I didn’t see or hear from Troy for months. I finally took a day off and drove down to the shore. Johnson Hardware was located in a large stand alone building that shared a parking lot with a cleaners, a Chinese restaurant and a bike shop. Out front was a display of new power mowers and bags of peat moss piled high.
I went right to the service desk. A middle-aged woman had her back to me while she talked on the telephone. “I demand to see the manager.” I pounded the counter. “Get me the manager.”
Without even looking at me, she spoke into the microphone and I heard the overhead page. “Mr. Johnson to the service desk. Mr. Johnson to the service desk.”
He came around the corner in his white shirt and tie and when he saw me his phony smile broke into the biggest grin. “Lee,” he said. “How the hell are you?”
We embraced fiercely.
“I’ve come to bust you out. We’re going to lunch.”
“But Mr. Johnson,” the woman said, as she hung up the phone. “Mr. Hamlish from the Stanley Tools is supposed to be in to meet with you in a half hour.”
“Tell him I’m out drinking.”
She looked unshocked, like she was used to those comments.
“You’ll think of something,” he said. “Tell him I had a meeting with Lee Jones. Yeah, that’s it.”
“Lee Jones?” she said.
“The legend himself.” He winked at me.
We talked for two hours over steak at the Ship’s Pub. Troy said he was making twice the salary he made on the street, but I could tell he missed the life. ounting widgets and reordering paint wasn’t the same adrenaline rush. His health was good though, and he was seeing a girl steady now, thinking about marriage. He showed me a picture of her -- I was jealous -- she was like someone out of a magazine – Clairol blonde hair, wide blue eyes, full lips, perfect complexion.
“Life is good,” he said, “I’ve got a little garden in the backyard. I’m growing beets, carrots, celery, radishes. Next year I might grow corn. I’m a damn good weeder. I get all my tools for free. Salesman samples. Can’t beat that. They want me back up in the city, they’re going to have to raise their pay scales, and even then I don’t think I’ll go back. Fuck them.”
“That’s telling them,” I said. But I didn’t believe him.
I saw his eyes move and he signaled to a man who had just come in the door. “Hey, there’s someone I want you to meet. ‘Yo, Dad.’” To me, “It’s my Dad.”
A tall broad shouldered man approached. He wore construction boots, denim overalls, and a cap that said Johnson Electric.
It took him awhile to get to us. Other diners hailed him, shook his hand, and cracked comments his way. There wasn’t an eye in the room that wasn’t on him.
“Pleasure to meet you, Lee,” he said, after Troy had introduced us. “I’ve heard a lot about you. You still working up in the city?”
“I am.”
“Good of you to come down.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the man either. It wasn’t just that he looked like Troy; he looked familiar in another way. I looked at his big hands and then I saw the World Series ring.
“My god,” I said. “You’re Pete Johnson.”
“I’ve been known by that name.”
“I saw you play in Fenway Park. I was in high school. It was in September. You hit three home runs that day, and the catch you made in center on Yastremski’s blast, I’ve never seen anything like it, the way you leapt and twisted your body. I thought the ball was in the bullpen, but you brought it back down into play.”
“I told you I had game,” he said to Troy, who slapped him a high-five.
“How come you didn’t tell me he was a Yankee?”
“Because you’re a Red Sox fan. Can you believe that, Dad? They actually made me work with this guy.”
“Troy doesn’t like to brag,” the father said. “He knows once he started talking about me, he wouldn’t stop, ain’t that right, son?”
“In your dreams maybe.”
“I bet he hasn’t told you about his own exploits.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“He broke every record I ever set at Thorton High -- football, baseball, basketball, track. He might not have kissed as many girls as I did, but of course he doesn’t have his Dad’s looks.”
“Dream on, old man,” Troy said. “I got you on that record too.”
Pete Johnson – he was a sports legend. A local Connecticut kid. He’d signed with the Yankees out of high school, but had been drafted, did a tour in Korea, played a few years in the minors, then came up one year in September, hit .500, and helped the Yankees to the pennant. Hit seventeen homers in thirty games, including two in the World Series. He was the toast of the town. A handsome guy, he made the tabloids with his whirlwind romance with Marjorie Thetis, the actress. The papers said he was out-of-shape when he’d reported to camp the next spring, but I remember seeing pictures of him, and he’d looked great. The second week of training he tripped over a sprinkler head and wrenched his knee and was never the same. When he got off the injured list, he hit .230, a couple homers, and then suddenly retired.
Sitting at the restaurant table with Troy and his Dad, I was like a babbling fool. I recounted over and over again every memory from that day I’d seen him at Fenway. Troy’s dad I knew was flattered by my praise. And I could see how much it meant to him for Troy to hear as well. Troy clearly loved his father and I could tell he was proud as I gave my account.
“You didn’t want to come back?” I asked.
“I thought about it, but Troy was a baby then, and his mother, who was ill, wasn’t able to care for him. It wasn’t that important to me. And of course, they didn’t pay the millions then that they do now.”
“I can’t tell you how I respect that,” I said.
“Troy came out okay, nothing that a good beating every now and then didn’t fix.”
“That’s a good one,” Troy said. “Since when were you ever able to catch me with your gimpy leg. Even when I was three I was too fleet-footed for him.”
“Well, on those occasions, I didn’t catch him, he knew he had to spend the night out in the doghouse, which may explain his terrible manners.”
After Troy’s dad left – he had an appointment wiring a house -- we had a last beer, and then Troy insisted on paying the tab. In the parking lot, we shook hands goodbye. In the distance we heard the wail then yelp of an ambulance. I saw then the loss in his eyes.
“Good of you to come by,” he said.
“I’ll see you again soon.”
He looked like he doubted it. “You ever want paint,” he said. “I’ve got the best deal in town.”
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Chapter 25
Note to new readers: This is a work of fiction
***
In the Spring, Kim and I took a weekend off and went to Cape Cod where we stayed in a small cottage on the water in Truro just south of Provincetown at the end of Cape Cod. While we had seen increasingly more of each other during the winter – drinking with coworkers on Friday nights, occasionally going out to dinner, and spending nights at my place when her children were with their father -- this was our first trip together. I liked her quite a bit, and enjoyed her company. She fit my moods well, drinking beer and chatting when I felt garrulous, and not minding my occasional moody periods, when I dwelled in silence.
She’d gone to Cape Cod often as a child, and had continued to bring her children there for a week each summer. “Maybe you’ll come with us this year,” she said. “It’d do you good to get away, and the Cape in the summer is great. Spend the day on the beach, drink beer and eat lobster at night – speaking of which that’s where we’re going to tonight. I’m taking you to the Lobster pound in Provincetown. You can pick your own lobster out of the tank.”
“It all sounds great,” I said.
That night at dinner, she saw me smiling at her as she showed me how to crack open a lobster. “What are you laughing at?” she said.
“I’m from Maine,” I said.
“Oh, do’oh. You’ve had lobster before, obviously.”
I laughed. “I didn’t ever tell you what I used to do?”
“I know you told me once you drove a truck. You didn’t drive a lobster truck, did you?”
“Well, in a way I did, only it was a boat, not a truck.”
“A boat?”
“I come from a family of lobstermen.”
“How come you never told me that before? And also how come you’re not out there now? It sounds like a great job, although I suppose its hard work”
“It has its rewards.”
“Free lobster?”
“That’s one of them.”
“So what happened?”
“My father had a stroke right before I got out of the army. He didn’t have health insurance. I suppose I could have gone back to fishing when I got back, but I didn’t really feel like staying. I sold the boat, squared his bills, and that was that.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes I do, but I don’t as a matter of course. Besides, what if I’d stayed? I’d be an old man with barnacles on my skin, smelling of fish, and drinking beers with toothless fishermen instead of sitting across the table from the prettiest sweetest smelling girl in New England.”
She laughed. “You’re drunk.” And then she added, “Well, I’m glad I’m here with you, too. It’s nice to be away from the city.”
After dinner, we went out and walked along the docks and looked at the fishing boats. The truth was I did miss the sea. And this was the first I had seen the Atlantic in over a decade. The salt air, the fullness in your lungs when you breathed, the wind on your face -- it brought back memories, but at the same time, it all made me feel old and incomplete like I had no real place in the world anymore.
That night when we made love back in our cottage, I made love to her as if I would never have another chance. When you are a young man, there is no concept really of time closing in on you, the future is infinite. I believed that night that nothing lasts, and so while I held her in my arms, I wanted to remember every moment of it, to love as if my very life depended on it.
“My god,” she said after. “I’ll have to get you lobster more often.”
“It’s the sea air,” I said, “and of course the company that just keeps getting better. ”
“You’re nice,” she said, and brought my hand to her breast, as she nestled into me.
We slept late and made love again in the morning, and then went into town for coffee and doughnuts. She held me close as we walked the streets. She saw a sign advertising a whale watch with guaranteed sightings, and joked “A whale watch? How do you know there are not going to go, ‘Look that way, it’s a whale! Oh, too bad, you missed it,’” she said.
“No, there are whales out there,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll take you if you want. My treat you.” I knew it would be something she would marvel at when we’d get out there on the fishing grounds. “They are out there.”
So I was again out upon the sea. And with Kim at my side, and the water all around us, and the sun rising bright cutting through the fog, I felt, in fact, young again. And then on the feeding grounds, the humpback whales came out and watching the joy on Kim’s face and the faces of the children and other customers as the whales breached and flapped their tails, and splashed us, I felt like I had no reason on earth to be morose. “This is like being in another world,” Kim said. “Or at the edge of our own. Thank you for bringing me here.” She kissed me, and then turned again to point at the whales like I was the one who had conjured them up for her. I knew then that she loved me, and I felt that maybe my time wasn’t past at all, and that a real life was possible for me.
The whales led us north. No one objected when the captain asked if we wanted to stay out longer to follow them. Evening finally fell and we turned back. I looked out at the lights of the land to our west, and Kim knew at once that something had changed. “What is it? Are you okay?”
There to the west were the lights on the coast. I knew the houses of each light. It was a sight that I remembered as if it were only yesterday, and I was returning again from a day on the sea. But now instead of going home, I was heading back to this other life that now contained me, one I had never as a child dreamed of. I wondered who was left in the town, if anyone thought of me, if anyone even noticed the tourist boat out at sea, and wondered who the boat carried. The emptiness I felt was now almost unbearable. Kim leaned against me, and while I felt I could not begin to share with her the hurt I felt inside, I was glad for her to be there.
“I think we should build a house together right here,” I declared. “We’ll put our bed in this very spot.”
Penny and I were up on the bluff overlooking the ocean on land owned by her father. It was spring of our senior year, the afternoon of the senior dance. We’d been coming up there to drink beer and make love since we’d started going out our sophomore year. Her father was a banker and she was going away to college in the fall, but the town and her family had pretty much accepted us an inseparable couple. I was varsity athlete and a solid citizen with just a few rough edges. She was smart, athletic herself and a free spirit. I don’t know if I knew what love meant, but I enjoyed the hell out of her, and hadn’t imagined myself with anyone else.
She lifted her head off my chest. “Are you proposing to me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am.”
“My mother’s going to want a big wedding. I wouldn’t mind just you and me and the justice of peace standing up here in our spot, but she’s going to want a church, and the country club.”
“We could get married secretly now and save the big ceremony for when I get back.”
“When you what?”
“When I get back. “
“Back? So you went ahead and did it?”
“I went yesterday.”
“Just because Billy’s going.”
“We’ll be back in a year. It won’t be long.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing it. I told you I didn’t want you too. That didn’t count, huh?”
“He needs someone to look out for him.”
“Why don’t you marry him then?”
“Penny, com’on. I love you, but this is something I have to do.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“He’s my best friend. I can’t let him go by himself.”
She sat up and turned her back to me as she put her bra back on. She was crying.
“I feel like I am falling in love with you,” Kim told me that night as we lay in bed in the dark, “But at times you are so distant. I feel like I don’t even know you. If you let me in, you have to keep me there so I can feel safe.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and held her to hide her from my tears.
***
In the Spring, Kim and I took a weekend off and went to Cape Cod where we stayed in a small cottage on the water in Truro just south of Provincetown at the end of Cape Cod. While we had seen increasingly more of each other during the winter – drinking with coworkers on Friday nights, occasionally going out to dinner, and spending nights at my place when her children were with their father -- this was our first trip together. I liked her quite a bit, and enjoyed her company. She fit my moods well, drinking beer and chatting when I felt garrulous, and not minding my occasional moody periods, when I dwelled in silence.
She’d gone to Cape Cod often as a child, and had continued to bring her children there for a week each summer. “Maybe you’ll come with us this year,” she said. “It’d do you good to get away, and the Cape in the summer is great. Spend the day on the beach, drink beer and eat lobster at night – speaking of which that’s where we’re going to tonight. I’m taking you to the Lobster pound in Provincetown. You can pick your own lobster out of the tank.”
“It all sounds great,” I said.
That night at dinner, she saw me smiling at her as she showed me how to crack open a lobster. “What are you laughing at?” she said.
“I’m from Maine,” I said.
“Oh, do’oh. You’ve had lobster before, obviously.”
I laughed. “I didn’t ever tell you what I used to do?”
“I know you told me once you drove a truck. You didn’t drive a lobster truck, did you?”
“Well, in a way I did, only it was a boat, not a truck.”
“A boat?”
“I come from a family of lobstermen.”
“How come you never told me that before? And also how come you’re not out there now? It sounds like a great job, although I suppose its hard work”
“It has its rewards.”
“Free lobster?”
“That’s one of them.”
“So what happened?”
“My father had a stroke right before I got out of the army. He didn’t have health insurance. I suppose I could have gone back to fishing when I got back, but I didn’t really feel like staying. I sold the boat, squared his bills, and that was that.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes I do, but I don’t as a matter of course. Besides, what if I’d stayed? I’d be an old man with barnacles on my skin, smelling of fish, and drinking beers with toothless fishermen instead of sitting across the table from the prettiest sweetest smelling girl in New England.”
She laughed. “You’re drunk.” And then she added, “Well, I’m glad I’m here with you, too. It’s nice to be away from the city.”
After dinner, we went out and walked along the docks and looked at the fishing boats. The truth was I did miss the sea. And this was the first I had seen the Atlantic in over a decade. The salt air, the fullness in your lungs when you breathed, the wind on your face -- it brought back memories, but at the same time, it all made me feel old and incomplete like I had no real place in the world anymore.
That night when we made love back in our cottage, I made love to her as if I would never have another chance. When you are a young man, there is no concept really of time closing in on you, the future is infinite. I believed that night that nothing lasts, and so while I held her in my arms, I wanted to remember every moment of it, to love as if my very life depended on it.
“My god,” she said after. “I’ll have to get you lobster more often.”
“It’s the sea air,” I said, “and of course the company that just keeps getting better. ”
“You’re nice,” she said, and brought my hand to her breast, as she nestled into me.
We slept late and made love again in the morning, and then went into town for coffee and doughnuts. She held me close as we walked the streets. She saw a sign advertising a whale watch with guaranteed sightings, and joked “A whale watch? How do you know there are not going to go, ‘Look that way, it’s a whale! Oh, too bad, you missed it,’” she said.
“No, there are whales out there,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll take you if you want. My treat you.” I knew it would be something she would marvel at when we’d get out there on the fishing grounds. “They are out there.”
So I was again out upon the sea. And with Kim at my side, and the water all around us, and the sun rising bright cutting through the fog, I felt, in fact, young again. And then on the feeding grounds, the humpback whales came out and watching the joy on Kim’s face and the faces of the children and other customers as the whales breached and flapped their tails, and splashed us, I felt like I had no reason on earth to be morose. “This is like being in another world,” Kim said. “Or at the edge of our own. Thank you for bringing me here.” She kissed me, and then turned again to point at the whales like I was the one who had conjured them up for her. I knew then that she loved me, and I felt that maybe my time wasn’t past at all, and that a real life was possible for me.
The whales led us north. No one objected when the captain asked if we wanted to stay out longer to follow them. Evening finally fell and we turned back. I looked out at the lights of the land to our west, and Kim knew at once that something had changed. “What is it? Are you okay?”
There to the west were the lights on the coast. I knew the houses of each light. It was a sight that I remembered as if it were only yesterday, and I was returning again from a day on the sea. But now instead of going home, I was heading back to this other life that now contained me, one I had never as a child dreamed of. I wondered who was left in the town, if anyone thought of me, if anyone even noticed the tourist boat out at sea, and wondered who the boat carried. The emptiness I felt was now almost unbearable. Kim leaned against me, and while I felt I could not begin to share with her the hurt I felt inside, I was glad for her to be there.
“I think we should build a house together right here,” I declared. “We’ll put our bed in this very spot.”
Penny and I were up on the bluff overlooking the ocean on land owned by her father. It was spring of our senior year, the afternoon of the senior dance. We’d been coming up there to drink beer and make love since we’d started going out our sophomore year. Her father was a banker and she was going away to college in the fall, but the town and her family had pretty much accepted us an inseparable couple. I was varsity athlete and a solid citizen with just a few rough edges. She was smart, athletic herself and a free spirit. I don’t know if I knew what love meant, but I enjoyed the hell out of her, and hadn’t imagined myself with anyone else.
She lifted her head off my chest. “Are you proposing to me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am.”
“My mother’s going to want a big wedding. I wouldn’t mind just you and me and the justice of peace standing up here in our spot, but she’s going to want a church, and the country club.”
“We could get married secretly now and save the big ceremony for when I get back.”
“When you what?”
“When I get back. “
“Back? So you went ahead and did it?”
“I went yesterday.”
“Just because Billy’s going.”
“We’ll be back in a year. It won’t be long.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing it. I told you I didn’t want you too. That didn’t count, huh?”
“He needs someone to look out for him.”
