had an oxygen mask on her face. She had to be two hundred twenty pounds. On the wall was a shelf of teddy bears and a poster from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Andrew Melnick, a short, skinny paramedic, just twenty years old, was trying to tape an IV down on the woman’s jerking arm. Blood backed up in the IV line. Melnick’s hands shook.
“What do you have?” Troy asked.
“Lord, help my baby!” The woman cried.
“Take her to the hospital!” the man shouted. His breath reeked of alcohol. The police officer pushed him back. “Calm down or you’re out of the room.”
“Everyone quiet!” Troy said.
“She said she had belly pain,” Andrew said. “Then all of a sudden she started seizing. I just got a line and gave her five of Valium, but it’s not working.”
“Did you get a pressure before she started?”
“230/130.”
“Is she pregnant?”
“Pregnant? My daughter not pregnant,” the man said.
“She’s a good girl!” the mother shouted. “A church girl!”
“Take her to the hospital before she dies!”
“That’s it, you’re out of here.” The officer grabbed the man by the arm.
The IV line was knocked loose. Blood squirted in the air.
“Lee hold her shoulder,” Troy said. “Get some tape on that. Andrew get me an 18.”
He knelt on the woman’s forearm to hold it steady and took the IV catheter Andrew handed him. “She’s got to be eclamptic.”
“But she said there was no chance.”
“Look at her pants. That’s not pee, she broke her water.”
Her sweat pants were soaked at the crotch. The smell wasn’t urine. Troy had the IV in. “Give me some mag.”
Andrew fumbled with the one cc syringe as he tried to stick the needle into the small vial of magnesium I had handed him from the med kit. He pulled the plunger back. The drug drained into the chamber.
“Easy, my friend,” Troy said. “Get it in there and push it slow.”
Andrew again had trouble as he tried to stick the needle through the rubber port on the IV line.
“Easy,” Troy said. “That’s it. Now push slow.”
I felt a tension easing in the girl’s arms. The seizure stopped.
“Get your airway kit out,” Troy said.
The woman lay still. Her chest wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing.
“Bag her,” Troy said. He tossed me the ambu-bag as Andrew unzipped his airway kit and fumbled to get out the laryngoscope.
I applied the mask over her face, holding a tight seal around her mouth and bending her head back to keep her airway open as I squeezed the bag.
“How my daughter doing in there?” the man shouted.
The cop barred the doorway.
“Just fine,” Troy said to the man. “I’m shutting the door.” To us, “She still has a good pulse. Tube her.”
Andrew nudged me to the side and stuck the scope in her mouth and swept her tongue to the side, peering in looking for her vocal chords.
“She’s bradying down,” Troy said, “Get that tube in.”
“I can’t see the chords.”
Troy reached up and pressed on the front of the woman’s neck.
“I think I’m in,” Andrew said.
“You’re not,” Troy said. “I didn’t feel it pass.”
“Heart rate’s thirty,” I said.
“No, I’m in.”
“Pull it out,” Troy said.
Andrew attached the ambu bag to the end of the tube. Gave one squeeze. The bag didn’t reopen. I saw the belly rise. He pulled the bag off. Vomit surged out of the tube.
“Listen to me next time,” Troy said. “No, leave the tube there. Go in above it. Don’t go in so deep this time. She’s anterior.”
Troy handed him another tube. He went back in. More puke came out of the other tube.
Andrew’s partner turned his head. I could hear him vomit.
“Rate’s fifteen.”
Troy pressed his fingers against the neck again, just below the Adam’s apple. “That’s it. I felt it pass.”
Andrew attached the bag. This time you could see vapor in the tube. Good chest rise. Troy listened with his stethoscope while Andrew bagged. “Nothing in the belly. Good on the left. Nothing on the right. Pull back a little. That’s good. Solid placement. Tie it off. Yank the other tube.”
“Rate’s coming up,” I said.
But Troy wasn’t looking at the monitor. “We’ve got company.”
“What?”
Troy had pulled the woman’s sweat pants down. There between her legs was a bloody motionless baby.
“Throw me a blanket.”
I handed him a towel that was by the bedside.
Troy lifted the child and rubbed it with the towel. He brought the baby up to his mouth and gave it two breaths. He moved his fingers up and down on its chest. In between breaths, he told Andrew how to set up a magnesium drip, while Andrew’s partner bagged the woman through the tube.
“Drip set,” Troy said, “Hang it from the wall hanger. Lee get her on the board and strapped tight.” He gave the baby two more breaths. “Andrew get the infant ambu out, then get the OB kit and let’s get the chord cut.”
It was hot in that room, and I was sweating too, lifting and turning the woman to get the board under her and the straps around her fat. I was so busy I didn’t have time to stop and admire Troy, the calm he displayed. He kept us focused. At his direction I unhooked the woman from the monitor, and applied patches to the baby, who they laid on the short board on the dresser. Its color wasn’t quite as mottled. Troy had a tube in the baby’s mouth, and coached Andrew inserting a small catheter into the umbilical vein.
“Nice job,” he said to Andrew. “A little epi, a little atropine, and maybe things will be all right. You know the dose?”
“I have a field guide.” He reached for his side pocket.
“.01 per kilogram for the epi. .02 for the atropine,” Troy said. “Let’s make it .35 ccs for the epi and 1 cc for the atropine.”
The baby’s rate came up to 140. Troy stopped the compressions. Its color was close to pink now. “Attention all,” Troy announced. “In case you haven’t noticed. It’s a boy.”
When we got to the ED, they had a team from labor and delivery down there with an incubator. The baby weighed five pounds, but the doctor said he appeared to have good reflexes. The mother was stable too. Her pressure was down close to normal. She was breathing well enough on her own that they were able take the tube out of her windpipe.
“Excellent work,” Doctor Eckstein said to Troy. “You guys did a hell of job. Strong work. Strong work.”
She seemed to lighten up around Troy.
“Andrew was the man,” Troy said. “This was your first delivery, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. If you could call that a delivery.”
“I foresee a great future for you.”
“I don’t know,” Andrew said. “I was sort of losing it there.”
Troy slapped him on the back. “You hung in there. You were a stud. They should name the kid Andrew in your honor.”
As Troy walked down the hall, the others looked at him -- two nurses in the station, Melnick, Dr. Eckstein who’d come out of the room behind him, even the cleaning lady looked up from her mop as he passed – and I couldn’t help but admire him as they did.
