“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.