“Why don’t you marry him then?”
“Penny, com’on. I love you, but this is something I have to do.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“He’s my best friend. I can’t let him go by himself.”
She sat up and turned her back to me as she put her bra back on. She was crying.
“I feel like I am falling in love with you,” Kim told me that night as we lay in bed in the dark, “But at times you are so distant. I feel like I don’t even know you. If you let me in, you have to keep me there so I can feel safe.”
“I’ll try,” I said, and held her to hide her from my tears.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Chapter 24
Troy took a job managing one of his uncle’s hardware stores down by the shore. Without Troy as my partner, the job wasn’t nearly as interesting. While I still worked with Victor three days a week, on the other four they usually put me with new EMTs, which despite the closest car goes policy, usually turned out to be all day transfer duty.
We ferried sick old people, back and forth to dialysis, between radiation treatments, into the ER for debreidment of bedsores and replacement of pulled feeding tubes and Foley catheters. Some people left EMS after burning out from seeing too much trauma -- too many young people dying -- but to many of us the worst was not the young, but the continual contact with the dying and the forgotten. Life decaying before the grave. It was like giving you a picture of what your own future held. It was grim and inescapable.
I saw myself alone in a dim room. A tube stuck out of my stomach hooked up to a bottle of brown thick liquid. A catheter stuck out of my penis hooked to a bag that collected my dark urine. There was a hole cut in my throat. I struggled to breathe through the thick mucus that continually clogged it. Bedsores festered on my back and buttocks. My diaper needed changing. I listened to the endless howling of my roommate as I waited for the reaper to come through my door and take me to another hell.
In the nursing homes, people had no identity. There might be a few cheery photos of children, crayon drawings saying we love grandpa, but we never saw the children there. We rarely saw any visitors at all. We made our way down the halls past the gauntlet of forgotten vacant souls, sitting in their wheels chairs, heads down, mouths open, waiting for their hearts to stop beating. You couldn’t tell who had been football stars, who the captains of industry, who had won all the girls, who had dazzled the boys, who had build skyscrapers, won justice in courtrooms, medals on the field of battle. They were all lumped together now, warehoused in halls that smelled like shit lightly dusted with baby powder. If they were lucky they’d die after the nurse checked them at shift change so when the next shift occurred they’d be to far gone to be saved – saved to continue their life in earth’s version of Hades.
Andrew Melnick and I took a brain-injured patient down to a special rehabilitation facility near the mouth of the Connecticut River. He’d been up at Hartford Hospital for an operation to relieve pressure on his brain. He was twenty-six years old. He’d been in a drunk-driving senior prom accident when he was eighteen and had been unfortunate enough to survive. He’d lost his right leg at the hip, and could not speak. He moved his arms only with great difficulty. They fed him with a tube into his stomach. He had a stoma in his neck from which yellow phlegm had to be suctioned regularly. You could tell he’d once had massive arms, but the tattoo of a Wildcat now appeared grossly misshapen on his right arm, more like a starving kitten with a big head. The facility looked nice from the outside -- it had a spectacular view of the river and Long Island Sound. We brought the man into a room without windows that he shared with three other men in similar condition. The place smelled like baby powder on shit.
Normally we tried to joke in the nursing homes, saying hello to the procession of gray haired ladies sitting in their wheelchairs lining the halls, engaging them in conversation, but this place was like the house of horrors. Everyone was young, crippled in body and mind. It was too close to home. One man sat in his wheel chair, pounding his fist -- the only arm he could move --against the armrest. Though he couldn’t have been thirty, his hair was already thinning. He had dandruff on his shoulders. There was food on his mustache and on his green army jacket. Somewhere down the hall, a man howled. It would stop suddenly, and then start again.
We got our patient into his special wheel chair. While we waited for the nurse to come down and get our report and sign our paperwork acknowledging that we’d successfully delivered him, I read the faded news clippings taped to his wall. “Wheeler Leads Wildcats to Championship, Throws 3 TD Passes.” There was a picture of him in his uniform, being carried on the shoulders of his teammates.
“Another football hero,” I said.
The man grunted and jerked his head. He seemed to motion with his hand.
“I think he wants to show us something,” Andrew said. “Bring him the article.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, he does,” Andrew said. Then to the man, “You were QB? The Seymour Wildcats. That’s good football.”
Andrew took the clipping from me and put it in the man’s shaking hand. We watched as the man slowly brought his other hand over to the clipping, then in one quick jerky movement, he ripped the article, and crumbled it in his hand.
“Hey!” Andrew said, “What’d you do that for?”
The man just looked at him coldly, his arms and hands shaking.
“I didn’t know he was going to rip it up,” Andrew said on the drive back. “How would you figure that?”
I didn’t say anything. I had no answer for him that would soothe him.
We ferried sick old people, back and forth to dialysis, between radiation treatments, into the ER for debreidment of bedsores and replacement of pulled feeding tubes and Foley catheters. Some people left EMS after burning out from seeing too much trauma -- too many young people dying -- but to many of us the worst was not the young, but the continual contact with the dying and the forgotten. Life decaying before the grave. It was like giving you a picture of what your own future held. It was grim and inescapable.
I saw myself alone in a dim room. A tube stuck out of my stomach hooked up to a bottle of brown thick liquid. A catheter stuck out of my penis hooked to a bag that collected my dark urine. There was a hole cut in my throat. I struggled to breathe through the thick mucus that continually clogged it. Bedsores festered on my back and buttocks. My diaper needed changing. I listened to the endless howling of my roommate as I waited for the reaper to come through my door and take me to another hell.
In the nursing homes, people had no identity. There might be a few cheery photos of children, crayon drawings saying we love grandpa, but we never saw the children there. We rarely saw any visitors at all. We made our way down the halls past the gauntlet of forgotten vacant souls, sitting in their wheels chairs, heads down, mouths open, waiting for their hearts to stop beating. You couldn’t tell who had been football stars, who the captains of industry, who had won all the girls, who had dazzled the boys, who had build skyscrapers, won justice in courtrooms, medals on the field of battle. They were all lumped together now, warehoused in halls that smelled like shit lightly dusted with baby powder. If they were lucky they’d die after the nurse checked them at shift change so when the next shift occurred they’d be to far gone to be saved – saved to continue their life in earth’s version of Hades.
Andrew Melnick and I took a brain-injured patient down to a special rehabilitation facility near the mouth of the Connecticut River. He’d been up at Hartford Hospital for an operation to relieve pressure on his brain. He was twenty-six years old. He’d been in a drunk-driving senior prom accident when he was eighteen and had been unfortunate enough to survive. He’d lost his right leg at the hip, and could not speak. He moved his arms only with great difficulty. They fed him with a tube into his stomach. He had a stoma in his neck from which yellow phlegm had to be suctioned regularly. You could tell he’d once had massive arms, but the tattoo of a Wildcat now appeared grossly misshapen on his right arm, more like a starving kitten with a big head. The facility looked nice from the outside -- it had a spectacular view of the river and Long Island Sound. We brought the man into a room without windows that he shared with three other men in similar condition. The place smelled like baby powder on shit.
Normally we tried to joke in the nursing homes, saying hello to the procession of gray haired ladies sitting in their wheelchairs lining the halls, engaging them in conversation, but this place was like the house of horrors. Everyone was young, crippled in body and mind. It was too close to home. One man sat in his wheel chair, pounding his fist -- the only arm he could move --against the armrest. Though he couldn’t have been thirty, his hair was already thinning. He had dandruff on his shoulders. There was food on his mustache and on his green army jacket. Somewhere down the hall, a man howled. It would stop suddenly, and then start again.
We got our patient into his special wheel chair. While we waited for the nurse to come down and get our report and sign our paperwork acknowledging that we’d successfully delivered him, I read the faded news clippings taped to his wall. “Wheeler Leads Wildcats to Championship, Throws 3 TD Passes.” There was a picture of him in his uniform, being carried on the shoulders of his teammates.
“Another football hero,” I said.
The man grunted and jerked his head. He seemed to motion with his hand.
“I think he wants to show us something,” Andrew said. “Bring him the article.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, he does,” Andrew said. Then to the man, “You were QB? The Seymour Wildcats. That’s good football.”
Andrew took the clipping from me and put it in the man’s shaking hand. We watched as the man slowly brought his other hand over to the clipping, then in one quick jerky movement, he ripped the article, and crumbled it in his hand.
“Hey!” Andrew said, “What’d you do that for?”
The man just looked at him coldly, his arms and hands shaking.
“I didn’t know he was going to rip it up,” Andrew said on the drive back. “How would you figure that?”
I didn’t say anything. I had no answer for him that would soothe him.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Chapter 23
I may have saved Troy an arrest, but I couldn’t get him back on the road. The company told Troy he could only come back if he brought in a doctor’s note certifying that he had his diabetes under control and that he would suffer no further relapses. No legitimate doctor would sign that any time soon. Still, the next day, Troy put his boots on and tried to go to work like nothing had happened.
“What are you doing here?” Brian Sajack asked.
“Coming to work. You have the keys for 482?”
“Hold on a moment.” He picked up the phone and called Ben. “Ben, Troy’s here.”
“Just a moment,” he said. “You and Ben can work this out.”
Troy waited patiently until Ben appeared.
“You were suspended, pending medical clearance,” Ben said. “I thought we were clear on that.”
I looked out the door and saw a police car pull up. Two officers stepped out. I recognized the taller one as the officer Troy had punched the day before.
“I’m scheduled to work 10 A.M. to midnight. I always work this shift. Ask Lee. He’s my partner.”
“The book says Lee is working with Tim Vijay today. You are on the suspended list until you bring a note from your physician saying your diabetes is under control and you are no longer at risk. You know that.”
The two officers came in the door and made eye contact with Ben. I could still see the black eye on the one officer who’d been there the day before. He didn’t look happy.
Troy smiled broadly. “Howdy guys,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet, which he unfolded and presented to Ben. “I think you’ll find that’s in order.”
Ben stared at the sheet a long moment. He looked back at Troy, almost incredulously. “This is your note?”
“That’s right. Signed by a physician.”
“To whom it may concern,” Ben read aloud. “I give my blessing to Troy Johnson to return to work today. Sincerely, Marcus Welby M.D.”
Troy smiled, his eyes gleaming. It was then I realized he was insane.
“Marcus Welby, M.D? He doesn’t practice anymore. He’s been off the air for years.” Ben gave a half guffaw. “You’ll have to do better.”
“I’m disappointed,” Troy said. “These obstacles you are putting in my path.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Ben said. “The officers here will escort you back to your car.”
“Very well.” Troy took the note back and put it in his pocket. “But I am not thorough with this, not by a long shot.” He cocked his head slightly, and then in a voice intended perhaps to sound like Douglas Macarthur, he said slowly and with great dramatic gravity, “I shall return.”
“You come back without a legitimate note, you’re not getting in an ambulance.”
“Good day,” Troy said.
On his way out Troy nodded to the officers. He stopped and looked at the bruise under the eye of the tall one. “What did the other guy look like?” he said, then laughed to himself and walked out.
Troy was back the next day with a note from Dr. Mark Green of ER. Ben shook his head. “A real doctor, not a TV doctor.”
I don’t know what he was trying to prove -- that his suspension was a joke and should be treated as such or maybe he was just plain crazy.
The next time the note was from Dr. J.
He didn’t come after that. A joke only went so far until it was pathetic, and Troy wasn’t the pathetic type. Or maybe it was just because he’d heard the Seurats were going to have him arrested for trespassing if he showed up again.
“What are you doing here?” Brian Sajack asked.
“Coming to work. You have the keys for 482?”
“Hold on a moment.” He picked up the phone and called Ben. “Ben, Troy’s here.”
“Just a moment,” he said. “You and Ben can work this out.”
Troy waited patiently until Ben appeared.
“You were suspended, pending medical clearance,” Ben said. “I thought we were clear on that.”
I looked out the door and saw a police car pull up. Two officers stepped out. I recognized the taller one as the officer Troy had punched the day before.
“I’m scheduled to work 10 A.M. to midnight. I always work this shift. Ask Lee. He’s my partner.”
“The book says Lee is working with Tim Vijay today. You are on the suspended list until you bring a note from your physician saying your diabetes is under control and you are no longer at risk. You know that.”
The two officers came in the door and made eye contact with Ben. I could still see the black eye on the one officer who’d been there the day before. He didn’t look happy.
Troy smiled broadly. “Howdy guys,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet, which he unfolded and presented to Ben. “I think you’ll find that’s in order.”
Ben stared at the sheet a long moment. He looked back at Troy, almost incredulously. “This is your note?”
“That’s right. Signed by a physician.”
“To whom it may concern,” Ben read aloud. “I give my blessing to Troy Johnson to return to work today. Sincerely, Marcus Welby M.D.”
Troy smiled, his eyes gleaming. It was then I realized he was insane.
“Marcus Welby, M.D? He doesn’t practice anymore. He’s been off the air for years.” Ben gave a half guffaw. “You’ll have to do better.”
“I’m disappointed,” Troy said. “These obstacles you are putting in my path.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Ben said. “The officers here will escort you back to your car.”
“Very well.” Troy took the note back and put it in his pocket. “But I am not thorough with this, not by a long shot.” He cocked his head slightly, and then in a voice intended perhaps to sound like Douglas Macarthur, he said slowly and with great dramatic gravity, “I shall return.”
“You come back without a legitimate note, you’re not getting in an ambulance.”
“Good day,” Troy said.
On his way out Troy nodded to the officers. He stopped and looked at the bruise under the eye of the tall one. “What did the other guy look like?” he said, then laughed to himself and walked out.
Troy was back the next day with a note from Dr. Mark Green of ER. Ben shook his head. “A real doctor, not a TV doctor.”
I don’t know what he was trying to prove -- that his suspension was a joke and should be treated as such or maybe he was just plain crazy.
The next time the note was from Dr. J.
He didn’t come after that. A joke only went so far until it was pathetic, and Troy wasn’t the pathetic type. Or maybe it was just because he’d heard the Seurats were going to have him arrested for trespassing if he showed up again.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Chapter 22
“482, report to operations,” the dispatcher said when Troy and I cleared the hospital after a cardiac arrest.
“What do you think that’s about?” I asked. “I hope that family didn’t complain.”
“What family?” he said, and gave me one of his maniacal grins.
I just shook my head. “It can’t be good.
A West Hartford police car was parked outside the office. That wasn’t usual. We found the two officers in the crew room having coffee with Don Seurat. They stopped laughing when we walked in. When Seurat saw us, his smile also abruptly ended. “In my office,” he said to us. To the cops, he said, “Excuse me.”
Then I saw Linda standing by the copier, and the look of worry in her eyes further unsettled me. It was a look that said she had tried to forestall this, but hadn’t been successful. Troy hadn’t picked up on her alarm. He sauntered into Seurat’s paneled office, and poured himself a scotch from the liquor on the bar. “What’s everybody drinking?” he asked.
I stood stiffly by the door. Keith Bodin, the company risk manager was there, along with Ben Seurat. They stared at Troy.
Don took the glass from Troy’s hand and poured it in the sink. “Sit down the both of you,” he said. He walked around his desk, and sat in his high-backed leather chair.
I looked at Troy uneasily. I knew we were in trouble, and I thought I knew why.
“Ben, you want to start this off,” Don said.
Ben nodded. He looked directly at Troy. “A woman complained to us that earlier today while you were on your way to Hartford Hospital with her mother, Mr. Johnson driving, Mr. Jones attending the patient, that Mr. Johnson, after running several red lights, appeared to go comatose at the wheel. And that you, Mr. Jones then gave Mr. Johnson a shot with a syringe. And then after helping Mr. Johnson into the back, you took over driving the rest of the way, leaving the patient alone with a semi-conscious technician. Before you answer, I will tell you the woman is a retired ER nurse and was very upset about it.”
“Did she complain about the care her mother received?” I said.
“Are you certified to give IM injections?”
“He was giving me Vitamin B12,” Troy said. “It’s an experimental treatment. It has to be administered regularly like clockwork. I have a very active extracurricular life. My energy wanes, but this Vitamin 12, woo. You ought to try it.”
“This is a serious matter,” Don said.
“Okay, slap his hand. Slap mine. It won’t happen again. Let us go back to work.”
“It’s not that simple. I could fire both of you right now based on this complaint. Mr. Jones for giving an injection he is not certified to give and you for not reporting an illness on duty. You’re lucky the woman brought her complaint to us and not the state.”
“The state? This is bullshit,” Troy said. “This is bullshit!”
“Watch yourself.”
Troy was already out of his chair and leaning over Don’s desk. Don’s chair hit the wall as Don tried to escape. Ben and I grabbed Troy by the arms. He flung us back. “We’re the best crew you have, you sorry son of a bitch. You don’t know shit anymore about what goes on.”
“Get the officers in here,” Don shouted to his secretary.
“The officers?” Troy said, “Why you little sissy punk.” But instead of going for Don, he turned and faced the policemen who entered the room. “In case you don’t know who I am,” he said, “Allow me to introduce myself.” Ben and I grabbed him again. I saw an officer reach for his baton. Troy stepped toward him. I stuck my foot out and tripped Troy. He fell forward and the officers and I were on him in a moment.
“It’s his sugar, it’s his sugar,” I said.
“It’s not my fucking sugar,” Troy shouted. He broke his arm free, punched one of the cops in the face, knocking his head back. “I’m the king of the world!” he shouted. “The king of the world!”
There was a brawl with Troy getting the worst of it. I got in the way of the officer’s counterpunches, and held myself over Troy between them. “I know him. It’s his sugar. We all know that. Let me at least test it. He’s out of his mind right now. I can prove it.”
The tension went out of Troy’s struggle. He eyed me.
“It’s his sugar,” I said, again. “He’d never hit you if his sugar was right.”