Troy and I were on the second floor of Saint Francis Hospital waiting in the hallway while a nursing home patient we’d brought in from Mediplex of Greater Hartford had an x-ray on his hip. Troy’s first day back at work from his hunting trip and here he was working with me again, and all they’d given us were basic transfers.
“We should be out there,” Troy said.
“Why don’t you turn the radio off?”
“I’ve humped more basic transfers today than I’ve humped in the last three years. The least they could do is give us time to get a meal. Fucking Seurat brothers, the both of them. They’re probably sitting back in the office cackling every time dispatch calls our number. Thinking about how good they’re boning me. ‘482, CB-6, going to Glastonbury Health Care.’ ‘482, Pickup up Steady at Saint Fran Dialysis, then grab Edith next.’ ‘482, Alexandria Manor going to the Cancer Center, wait and return.’ I can’t take it.”
I’d worked enough to know when a dispatcher had it in for you, or when they were told to stick to you, and clearly that was the order of the day for us. “The more you complain, the more you let them see they’re getting to you, the more they are going to mess with you.”
“They’re messing with me plenty. Don’s already asked Linda and her kids out on his boat. I saw that coming a mile away.”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Linda is free to do what she wants. Her kids love his boat.”
“You two were never a couple?”
“We were just partners. We had fun. We understood each other.”
Sanchez had told me when Troy and Linda worked together, they often drove down behind the college at night and parked in the empty lot by the river. People knew enough to leave them alone.
“471, shooting to the head, Park and Zion. On a one.”
Troy swore. I noticed his hands were shaking. He looked pale.
“You all right?”
“Give me fifty cents,” he said.
I dug into my pocket and gave it to him.
He came back with a Baby Ruth bar.
“It’s not right,” he said. “Paramedics doing basic transfers.”
“I’ll do anything they tell me to do,” I said, “as long as they sign my paycheck at the end of the week.”
“If it was about money, I wouldn’t be here.” He unwrapped his candy bar and took a big bite. “All I ask is a chance to use my skills.”
“Careful what you wish for.”
“I wish no harm on anyone,” he said. “But if harm shows up, call my number. Let me be the cavalry.”
Not an hour later, he got his wish. We’d cleared a transfer at Brittany Farms and were headed on New Britain Avenue toward Avery Heights for a dialysis run when dispatch called. “482, disregard that transfer. I need you to back up 463 on Overbrook. Their radio’s breaking up, but it sounds like they need help.”
“Overbrook,” I repeated. “What’s the nature?”
“Came in as a child with abdominal pain.”
Overbrook was in the Charter Oak public housing complex just a few blocks away from our location. Two story brick buildings built during World War II were laid out around several oval roads. The buildings looked in disrepair, the grass was burned. Shirtless children shouted and waved at us as we approached. Ahead we saw a parked police car and 463, its lights on and back door open.
The stretcher was outside the building in low position with the straps undone and the sheet spread out.
“They upstairs,” a young boy said. “Davey’s sister sick. She got the shakes.”
I followed Troy up the narrow staircase to the second floor. He took the steps three at a time, easy as walking.
We entered the apartment that smelled of rancid hamburger.
“Let them do their jobs!” I heard someone bark.
A man and woman were yelling at a police officer in the room at the end of the hall.
“Just take her to the hospital!” the man shouted.
“Calm down or I’m going to have to arrest you,” the officer said.
“That’s my daughter!” the man said.
“She’s sick! Lord, she’s sick!” the woman cried.
We pushed into the room. “Coming through,” Troy said.
A young woman lay on the bed convulsing, arms and legs jerking together. She had an oxygen mask on her face. She had to be two hundred twenty pounds. On the wall was a shelf of teddy bears and a poster from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
Andrew Melnick, a short, skinny paramedic, just twenty years old, was trying to tape an IV down on the woman’s jerking arm. Blood backed up in the IV line. Melnick’s hands shook.
“What do you have?” Troy asked.
“Lord, help my baby!” The woman cried.
“Take her to the hospital!” the man shouted. His breath reeked of alcohol. The police officer pushed him back. “Calm down or you’re out of the room.”
“Everyone quiet!” Troy said.
“She said she had belly pain,” Andrew said. “Then all of a sudden she started seizing. I just got a line and gave her five of Valium, but it’s not working.”
“Did you get a pressure before she started?”
“230/130.”
“Is she pregnant?”
“Pregnant? My daughter not pregnant,” the man said.
“She’s a good girl!” the mother shouted. “A church girl!”
“Take her to the hospital before she dies!”
“That’s it, you’re out of here.” The officer grabbed the man by the arm.
The IV line was knocked loose. Blood squirted in the air.
“Lee hold her shoulder,” Troy said. “Get some tape on that. Andrew get me an 18.”
He knelt on the woman’s forearm to hold it steady and took the IV catheter Andrew handed him. “She’s got to be eclamptic.”
“But she said there was no chance.”
“Look at her pants. That’s not pee, she broke her water.”
Her sweat pants were soaked at the crotch. The smell wasn’t urine. Troy had the IV in. “Give me some mag.”
Andrew fumbled with the one cc syringe as he tried to stick the needle into the small vial of magnesium I had handed him from the med kit. He pulled the plunger back. The drug drained into the chamber.
“Easy, my friend,” Troy said. “Get it in there and push it slow.”
Andrew again had trouble as he tried to stick the needle through the rubber port on the IV line.
“Easy,” Troy said. “That’s it. Now push slow.”
I felt a tension easing in the girl’s arms. The seizure stopped.
“Get your airway kit out,” Troy said.
The woman lay still. Her chest wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing.
“Bag her,” Troy said. He tossed me the ambu-bag as Andrew unzipped his airway kit and fumbled to get out the laryngoscope.
I applied the mask over her face, holding a tight seal around her mouth and bending her head back to keep her airway open as I squeezed the bag.
“How my daughter doing in there?” the man shouted.
The cop barred the doorway.
“Just fine,” Troy said to the man. “I’m shutting the door.” To us, “She still has a good pulse. Tube her.”
Andrew nudged me to the side and stuck the scope in her mouth and swept her tongue to the side, peering in looking for her vocal chords.
“She’s bradying down,” Troy said, “Get that tube in.”
“I can’t see the chords.”
Troy reached up and pressed on the front of the woman’s neck.
“I think I’m in,” Andrew said.
“You’re not,” Troy said. “I didn’t feel it pass.”
“Heart rate’s thirty,” I said.
“No, I’m in.”
