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.”