Ben brought a medic bag in. While the cops continued to hold a temporarily subdued Troy down, Ben poked Troy’s finger with a lancet. I held the glucometer.
As soon as I had a drop of blood on the strip, I stepped back. “Twenty seconds,” I said. “It’s reading it.”
They all watched me.
The number came up. Three digits. “Forty!” I announced holding the glucometer above everyone’s eye-level. “I was right.”
Ben nodded for me to show him, but I clicked the machine off. “He was going to eat when you called us in. We just did a code. A save. He did a fine job. It must have sucked his sugar down. Look at him, he’s sweating. He just needs to eat. He’s got to eat.”
Troy, even though he was pissed, looked at me with wonder. I saw him try to hold back a smile. He only offered mild resistance when Ben put the IV in his arm. Ben gave him the sugar, but only half an amp. As he pushed it I saw Ben studying me, knowing now where my loyalty lay.
“This is why we can’t have him on the road,” Don said.
“What do you think that’s about?” I asked. “I hope that family didn’t complain.”
“What family?” he said, and gave me one of his maniacal grins.
I just shook my head. “It can’t be good.
A West Hartford police car was parked outside the office. That wasn’t usual. We found the two officers in the crew room having coffee with Don Seurat. They stopped laughing when we walked in. When Seurat saw us, his smile also abruptly ended. “In my office,” he said to us. To the cops, he said, “Excuse me.”
Then I saw Linda standing by the copier, and the look of worry in her eyes further unsettled me. It was a look that said she had tried to forestall this, but hadn’t been successful. Troy hadn’t picked up on her alarm. He sauntered into Seurat’s paneled office, and poured himself a scotch from the liquor on the bar. “What’s everybody drinking?” he asked.
I stood stiffly by the door. Keith Bodin, the company risk manager was there, along with Ben Seurat. They stared at Troy.
Don took the glass from Troy’s hand and poured it in the sink. “Sit down the both of you,” he said. He walked around his desk, and sat in his high-backed leather chair.
I looked at Troy uneasily. I knew we were in trouble, and I thought I knew why.
“Ben, you want to start this off,” Don said.
Ben nodded. He looked directly at Troy. “A woman complained to us that earlier today while you were on your way to Hartford Hospital with her mother, Mr. Johnson driving, Mr. Jones attending the patient, that Mr. Johnson, after running several red lights, appeared to go comatose at the wheel. And that you, Mr. Jones then gave Mr. Johnson a shot with a syringe. And then after helping Mr. Johnson into the back, you took over driving the rest of the way, leaving the patient alone with a semi-conscious technician. Before you answer, I will tell you the woman is a retired ER nurse and was very upset about it.”
“Did she complain about the care her mother received?” I said.
“Are you certified to give IM injections?”
“He was giving me Vitamin B12,” Troy said. “It’s an experimental treatment. It has to be administered regularly like clockwork. I have a very active extracurricular life. My energy wanes, but this Vitamin 12, woo. You ought to try it.”
“This is a serious matter,” Don said.
“Okay, slap his hand. Slap mine. It won’t happen again. Let us go back to work.”
“It’s not that simple. I could fire both of you right now based on this complaint. Mr. Jones for giving an injection he is not certified to give and you for not reporting an illness on duty. You’re lucky the woman brought her complaint to us and not the state.”
“The state? This is bullshit,” Troy said. “This is bullshit!”
“Watch yourself.”
Troy was already out of his chair and leaning over Don’s desk. Don’s chair hit the wall as Don tried to escape. Ben and I grabbed Troy by the arms. He flung us back. “We’re the best crew you have, you sorry son of a bitch. You don’t know shit anymore about what goes on.”
“Get the officers in here,” Don shouted to his secretary.
“The officers?” Troy said, “Why you little sissy punk.” But instead of going for Don, he turned and faced the policemen who entered the room. “In case you don’t know who I am,” he said, “Allow me to introduce myself.” Ben and I grabbed him again. I saw an officer reach for his baton. Troy stepped toward him. I stuck my foot out and tripped Troy. He fell forward and the officers and I were on him in a moment.
“It’s his sugar, it’s his sugar,” I said.
“It’s not my fucking sugar,” Troy shouted. He broke his arm free, punched one of the cops in the face, knocking his head back. “I’m the king of the world!” he shouted. “The king of the world!”
There was a brawl with Troy getting the worst of it. I got in the way of the officer’s counterpunches, and held myself over Troy between them. “I know him. It’s his sugar. We all know that. Let me at least test it. He’s out of his mind right now. I can prove it.”
The tension went out of Troy’s struggle. He eyed me.
“It’s his sugar,” I said, again. “He’d never hit you if his sugar was right.”
Ben brought a medic bag in. While the cops continued to hold a temporarily subdued Troy down, Ben poked Troy’s finger with a lancet. I held the glucometer.
As soon as I had a drop of blood on the strip, I stepped back. “Twenty seconds,” I said. “It’s reading it.”
They all watched me.
The number came up. Three digits. “Forty!” I announced holding the glucometer above everyone’s eye-level. “I was right.”
Ben nodded for me to show him, but I clicked the machine off. “He was going to eat when you called us in. We just did a code. A save. He did a fine job. It must have sucked his sugar down. Look at him, he’s sweating. He just needs to eat. He’s got to eat.”
Troy, even though he was pissed, looked at me with wonder. I saw him try to hold back a smile. He only offered mild resistance when Ben put the IV in his arm. Ben gave him the sugar, but only half an amp. As he pushed it I saw Ben studying me, knowing now where my loyalty lay.
“This is why we can’t have him on the road,” Don said.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Chapter 21
Dispatch had a call holding for us when I saw Troy’s black pickup drive into the lot, twenty minutes late. “We’ve got to move,” I said, picking him up by his car, the ambulance lights already whirling.
Troy wearing a black tee-shirt, tossed his backpack and cooler into the front. “I had a flat,” he said. “What are we going for?”
“Woman down in Newington near the Berlin line.”
“Can’t they even give me time to eat?”
“They are at status zero. This call’s been holding ten minutes.”
I drove while Troy put on his uniform shirt and laced his boots.
“928, what’s your ETA?”
“Doing our best. Maybe seven out. Do you have an update on the condition?”
“No, the PD’s just asking.”
“Doing our best.”
It was raining and the traffic wasn’t behaving. People talked on cell phones as they drove oblivious to our charging ambulance. Cars stopped in the middle of the road. Others tried to beat us through intersections.
Suddenly I heard machine gun fire. I looked at Troy. He held a small novelty gadget that made sounds of machine guns, bombs, and mortars against the PA mike.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted into the mike, then pressed a button and I heard an explosion.
He laughed manically. “Didn’t mean to give you flashbacks,” he said. “Just trying to clear traffic. Incoming!” There was the sound of a mortar lobbed through the air, and then exploding as it hit its target.
Ahead the cars seem to part. We raced through.
“What would you do without me?” he said.
“You’re a lunatic,” I said.
He just laughed, and fired off more machine gun noise.
I hit the lights off as I turned into the residential street. Two cops stood outside, small-talking. “Can’t be much,” I said. Often, as turned out to be the case here, the first responders didn’t bother to slow us down if the call turned out to be non-life threatening. “She fell and twisted her ankle,” an officer said. “She’s going to Hartford.”
In the house we found an eighty-year old woman lying on the couch with a bag if ice wrapped around her ankle. While Troy seemed more interested in chatting with an attractive blonde and her little boy. I introduced myself to the woman and examined her bruised and swollen ankle. “I’m Lee,” I said, “What happened? Did you hit you hit your head at all? Do you have any neck or back pain?”
“No, just my ankle.”
“She tripped on the rug,” I’m her daughter, the grey-haired woman standing next to her said. “She is on coumadin. I used to be a nurse at Hartford. I’d like her to go there.”
“Fine. We can do that. How bad is your pain?”
“Not bad at all. The ice helps.”
I glanced back at Troy. He had the little boy hung upside down from his ankles and was walking him across the ceiling. “What are you doing up there? Come down from there? Don’t you know, you’re not supposed to walk on the ceiling? Didn’t your mother tell you not to walk on the ceiling?”
The little boy giggled wildly and I could see the mother checking out Troy.
“We’ll bring the stretcher in,” I said, “and give you a nice easy ride into the hospital.”
Troy was too preoccupied so I dragged the stretcher in myself, lowered it, and helped the woman stand and pivot on to it. “A little hand here,” I said to Troy, and he broke away to help me lift the stretcher up.
“Can I ride with her?” the daughter asked.
“Absolutely. “You ride up front and your granddaughter can follow. We won’t be going lights and sirens. Just a nice, easy ride up to Hartford.”
Troy drove, while I attended the woman. Our route was right up the Berlin Turnpike, a long straight road lined by shopping plazas, gas stations, fast food restaurants and motels. Troy seemed to be driving a little fast and stopping a little sudden. I tried to make eye contact with him, but he had put on a pair of sunglasses. I didn’t want to yell at him in front of the woman. He had the radio on a head-banging rock station. At least he hadn’t turned on the back speakers, which he sometimes did when he heard a song he liked and wanted to share with me and whoever the patient was.
I heard honking behind us, and looked out and saw the granddaughter and great grandson waving at us. “Hey they’re waving,” I said. The great grandmother and I waved back.
It seemed all the way into Hartford they were honking and waving, and we waved back.
Then I looked out the window and saw Troy had gone past the Retreat Avenue turn to the back entrance of the hospital. Then he didn’t turn into the side entrance. “Where are you going?” I asked.
Ahead the traffic moved. Troy stayed stopped. I went up through the break between the driver’s compartment and passenger compartment. I looked at Troy, he seemed immobile. Cars were honking at us from behind. “Troy! Troy!” I shook his arm. He didn’t move. I looked at his forehead it was beaded with cold sweat. He was out in the driver’s seat. Out cold.
“Hold on a moment,” I said to the woman. “I apologize.”
I quickly opened up the medic kit, and took out a vial of glucagon, which I quickly mixed with sterile water, and drew up into a syringe. “He’s a diabetic,” I said to the woman. “His sugar sometimes drops quickly.” I jabbed him in the arm. He roused slightly at the pain. “Don’t move,” I said.
I got out the back and walked around to the front, as cars continued to honk. We were blocking the west entrance to the hospital. I took Troy by the shoulder, and helped him step out, and then sleep walked him around to the back, and helped him up, and had him sit on the bench. He was still out of it. “Don’t move,” I said. “Stay here.”
I went back and got in the driver’s seat. “Again, my apologies,” I said to the woman.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“The medicine I gave him takes about fifteen minutes to work. He’ll be all right?”
“This has happened before?”
“Not quite like this.”
“He shouldn’t be driving.”
“He’s an excellent paramedic. I’m sorry. Excuse me.” I picked up the radio. “451 out at Hartford. If there are any crews, we could use a hand with our patient.”
Victor came out of the ER as I backed in. “You got a heifer,” he said.
“No, it’s Troy. I just gave him some Glucagon, but he’s still out of it. And I need a hand getting the patient in.”
He nodded. His partner helped me with the stretcher, and Victor took care of Troy.
When I came out of the hospital, Troy as usual, was sitting on the cement wall outside the ER, eating the sandwich from his lunch box, and talking with other EMTs like nothing had happened. I had apologized over and over to the woman, and her daughter, who said she’d been honking because Troy had run several red lights. I hoped I’d been able to assuage them, but for all I knew they were calling the company right then.
Troy wearing a black tee-shirt, tossed his backpack and cooler into the front. “I had a flat,” he said. “What are we going for?”
“Woman down in Newington near the Berlin line.”
“Can’t they even give me time to eat?”
“They are at status zero. This call’s been holding ten minutes.”
I drove while Troy put on his uniform shirt and laced his boots.
“928, what’s your ETA?”
“Doing our best. Maybe seven out. Do you have an update on the condition?”
“No, the PD’s just asking.”
“Doing our best.”
It was raining and the traffic wasn’t behaving. People talked on cell phones as they drove oblivious to our charging ambulance. Cars stopped in the middle of the road. Others tried to beat us through intersections.
Suddenly I heard machine gun fire. I looked at Troy. He held a small novelty gadget that made sounds of machine guns, bombs, and mortars against the PA mike.
“Fire in the hole!” he shouted into the mike, then pressed a button and I heard an explosion.
He laughed manically. “Didn’t mean to give you flashbacks,” he said. “Just trying to clear traffic. Incoming!” There was the sound of a mortar lobbed through the air, and then exploding as it hit its target.
Ahead the cars seem to part. We raced through.
“What would you do without me?” he said.
“You’re a lunatic,” I said.
He just laughed, and fired off more machine gun noise.
I hit the lights off as I turned into the residential street. Two cops stood outside, small-talking. “Can’t be much,” I said. Often, as turned out to be the case here, the first responders didn’t bother to slow us down if the call turned out to be non-life threatening. “She fell and twisted her ankle,” an officer said. “She’s going to Hartford.”
In the house we found an eighty-year old woman lying on the couch with a bag if ice wrapped around her ankle. While Troy seemed more interested in chatting with an attractive blonde and her little boy. I introduced myself to the woman and examined her bruised and swollen ankle. “I’m Lee,” I said, “What happened? Did you hit you hit your head at all? Do you have any neck or back pain?”
“No, just my ankle.”
“She tripped on the rug,” I’m her daughter, the grey-haired woman standing next to her said. “She is on coumadin. I used to be a nurse at Hartford. I’d like her to go there.”
“Fine. We can do that. How bad is your pain?”
“Not bad at all. The ice helps.”
I glanced back at Troy. He had the little boy hung upside down from his ankles and was walking him across the ceiling. “What are you doing up there? Come down from there? Don’t you know, you’re not supposed to walk on the ceiling? Didn’t your mother tell you not to walk on the ceiling?”
The little boy giggled wildly and I could see the mother checking out Troy.
“We’ll bring the stretcher in,” I said, “and give you a nice easy ride into the hospital.”
Troy was too preoccupied so I dragged the stretcher in myself, lowered it, and helped the woman stand and pivot on to it. “A little hand here,” I said to Troy, and he broke away to help me lift the stretcher up.
“Can I ride with her?” the daughter asked.
“Absolutely. “You ride up front and your granddaughter can follow. We won’t be going lights and sirens. Just a nice, easy ride up to Hartford.”
Troy drove, while I attended the woman. Our route was right up the Berlin Turnpike, a long straight road lined by shopping plazas, gas stations, fast food restaurants and motels. Troy seemed to be driving a little fast and stopping a little sudden. I tried to make eye contact with him, but he had put on a pair of sunglasses. I didn’t want to yell at him in front of the woman. He had the radio on a head-banging rock station. At least he hadn’t turned on the back speakers, which he sometimes did when he heard a song he liked and wanted to share with me and whoever the patient was.
I heard honking behind us, and looked out and saw the granddaughter and great grandson waving at us. “Hey they’re waving,” I said. The great grandmother and I waved back.
It seemed all the way into Hartford they were honking and waving, and we waved back.
Then I looked out the window and saw Troy had gone past the Retreat Avenue turn to the back entrance of the hospital. Then he didn’t turn into the side entrance. “Where are you going?” I asked.
Ahead the traffic moved. Troy stayed stopped. I went up through the break between the driver’s compartment and passenger compartment. I looked at Troy, he seemed immobile. Cars were honking at us from behind. “Troy! Troy!” I shook his arm. He didn’t move. I looked at his forehead it was beaded with cold sweat. He was out in the driver’s seat. Out cold.
“Hold on a moment,” I said to the woman. “I apologize.”
I quickly opened up the medic kit, and took out a vial of glucagon, which I quickly mixed with sterile water, and drew up into a syringe. “He’s a diabetic,” I said to the woman. “His sugar sometimes drops quickly.” I jabbed him in the arm. He roused slightly at the pain. “Don’t move,” I said.
I got out the back and walked around to the front, as cars continued to honk. We were blocking the west entrance to the hospital. I took Troy by the shoulder, and helped him step out, and then sleep walked him around to the back, and helped him up, and had him sit on the bench. He was still out of it. “Don’t move,” I said. “Stay here.”
I went back and got in the driver’s seat. “Again, my apologies,” I said to the woman.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“The medicine I gave him takes about fifteen minutes to work. He’ll be all right?”
“This has happened before?”
“Not quite like this.”
“He shouldn’t be driving.”
“He’s an excellent paramedic. I’m sorry. Excuse me.” I picked up the radio. “451 out at Hartford. If there are any crews, we could use a hand with our patient.”
Victor came out of the ER as I backed in. “You got a heifer,” he said.
“No, it’s Troy. I just gave him some Glucagon, but he’s still out of it. And I need a hand getting the patient in.”
He nodded. His partner helped me with the stretcher, and Victor took care of Troy.
When I came out of the hospital, Troy as usual, was sitting on the cement wall outside the ER, eating the sandwich from his lunch box, and talking with other EMTs like nothing had happened. I had apologized over and over to the woman, and her daughter, who said she’d been honking because Troy had run several red lights. I hoped I’d been able to assuage them, but for all I knew they were calling the company right then.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Chapter 20
It was a cold morning a few days before Christmas. The six inches of snow we’d received the week before had been washed away by a steady cold rain. The only remnants were the now dirt encrusted mounds on the roadside where the plows had piled the snow. Troy and I were covering the town of Newington when we got called to a street off Willard Avenue. They wouldn’t tell us what it was for. “No lights, no sirens. Report to PD on scene."
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Troy said.
“How’s that?”
“It’s Nestor’s place.”
Nestor hadn’t been to work for three days. He’d called in on Tuesday, saying he wasn’t feeling well. Wednesday he hadn’t answered his phone.
The sky was gray. The roads were slippery with patches of black ice.
Neither of us said anything as we drove there.