“Pull it out,” Troy said.
Andrew attached the ambu bag to the end of the tube. Gave one squeeze. The bag didn’t reopen. I saw the belly rise. He pulled the bag off. Vomit surged out of the tube.
“Listen to me next time,” Troy said. “No, leave the tube there. Go in above it. Don’t go in so deep this time. She’s anterior.”
Troy handed him another tube. He went back in. More puke came out of the other tube.
Andrew’s partner turned his head. I could hear him vomit.
“Rate’s fifteen.”
Troy pressed his fingers against the neck again, just below the Adam’s apple. “That’s it. I felt it pass.”
Andrew attached the bag. This time you could see vapor in the tube. Good chest rise. Troy listened with his stethoscope while Andrew bagged. “Nothing in the belly. Good on the left. Nothing on the right. Pull back a little. That’s good. Solid placement. Tie it off. Yank the other tube.”
“Rate’s coming up,” I said.
But Troy wasn’t looking at the monitor. “We’ve got company.”
“What?”
Troy had pulled the woman’s sweat pants down. There between her legs was a bloody motionless baby.
“Throw me a blanket.”
I handed him a towel that was by the bedside.
Troy lifted the child and rubbed it with the towel. He brought the baby up to his mouth and gave it two breaths. He moved his fingers up and down on its chest. In between breaths, he told Andrew how to set up a magnesium drip, while Andrew’s partner bagged the woman through the tube.
“Drip set,” Troy said, “Hang it from the wall hanger. Lee get her on the board and strapped tight.” He gave the baby two more breaths. “Andrew get the infant ambu out, then get the OB kit and let’s get the chord cut.”
It was hot in that room, and I was sweating too, lifting and turning the woman to get the board under her and the straps around her fat. I was so busy I didn’t have time to stop and admire Troy, the calm he displayed. He kept us focused. At his direction I unhooked the woman from the monitor, and applied patches to the baby, who they laid on the short board on the dresser. Its color wasn’t quite as mottled. Troy had a tube in the baby’s mouth, and coached Andrew inserting a small catheter into the umbilical vein.
“Nice job,” he said to Andrew. “A little epi, a little atropine, and maybe things will be all right. You know the dose?”
“I have a field guide.” He reached for his side pocket.
“.01 per kilogram for the epi. .02 for the atropine,” Troy said. “Let’s make it .35 ccs for the epi and 1 cc for the atropine.”
The baby’s rate came up to 140. Troy stopped the compressions. Its color was close to pink now. “Attention all,” Troy announced. “In case you haven’t noticed. It’s a boy.”
When we got to the ED, they had a team from labor and delivery down there with an incubator. The baby weighed five pounds, but the doctor said he appeared to have good reflexes. The mother was stable too. Her pressure was down close to normal. She was breathing well enough on her own that they were able take the tube out of her windpipe.
“Excellent work,” Doctor Eckstein said to Troy. “You guys did a hell of job. Strong work. Strong work.”
She seemed to lighten up around Troy.
“Andrew was the man,” Troy said. “This was your first delivery, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. If you could call that a delivery.”
“I foresee a great future for you.”
“I don’t know,” Andrew said. “I was sort of losing it there.”
Troy slapped him on the back. “You hung in there. You were a stud. They should name the kid Andrew in your honor.”
As Troy walked down the hall, the others looked at him -- two nurses in the station, Melnick, Dr. Eckstein who’d come out of the room behind him, even the cleaning lady looked up from her mop as he passed – and I couldn’t help but admire him as they did.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Chapter Three
“482, Respond to 1640 Main, 2nd Floor for difficulty breathing on a one.”
North on Main Street, the SANDS housing project dominated the vista, a ten story eye-sore, surrounded by several equally ugly three story buildings. Any promise the project once held of a model life for its residents was gone. It was instead a drab graffiti ridden concrete jungle run by drug dealers and gangs. We parked around back behind one of the smaller buildings, next to a panel truck with smashed windows.
“You should see this place on a hot summer evening,” Victor Sanchez said as we got out. “Everyone outside in the heat, drinking their forties, music blaring, dealing drugs.”
We left the stretcher at the base of the outside stairs. I took the oxygen tank. Victor carried the house bag and the heart monitor. Victor was a short bull-chested young man who’d been with the company almost ten years, working his way up from a handicapped van driver to paramedic.
“It’s probably BS,” he said, as we climbed the cement stairwell. “Most calls around here are. You never know. I carry everything.”
On the third floor, a young woman wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey that went down to her knees, answered the door. “You here already? I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Gimme a few minutes to get dressed and for my sister to come over.”
“Is there a child here having difficulty breathing?” Victor asked.
“My boy been stuffed up for two weeks and the medicine the doctor give him yesterday not helping. I want to take him back and show him he still sick.”
As she let us in the apartment, I could see a child sitting on the couch watching Wyle E. Coyote chase the Roadrunner on a big screen TV.
“The paper said you always late,” the woman said, routing in the closet and coming up with a gray pair of sweatpants. “When I called yesterday it took ten minutes. Today I hardly put down the phone and you there beating down my door. All the complaining having an effect, huh?”
“Yeah,” Victor said, “They don’t let us stop for doughnuts anymore.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that. I haven’t had breakfast yet. My sister should be here soon. Let me just put these on and get my shoes.”
“Don’t let us rush you,” Victor said.
I carried the equipment down to the ambulance.
After we’d taken the boy to the hospital, where he and his mom were put out into the crowded waiting room, I stood with Victor in the EMS room and listened to people bitch about how the paper was on everybody about response times. Victor tried to fill me in.
“A couple weeks ago there was another gang shooting at an apartment on Wethersfield Avenue,” he said. “The paper said it took the ambulance twenty minutes to get there. The TV news picked it up and we’ve been getting dissed hard. They had an editorial cartoon that showed a giant turtle with an EMT sitting on it holding the reins. It said Capitol Ambulance on the shell. They had a shot guy crying for help in the middle of the road, and a guy in a black hood already digging his grave.”
“Were we twenty minutes late?”
“No. Maybe ten. The problem was the PD wouldn’t let the crew in. They said the scene wasn’t safe. Of course, when Troy gets there he charges through the police tape. The guy is shot eleven times, and Troy starts working him. Pissed the cops off. Trashed their crime scene and nearly started a riot. The home crowd thinking the cops had let him die.”
“The guy didn’t make it, did he?”
“No, he was shot eleven times. Troy will work anybody that isn’t stiff.”