Nestor hadn’t been doing well at all lately. He’d stopped hanging out in the crew room a couple months before, retiring to his cubicle in the billing department. Some mornings he had alcohol on his breath. He’d stopped joking with people. Even stopped wearing his uniform. It was like he didn’t even want to be seen.
They led us though the house and down into the basement. The house looked like so many others we went into -- dishes in the sink, piles of newspapers, empty liquor bottles, full ashtrays, curtains pulled against the light, a carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed for months. The basement steps were in need of repair. You wondered how they could have supported Nestor’s weight as he made his way down to the cellar.
He lay on his side on the cement floor, the rifle still in his hands, a pool of caked muddy blood formed a semi-circle around the body, the back half of his head was gone. You could still see the look in his eyes like he’d seen something no man should face, a fear, a panic, a disbelief that it all had come to this.
Troy’s looked down at the body. I saw no emotion in his eyes. He looked at his watch. “Two-thirty-one. P.M.,” he said, then walked out.
Ben Seurat arrived in his Bronco. Troy was writing his paperwork against the hood of the ambulance. Ben glanced at him, but didn’t come over to talk. He nodded to the cops who let him in the house.
He came out a few minutes later. He had put on sunglasses.
A couple days later, when I was without a partner, and doing chores about the office, I brought a box of new training manuals up to Ben’s office. He was sitting with his feet up on his desk He’d just gotten back from the funeral services. He seemed to be staring at a picture on the wall. I made a little cough so he’d know I was there. He invited me in.
“How was the service?” I asked.
“Good, good. A lot of people came out, not as many as he deserved, but a decent showing. Too bad we couldn’t have sent all the crews, but someone had to work. People said nice things about him, things that had been forgotten and needed to be said.”
“He worked here for many years,” I said.
“Yes, he did. He put in his time. No matter what he’d become in the end, he deserved the respect of a decent funeral. And he got that.”
I looked at the picture. It appeared to be of a graduating class -- young people in their twenties to early thirties.
“First paramedic class in the city,” Ben said. He pointed to each photo. “Dan Turner -- he’s a doctor now. He came up today all the way from New York City. Fred Capezzi, another suicide -- about four years ago. Julio Ramos -- he’s an East Hartford firefighter now. No longer works as a medic. He was there. You recognize Brian Sajack. That’s me -- had a full head of hair then. Rob Matros, died in a car wreck. Mary Beth Fowler, a physician assistant in Massachusetts. Thomas Gallimore, working out in New Mexico for Albuquerque EMS. Lenny Lown, a junkie, or was when I last heard from him, living down on the streets of Willimantic. And that -- that’s Davey.”
I looked at the picture. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred and seventy-five pounds with a trimmed mustache and a lady killer smile.
“Being a paramedic was his life,” Ben said. “Brian and I were talking about how people used to always gather around to listen to him tell his stories. Too bad he never wrote his book.” He was quiet a moment. “He had a lot of good years, but it destroyed him in the end.” I saw Ben’s eyes look at the other pictures on his wall – Ben’s wife and his daughters. “He didn’t have anything else.”
“A lesson for us all,” I said.
“Amen.”
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” Troy said.
“How’s that?”
“It’s Nestor’s place.”
Nestor hadn’t been to work for three days. He’d called in on Tuesday, saying he wasn’t feeling well. Wednesday he hadn’t answered his phone.
The sky was gray. The roads were slippery with patches of black ice.
Neither of us said anything as we drove there.
Nestor hadn’t been doing well at all lately. He’d stopped hanging out in the crew room a couple months before, retiring to his cubicle in the billing department. Some mornings he had alcohol on his breath. He’d stopped joking with people. Even stopped wearing his uniform. It was like he didn’t even want to be seen.
They led us though the house and down into the basement. The house looked like so many others we went into -- dishes in the sink, piles of newspapers, empty liquor bottles, full ashtrays, curtains pulled against the light, a carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed for months. The basement steps were in need of repair. You wondered how they could have supported Nestor’s weight as he made his way down to the cellar.
He lay on his side on the cement floor, the rifle still in his hands, a pool of caked muddy blood formed a semi-circle around the body, the back half of his head was gone. You could still see the look in his eyes like he’d seen something no man should face, a fear, a panic, a disbelief that it all had come to this.
Troy’s looked down at the body. I saw no emotion in his eyes. He looked at his watch. “Two-thirty-one. P.M.,” he said, then walked out.
Ben Seurat arrived in his Bronco. Troy was writing his paperwork against the hood of the ambulance. Ben glanced at him, but didn’t come over to talk. He nodded to the cops who let him in the house.
He came out a few minutes later. He had put on sunglasses.
A couple days later, when I was without a partner, and doing chores about the office, I brought a box of new training manuals up to Ben’s office. He was sitting with his feet up on his desk He’d just gotten back from the funeral services. He seemed to be staring at a picture on the wall. I made a little cough so he’d know I was there. He invited me in.
“How was the service?” I asked.
“Good, good. A lot of people came out, not as many as he deserved, but a decent showing. Too bad we couldn’t have sent all the crews, but someone had to work. People said nice things about him, things that had been forgotten and needed to be said.”
“He worked here for many years,” I said.
“Yes, he did. He put in his time. No matter what he’d become in the end, he deserved the respect of a decent funeral. And he got that.”
I looked at the picture. It appeared to be of a graduating class -- young people in their twenties to early thirties.
“First paramedic class in the city,” Ben said. He pointed to each photo. “Dan Turner -- he’s a doctor now. He came up today all the way from New York City. Fred Capezzi, another suicide -- about four years ago. Julio Ramos -- he’s an East Hartford firefighter now. No longer works as a medic. He was there. You recognize Brian Sajack. That’s me -- had a full head of hair then. Rob Matros, died in a car wreck. Mary Beth Fowler, a physician assistant in Massachusetts. Thomas Gallimore, working out in New Mexico for Albuquerque EMS. Lenny Lown, a junkie, or was when I last heard from him, living down on the streets of Willimantic. And that -- that’s Davey.”
I looked at the picture. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred and seventy-five pounds with a trimmed mustache and a lady killer smile.
“Being a paramedic was his life,” Ben said. “Brian and I were talking about how people used to always gather around to listen to him tell his stories. Too bad he never wrote his book.” He was quiet a moment. “He had a lot of good years, but it destroyed him in the end.” I saw Ben’s eyes look at the other pictures on his wall – Ben’s wife and his daughters. “He didn’t have anything else.”
“A lesson for us all,” I said.
“Amen.”
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Chapter 19
Note to readers: Just a reminder this is a work of fiction. Any resemblemence to real people is purely coincidental.
***
It was dark. About three o’clock on a Saturday morning. I was coming home after getting off work when I saw a car pulled off the side of the wooded road. A woman stood outside the car holding a flashlight. I hit my hazards on and parked to protect the car. I got out and walked over. The air smelled of pine needles.
“Lee?” she said.
“Kim? What happened?"
“I was driving and I just lost power. I saw the battery voltage meter start dropping and my lights got dim, and then the car just gave out.”
“It’s probably your alternator. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just not thrilled about being broken down. I’ve been trying to call my brother, but he’s not home.”
“You live far from here?”
“Enfield. I was at a party at one of my girlfriend’s house. My kids are with their father this weekend, so at least I don’t have to worry about keeping the sitter late. Still I’m not too happy about this. I know I need a new car but I was hoping I could get another year on this one.”
“If it’s your alternator, it shouldn’t be that much. Let me give it a try.” I tried to start it up, but with no luck.
“Look, you’re in a safe spot here. Why don’t I just give you a ride home? In the morning, I can hit an auto parts store, and it probably won’t take me forty minutes to fix it.”
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Not till noon. I just have a couple chores I have to do at the farm. I live just up the road, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You need your sleep. I hate to have you drive all that way.”
“It’s not a problem. Unless, of course, you want to bunk with me. I’ve got a pullout couch.”
“Whatever is easist for you. I appreciate any help you can give me.”
“If you don’t mind, that probably would be.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s just get your car a little more off the road, and then we can be on our way.”
She got behind the driver’s wheel, and I pushed it while she steered into a little turnabout just ahead.
It felt strange driving to my place with a woman in the car, and then as we walked up the stairs to my apartment over the barn, I was almost dizzy. I had a small kitchen, a bathroom with shower, and one long room with wood floors and a fireplace. The bed was in the far end, a couch, small TV, a table, and reading chair at the other end. It was clean and I was not embarrassed by it. “You can have the bed,” I said. “There’s fresh sheets on it, and a good wool blanket. I’ll stoke up a fire.”
“I don’t want to set you out.”
“No, you’re my guest. The couch will do for me. You want something to drink?"
“I had a little too much wine at the party. You have some tea?”
“I’ll put some on. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to pop in the shower. I’ve still got the city on me.”
“No, I understand.”
When I came out, she was sitting in front of the fire. I had on a flannel shirt, and gray sweatpants.
“Feeling better?”
“Much.”
“This is nice of you to help me out.”
“You know I’d do anything to help you.”
It came out with more feeling than I intended, and she saw it.
“I made a cup for you, too,” she said.
I took the tea and joined her on the rug. I was suddenly nervous.
“I love a fire,” she said. “I have one at home, but usually only set it at Christmas.”
It had not been my plan, and until a few moments before, I had not even considered it a possibility. But with the heat of the fire on our faces, and the look that was in her eyes and surely in mine, as we looked at each other, I leaned toward her and kissed her mouth that had risen up to meet mine. We said nothing. We kissed each other deeply, and felt each other’s bodies, as we struggled to undress each other. The feel of her skin against mine, her scent was more than I felt I deserved, but I wasn’t pulling away from it. I carried her to the bed and we made love, slowly and without talking. When it was over, we turned on our sides, I had my arm and leg over her, and we looked toward the fire. She took my arm and held it to her small breast. I stayed awake a long time listening to her breathe.
I awoke with the sun in the morning in the same position that I had fallen asleep. It was seven. I eased myself up, put on a pot of coffee, dressed, and went out and did my chores. I could still smell her on my skin. My chest felt full. I felt like a man again. When I came in, she was in the shower. She smiled at me shyly when she came out. Even with her makeup washed off, she looked great.
I was tempted to pick up the phone right then, and call work, and tell them I wouldn’t be in. I thought about just getting her in my truck and driving up to New Hampshire, the White Mountains, climbing Mount Washington, looking down on the world, feeling strong and alive, then finding a mountain cottage, cooking steaks or fresh fish, sleeping with the windows open, breathing the air, feeling her next to me. I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was in good shape. I had strong shoulders and chest, well-defined arms, and strong abdomen, but the hair on my chest was turning gray. I had deep wrinkles in my forehead, my hair was thinning, my hairline receding. Still looking in the mirror, I felt hopeful that what I was looking at was someone who hadn’t yet given up. Maybe this time, my heart would open up and I could be the kind of man I wanted to be.
She was dressed when I came out. She looked at me uncertainly.
“I guess we should go get your car.”
“I appreciate your helping me.”
“My pleasure.”
I felt awkward. We drove to the auto parts store where I bought a new alternator. We went back to the car. With the battery rested. I was able to start it and drive it back to my house before it died again. It didn’t take me an hour to put in the new alternator. The car started right up.
She gave me a hug, and then we stood facing each other.
“You have a safe day at work,” she said.
“Thank you for last night,” I said.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I’d like to see you again like this,” I said.
She smiled. “That’d be nice,” she said. “I’d like that too.”
“Drive careful.”
I stood in the driveway, and watched her back out off, a rising feeling in my chest, when she turned her head back to wave. When she was gone, I went back upstairs and changed into my work clothes.
***
It was dark. About three o’clock on a Saturday morning. I was coming home after getting off work when I saw a car pulled off the side of the wooded road. A woman stood outside the car holding a flashlight. I hit my hazards on and parked to protect the car. I got out and walked over. The air smelled of pine needles.
“Lee?” she said.
“Kim? What happened?"
“I was driving and I just lost power. I saw the battery voltage meter start dropping and my lights got dim, and then the car just gave out.”
“It’s probably your alternator. You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just not thrilled about being broken down. I’ve been trying to call my brother, but he’s not home.”
“You live far from here?”
“Enfield. I was at a party at one of my girlfriend’s house. My kids are with their father this weekend, so at least I don’t have to worry about keeping the sitter late. Still I’m not too happy about this. I know I need a new car but I was hoping I could get another year on this one.”
“If it’s your alternator, it shouldn’t be that much. Let me give it a try.” I tried to start it up, but with no luck.
“Look, you’re in a safe spot here. Why don’t I just give you a ride home? In the morning, I can hit an auto parts store, and it probably won’t take me forty minutes to fix it.”
“Don’t you have to work tomorrow?”
“Not till noon. I just have a couple chores I have to do at the farm. I live just up the road, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You need your sleep. I hate to have you drive all that way.”
“It’s not a problem. Unless, of course, you want to bunk with me. I’ve got a pullout couch.”
“Whatever is easist for you. I appreciate any help you can give me.”
“If you don’t mind, that probably would be.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s just get your car a little more off the road, and then we can be on our way.”
She got behind the driver’s wheel, and I pushed it while she steered into a little turnabout just ahead.
It felt strange driving to my place with a woman in the car, and then as we walked up the stairs to my apartment over the barn, I was almost dizzy. I had a small kitchen, a bathroom with shower, and one long room with wood floors and a fireplace. The bed was in the far end, a couch, small TV, a table, and reading chair at the other end. It was clean and I was not embarrassed by it. “You can have the bed,” I said. “There’s fresh sheets on it, and a good wool blanket. I’ll stoke up a fire.”
“I don’t want to set you out.”
“No, you’re my guest. The couch will do for me. You want something to drink?"
“I had a little too much wine at the party. You have some tea?”
“I’ll put some on. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to pop in the shower. I’ve still got the city on me.”
“No, I understand.”
When I came out, she was sitting in front of the fire. I had on a flannel shirt, and gray sweatpants.
“Feeling better?”
“Much.”
“This is nice of you to help me out.”
“You know I’d do anything to help you.”
It came out with more feeling than I intended, and she saw it.
“I made a cup for you, too,” she said.
I took the tea and joined her on the rug. I was suddenly nervous.
“I love a fire,” she said. “I have one at home, but usually only set it at Christmas.”
It had not been my plan, and until a few moments before, I had not even considered it a possibility. But with the heat of the fire on our faces, and the look that was in her eyes and surely in mine, as we looked at each other, I leaned toward her and kissed her mouth that had risen up to meet mine. We said nothing. We kissed each other deeply, and felt each other’s bodies, as we struggled to undress each other. The feel of her skin against mine, her scent was more than I felt I deserved, but I wasn’t pulling away from it. I carried her to the bed and we made love, slowly and without talking. When it was over, we turned on our sides, I had my arm and leg over her, and we looked toward the fire. She took my arm and held it to her small breast. I stayed awake a long time listening to her breathe.
I awoke with the sun in the morning in the same position that I had fallen asleep. It was seven. I eased myself up, put on a pot of coffee, dressed, and went out and did my chores. I could still smell her on my skin. My chest felt full. I felt like a man again. When I came in, she was in the shower. She smiled at me shyly when she came out. Even with her makeup washed off, she looked great.
I was tempted to pick up the phone right then, and call work, and tell them I wouldn’t be in. I thought about just getting her in my truck and driving up to New Hampshire, the White Mountains, climbing Mount Washington, looking down on the world, feeling strong and alive, then finding a mountain cottage, cooking steaks or fresh fish, sleeping with the windows open, breathing the air, feeling her next to me. I went in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was in good shape. I had strong shoulders and chest, well-defined arms, and strong abdomen, but the hair on my chest was turning gray. I had deep wrinkles in my forehead, my hair was thinning, my hairline receding. Still looking in the mirror, I felt hopeful that what I was looking at was someone who hadn’t yet given up. Maybe this time, my heart would open up and I could be the kind of man I wanted to be.
She was dressed when I came out. She looked at me uncertainly.
“I guess we should go get your car.”
“I appreciate your helping me.”
“My pleasure.”
I felt awkward. We drove to the auto parts store where I bought a new alternator. We went back to the car. With the battery rested. I was able to start it and drive it back to my house before it died again. It didn’t take me an hour to put in the new alternator. The car started right up.
She gave me a hug, and then we stood facing each other.
“You have a safe day at work,” she said.
“Thank you for last night,” I said.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I’d like to see you again like this,” I said.
She smiled. “That’d be nice,” she said. “I’d like that too.”
“Drive careful.”
I stood in the driveway, and watched her back out off, a rising feeling in my chest, when she turned her head back to wave. When she was gone, I went back upstairs and changed into my work clothes.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Chapter 18
I worked seven days a week twelve sixteen hours a day for over a year with hardly a day off. It was easier that way. It wasn’t so much the money as feeling my days were full. Going to work wasn’t hard when work was my life.
I came in one Sunday morning at noon prepared to work till midnight when the supervisor, Brian Sajack, said, “What you doing here old man? Your name isn’t in the book.”
Sajack was a long standing medic who’d reluctantly left the road to take a supervisor position due to a chronic back injury. He still went out in the intercept Bronco to back up crews, but his days of regularly hauling stretchers had past. A large man with a sweeping mustache, he was well liked by all, and enjoyed putting people on.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Who do you have with me?”
“I told you your name isn’t in the book.”
“It was there yesterday.” I pointed to the spot, and saw it had been erased. “That’s not right. It was there.”
“I’ve never seen you bristle like that,” he said. “It’s okay, Troy and Pat booked you off.”
“They what?”
“They left this.” He gave me an envelope, which I opened to find a map with directions to a party at Dr. Eckstein’s house in the country. “And this,” Brian said. He handed me a small cooler, which I opened to find six longneck Buds on ice. No one knew it, but I hadn’t had a drink in the year I’d been there. “Just don’t start drinking till you’re off the premises,” he said. “Enjoy. You deserve the break. I’ll be there later myself when my shift ends. I expect the party will last into the early hours.”
The doctor had a huge spread out in Litchfield County, forty acres of land, a modern split-level house with a pool in the back and a horse stable on the lower grounds. It was a beautiful day in late September – Indian summer, the leaves just starting to turn color, the sky clear blue, the temperature in the 70’s. It reminded me of my youth in Maine, the kind of day where it was just too nice to go to school, so you and your pals drove to the cliffs over the ocean, drank beer and listened to the car stereo, while you kissed your girl and never thought anything bad could ever intrude on the fullness in your chest.
Dr. Eckstein draped green and yellow Hawaiian leis around my neck, gave me a warm hug, and called me “Lee.” Partiers played water volleyball in the large in-ground pool, threw horseshoes and soaked in the hot tub. A hired DJ played Hip-Hop on the sound system. I stood by Victor who manned the barbeque pit where a pig and a goat roasted on spits. He cut off large sections of meat, rich with fat, and served them to the partygoers, who also dined on a lavish spread of vegetables, fruits, salads, chips, cakes and sweets spread out on two picnic tables.
I’m not sentimental, but I found comfort in the camaraderie that day, the friendship between the people I worked with on the road and at the hospitals. I had come to know good souls, who I felt the same about me.
There was Kim Dylan, a cute curly-haired single mother of two in her mid-thirties. She had a quiet grace and a level-headness born out of trial. I could see the pride in her eyes as she watched her two sons, seven and nine, play football with Raul Martinez, an emergency department tech at Saint Francis, who after hard times of his own, had become a lay minister to the city’s homeless.
Andrew Melnick was there with his girlfriend Teresa, a sweet pale-complected clerk at Hartford Hospital. Andrew threw a Frisbee. Dr. Eckstien’s dog Astro, a golden retriever, chased the flying disc down, then leapt up into the air, catching it in his teeth, then ran back and eagerly gave it to Andrew, who threw it again.
In the hot tub, five of the night nurses from Saint Francis egged on two Hartford cops to down the Jell-O shots the nurses had made and were passing out to anyone who joined them. They looked younger in their bikinis than they ever did in their hospital scrubs. It was good to hear them laughing.
Pat Brothers and his girlfriend Alison had organized a group of children into a soccer game. Pat ran back and forth among the players, announcing the action, and occasionally helping out each team with a well placed pass. Whenever a goal was scored, he shouted “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALL!” and ran about high-fiving all the kids. They were crazy for him.
Ben Seurat came with his pregnant wife, Dana, and their four little girls, ages three to eleven. The two oldest eagerly joined in Pat’s soccer game. The younger girls got into the cake and had it on their mouths, fingers and dresses. Ben seemed less intimidating in the presence of his children than he did around the office.
His brother Don Seurat wore kaki pants and a green Lacoste shirt, had a Michelob in his hand and wandered about with Linda Sullivan in tow, shaking hands like a dutiful politician. On this day, no one was speaking ill of him. It was a timeout for everyone from complaints of any type. It was just too nice of a day. Blue sky and warm sun on your face, made you think the world was a better place than you remembered.
Don’s ex-wife Helen Seurat came alone arriving in her white convertible. Even Troy, who was playing horseshoes stopped to watch her move across the grass. People came up to her, paying their homage. She smiled and was quite friendly, but she left not much after she had arrived.
David Nestor was there too, sitting with Victor and me by the fire pit, gorging on the roasted meats, washing them down with beer from the pitcher he refilled from one of the two kegs. “This is like the old days again,” he said. “Remember when we used to go to Vermont every summer for Jackie’s annual party. Drinking, barbequing, only thing missing is folks running around naked, but it’s early yet.”
He saw me looking at him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I got the running around naked out of my system awhile back.”
“Those were fun times,” Victor said. “I got a letter from Jackie a month ago. She’s still with Aerosmith. She promised me free tickets when they come to the Meadows.” He said to me, “Jackie is a Medic who worked here for ten years. She hooked up as a roadie for Aerosmith, travels the world with them. Crazy hippie chick. She’s lots of fun, not a bad medic either. We all partied more then we do now. That’s why this is nice.”
“Are you going to drink that beer or just cool your hand with it?” Nestor said.
I looked down at the Bud I held. I hadn’t had a drink in a year, but I held that bottle as comfortable as I had in high school. I was a drinker -- at times in my past, a hard one -- but I had been trying to change. I hoped that I could drink the beer and stop at the enjoyment of it, and not let it lead me back down a wrong path.
“I’m just enjoying holding it right now,” I said, “Thank you. I’m just enjoying the feel in my hand and being a part of this nice day. I expect to drink it eventually.”
“Gotcha,” Nestor said. “I can respect that.”
“Me, too,” Victor said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Later, I was looking for a bathroom, when I accidentally opened the door to a bedroom. Before I could shut the door, I saw a man’s strong back, a pair of long legs around him, and a glimpse of red hair. I heard the heavy thumping of the headboard against the wall, and a woman’s pleasured cries. I closed the door quickly.
“Have you seen Troy?” Pat asked.
“I think he’s in there,” I said, pointing to the door I’d just closed, “with company.”
“Not the doc?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“That dog. Hey will you give me five bucks if I open the door and shout ‘Gooooooaaaaaal!’”
“Five bucks?”
“I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do that. Are you having a good time?”
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“I’m glad. You’re a good man, Lee.” He slapped me on the back, and went back out to the party, where he got a cold beer from the keg, then joined his girlfriend Allison sunning on the back lawn.
I sat on the couch looking out over the pool and countryside.
“Hi, Lee, Nice to see you out. May I sit?”
“Of course, by all means.” It was Kim Dylan. “Nice to see you, too.”
“While the kids are being entertained, I’d thought I’d put me feet up. It’s great all the games they have for them. There’s a magician out there now.”
“I saw. That’s great.” Out on the lawn, all the kids had been rounded up, and now sat enthralled as a tall thin young man made animal balloons and pulled endless ribbons out of his mouth.
“Nice place, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll marry a rich man someday, or win the lottery – I’ll probably have better odds.”
“I don’t know. I think you’d make a rich man very happy, or any man for that matter.”
“You’re too kind. How much have you had to drink?”
“Nothing really. I’m just holding this beer.”
“I was kidding.” She gave me a playful tap on the shoulder that thrilled me.
And we sat there and talked, talked like old friends, chatting away about everything from work to the weather. I was sorry when after a half an hour, she had to leave.
“I hate to interrupt the kids’ fun out there, but I need to be going. I have an early shift tomorrow morning. It’s been nice to see you out,” Kim said. “I guess you work so much, it’s hard for you.”
“I’ve had a good time,” I said. “I probably should get out more.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s hard with the kids. I get my sister to take them sometimes. That helps. Life can’t be all work.”
“True,” I said.
There are times in your life when you meet someone and you feel a connection, but the time just isn’t right. By no means had I been alone in my years away, but I hadn’t found anyone who reached me in a way that mattered. I was tired of disappointing people, and I didn’t care for partings. So I had found myself sitting there on the couch next to a nice woman I found attractive, and while I had imagined her flesh next to mine, I had also imagined another tearful goodbye months later as I packed and left, with little explanation more than it’s not your fault. If she had known what I was thinking, she would have wanted to avoid me. I was a dead end.
We stood together and she gave me a friendly hug. I tried not to hold it as long as I wanted.
“You should come out with us to the Brickyard some night after work,” she said. “It’s a good place to unwind. Some people like me just pop in for a beer, some close the place down.”
“Maybe I will some night.”
“You’ll have a good time. I’ll look for you.”
Suddenly there was a commotion by the pool.
“My goodness,” Kim said. “He doesn’t have anything on.”
There was Troy stark naked on the diving board. He stood completely still like an Olympic diver, then took a couple studied steps, bounced high once, then executed an Olympic one and a half, neatly ripping the landing. He came up, and people applauded and shouted “Ten. Ten.”
Before a growing and enthusiastic crowd, he executed a number of dives and assorted cannonballs and jackknifes. But it was only when he sauntered through the house still in his birthday suit and stood dipping nachos in the cheese sauce muttering about being robbed by the Russian judges that Pat got him some orange juice. He made him eat a peanut butter sandwich and found some surgical scrubs for him to wear.
Just before I left, Scott Dykema, one of our paramedics, and Scott Cummings, his EMT partner, took their bagpipes and played. Evidently they had been horrendous when they’d started a few years back, but they were actually very good. There was something ancient and soulful about the sound of the pipes, that may have been the reason everyone stopped their conversation and listened, and looked about at all who were there, as if the occasion were being marked and remembered for all time.
I came in one Sunday morning at noon prepared to work till midnight when the supervisor, Brian Sajack, said, “What you doing here old man? Your name isn’t in the book.”
Sajack was a long standing medic who’d reluctantly left the road to take a supervisor position due to a chronic back injury. He still went out in the intercept Bronco to back up crews, but his days of regularly hauling stretchers had past. A large man with a sweeping mustache, he was well liked by all, and enjoyed putting people on.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Who do you have with me?”
“I told you your name isn’t in the book.”
“It was there yesterday.” I pointed to the spot, and saw it had been erased. “That’s not right. It was there.”
“I’ve never seen you bristle like that,” he said. “It’s okay, Troy and Pat booked you off.”
“They what?”
“They left this.” He gave me an envelope, which I opened to find a map with directions to a party at Dr. Eckstein’s house in the country. “And this,” Brian said. He handed me a small cooler, which I opened to find six longneck Buds on ice. No one knew it, but I hadn’t had a drink in the year I’d been there. “Just don’t start drinking till you’re off the premises,” he said. “Enjoy. You deserve the break. I’ll be there later myself when my shift ends. I expect the party will last into the early hours.”
The doctor had a huge spread out in Litchfield County, forty acres of land, a modern split-level house with a pool in the back and a horse stable on the lower grounds. It was a beautiful day in late September – Indian summer, the leaves just starting to turn color, the sky clear blue, the temperature in the 70’s. It reminded me of my youth in Maine, the kind of day where it was just too nice to go to school, so you and your pals drove to the cliffs over the ocean, drank beer and listened to the car stereo, while you kissed your girl and never thought anything bad could ever intrude on the fullness in your chest.
Dr. Eckstein draped green and yellow Hawaiian leis around my neck, gave me a warm hug, and called me “Lee.” Partiers played water volleyball in the large in-ground pool, threw horseshoes and soaked in the hot tub. A hired DJ played Hip-Hop on the sound system. I stood by Victor who manned the barbeque pit where a pig and a goat roasted on spits. He cut off large sections of meat, rich with fat, and served them to the partygoers, who also dined on a lavish spread of vegetables, fruits, salads, chips, cakes and sweets spread out on two picnic tables.
I’m not sentimental, but I found comfort in the camaraderie that day, the friendship between the people I worked with on the road and at the hospitals. I had come to know good souls, who I felt the same about me.
There was Kim Dylan, a cute curly-haired single mother of two in her mid-thirties. She had a quiet grace and a level-headness born out of trial. I could see the pride in her eyes as she watched her two sons, seven and nine, play football with Raul Martinez, an emergency department tech at Saint Francis, who after hard times of his own, had become a lay minister to the city’s homeless.
Andrew Melnick was there with his girlfriend Teresa, a sweet pale-complected clerk at Hartford Hospital. Andrew threw a Frisbee. Dr. Eckstien’s dog Astro, a golden retriever, chased the flying disc down, then leapt up into the air, catching it in his teeth, then ran back and eagerly gave it to Andrew, who threw it again.
In the hot tub, five of the night nurses from Saint Francis egged on two Hartford cops to down the Jell-O shots the nurses had made and were passing out to anyone who joined them. They looked younger in their bikinis than they ever did in their hospital scrubs. It was good to hear them laughing.
Pat Brothers and his girlfriend Alison had organized a group of children into a soccer game. Pat ran back and forth among the players, announcing the action, and occasionally helping out each team with a well placed pass. Whenever a goal was scored, he shouted “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALL!” and ran about high-fiving all the kids. They were crazy for him.
Ben Seurat came with his pregnant wife, Dana, and their four little girls, ages three to eleven. The two oldest eagerly joined in Pat’s soccer game. The younger girls got into the cake and had it on their mouths, fingers and dresses. Ben seemed less intimidating in the presence of his children than he did around the office.
His brother Don Seurat wore kaki pants and a green Lacoste shirt, had a Michelob in his hand and wandered about with Linda Sullivan in tow, shaking hands like a dutiful politician. On this day, no one was speaking ill of him. It was a timeout for everyone from complaints of any type. It was just too nice of a day. Blue sky and warm sun on your face, made you think the world was a better place than you remembered.
Don’s ex-wife Helen Seurat came alone arriving in her white convertible. Even Troy, who was playing horseshoes stopped to watch her move across the grass. People came up to her, paying their homage. She smiled and was quite friendly, but she left not much after she had arrived.
David Nestor was there too, sitting with Victor and me by the fire pit, gorging on the roasted meats, washing them down with beer from the pitcher he refilled from one of the two kegs. “This is like the old days again,” he said. “Remember when we used to go to Vermont every summer for Jackie’s annual party. Drinking, barbequing, only thing missing is folks running around naked, but it’s early yet.”
He saw me looking at him.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I got the running around naked out of my system awhile back.”
“Those were fun times,” Victor said. “I got a letter from Jackie a month ago. She’s still with Aerosmith. She promised me free tickets when they come to the Meadows.” He said to me, “Jackie is a Medic who worked here for ten years. She hooked up as a roadie for Aerosmith, travels the world with them. Crazy hippie chick. She’s lots of fun, not a bad medic either. We all partied more then we do now. That’s why this is nice.”
“Are you going to drink that beer or just cool your hand with it?” Nestor said.
I looked down at the Bud I held. I hadn’t had a drink in a year, but I held that bottle as comfortable as I had in high school. I was a drinker -- at times in my past, a hard one -- but I had been trying to change. I hoped that I could drink the beer and stop at the enjoyment of it, and not let it lead me back down a wrong path.
“I’m just enjoying holding it right now,” I said, “Thank you. I’m just enjoying the feel in my hand and being a part of this nice day. I expect to drink it eventually.”
“Gotcha,” Nestor said. “I can respect that.”
“Me, too,” Victor said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Later, I was looking for a bathroom, when I accidentally opened the door to a bedroom. Before I could shut the door, I saw a man’s strong back, a pair of long legs around him, and a glimpse of red hair. I heard the heavy thumping of the headboard against the wall, and a woman’s pleasured cries. I closed the door quickly.
“Have you seen Troy?” Pat asked.
“I think he’s in there,” I said, pointing to the door I’d just closed, “with company.”
“Not the doc?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“That dog. Hey will you give me five bucks if I open the door and shout ‘Gooooooaaaaaal!’”
“Five bucks?”
“I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do that. Are you having a good time?”
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“I’m glad. You’re a good man, Lee.” He slapped me on the back, and went back out to the party, where he got a cold beer from the keg, then joined his girlfriend Allison sunning on the back lawn.
I sat on the couch looking out over the pool and countryside.
“Hi, Lee, Nice to see you out. May I sit?”
“Of course, by all means.” It was Kim Dylan. “Nice to see you, too.”
“While the kids are being entertained, I’d thought I’d put me feet up. It’s great all the games they have for them. There’s a magician out there now.”
“I saw. That’s great.” Out on the lawn, all the kids had been rounded up, and now sat enthralled as a tall thin young man made animal balloons and pulled endless ribbons out of his mouth.
“Nice place, huh?”
“Yeah, it’s beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll marry a rich man someday, or win the lottery – I’ll probably have better odds.”
“I don’t know. I think you’d make a rich man very happy, or any man for that matter.”
“You’re too kind. How much have you had to drink?”
“Nothing really. I’m just holding this beer.”
“I was kidding.” She gave me a playful tap on the shoulder that thrilled me.
And we sat there and talked, talked like old friends, chatting away about everything from work to the weather. I was sorry when after a half an hour, she had to leave.
“I hate to interrupt the kids’ fun out there, but I need to be going. I have an early shift tomorrow morning. It’s been nice to see you out,” Kim said. “I guess you work so much, it’s hard for you.”
“I’ve had a good time,” I said. “I probably should get out more.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s hard with the kids. I get my sister to take them sometimes. That helps. Life can’t be all work.”
“True,” I said.
There are times in your life when you meet someone and you feel a connection, but the time just isn’t right. By no means had I been alone in my years away, but I hadn’t found anyone who reached me in a way that mattered. I was tired of disappointing people, and I didn’t care for partings. So I had found myself sitting there on the couch next to a nice woman I found attractive, and while I had imagined her flesh next to mine, I had also imagined another tearful goodbye months later as I packed and left, with little explanation more than it’s not your fault. If she had known what I was thinking, she would have wanted to avoid me. I was a dead end.
We stood together and she gave me a friendly hug. I tried not to hold it as long as I wanted.
“You should come out with us to the Brickyard some night after work,” she said. “It’s a good place to unwind. Some people like me just pop in for a beer, some close the place down.”
“Maybe I will some night.”
“You’ll have a good time. I’ll look for you.”
Suddenly there was a commotion by the pool.
“My goodness,” Kim said. “He doesn’t have anything on.”
There was Troy stark naked on the diving board. He stood completely still like an Olympic diver, then took a couple studied steps, bounced high once, then executed an Olympic one and a half, neatly ripping the landing. He came up, and people applauded and shouted “Ten. Ten.”
Before a growing and enthusiastic crowd, he executed a number of dives and assorted cannonballs and jackknifes. But it was only when he sauntered through the house still in his birthday suit and stood dipping nachos in the cheese sauce muttering about being robbed by the Russian judges that Pat got him some orange juice. He made him eat a peanut butter sandwich and found some surgical scrubs for him to wear.