“I heard about your guy yesterday,” Joel Morris, another medic, said to me. “Doctor Eckstein told me the guy had no face. It was all hamburger. Ben was pissed off, huh?”
“He seemed a little upset.”
“Ben and Troy are always butting heads.”
“I thought there was some history there.”
“Ben thinks younger medics should defer to his experience,” Victor said, “but Troy doesn’t defer to anyone. When Troy was new medic, Ben was in the crew room talking with some of the older medics about the state exam. Medics have to test every two years. Every time it’s the same test. Ben always gets a 98 – the best score in the company. He can’t figure out what two questions he gets wrong. The test has to be fixed. He thinks there are two deliberately wrong questions. The state doesn’t want anyone getting a perfect score and thinking they know everything. Troy takes a piece of paper out of his wallet, goes over to the Xerox machine, runs off five copies and hands them to each of the medics. It’s his test results. 100 in each category. The other medics laugh, but it steams Ben up. To Ben you are a new medic, you don’t say a word till you’ve been there two years. You have to prove yourself. Troy was cocky the day his mother popped him out.
“The real rivalry between Troy and Ben started the day Sidney coded,” joel said. “Sidney Seuss -- he’s the guy in the portrait in the front office. He founded the place. A real old time ambulance man. He’d just finished his dialysis treatment – he had his own machine in his office - when he crumpled to the ground. His secretary screams. When Ben gets there, he sees Sidney lying on the carpet. He’s blue. No breathing, no pulse. Ben rips Sidney’s shirt open, puts the paddles on his chest. He’s in v-fib. He shocks him. 200 Joules. No change. Shocks him again. 300 Joules. Nothing. 360. Nothing.
“The secretary starts CPR while Ben goes for the airway. Sidney’s a big broad guy with no neck. A difficult tube. Ben’s looking down into his throat, trying to move his tongue out of the way. He sees the chords for a moment, passes the tube. Puke comes up. He’s in the esophagus.
“That’s when Troy and I come in,” Victor said. “We’d been in the office resupplying. Troy sidesteps the puke, and while Ben tries again, Troy slams an IV in Sidney’s arm. Ben’s still struggling with the tube, Troy says, ‘Let me try.’ He takes the scope from him. Then like that -- ‘I’m in,’ he says. Ben pushes epi and lidocaine into the IV line. They shock him again 360 joules. No change.
“’Calcium,’ Troy says.
“‘Calcium?’ Ben says. We carry it, but it’s not in the routine protocol.
“‘Calcium. His kidneys suck.’
“Ben goes ahead and gives it to him. They shock him again.
“Ben looks at the monitor -- sees a rhythm. You don’t have to feel a pulse. You can just look at his neck and see it pounding.
“Then Sidney opens his eyes and he’s looking right up at Troy. He looks a little confused like maybe he was expecting to see Satan or St. Peter. Instead Troy Johnson is the one grinning at him.
“‘Afternoon, boss,’ Troy says. ‘I see I’m not the only slacker around this place likes to get in a good snooze.’
“Troy was the golden boy after that. Sidney gave Troy his own dedicated ambulance, his own shift whatever hours he wanted to work, and let him pick whatever partner he wanted. Told the dispatchers no transfers for Troy. They have to leave him free for the big bad ones. The Deputy mayor coded. Troy saved him. One of the high-ranking police brass coded. Troy brought him back to life. Head of the chamber of commerce choked on a piece of meat the size of his fist; Troy yanked it out with a pair of McGill’s. The guy was well enough to give the after dinner speech.
“Every save Troy got, Sidney made a show of visiting the patient in the hospital, and bringing a photographer along. Ben wasn’t happy about it -- ,that and the fact every time Sidney saw Ben and Troy together he ribbed Ben about it. ‘Good, I got my bodyguard here to keep my chief paramedic from killing me.’ The truth is we got some good publicity in those days. We were miracle workers. The pride of the city. Paramedics. We were all like Johnny and Roy on that old Emergency show. You could walk tall.”
“Not any more?”
“No, that’s the past. Sidney’s dead. Things are changing for the worse. They don’t get better, we could be out of business. We could all be looking for jobs. So you can understand why no one’s happy.”
***
Note: I will posting a new chapter every other day.
North on Main Street, the SANDS housing project dominated the vista, a ten story eye-sore, surrounded by several equally ugly three story buildings. Any promise the project once held of a model life for its residents was gone. It was instead a drab graffiti ridden concrete jungle run by drug dealers and gangs. We parked around back behind one of the smaller buildings, next to a panel truck with smashed windows.
“You should see this place on a hot summer evening,” Victor Sanchez said as we got out. “Everyone outside in the heat, drinking their forties, music blaring, dealing drugs.”
We left the stretcher at the base of the outside stairs. I took the oxygen tank. Victor carried the house bag and the heart monitor. Victor was a short bull-chested young man who’d been with the company almost ten years, working his way up from a handicapped van driver to paramedic.
“It’s probably BS,” he said, as we climbed the cement stairwell. “Most calls around here are. You never know. I carry everything.”
On the third floor, a young woman wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey that went down to her knees, answered the door. “You here already? I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Gimme a few minutes to get dressed and for my sister to come over.”
“Is there a child here having difficulty breathing?” Victor asked.
“My boy been stuffed up for two weeks and the medicine the doctor give him yesterday not helping. I want to take him back and show him he still sick.”
As she let us in the apartment, I could see a child sitting on the couch watching Wyle E. Coyote chase the Roadrunner on a big screen TV.
“The paper said you always late,” the woman said, routing in the closet and coming up with a gray pair of sweatpants. “When I called yesterday it took ten minutes. Today I hardly put down the phone and you there beating down my door. All the complaining having an effect, huh?”
“Yeah,” Victor said, “They don’t let us stop for doughnuts anymore.”
“I wouldn’t have minded that. I haven’t had breakfast yet. My sister should be here soon. Let me just put these on and get my shoes.”
“Don’t let us rush you,” Victor said.
I carried the equipment down to the ambulance.
After we’d taken the boy to the hospital, where he and his mom were put out into the crowded waiting room, I stood with Victor in the EMS room and listened to people bitch about how the paper was on everybody about response times. Victor tried to fill me in.
“A couple weeks ago there was another gang shooting at an apartment on Wethersfield Avenue,” he said. “The paper said it took the ambulance twenty minutes to get there. The TV news picked it up and we’ve been getting dissed hard. They had an editorial cartoon that showed a giant turtle with an EMT sitting on it holding the reins. It said Capitol Ambulance on the shell. They had a shot guy crying for help in the middle of the road, and a guy in a black hood already digging his grave.”
“Were we twenty minutes late?”
“No. Maybe ten. The problem was the PD wouldn’t let the crew in. They said the scene wasn’t safe. Of course, when Troy gets there he charges through the police tape. The guy is shot eleven times, and Troy starts working him. Pissed the cops off. Trashed their crime scene and nearly started a riot. The home crowd thinking the cops had let him die.”
“The guy didn’t make it, did he?”
“No, he was shot eleven times. Troy will work anybody that isn’t stiff.”
“I heard about your guy yesterday,” Joel Morris, another medic, said to me. “Doctor Eckstein told me the guy had no face. It was all hamburger. Ben was pissed off, huh?”
“He seemed a little upset.”
“Ben and Troy are always butting heads.”
“I thought there was some history there.”
“Ben thinks younger medics should defer to his experience,” Victor said, “but Troy doesn’t defer to anyone. When Troy was new medic, Ben was in the crew room talking with some of the older medics about the state exam. Medics have to test every two years. Every time it’s the same test. Ben always gets a 98 – the best score in the company. He can’t figure out what two questions he gets wrong. The test has to be fixed. He thinks there are two deliberately wrong questions. The state doesn’t want anyone getting a perfect score and thinking they know everything. Troy takes a piece of paper out of his wallet, goes over to the Xerox machine, runs off five copies and hands them to each of the medics. It’s his test results. 100 in each category. The other medics laugh, but it steams Ben up. To Ben you are a new medic, you don’t say a word till you’ve been there two years. You have to prove yourself. Troy was cocky the day his mother popped him out.
“The real rivalry between Troy and Ben started the day Sidney coded,” joel said. “Sidney Seuss -- he’s the guy in the portrait in the front office. He founded the place. A real old time ambulance man. He’d just finished his dialysis treatment – he had his own machine in his office - when he crumpled to the ground. His secretary screams. When Ben gets there, he sees Sidney lying on the carpet. He’s blue. No breathing, no pulse. Ben rips Sidney’s shirt open, puts the paddles on his chest. He’s in v-fib. He shocks him. 200 Joules. No change. Shocks him again. 300 Joules. Nothing. 360. Nothing.
“The secretary starts CPR while Ben goes for the airway. Sidney’s a big broad guy with no neck. A difficult tube. Ben’s looking down into his throat, trying to move his tongue out of the way. He sees the chords for a moment, passes the tube. Puke comes up. He’s in the esophagus.
“That’s when Troy and I come in,” Victor said. “We’d been in the office resupplying. Troy sidesteps the puke, and while Ben tries again, Troy slams an IV in Sidney’s arm. Ben’s still struggling with the tube, Troy says, ‘Let me try.’ He takes the scope from him. Then like that -- ‘I’m in,’ he says. Ben pushes epi and lidocaine into the IV line. They shock him again 360 joules. No change.
“’Calcium,’ Troy says.
“‘Calcium?’ Ben says. We carry it, but it’s not in the routine protocol.
“‘Calcium. His kidneys suck.’
“Ben goes ahead and gives it to him. They shock him again.
“Ben looks at the monitor -- sees a rhythm. You don’t have to feel a pulse. You can just look at his neck and see it pounding.
“Then Sidney opens his eyes and he’s looking right up at Troy. He looks a little confused like maybe he was expecting to see Satan or St. Peter. Instead Troy Johnson is the one grinning at him.
“‘Afternoon, boss,’ Troy says. ‘I see I’m not the only slacker around this place likes to get in a good snooze.’
“Troy was the golden boy after that. Sidney gave Troy his own dedicated ambulance, his own shift whatever hours he wanted to work, and let him pick whatever partner he wanted. Told the dispatchers no transfers for Troy. They have to leave him free for the big bad ones. The Deputy mayor coded. Troy saved him. One of the high-ranking police brass coded. Troy brought him back to life. Head of the chamber of commerce choked on a piece of meat the size of his fist; Troy yanked it out with a pair of McGill’s. The guy was well enough to give the after dinner speech.
“Every save Troy got, Sidney made a show of visiting the patient in the hospital, and bringing a photographer along. Ben wasn’t happy about it -- ,that and the fact every time Sidney saw Ben and Troy together he ribbed Ben about it. ‘Good, I got my bodyguard here to keep my chief paramedic from killing me.’ The truth is we got some good publicity in those days. We were miracle workers. The pride of the city. Paramedics. We were all like Johnny and Roy on that old Emergency show. You could walk tall.”
“Not any more?”
“No, that’s the past. Sidney’s dead. Things are changing for the worse. They don’t get better, we could be out of business. We could all be looking for jobs. So you can understand why no one’s happy.”
***
Note: I will posting a new chapter every other day.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Chapter Two
Chapter 2
“So you’ve worked the road before?” Troy said as we left the hospital after the call.
“Yeah. I’ve worked a few places.”
“Well, you did a fine job. Don’t mind Ben, he’s a prick.”
I just headed down the road. I had worked a few places, starting in Maine and most recently in Las Vegas. Being an EMT was a handy job – there was work most places you went. The pay wasn’t great, but you could work as much as you wanted. I’d met people in this line of work like Troy -- cocky, talented, and set up to have life knock the stuffing right out of them.
“Where am I headed?” I asked.
“Right on Farmington, left on Sisson, then hop on the highway West. We’re going back to the office to resupply. I already called and told them we were coming in. I need to see Linda, my regular partner, so I told them we need to decon and change the main. She’s out on light duty. Don’t get used to working with me because as soon as the doctor clears her, she’s going to be sitting in your seat. You’ll be working with someone else. You’re all right, but she and I are a team.”
“I’ll work with anyone,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Seurat has her helping him with QA while Karen Priest, his assistant chief medic, is on vacation. Linda should be back in a couple days. She was supposed to talk to the doctor this morning. Hopefully he gives her the okay.”
Linda Sullivan was in the hallway posting the monthly QA stats on the bulletin board when we walked in. She hugged Troy and kissed him on the neck. His hand went right to the small of her back. A tall slender woman of no more than twenty-six years old, she had lively brown eyes, freckles on her face, and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wore the same navy blue uniform as the road personnel. I could only imagine what she looked like in a dress. I wouldn’t have been a man if I hadn’t felt a jealousy in the way she smiled at Troy.