Just before I left, Scott Dykema, one of our paramedics, and Scott Cummings, his EMT partner, took their bagpipes and played. Evidently they had been horrendous when they’d started a few years back, but they were actually very good. There was something ancient and soulful about the sound of the pipes, that may have been the reason everyone stopped their conversation and listened, and looked about at all who were there, as if the occasion were being marked and remembered for all time.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Chapter 17
“Baby choking. Priority one. Hamilton Street. First floor. 461 acknowledge.”
“Hamilton Street,” I said. I hit the lights on.
Baby choking was a common call that usually turned out to be nothing more than a coughing fit or the baby getting a little too much milk and spitting it up. And like clockwork, thirty-seconds later we were updated. “Baby’s breathing okay, but continue. Slow it down to a two.”
The house on Hamilton was a triple-decker. We arrived to find a party in progress -- young men drinking beer and smoking on the front porch. Spanish music played on a boom box. A banner over the door said “Welcome Home Hector.”
Victor gave me a heads up nod. Even I recognized the tattoos and beaded necklaces that most of them wore.
"What are you doing here? Everything’s fine,” a young man in a red do-rag said to the police officer who had responded with us. “We didn’t ask for cops, just the ambulance man.”
“Hey, hey,” another man said, coming out of the front door. “Everything is okay. No problem, officer.”
The others seemed to defer to this man, who had to be six four, powerfully built with ripped muscles on his extensively tattooed arms. He had deep brown eyes and an engaging confident smile. A gold crucifix hung around his neck on a chain.
The man saw Victor. “Baby bull,” he said.
“Hector.”
“Andry has the boy. He choked on the milk. She just wants you to check him, see that he’s okay. They’re inside.”
This young man led us in through the door and into the kitchen, where a pretty petite young woman with long black hair held a two-year old boy over her shoulder, patting its back. The woman had round brown eyes that looked up faithfully at the young man. She had been crying.
By the stove I saw an old man in a wheelchair with a small child on his lap. The old man also nodded to Victor. Victor called him “Papi.” It was Papi Ruiz.
Hector took the boy from the mother, but the boy immediately began screaming.
Hector laughed. “He is afraid of the tattoo.” On his right arm was a large tattoo of a helmeted skeleton with a raised sword that seemed to have startled the little boy.
“It’s good that he’s crying,” Victor said. Victor took the baby from Hector and made a couple funny faces at the boy, who laughed now. I looked about. On the table and kitchen counters there were cakes and trays of chicken and ribs and rice and beans, and Spanish pastries.
“He’s all right,” Victor said. “Just be careful what you feed him. He may be hungry, but he’s still a little boy.”
The mother smiled, and nodded. Another woman offered her a tissue, but she took the boy back from Victor and kissed him, and hugged him, whispering in his ear.
“Thank you for coming,” Hector said.
By the way people looked at him, and the way he carried himself, he was everything Victor had told me about. He had a self-assurance that this was where he belonged. We were guests he had invited, not threatening trespassers. I could see one of the bigger tattoos on his arm: There was a picture of a young girl. “Remember Maria,” read the inscription.
“How’s your family?” he said to Victor.
“Good, I will tell them you asked about them.”
“Give a kiss to your mother.”
“I will.”
“That’s Victor,” the old man said to the boy on his knee. “Maybe he will show you the ambulance.”
“I’d be happy too, Papi,” Victor said.
“Another time,” Hector said.
Hector escorted us out, but he stopped in the hallway when we were alone and said to Victor, “You took care of my brother?”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“The other paramedic, he still work for you?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the Yankee hat.”
“There’s more than one.”
“The tall one.”
“He’s on military leave.”
“Military leave?”
“He was just doing his job.”
“He kept my brother from a murder rap, I wanted to thank him.”
“I’ll see he gets the message.”
Hector laughed and hit him on the back. “Good to see you.”
When we reached the porch, the friendliness was gone. There was no goodbye between either of them.
“Hector Ruiz?” I said when we were back in the ambulance.
“That’s right. Back on the street.”
“Are we going to see more violence?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What was that he was asking about the medic with the Yankees hat?”
“About six months ago, Troy and Linda were driving down Afflect Street when they heard a gun go off. Troy saw a man fall and another man – just a blur – run past the ambulance. They called it in, got out and started working on the victim. Then Linda screams – she sees a gun barrel out of the corner of her eye. Troy looks up to see the shooter standing over them. Before the guy can pull the trigger to shoot the victim again, Troy grabs the gun and pops the release, yanking off the barrel. A spring flies out. The guy is standing there looking at half a gun in his hand. His bad luck – Troy was Special Forces in the Army. Troy decks him. Knocks him out cold. Loads his patient and goes. I was the second ambulance in. I see a pool of blood and a guy lying nearby unconscious with a swollen face. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s not till I get to the hospital I get the full story. Turns out my patient is Hector’s little brother Felipe. I didn’t recognize him his face was so swollen. The victim lives. Felipe comes too with his jaw wired shut. What a hubbub it all caused. Ben Seurat tries to get Troy suspended for leaving a patient on the scene. The cops are pissed he took the gun with him. But the newspaper gets a hold of the story and Troy in his Yankee cap are all over the papers and nightly news casts. The cops ended up giving him a medal.”
“What happened to Felipe?” I asked.
“He’s awaiting trial on attempted murder. I guess Hector was grateful Troy saved him from murder one.”
“Why did you tell him Troy was on military duty?”
“It just seemed like the right thing to say.”
“Hamilton Street,” I said. I hit the lights on.
Baby choking was a common call that usually turned out to be nothing more than a coughing fit or the baby getting a little too much milk and spitting it up. And like clockwork, thirty-seconds later we were updated. “Baby’s breathing okay, but continue. Slow it down to a two.”
The house on Hamilton was a triple-decker. We arrived to find a party in progress -- young men drinking beer and smoking on the front porch. Spanish music played on a boom box. A banner over the door said “Welcome Home Hector.”
Victor gave me a heads up nod. Even I recognized the tattoos and beaded necklaces that most of them wore.
"What are you doing here? Everything’s fine,” a young man in a red do-rag said to the police officer who had responded with us. “We didn’t ask for cops, just the ambulance man.”
“Hey, hey,” another man said, coming out of the front door. “Everything is okay. No problem, officer.”
The others seemed to defer to this man, who had to be six four, powerfully built with ripped muscles on his extensively tattooed arms. He had deep brown eyes and an engaging confident smile. A gold crucifix hung around his neck on a chain.
The man saw Victor. “Baby bull,” he said.
“Hector.”
“Andry has the boy. He choked on the milk. She just wants you to check him, see that he’s okay. They’re inside.”
This young man led us in through the door and into the kitchen, where a pretty petite young woman with long black hair held a two-year old boy over her shoulder, patting its back. The woman had round brown eyes that looked up faithfully at the young man. She had been crying.
By the stove I saw an old man in a wheelchair with a small child on his lap. The old man also nodded to Victor. Victor called him “Papi.” It was Papi Ruiz.
Hector took the boy from the mother, but the boy immediately began screaming.
Hector laughed. “He is afraid of the tattoo.” On his right arm was a large tattoo of a helmeted skeleton with a raised sword that seemed to have startled the little boy.
“It’s good that he’s crying,” Victor said. Victor took the baby from Hector and made a couple funny faces at the boy, who laughed now. I looked about. On the table and kitchen counters there were cakes and trays of chicken and ribs and rice and beans, and Spanish pastries.
“He’s all right,” Victor said. “Just be careful what you feed him. He may be hungry, but he’s still a little boy.”
The mother smiled, and nodded. Another woman offered her a tissue, but she took the boy back from Victor and kissed him, and hugged him, whispering in his ear.
“Thank you for coming,” Hector said.
By the way people looked at him, and the way he carried himself, he was everything Victor had told me about. He had a self-assurance that this was where he belonged. We were guests he had invited, not threatening trespassers. I could see one of the bigger tattoos on his arm: There was a picture of a young girl. “Remember Maria,” read the inscription.
“How’s your family?” he said to Victor.
“Good, I will tell them you asked about them.”
“Give a kiss to your mother.”
“I will.”
“That’s Victor,” the old man said to the boy on his knee. “Maybe he will show you the ambulance.”
“I’d be happy too, Papi,” Victor said.
“Another time,” Hector said.
Hector escorted us out, but he stopped in the hallway when we were alone and said to Victor, “You took care of my brother?”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“The other paramedic, he still work for you?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the Yankee hat.”
“There’s more than one.”
“The tall one.”
“He’s on military leave.”
“Military leave?”
“He was just doing his job.”
“He kept my brother from a murder rap, I wanted to thank him.”
“I’ll see he gets the message.”
Hector laughed and hit him on the back. “Good to see you.”
When we reached the porch, the friendliness was gone. There was no goodbye between either of them.
“Hector Ruiz?” I said when we were back in the ambulance.
“That’s right. Back on the street.”
“Are we going to see more violence?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What was that he was asking about the medic with the Yankees hat?”
“About six months ago, Troy and Linda were driving down Afflect Street when they heard a gun go off. Troy saw a man fall and another man – just a blur – run past the ambulance. They called it in, got out and started working on the victim. Then Linda screams – she sees a gun barrel out of the corner of her eye. Troy looks up to see the shooter standing over them. Before the guy can pull the trigger to shoot the victim again, Troy grabs the gun and pops the release, yanking off the barrel. A spring flies out. The guy is standing there looking at half a gun in his hand. His bad luck – Troy was Special Forces in the Army. Troy decks him. Knocks him out cold. Loads his patient and goes. I was the second ambulance in. I see a pool of blood and a guy lying nearby unconscious with a swollen face. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s not till I get to the hospital I get the full story. Turns out my patient is Hector’s little brother Felipe. I didn’t recognize him his face was so swollen. The victim lives. Felipe comes too with his jaw wired shut. What a hubbub it all caused. Ben Seurat tries to get Troy suspended for leaving a patient on the scene. The cops are pissed he took the gun with him. But the newspaper gets a hold of the story and Troy in his Yankee cap are all over the papers and nightly news casts. The cops ended up giving him a medal.”
“What happened to Felipe?” I asked.
“He’s awaiting trial on attempted murder. I guess Hector was grateful Troy saved him from murder one.”
“Why did you tell him Troy was on military duty?”
“It just seemed like the right thing to say.”
Friday, July 10, 2009
Chapter 16
Annie Moore stood in front of the High Street Liquor Store with her forty ounce bottle of beer. Troy tooted the air horn. She smiled and still holding her bottle in her hand, raised her shirt up and flashed her droopy breasts at us.
“The joys of being in EMS,” Troy said.
“I guess.”
“You gotta love this life.”
And Troy did. Hartford was like a giant playground for him, each call a new adventure.
“482. Lawrence Street. 2nd Floor, unknown on a one. PD on the way. Advise when you get there.”
We were around the corner having just cleared Hartford Hospital. “Shouldn’t we wait for the cops?” I said, as Troy grabbed his house bag and monitor from the side door.
“No, it’s shift change. We’ll be out of here before they even get here. Besides it’s just going to be an OD. This place is the junkie’s version of Studio 54. They buy their heroin down the street, and then head for their club. They ought to install an emergency syringe of narcan behind glass on the wall up in the shooting gallery. Then when one of them stops breathing, his homeys can break the glass, pull out the syringe and zap them with the narcan without having to bother us.”
Narcan was to heroin what kryptonite was to Superman. It worked by reversing the effects of the opiate on the brain. Once injected in the body, it raced up to the brain, kicked down the party door, slapped the brain hard and said “Wake the fuck up! The shindig’s over!” Within moments of getting injected with narcan a junky was on his knees puking, his high gone, his mind a stoned out Daffy Duck “Who? What? When? Where? Why?” routine until he finally recognized a paramedic standing over him, and realized he’d gotten “that narcan shit.”
A skinny woman who looked like she hadn’t bathed for days met us out in front of the abandoned partially burned out building and led us up the staircase to the second floor, then down a hallway to a room without a door. I carried a flashlight with the plastic IV bag wrapper over the light creating a makeshift torch. We saw a man laying against a wall, a belt around his left bicep. The syringe lay on the floor just beyond his fingers. Troy leaned down and felt the man’s neck and watched his chest rise slowly.
“How well do you like this guy?” Troy asked the woman who’d led us to him.
“I like him better now he paid me the money he owe me.”
The unconscious man’s wallet protruded from his pants. A roll of bills stuck out of his friend’s shirt.
“Pretend he’s dead. Okay?
“He’s dead?”
“No, no, he’s not. We’re going to save him. I just want you to pretend that he’s dead when he comes around. Can you do that?”
“I think I got you,” the woman said. “You giving him that narcan shit?”
Troy took the prefilled syringe out of his pocket.
“This going be good,” the woman said.
Troy wiped a spot on the man’s bicep with an alcohol prep, then stuck in the syringe and pushed the drug.
“What’s his name?” Troy asked, as he discarded the syringe in the sharps container in the bag.
“Samuel.”
“Lee, grab the tarp over there.”
I could see the man was beginning to breathe better, rousing.
I handed the tarp to Troy. Troy leaned down and whispered in the man’s ear. “Next stop. Pearly Gates. Pearly Gates. Next.”
Troy spread the tarp out next to the man whose eyes were now open though he looked groggy and diaphoretic. He fought back a retch. I thought he might throw up.
“It’s a shame we didn’t get here in time,” Troy said. “I hate to see a life end like this. You have anything you want to say about your friend?”
“That motherfucker owed me money, but I still tried to save his life.”
“You almost did, but we were late I’m afraid. Here lies…What did you say his name was again?”
“Samuel. Samuel Pugh.”
“Here lies Samuel Pugh. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Another one’s gone, another one’s gone…” He looked to me.
“Another one bites the dust,” I said.
“That’s what he gets for not listening to his Mama. Let’s go eat. I could go for tacos.”
“Hey,” the man on the ground said.
“You hear anything?” Troy asked.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t hear so well.”
“I don’t hear nothing,” the friend said.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Hey!” The man grabbed Troy’s leg. “I know you. You the one always giving me that narcan shit.”
Troy started shaking. “Do you guys see anything?”
“No, I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“Something’s touching my leg. I can’t move it.”
“Quit fucking around. Let’s get out of here.”
“I swear something’s got my leg.”
“I got your leg motherfucker. I ain’t dead.”
“Your imagination again,” I said. I lifted the tarp up, and pointed at the floor. “See. Dead is dead. Cut it with your seeing ghosts again.”
The man let go of Troy’s leg. “I ain’t dead.” He touched his chest and face. He looked alarmed. “What’s that shit?”
“Oh, dear!” Troy stared in mock horror at the apparition. “I’m not well.” He grabbed the medic bag and ran toward the stairway.
“He’s been seeing ghosts all weekend,” I said to the woman.
“He must work too hard.”
“Wait! I ain’t dead!” The man tried to get to his feet, but stumbled. “I ain’t dead.”
“The joys of being in EMS,” Troy said.
“I guess.”
“You gotta love this life.”
And Troy did. Hartford was like a giant playground for him, each call a new adventure.
“482. Lawrence Street. 2nd Floor, unknown on a one. PD on the way. Advise when you get there.”
We were around the corner having just cleared Hartford Hospital. “Shouldn’t we wait for the cops?” I said, as Troy grabbed his house bag and monitor from the side door.
“No, it’s shift change. We’ll be out of here before they even get here. Besides it’s just going to be an OD. This place is the junkie’s version of Studio 54. They buy their heroin down the street, and then head for their club. They ought to install an emergency syringe of narcan behind glass on the wall up in the shooting gallery. Then when one of them stops breathing, his homeys can break the glass, pull out the syringe and zap them with the narcan without having to bother us.”
Narcan was to heroin what kryptonite was to Superman. It worked by reversing the effects of the opiate on the brain. Once injected in the body, it raced up to the brain, kicked down the party door, slapped the brain hard and said “Wake the fuck up! The shindig’s over!” Within moments of getting injected with narcan a junky was on his knees puking, his high gone, his mind a stoned out Daffy Duck “Who? What? When? Where? Why?” routine until he finally recognized a paramedic standing over him, and realized he’d gotten “that narcan shit.”
A skinny woman who looked like she hadn’t bathed for days met us out in front of the abandoned partially burned out building and led us up the staircase to the second floor, then down a hallway to a room without a door. I carried a flashlight with the plastic IV bag wrapper over the light creating a makeshift torch. We saw a man laying against a wall, a belt around his left bicep. The syringe lay on the floor just beyond his fingers. Troy leaned down and felt the man’s neck and watched his chest rise slowly.
“How well do you like this guy?” Troy asked the woman who’d led us to him.
“I like him better now he paid me the money he owe me.”
The unconscious man’s wallet protruded from his pants. A roll of bills stuck out of his friend’s shirt.
“Pretend he’s dead. Okay?
“He’s dead?”
“No, no, he’s not. We’re going to save him. I just want you to pretend that he’s dead when he comes around. Can you do that?”
“I think I got you,” the woman said. “You giving him that narcan shit?”
Troy took the prefilled syringe out of his pocket.
“This going be good,” the woman said.
Troy wiped a spot on the man’s bicep with an alcohol prep, then stuck in the syringe and pushed the drug.
“What’s his name?” Troy asked, as he discarded the syringe in the sharps container in the bag.
“Samuel.”
“Lee, grab the tarp over there.”
I could see the man was beginning to breathe better, rousing.
I handed the tarp to Troy. Troy leaned down and whispered in the man’s ear. “Next stop. Pearly Gates. Pearly Gates. Next.”
Troy spread the tarp out next to the man whose eyes were now open though he looked groggy and diaphoretic. He fought back a retch. I thought he might throw up.