“Great news,” she said.
“You got cleared?”
“No, Ben just offered me the assistant chief medic job.”
“That’s Karen Priest’s job.”
“No, Ben just got word, she’s moving back to Illinois to take care of her sick father. She’s not coming back. I guess she’s got a job lined up back there. Ben needed someone so he asked me.”
“You didn’t take it did you?”
“Of course I took it. It’s a raise and regular hours. I can take my kids to school and be home to cook them dinner.”
“But you’d be giving up the road.”
“You think that’s bad? With my back?”
“But they didn’t even post the job.”
“They don’t have to. Don said Ben could hire whoever he wanted.”
“So we’re not going to work together anymore?”
She gave him a light stiff arm away. “Don’t be so happy for me.”
“I’m sorry, I am happy for you. Its just I was expecting you back with me.”
“Oh, you’re so cute when you’re sad.” She pulled him back towards her. “I’ll miss you too, but this is a raise -- and the hours – it’s perfect for me. You should come over tonight when you get off. We can celebrate.”
“I going to New Hampshire to go hunting with Pat. I told you about that.”
“Don’t say I never invite you over.”
A female voice on the intercom said, “Linda, if you’re in the building, there’s a call for you on your line.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “It’s probably the doctor.”
“A lot of good that does now,” Troy muttered as he watched her go. He looked troubled, almost like it was the last time he was going to be seeing her. Then Ben stepped out of the men’s room. “Nice,” Troy said to Ben’s back.
Ben turned, still rubbing his hands with a paper towel. “You heard about my new assistant?” he said. He didn’t try to hide his delight at Troy’s reaction.
“I’m sure your motives were pure.”
“She was the best person for the job.”
“You never even posted the job. You don’t know who would have applied.”
“Oh, you mean you wanted to be my office girl?”
Troy wasn’t ready for that. He stammered a moment.
“I know you liked working with her,” Ben said, “But even if she didn’t take the job, you wouldn’t be working with her anymore anyway.”
“How’s that?”
“Get used to Lee as your partner. We have another new policy. No more double medic cars. No more dedicated emergency cars.”
“What are you crazy?”
A voice from behind us said, “It comes from me.”
I turned to see a man of medium build walking toward us. He was in his early thirties with a sweeping black mustache, curly black hair and a deeply tanned face and arms. In his red slacks and black polo shirt, he looked like he’d just gotten off the golf course.
Troy’s eyes narrowed. “I should have known you were in on it too, Don.”
Don Seurat, Ben’s younger brother, was the operations manager. He was the one I spoke to when I called from Las Vegas to inquire about work. He told me he could schedule me seven days a week if I wanted. When I said that was my intention, he’d given me the job right there on the phone.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Don told Troy now. “It’s a business decision. We’re losing transfers to Champion. We don’t shape up we’re going to keep losing business. From now on the closest car will get the call whether it’s a transfer or an emergency. We’re going to spread our medics around. Every medic gets a basic partner.”
“That’s not right.”
“Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. We need the flexibility. You want to keep your job, don’t you?”
“You’re a menace. I never thought I’d miss Sidney.”
“Sidney doesn’t run the show anymore. How about I fire you for insubordination?”
“If you didn’t need me so much, maybe you would. But in the meantime, insubordinate this.” Troy raised his middle finger. “The both of you.” Then he turned and walked out.
“Keep an eye on him,” Ben said to me.
I nodded. They were the same words he’d said to me that morning when he’d assigned me to Troy for the day.
When we cleared from our resupply, dispatch sent us downtown to area ten. I glanced at Troy as I drove on the highway. His eyes were dark, brooding.
“Where are we supposed to post down here?” I asked as I got off the Asylum Street exit.
“Take a right, go under the railroad bridge, then take your second left on Union Place.”
He had me park across from the train station in front of a restaurant called Papa’s that served pizza and sandwiches. He stepped out of the ambulance, unbuttoned his paramedic shirt and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “I’m going into Dooley’s.”
“In there?” Dooley’s was next door to Papa’s. A neon Budweiser sign glowed in the window.
“That’s what I said. You have a problem with that?”
“You might want to take this with you.” I handed him his portable radio.
He suddenly smiled. “Hey, you’re all right.” He clipped the portable on his belt, and then walked into the bar that promised “Happy Hour -- Two for One Drinks.”
I sat in the ambulance and ate the roast beef sandwich and apple I’d brought in my small cooler. I read through Troy’s Hartford Courant. The Red Sox had lost a heartbreaker on the west coast the night before. City and state officials were holding an emergency meeting about the escalating gang-violence in Hartford. Gang members jailed several years ago in a major crackdown were now getting out of prison and flexing their muscles. The resulting turf wars had the city on a record homicide pace. The day before there had been a double slaying at the Charter Oak - Rice Heights housing project. On the front of the Connecticut section there was a photo of Troy ventilation one of the victims with an ambu-bag as the patient was wheeled across the grass, another EMT riding the stretcher doing compressions.
Ten minutes went by. No sign of Troy.
“482,” dispatch called.
“482,” I answered slowly.
“170 Sisson Avenue Building 3, apartment 247, for the swollen legs. Priority 2.”
“170 Sisson Avenue,” I repeated.
I watched the door of the bar, but it stayed closed. I waited. Troy did not come out. After three minutes, I picked up the radio. “482. We’re having trouble getting the engine started. I think it’s flooded. Just letting you know we’re going to be a little late, if we can get it going at all.”
“Okay 82. 463, can you take that call? 170 Sisson for the swollen legs?”
Still no partner.
“482? Where are you so we can get a mechanic down there?”
“Union Street. Down by the train station,” I said.
“We’ll send him right down.”
“Okay,” I said. I waited another five minutes, and then called dispatch back. “482, I’ve got it going now. Sorry. You can cancel the mechanic.”
“Okay, just keep it running. Stay in Area 10.”
I took off my company shirt, turned on my portable radio, and headed into Dooley’s.
It was dark, the air was heavy with cigarette smoke. The Rolling Stones “Get Off My Cloud” blared on the jukebox. Troy sat on a stool with his back to the bar watching the action on the pool table. The bartender set a drink down beside his radio and empty glass. “Vodka and OJ,” he announced, more to me than to Troy.
“We just passed a call,” I said.
“Look at those two.”
A slender Farrah Fawcett blonde in a white tank top and a pierced bellybutton intently lined up a shot, showing cleavage, while her friend, a giggly brunette, tried to coach her. The blonde hit the cue ball. It flew a foot in the air, bounced twice, and went right off the table.
The blonde cursed while her friend couldn’t contain her laughter.
The cue ball rolled toward us.
“We really ought to get back in the truck,” I said.
But Troy was already off his stool, scooping up the ball.
“Who taught you who how to shoot pool?” He placed the ball back on the table. “That was terrible.”
Two thick-necked young men with beer bottles in their hands stepped away from the wall.
“Haven’t these guys taught you anything?” Troy said.
“That’s all right, pal,” the one with the shaved head - said. “We’re doing fine here. Let the girls play.”
Troy turned and faced him. In his black tee shirt you could see his lean muscled strength.
“Yeah,” the other young man said. “You want conversation, talk to the bartender.”
“This is great. I love it,” Troy said. “Two on two.”
The young men looked momentarily confused. “Your friend doesn’t look like he’s ready to join in,” the smaller one said.
I had my hand on Troy’s shoulder, trying to ease him away.
Troy held up his arm. “Oh, no, he’s just my cut man, but you can see I’m too pretty to ever need his services.” He grinned. “I’m talking about…” He slapped his biceps. “These bad boys.” He leaned into a boxer’s crouch, his fists up, his head bobbing.
“Who do you think you are?”
“Troy, please,” I said.
“Allow me to introduce myself.” Fists still clenched, he raised both arms above his head. “I am the King of the World!” He stepped toward them and roared, “The King of the Woooorld!”
Years later in a bar, I would tell co-workers how Troy Johnson gave them a serious beat down, breaking pool cues, smashing chairs, even throwing one muscle man through the front plate glass window. I would tell how his foes vanquished, Troy calmly finished his drink. Then as I held the back door open, he strolled out with a woman on each arm.
It was a story worthy of Troy’s legend, but not what happened. The truth was the guys looked into Troy’s eyes and saw just what I did -- a mad man -- and they stood down. It was as simple as that. The would-be bruisers left, while Troy ate the girls’ pizza and gave them lessons in the art of nine-ball. I handed his drink to the bartender and had him replace it with OJ and seltzer water. When I pulled Troy away to respond to a motor vehicle at Main and Church, he left the girls behind, though he did get both their phone numbers. The next week he spent parts of several afternoons at Mandy the blonde’s apartment on West Boulevard, his portable radio no doubt on the nightstand. I was parked outside in the ambulance, engine idling.
I didn’t care back then. It was just a job for me.
“So you’ve worked the road before?” Troy said as we left the hospital after the call.
“Yeah. I’ve worked a few places.”
“Well, you did a fine job. Don’t mind Ben, he’s a prick.”
I just headed down the road. I had worked a few places, starting in Maine and most recently in Las Vegas. Being an EMT was a handy job – there was work most places you went. The pay wasn’t great, but you could work as much as you wanted. I’d met people in this line of work like Troy -- cocky, talented, and set up to have life knock the stuffing right out of them.
“Where am I headed?” I asked.
“Right on Farmington, left on Sisson, then hop on the highway West. We’re going back to the office to resupply. I already called and told them we were coming in. I need to see Linda, my regular partner, so I told them we need to decon and change the main. She’s out on light duty. Don’t get used to working with me because as soon as the doctor clears her, she’s going to be sitting in your seat. You’ll be working with someone else. You’re all right, but she and I are a team.”
“I’ll work with anyone,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Seurat has her helping him with QA while Karen Priest, his assistant chief medic, is on vacation. Linda should be back in a couple days. She was supposed to talk to the doctor this morning. Hopefully he gives her the okay.”
Linda Sullivan was in the hallway posting the monthly QA stats on the bulletin board when we walked in. She hugged Troy and kissed him on the neck. His hand went right to the small of her back. A tall slender woman of no more than twenty-six years old, she had lively brown eyes, freckles on her face, and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wore the same navy blue uniform as the road personnel. I could only imagine what she looked like in a dress. I wouldn’t have been a man if I hadn’t felt a jealousy in the way she smiled at Troy.
“Great news,” she said.
“You got cleared?”
“No, Ben just offered me the assistant chief medic job.”
“That’s Karen Priest’s job.”
“No, Ben just got word, she’s moving back to Illinois to take care of her sick father. She’s not coming back. I guess she’s got a job lined up back there. Ben needed someone so he asked me.”
“You didn’t take it did you?”
“Of course I took it. It’s a raise and regular hours. I can take my kids to school and be home to cook them dinner.”
“But you’d be giving up the road.”
“You think that’s bad? With my back?”
“But they didn’t even post the job.”
“They don’t have to. Don said Ben could hire whoever he wanted.”
“So we’re not going to work together anymore?”
She gave him a light stiff arm away. “Don’t be so happy for me.”
“I’m sorry, I am happy for you. Its just I was expecting you back with me.”
“Oh, you’re so cute when you’re sad.” She pulled him back towards her. “I’ll miss you too, but this is a raise -- and the hours – it’s perfect for me. You should come over tonight when you get off. We can celebrate.”
“I going to New Hampshire to go hunting with Pat. I told you about that.”
“Don’t say I never invite you over.”
A female voice on the intercom said, “Linda, if you’re in the building, there’s a call for you on your line.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “It’s probably the doctor.”
“A lot of good that does now,” Troy muttered as he watched her go. He looked troubled, almost like it was the last time he was going to be seeing her. Then Ben stepped out of the men’s room. “Nice,” Troy said to Ben’s back.
Ben turned, still rubbing his hands with a paper towel. “You heard about my new assistant?” he said. He didn’t try to hide his delight at Troy’s reaction.
“I’m sure your motives were pure.”
“She was the best person for the job.”
“You never even posted the job. You don’t know who would have applied.”
“Oh, you mean you wanted to be my office girl?”
Troy wasn’t ready for that. He stammered a moment.
“I know you liked working with her,” Ben said, “But even if she didn’t take the job, you wouldn’t be working with her anymore anyway.”
“How’s that?”
“Get used to Lee as your partner. We have another new policy. No more double medic cars. No more dedicated emergency cars.”
“What are you crazy?”
A voice from behind us said, “It comes from me.”
I turned to see a man of medium build walking toward us. He was in his early thirties with a sweeping black mustache, curly black hair and a deeply tanned face and arms. In his red slacks and black polo shirt, he looked like he’d just gotten off the golf course.
Troy’s eyes narrowed. “I should have known you were in on it too, Don.”