“It’s a shame we didn’t get here in time,” Troy said. “I hate to see a life end like this. You have anything you want to say about your friend?”
“That motherfucker owed me money, but I still tried to save his life.”
“You almost did, but we were late I’m afraid. Here lies…What did you say his name was again?”
“Samuel. Samuel Pugh.”
“Here lies Samuel Pugh. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Another one’s gone, another one’s gone…” He looked to me.
“Another one bites the dust,” I said.
“That’s what he gets for not listening to his Mama. Let’s go eat. I could go for tacos.”
“Hey,” the man on the ground said.
“You hear anything?” Troy asked.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t hear so well.”
“I don’t hear nothing,” the friend said.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Hey!” The man grabbed Troy’s leg. “I know you. You the one always giving me that narcan shit.”
Troy started shaking. “Do you guys see anything?”
“No, I don’t see anything,” I said.
“Me neither.”
“Something’s touching my leg. I can’t move it.”
“Quit fucking around. Let’s get out of here.”
“I swear something’s got my leg.”
“I got your leg motherfucker. I ain’t dead.”
“Your imagination again,” I said. I lifted the tarp up, and pointed at the floor. “See. Dead is dead. Cut it with your seeing ghosts again.”
The man let go of Troy’s leg. “I ain’t dead.” He touched his chest and face. He looked alarmed. “What’s that shit?”
“Oh, dear!” Troy stared in mock horror at the apparition. “I’m not well.” He grabbed the medic bag and ran toward the stairway.
“He’s been seeing ghosts all weekend,” I said to the woman.
“He must work too hard.”
“Wait! I ain’t dead!” The man tried to get to his feet, but stumbled. “I ain’t dead.”
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Chapter Fifteen
Troy was at an Advanced Cardiac Life Support recertification class so I was working with Pat. Troy, while fun and entertaining, could also be dark, moody and unpredictable. Pat was a rock of calm. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone or anything. He was always on an even keel. He moved through the day with a quiet proficiency.
We had just dropped off a drunk at the Hartford Hospital ED when dispatch called. “I need a car to clear for a priority one. Respiratory arrest on Woodland Street.”
I was just putting the stretcher back in the ambulance, when Pat came out and said, “We’ll take it.”
“Your paperwork’s already done?” I asked.
“I did it on the way.”
Woodland was north, and it took us eight minutes of working through the morning traffic to get there.
The building was an elderly housing hi-rise. The manager led us to the apartment. We found a woman sitting in an arm chair in her bathrobe. A visiting nurse sat at the table filling out paperwork. There appeared to be no one in respiratory arrest.
“She’s a direct admit to Saint Francis,” the nurse said.
“We got the call for respiratory arrest,” I said.
“I meant distress. She has some swelling in her ankles and gets short of breath on exertion. The doctor wants her admitted for some tests.”
“Okay,” Pat said, stepping forward as he could see I was a little agitated after the drive, thinking someone wasn’t breathing. “We can do that. But since it’s a direct admit, we need to clear it through her insurance company before we can take her so she won’t get charged.”
“Oh, really?”
“It’s a paperwork thing. They pay for emergency calls, but since this isn’t going to the emergency room, it has to be cleared with the insurance.”
“I didn’t mean to cause a problem. The ambulance company told us it would be two hours.”
I imagined Troy on a similar call. “So you dialed 911?” he’d say, accusingly.
Pat was unphased.
“The doctor wants her in the hospital,” the nurse added.
“No, it’s not a problem at all. It’s just going to take a little time to get the insurance approved. By the way, my name is Pat and this is my partner Lee.”
He shook hands with the nurse and with the patient whose name was Mrs. Bierce. He got her insurance information, called dispatch and working through them, got the approval.
When we went to move the patient on to the stretcher, Pat said, “Who’s this attractive girl?” He pointed to a black and white snapshot of a girl in a bathing suit by the woman’s bed.
“Oh, that’s me, many years ago,” the woman said.
“Mrs. Bierce was a hottie, isn’t she? Lee?”
I could see the woman smiling. “Yes, she still is.”
“Oh, you boys,” she said, blushing.
“We’re just going to lift you on to our stretcher,” Pat said. “Keep your hands over your chest and let us do the work.”
“But I’m heavy.”
“Light as a ballerina,” Pat said as we moved her.
And she beamed.
I had to hand it to him. It was easy to get frustrated in the job, to drive lights and sirens through the cross town traffic only to find out the emergency wasn’t such an emergency after all, but Pat was always courteous to the patient, always making a point to introduce himself, get the patient’s name, and to use their name to make them feel more comfortable. To many paramedics, patients were hips or fevers, or TIAs or motor vehicles. If you were on the outside you might find fault with that attitude, but for many it was a coping mechanism, enabling them to do their job dispassionately, which for some meant doing it better, never letting emotion interfere with cold clinical judgement. With Pat they were always people first. And for that alone I respected him.
When we got to the hospital, the nurses, techs, docs, registrars, maintenance people – nearly everyone -- smiled on seeing Pat and said hello to him. He always moved the patient over using the sheet, rather than making them roll over themselves from our stretcher to the bed. “Light as a ballerina,” he’d say to the old women when we’d lift them across. “Hoo, someone had their breakfast,” he’d say to the men. Then always, before leaving, he’d touch them on the shoulder, wish them health and tell them they were in good hands at the hospital. When I took the stretcher back out to the ambulance to clean up, I’d find he’d already managed to clean up after himself. The house bag was restocked; the IV wrappings and latex gloves he’d used already put in the trash bucket. He was done with his run form in five minutes and we were ready to clear. There was no bitching, no dogging it, just doing his job the way the company expected.
“451, 45 Barber for the assault, PD on the way.”
I put us out as we drove into the parking lot of the apartment complex. I started to get out of the ambulance, when Pat said, “Hold up. We’ll wait for the cops.”
“Okay,” I said, a little hesitantly.
“You can’t be too careful around here. There’s a lot of weapons in this building. No sense in being a hero. It’s probably nothing, but we should wait for the cops. They said they were coming so we best believe it.”
I didn’t argue. The police were the designated first responders in the city, which meant they were supposed to go to every medical call, but we were often off the scene and en route to the hospital before they ever showed up. They were taxed to the maximum with police matters and it made little sense for them to show up at most of the calls which we could handle just fine on our own.
“A couple years ago,” Pat said, “an officer responding to a 911 hangup here, got jumped as soon as he walked in the door. He saw a woman crying, he went towards her, her husband was hiding behind the door, stabbed him in the neck and back. The cop managed to get in a radio call, and then fight the man off till help arrived. He hadn’t been so strong, he would have been dead. It could have been a medic walking in just as easy as a cop. You have to be careful.”
“I notice you and Troy don’t wear vests.”
“I think they give you a false sense of protection. My girlfriend’s after me to wear one –it’s a secret, but I think she’s getting me one for my birthday. I suppose I’ll have to wear one then. They’re hot and bulky. You really want to be safe, you should wear a crash helmet. Despite the dangers in this city, you’re still more likely to die in an ambulance crash than getting shot. I just try to be careful. I put my gloves on, most EMTs don’t, particularly the older one who should know better.”
“You’re right about that. When I started on the ambulance back in Maine, no one wore them, and it’s been hard to get in that mindset.”
“A lot of HIV in this city, a lot of Hepatitis – that’s the one you really have to be careful for. I know a medic had open cuts on his arms from doing yard work – he got splashed by body fluids when he was doing a carry down. A year later he’s out of work and on a list for a kidney transplant. A lot of ways you can get hurt in this job. My best advice is use caution, stay in shape, don’t take chances. It’s like they teach you in class -- scene safety comes first. You don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help someone else.”
When the squad cars finally arrived, we walked in with the officers. The apartment was on the second floor. We stood to the side of the door as the officer used his club to knock on the door. A woman with long stringing hair answered. She looked to be about thirty, but with some hard miles on her.
“My boyfriend smacked me,” she said. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just want you to bust his ass. He’s hanging out on Clay Street now I suspect.”
“Last two times we were here, in the same circumstances, you dropped charges, is that going to happen again?”
“He don’t make it up to me, let him spend the night in jail. Let him reflect on that.”
“You want EMS to look at you?”
“No, only thing he really hurt his chances of getting any more from me. Let’s go down to Clay Street, I’ll show you where he’s at.”
“We’re going to clear then,” Pat said to the cop.
The officer nodded. “Have a good one.”
“Good use of everyone’s time,” I said as we walked backed outside.
“Well, you never know what you’re going to find.”
“I guess that’s true. It’s a shame when we’re on BS and it makes us late to real calls.”
“I try to take it a call at a time.”
“What do you think about these newspaper articles?”
“It’s just a story for the paper. The problem isn’t the people on the street, the problem is the system. You can blame a private company, but we’re only out here because the city doesn’t want to pay for EMS. The police are short staffed, the schools are underfunded, the roads are a mess, the tax base is shrinking. The world’s fucked up, but you can’t write that in a news story. You’ve got to point a finger. I think we just have to keep our heads down and do our jobs, and weather the criticism. It will pass.”
That’s how Pat approached his work -- putting his head down, taking it one patient at a time. Each patient was special. He was great at eliciting what the patient was most proud of in their lives and then introducing them to the nursing staff at the hospital. “This is Mr. Irving who flew P-45 Spitfires in the war.” “This is Mrs. Tolski, from St. Petersburg, Mrs. Tolski, the countess.” “This is Mrs. Dales, if she looks familiar its because her granddaughter is the same Lady Husky you and I have watched tossing in those threes on TV, making the whole state proud.” And if someone was in pain, he was very aggressive with managing it with drugs. Anyone with a broken leg or dislocated shoulder Pat called medical control and got orders to give them morphine. He was very aggressive with pain management. It didn’t matter if it was crew change and he had plans for a date and we were five blocks from the hospital, he’d call for orders to administer morphine, even though it meant filling out paperwork for the DEA and us having to drive cross-town to the sponsor hospital to exchange narcotic kits. He took care of their pain.
His girlfriend, Allison Winters, was a triage nurse at Saint Francis. She was tall, with long red hair, beautiful and, like Pat, completely unflappable. Only twenty-seven, she commanded the same respect as the most senior nurses like Mary O’Toole. Victor and some of the other medics called her their dream wife. No one tried to hit on her, they just sat back and looked at her, did anything she asked. Even the drunks and psychos treated her with respect.
“Hey, good looking,” Pat said as we stopped by Saint Francis to pick up the narcotic kit at the pharmacy and found Allison coming back from the coffee shop.
She smiled brightly and gave him a kiss, then frowned and adjusted his collar. “Look at you,” she said. “You can’t even dress yourself.”
“I just do it so you’ll play with my shirt.”
“I’d like to play with more than that, but I’m at work.” She smiled at me now. “Hi, Lee. Keeping my man out of trouble?”
“You know it. He’s a piece of cake after Troy.”
“Troy? He’s got his devil side, but he’s not the devil. Did I say that?”
“I think you did.”
“No, I like Troy. He’s actually responsible for getting us together. Did you ever tell him the story, honey?”
Pat said, “First day she was working here, Troy bets me fifty bucks he can get her to go out with him before me. I tell her about the bet. She’s horrified but agrees to go out with me just to show him. He puts on all his charm, gets nowhere. Shot down repeatedly. So we go out for coffee and we hit it off. With Troy’s fifty bucks we go on a real date.”
“A story to tell your grandchildren.”
“We’re not there yet,” Allison said, then looked up at Pat, and jabbed him in the side with her finger.
“Patience,” Pat said, “is needed for all good things.”
“Patience, my fanny,” she said. “I have to get back to my post. Come with me. I’ve got some cookies for you.”
“I wouldn’t be waiting on that,” I said to Pat as we walked back out to the ambulance. “Not a day.”
“Troy says I have wild oats yet to sow.”
“Troy’s just jealous.”
“I don’t think Troy is capable of jealousy or if he was, he wouldn’t recognize it as anything more than unexplained unhappiness.”
“You may be right.”
We had just dropped off a drunk at the Hartford Hospital ED when dispatch called. “I need a car to clear for a priority one. Respiratory arrest on Woodland Street.”
I was just putting the stretcher back in the ambulance, when Pat came out and said, “We’ll take it.”
“Your paperwork’s already done?” I asked.
“I did it on the way.”
Woodland was north, and it took us eight minutes of working through the morning traffic to get there.
The building was an elderly housing hi-rise. The manager led us to the apartment. We found a woman sitting in an arm chair in her bathrobe. A visiting nurse sat at the table filling out paperwork. There appeared to be no one in respiratory arrest.
“She’s a direct admit to Saint Francis,” the nurse said.
“We got the call for respiratory arrest,” I said.
“I meant distress. She has some swelling in her ankles and gets short of breath on exertion. The doctor wants her admitted for some tests.”
“Okay,” Pat said, stepping forward as he could see I was a little agitated after the drive, thinking someone wasn’t breathing. “We can do that. But since it’s a direct admit, we need to clear it through her insurance company before we can take her so she won’t get charged.”
“Oh, really?”
“It’s a paperwork thing. They pay for emergency calls, but since this isn’t going to the emergency room, it has to be cleared with the insurance.”
“I didn’t mean to cause a problem. The ambulance company told us it would be two hours.”
I imagined Troy on a similar call. “So you dialed 911?” he’d say, accusingly.
Pat was unphased.
“The doctor wants her in the hospital,” the nurse added.
“No, it’s not a problem at all. It’s just going to take a little time to get the insurance approved. By the way, my name is Pat and this is my partner Lee.”
He shook hands with the nurse and with the patient whose name was Mrs. Bierce. He got her insurance information, called dispatch and working through them, got the approval.
When we went to move the patient on to the stretcher, Pat said, “Who’s this attractive girl?” He pointed to a black and white snapshot of a girl in a bathing suit by the woman’s bed.
“Oh, that’s me, many years ago,” the woman said.
“Mrs. Bierce was a hottie, isn’t she? Lee?”
I could see the woman smiling. “Yes, she still is.”
“Oh, you boys,” she said, blushing.
“We’re just going to lift you on to our stretcher,” Pat said. “Keep your hands over your chest and let us do the work.”
“But I’m heavy.”
“Light as a ballerina,” Pat said as we moved her.
And she beamed.
I had to hand it to him. It was easy to get frustrated in the job, to drive lights and sirens through the cross town traffic only to find out the emergency wasn’t such an emergency after all, but Pat was always courteous to the patient, always making a point to introduce himself, get the patient’s name, and to use their name to make them feel more comfortable. To many paramedics, patients were hips or fevers, or TIAs or motor vehicles. If you were on the outside you might find fault with that attitude, but for many it was a coping mechanism, enabling them to do their job dispassionately, which for some meant doing it better, never letting emotion interfere with cold clinical judgement. With Pat they were always people first. And for that alone I respected him.
When we got to the hospital, the nurses, techs, docs, registrars, maintenance people – nearly everyone -- smiled on seeing Pat and said hello to him. He always moved the patient over using the sheet, rather than making them roll over themselves from our stretcher to the bed. “Light as a ballerina,” he’d say to the old women when we’d lift them across. “Hoo, someone had their breakfast,” he’d say to the men. Then always, before leaving, he’d touch them on the shoulder, wish them health and tell them they were in good hands at the hospital. When I took the stretcher back out to the ambulance to clean up, I’d find he’d already managed to clean up after himself. The house bag was restocked; the IV wrappings and latex gloves he’d used already put in the trash bucket. He was done with his run form in five minutes and we were ready to clear. There was no bitching, no dogging it, just doing his job the way the company expected.
“451, 45 Barber for the assault, PD on the way.”
I put us out as we drove into the parking lot of the apartment complex. I started to get out of the ambulance, when Pat said, “Hold up. We’ll wait for the cops.”
“Okay,” I said, a little hesitantly.
“You can’t be too careful around here. There’s a lot of weapons in this building. No sense in being a hero. It’s probably nothing, but we should wait for the cops. They said they were coming so we best believe it.”
I didn’t argue. The police were the designated first responders in the city, which meant they were supposed to go to every medical call, but we were often off the scene and en route to the hospital before they ever showed up. They were taxed to the maximum with police matters and it made little sense for them to show up at most of the calls which we could handle just fine on our own.
“A couple years ago,” Pat said, “an officer responding to a 911 hangup here, got jumped as soon as he walked in the door. He saw a woman crying, he went towards her, her husband was hiding behind the door, stabbed him in the neck and back. The cop managed to get in a radio call, and then fight the man off till help arrived. He hadn’t been so strong, he would have been dead. It could have been a medic walking in just as easy as a cop. You have to be careful.”
“I notice you and Troy don’t wear vests.”
“I think they give you a false sense of protection. My girlfriend’s after me to wear one –it’s a secret, but I think she’s getting me one for my birthday. I suppose I’ll have to wear one then. They’re hot and bulky. You really want to be safe, you should wear a crash helmet. Despite the dangers in this city, you’re still more likely to die in an ambulance crash than getting shot. I just try to be careful. I put my gloves on, most EMTs don’t, particularly the older one who should know better.”
“You’re right about that. When I started on the ambulance back in Maine, no one wore them, and it’s been hard to get in that mindset.”
“A lot of HIV in this city, a lot of Hepatitis – that’s the one you really have to be careful for. I know a medic had open cuts on his arms from doing yard work – he got splashed by body fluids when he was doing a carry down. A year later he’s out of work and on a list for a kidney transplant. A lot of ways you can get hurt in this job. My best advice is use caution, stay in shape, don’t take chances. It’s like they teach you in class -- scene safety comes first. You don’t take care of yourself, you can’t help someone else.”