Don Seurat, Ben’s younger brother, was the operations manager. He was the one I spoke to when I called from Las Vegas to inquire about work. He told me he could schedule me seven days a week if I wanted. When I said that was my intention, he’d given me the job right there on the phone.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Don told Troy now. “It’s a business decision. We’re losing transfers to Champion. We don’t shape up we’re going to keep losing business. From now on the closest car will get the call whether it’s a transfer or an emergency. We’re going to spread our medics around. Every medic gets a basic partner.”
“That’s not right.”
“Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. We need the flexibility. You want to keep your job, don’t you?”
“You’re a menace. I never thought I’d miss Sidney.”
“Sidney doesn’t run the show anymore. How about I fire you for insubordination?”
“If you didn’t need me so much, maybe you would. But in the meantime, insubordinate this.” Troy raised his middle finger. “The both of you.” Then he turned and walked out.
“Keep an eye on him,” Ben said to me.
I nodded. They were the same words he’d said to me that morning when he’d assigned me to Troy for the day.
When we cleared from our resupply, dispatch sent us downtown to area ten. I glanced at Troy as I drove on the highway. His eyes were dark, brooding.
“Where are we supposed to post down here?” I asked as I got off the Asylum Street exit.
“Take a right, go under the railroad bridge, then take your second left on Union Place.”
He had me park across from the train station in front of a restaurant called Papa’s that served pizza and sandwiches. He stepped out of the ambulance, unbuttoned his paramedic shirt and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “I’m going into Dooley’s.”
“In there?” Dooley’s was next door to Papa’s. A neon Budweiser sign glowed in the window.
“That’s what I said. You have a problem with that?”
“You might want to take this with you.” I handed him his portable radio.
He suddenly smiled. “Hey, you’re all right.” He clipped the portable on his belt, and then walked into the bar that promised “Happy Hour -- Two for One Drinks.”
I sat in the ambulance and ate the roast beef sandwich and apple I’d brought in my small cooler. I read through Troy’s Hartford Courant. The Red Sox had lost a heartbreaker on the west coast the night before. City and state officials were holding an emergency meeting about the escalating gang-violence in Hartford. Gang members jailed several years ago in a major crackdown were now getting out of prison and flexing their muscles. The resulting turf wars had the city on a record homicide pace. The day before there had been a double slaying at the Charter Oak - Rice Heights housing project. On the front of the Connecticut section there was a photo of Troy ventilation one of the victims with an ambu-bag as the patient was wheeled across the grass, another EMT riding the stretcher doing compressions.
Ten minutes went by. No sign of Troy.
“482,” dispatch called.
“482,” I answered slowly.
“170 Sisson Avenue Building 3, apartment 247, for the swollen legs. Priority 2.”
“170 Sisson Avenue,” I repeated.
I watched the door of the bar, but it stayed closed. I waited. Troy did not come out. After three minutes, I picked up the radio. “482. We’re having trouble getting the engine started. I think it’s flooded. Just letting you know we’re going to be a little late, if we can get it going at all.”
“Okay 82. 463, can you take that call? 170 Sisson for the swollen legs?”
Still no partner.
“482? Where are you so we can get a mechanic down there?”
“Union Street. Down by the train station,” I said.
“We’ll send him right down.”
“Okay,” I said. I waited another five minutes, and then called dispatch back. “482, I’ve got it going now. Sorry. You can cancel the mechanic.”
“Okay, just keep it running. Stay in Area 10.”
I took off my company shirt, turned on my portable radio, and headed into Dooley’s.
It was dark, the air was heavy with cigarette smoke. The Rolling Stones “Get Off My Cloud” blared on the jukebox. Troy sat on a stool with his back to the bar watching the action on the pool table. The bartender set a drink down beside his radio and empty glass. “Vodka and OJ,” he announced, more to me than to Troy.
“We just passed a call,” I said.
“Look at those two.”
A slender Farrah Fawcett blonde in a white tank top and a pierced bellybutton intently lined up a shot, showing cleavage, while her friend, a giggly brunette, tried to coach her. The blonde hit the cue ball. It flew a foot in the air, bounced twice, and went right off the table.
The blonde cursed while her friend couldn’t contain her laughter.
The cue ball rolled toward us.
“We really ought to get back in the truck,” I said.
But Troy was already off his stool, scooping up the ball.
“Who taught you who how to shoot pool?” He placed the ball back on the table. “That was terrible.”
Two thick-necked young men with beer bottles in their hands stepped away from the wall.
“Haven’t these guys taught you anything?” Troy said.
“That’s all right, pal,” the one with the shaved head - said. “We’re doing fine here. Let the girls play.”
Troy turned and faced him. In his black tee shirt you could see his lean muscled strength.
“Yeah,” the other young man said. “You want conversation, talk to the bartender.”
“This is great. I love it,” Troy said. “Two on two.”
The young men looked momentarily confused. “Your friend doesn’t look like he’s ready to join in,” the smaller one said.
I had my hand on Troy’s shoulder, trying to ease him away.
Troy held up his arm. “Oh, no, he’s just my cut man, but you can see I’m too pretty to ever need his services.” He grinned. “I’m talking about…” He slapped his biceps. “These bad boys.” He leaned into a boxer’s crouch, his fists up, his head bobbing.
“Who do you think you are?”
“Troy, please,” I said.
“Allow me to introduce myself.” Fists still clenched, he raised both arms above his head. “I am the King of the World!” He stepped toward them and roared, “The King of the Woooorld!”
Years later in a bar, I would tell co-workers how Troy Johnson gave them a serious beat down, breaking pool cues, smashing chairs, even throwing one muscle man through the front plate glass window. I would tell how his foes vanquished, Troy calmly finished his drink. Then as I held the back door open, he strolled out with a woman on each arm.
It was a story worthy of Troy’s legend, but not what happened. The truth was the guys looked into Troy’s eyes and saw just what I did -- a mad man -- and they stood down. It was as simple as that. The would-be bruisers left, while Troy ate the girls’ pizza and gave them lessons in the art of nine-ball. I handed his drink to the bartender and had him replace it with OJ and seltzer water. When I pulled Troy away to respond to a motor vehicle at Main and Church, he left the girls behind, though he did get both their phone numbers. The next week he spent parts of several afternoons at Mandy the blonde’s apartment on West Boulevard, his portable radio no doubt on the nightstand. I was parked outside in the ambulance, engine idling.
I didn’t care back then. It was just a job for me.
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