When the squad cars finally arrived, we walked in with the officers. The apartment was on the second floor. We stood to the side of the door as the officer used his club to knock on the door. A woman with long stringing hair answered. She looked to be about thirty, but with some hard miles on her.
“My boyfriend smacked me,” she said. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I just want you to bust his ass. He’s hanging out on Clay Street now I suspect.”
“Last two times we were here, in the same circumstances, you dropped charges, is that going to happen again?”
“He don’t make it up to me, let him spend the night in jail. Let him reflect on that.”
“You want EMS to look at you?”
“No, only thing he really hurt his chances of getting any more from me. Let’s go down to Clay Street, I’ll show you where he’s at.”
“We’re going to clear then,” Pat said to the cop.
The officer nodded. “Have a good one.”
“Good use of everyone’s time,” I said as we walked backed outside.
“Well, you never know what you’re going to find.”
“I guess that’s true. It’s a shame when we’re on BS and it makes us late to real calls.”
“I try to take it a call at a time.”
“What do you think about these newspaper articles?”
“It’s just a story for the paper. The problem isn’t the people on the street, the problem is the system. You can blame a private company, but we’re only out here because the city doesn’t want to pay for EMS. The police are short staffed, the schools are underfunded, the roads are a mess, the tax base is shrinking. The world’s fucked up, but you can’t write that in a news story. You’ve got to point a finger. I think we just have to keep our heads down and do our jobs, and weather the criticism. It will pass.”
That’s how Pat approached his work -- putting his head down, taking it one patient at a time. Each patient was special. He was great at eliciting what the patient was most proud of in their lives and then introducing them to the nursing staff at the hospital. “This is Mr. Irving who flew P-45 Spitfires in the war.” “This is Mrs. Tolski, from St. Petersburg, Mrs. Tolski, the countess.” “This is Mrs. Dales, if she looks familiar its because her granddaughter is the same Lady Husky you and I have watched tossing in those threes on TV, making the whole state proud.” And if someone was in pain, he was very aggressive with managing it with drugs. Anyone with a broken leg or dislocated shoulder Pat called medical control and got orders to give them morphine. He was very aggressive with pain management. It didn’t matter if it was crew change and he had plans for a date and we were five blocks from the hospital, he’d call for orders to administer morphine, even though it meant filling out paperwork for the DEA and us having to drive cross-town to the sponsor hospital to exchange narcotic kits. He took care of their pain.
His girlfriend, Allison Winters, was a triage nurse at Saint Francis. She was tall, with long red hair, beautiful and, like Pat, completely unflappable. Only twenty-seven, she commanded the same respect as the most senior nurses like Mary O’Toole. Victor and some of the other medics called her their dream wife. No one tried to hit on her, they just sat back and looked at her, did anything she asked. Even the drunks and psychos treated her with respect.
“Hey, good looking,” Pat said as we stopped by Saint Francis to pick up the narcotic kit at the pharmacy and found Allison coming back from the coffee shop.
She smiled brightly and gave him a kiss, then frowned and adjusted his collar. “Look at you,” she said. “You can’t even dress yourself.”
“I just do it so you’ll play with my shirt.”
“I’d like to play with more than that, but I’m at work.” She smiled at me now. “Hi, Lee. Keeping my man out of trouble?”
“You know it. He’s a piece of cake after Troy.”
“Troy? He’s got his devil side, but he’s not the devil. Did I say that?”
“I think you did.”
“No, I like Troy. He’s actually responsible for getting us together. Did you ever tell him the story, honey?”
Pat said, “First day she was working here, Troy bets me fifty bucks he can get her to go out with him before me. I tell her about the bet. She’s horrified but agrees to go out with me just to show him. He puts on all his charm, gets nowhere. Shot down repeatedly. So we go out for coffee and we hit it off. With Troy’s fifty bucks we go on a real date.”
“A story to tell your grandchildren.”
“We’re not there yet,” Allison said, then looked up at Pat, and jabbed him in the side with her finger.
“Patience,” Pat said, “is needed for all good things.”
“Patience, my fanny,” she said. “I have to get back to my post. Come with me. I’ve got some cookies for you.”
“I wouldn’t be waiting on that,” I said to Pat as we walked back out to the ambulance. “Not a day.”
“Troy says I have wild oats yet to sow.”
“Troy’s just jealous.”
“I don’t think Troy is capable of jealousy or if he was, he wouldn’t recognize it as anything more than unexplained unhappiness.”
“You may be right.”
Monday, July 06, 2009
Chapter 14
There aren’t many things in the world that truly matter. In the world of EMS one thing that does is the bond you have with your partner. In a world ruled by chaos, you have to have something to rely on -- that’s your partner. You don’t have that you are truly alone.
In time Troy and I got along well. Troy liked working with me because I was older, I didn’t tell tales out of school, and though he wouldn’t admit it, I did a decent job of keeping him out of trouble. But most of all I think he liked working with me because I recognized just how good he was at his job.
He ran the calls, and I had his back. Some lesser medics said he was just lucky to get the saves he did. But he had a gift. One evening, when we were covering a suburban town, we drove by the baseball field to watch some of the American Legion regional baseball championship. We parked just beyond the centerfield fence, got out and stood leaning against the front of the ambulance. It was a beautiful evening. Parents, friends and people like us just interested in seeing a good game, filled the bleachers and lined the sides of the field. I estimated a crowd of several thousand. The air smelled of popcorn, hotdogs and bubble gum.
“He’s got to be throwing ninety,” Troy said, referring to the six-foot three inch Central team pitcher. “I read about him in the Courant. He may get drafted in the first round. All he throws is fastballs and off-speed pitches. His Dad won’t let him throw any curves till he turns eighteen. Even knowing what’s coming, they still can’t hit him. Pat’s Dad was the same with him, except Pat couldn’t throw ninety. He did all right, but sometimes he’d get tattooed. Then he got to Amherst, developed his curve and was a small college All-American his sophomore year. Junior year, he threw his arm out.”
“So like you he had a chance to go pro?” Victor had mentioned something to me about Troy’s prowess as a centerfielder for his high school baseball team, not to mention football, basketball and track.
“Why would I want to go pro, when I have all the women, glory and fame I got here, huh?” He laughed and punched me in the shoulder. “Don’t believe everything they say about me. Only half of it is true.”
“You were a star?”
“I still am.” He winked.
“Excuse me for forgetting.”
“I’ll let it go this time.” He turned back to the game to watch the pitcher drill the batter in the chest with a fastball. The batter dropped at home plate motionless.
The crowd went silent. The players and umpire stood looking at the young man. The catcher motioned frantically to a coach.
“Meet me at home plate,” Troy said. With one graceful motion, he scaled the five-foot fence and sprinted across the field.
I got in the ambulance, and hit the lights on. It looked like the umpire had started compressions on the boy’s chest.
I drove around the foul pole, and down the first baseline. I could see Troy kneeling over the boy. I saw him raise his fist and strike him in the chest. Then my view was obscured.
By the time I had the stretcher out and with the help of a player was wheeling it to the plate, the boy was sitting up, and the crowd applauding. His parents had come out of the stands.
“I can play. I’m all right,” the boy said. “I’m all right.”
The boy’s mother cried. The trembling father kept shaking Troy’s hand. “He’ll be fine,” Troy said. “But he has to go to the hospital.”
The boy looked at his coach. “I can play.”
“Son, you weren’t breathing,” the coach said.
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you are and you aren’t,” Troy said. “Here’s what happened. Your heart beats like this.” He made a squeezing motion with his fist. “The ball hit your chest when your heart was in what we call a vulnerable state, so instead of refilling, it got knocked out of sync and started beating spastically like a handful of worms. It was in what we call ventricular fibrillation. The heart can’t pump blood. No blood gets to your brain, you pass out. When I punched you in the chest – you may not remember and if it’s sore I apologize – I did it to send an electrical change into the heart, which seemed to have worked. It reset it, and now it’s back beating right. So you’re fine, but you need to get checked out, and probably be observed overnight just to make certain everything is back to normal. No one can promise that it is. We need to be on the safe side, besides all the chicks will bring you flowers, you’ve got to take advantage of that. Trust me.”
“It’s best, Adam,” the mother said. “You know we want you to play, but you scared us.”
“My chest is sore,” the boy said.
“Attaboy,” Troy said. “Now hop up on the stretcher. We’ll give you a hand.”
The crowd stood and applauded as we placed him on the stretcher. Troy took off his Yankees hat and acknowledged their ovation like he was Mickey Mantle himself.
Troy said later, “My mother told me once everyone has two choices in life -- to be on the stage or to be in the audience. I like the stage.”
“I can see you do.”
We were often on the news, but in critical cases still we had a point of pride to try to get off the scene before the cameras arrived. But even more important than beating the TV cameras was beating Ben’s arrival at the scene.
“482, shooting at Edgewood and Homestead. On a one, wait for police.”
“482 acknowledges, Edgewood and Homestead, going to wait for the cops.”
We were just three blocks away at Albany and Magnolia.
“404, I’m at Sigourney and Farmington, headed there,” Ben came over the radio.”
“Scoop and skee-daddle,” Troy said. “Burger King is on me if we get out of there before Ben.”
“They want us to wait for the cops.”
“Let’s see what we find.”
We came screaming down Edgewood. A crowd was in the street. There were no police cars. “There he is,” Troy said.
A man lay face down on the sidewalk. Troy was opening his door before I had even come to a stop. With him running to the patient, I had no choice but to pull the stretcher and join him in the crowd. Troy had rolled the man on his back. He pulled an ET tube out of his right leg pocket, just above his knee, ripped open the wrapping, and then shoved his hand into the man’s mouth. The proper way to intubate someone -- to put a breathing tube down their windpipe -- was to kneel by their head and use a steel bladed laryngoscope to move their tongue to the side, and look down their throat for the vocal chords, which should be illuminated by the tiny light bulb at the end of the blade. Troy several times at shooting scenes, stuck his hand down the patient’s throat, and used his fingers to feel for the epiglottis, the little piece of tissue that guards the opening to the chords. Once he found it, he could blindly manipulate the tube into the trachea. It wasn’t easy, but if you knew how to do it was a time saver.
“I’m in,” Troy said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
We got him on the board and managed to get him in the back of the ambulance without being knocked over by the crowd fighting to help us. Troy did CPR while I drove. As I turned right on Homestead, I saw Ben’s fly car come wailing up the street following two police cars. The police cars pulled on to Edgewood. Ben followed us.
“82, pull over, I’ll hop in.”
“I don’t know if you want to leave your car here,” I said.
“Cross the Woodland Bridge and stop there.”
“Don’t stop!” Troy shouted. “Get him to the hospital.”
“Troy’s already got him intubated,” I said. “Help us unload at the hospital. I’m patching it in now.”
He followed right on our tail. When I parked a minute later at Saint Fran, he was out of his fly car and reaching to open up the back. “We had to go quick,” I said. “We were on the scene before we could holdup.”
Ben nodded, and then looked to Troy, who was still doing compressions. “What do you have?”
“Shot to the chest. By the way, nice to see you.”
“I’ll do the compressions,” Ben said. “Pull the stretcher.”
He stood on the stretcher rails and did compressions all the way to the trauma room, then left without saying a word.
The ED doctors cracked the man’s chest, and did open cardiac massage, while they tried to tie off the hole in his heart, but he’d already pretty much bled out. They pronounced him dead before Troy had even turned in his paperwork.
“Did you see the look on Ben’s face – foiled again,” Troy said gleefully. “That was a classic.”
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“I’m always out of there before him. Always. Too quick.”
I tried not to encourage his behavior.
Billy Dalton was a veteran medic, who after ten years in the street, had started medical school a year ago. He was back for the summer to make some money before heading off to school again. He asked me about the shooting, and I told him how Troy had digitally intubated the man.
“Did he tell you who taught him how to do it?”
“No.” It was hard for me to imagine anyone teaching Troy anything.
“I precepted him when he started here. He’s crazy, but he has a gift. Did he tell you about the time we delivered triplets? They were all premies, barely the size of my hand. I delivered them, handed them to Troy. They were so small they just slipped out. I didn’t think any of them would make it. They were twenty-four weeks. I handed them to him blue and he raised them to his mouth and blew pink air into them. All three lived. The most amazing thing was it was the only time I would see his hands shake. He’s smart too. You know that, you’ve worked with him. I tried to get him to go to school at night, but he’d have no part of it. I told him he’d be an awesome trauma surgeon. He said he’s not the book type. ‘You and Pat can be the doctors. I’ll caddy for you at the club on Sundays,’ he said.”
I brought it up with Troy later. “You’d be in your glory running a trauma team,” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“You just have to put the work in. If you haven’t figured out by now that you can do anything, I don’t think you ever will.”
He just grunted. “Books aren’t for me,” he said, and hid his face in the sports page.
Many people think in terms of career advancement, making money, climbing the ladder, but for those like Troy, there was nothing above being a paramedic. The adrenaline, the freedom, the sights of the city, the stories, the view of life and the unique understanding of its fragile balances – you didn’t get that in an office job. He was a soldier, not a general, and the streets of the city were his turf, his home.
“482, Sigorney Park, male unconscious, on a one.”
In the bushes by the basketball court, we found a homeless man sleeping. We woke him up and moved him on his way. As we walked back to the ambulance, a ball from the basketball court bounced toward us. Troy snatched it, and spun it up on the tip of his finger.
A boy, who looked to be about ten, wearing an overlarge Isaiah Thomas basketball jersey approached to reclaim it. “Can I have the ball back?”
Troy stopped spinning the ball, took it in his hands, and looked at the basket. He had to be thirty feet away. “You think I can make it from here?” he said to the boy.
The boy shook his head.
Troy fired a high arching shot. The ball swished down through the torn net.
“Nice shot,” I said.
Troy clapped his hands. The boy who’d rebounded the ball threw him the ball back instinctively.
Troy hit a second shot, then a third and a fourth.
“You good,” the boy said. “Can you jam?”
In an instant Troy drove to the basket. He leapt high, swiveled his body, held the ball aloft in one hand, and slammed it down through the net.
A crowd had gathered now as Troy spun the ball again like a globe on the tip of his finger. He passed it from the finger on his right hand to the pointer finger on the left and back again.
“Maybe you’ve seen him in the NBA,” I said.
“Who you play for? What’s your name?” a boy asked.
“Get his autograph,” a thin boy with a toothless grin said.
The ball slipped off Troy’s finger. A small boy with a gold chain around his neck had caught his eye. The chain spelled the name “Troy.”
“Where’d you get the necklace?” Troy asked.
“My momma gave it to me.”
“That your name?”
He nodded.
“Where’d you get that name?”
“My momma gave it to me.”
“She named him after a taxi driver,” another boy said.
“A taxi driver?”
“Yeah, he was born on the way to the hospital. My mama named him after the driver man like the law says.”
Troy looked down at the birthmark on the kid’s neck. He’d tell me later, “My first week on the job I had a seventeen year old mother in labor. Corner of Collins and Sigourney, she says ‘I gotta go.’ Kid popped out just like that.”
“Here,” Troy handed him the ball now.
The kid smiled.
“Your mother doing all right?”
“She’s home with my baby sister.”
“Be good to her,” Troy said. “Stay in school.”
In time Troy and I got along well. Troy liked working with me because I was older, I didn’t tell tales out of school, and though he wouldn’t admit it, I did a decent job of keeping him out of trouble. But most of all I think he liked working with me because I recognized just how good he was at his job.
He ran the calls, and I had his back. Some lesser medics said he was just lucky to get the saves he did. But he had a gift. One evening, when we were covering a suburban town, we drove by the baseball field to watch some of the American Legion regional baseball championship. We parked just beyond the centerfield fence, got out and stood leaning against the front of the ambulance. It was a beautiful evening. Parents, friends and people like us just interested in seeing a good game, filled the bleachers and lined the sides of the field. I estimated a crowd of several thousand. The air smelled of popcorn, hotdogs and bubble gum.
“He’s got to be throwing ninety,” Troy said, referring to the six-foot three inch Central team pitcher. “I read about him in the Courant. He may get drafted in the first round. All he throws is fastballs and off-speed pitches. His Dad won’t let him throw any curves till he turns eighteen. Even knowing what’s coming, they still can’t hit him. Pat’s Dad was the same with him, except Pat couldn’t throw ninety. He did all right, but sometimes he’d get tattooed. Then he got to Amherst, developed his curve and was a small college All-American his sophomore year. Junior year, he threw his arm out.”
“So like you he had a chance to go pro?” Victor had mentioned something to me about Troy’s prowess as a centerfielder for his high school baseball team, not to mention football, basketball and track.
“Why would I want to go pro, when I have all the women, glory and fame I got here, huh?” He laughed and punched me in the shoulder. “Don’t believe everything they say about me. Only half of it is true.”
“You were a star?”
“I still am.” He winked.
“Excuse me for forgetting.”
“I’ll let it go this time.” He turned back to the game to watch the pitcher drill the batter in the chest with a fastball. The batter dropped at home plate motionless.
The crowd went silent. The players and umpire stood looking at the young man. The catcher motioned frantically to a coach.
“Meet me at home plate,” Troy said. With one graceful motion, he scaled the five-foot fence and sprinted across the field.
I got in the ambulance, and hit the lights on. It looked like the umpire had started compressions on the boy’s chest.
I drove around the foul pole, and down the first baseline. I could see Troy kneeling over the boy. I saw him raise his fist and strike him in the chest. Then my view was obscured.
By the time I had the stretcher out and with the help of a player was wheeling it to the plate, the boy was sitting up, and the crowd applauding. His parents had come out of the stands.
“I can play. I’m all right,” the boy said. “I’m all right.”
The boy’s mother cried. The trembling father kept shaking Troy’s hand. “He’ll be fine,” Troy said. “But he has to go to the hospital.”
The boy looked at his coach. “I can play.”
“Son, you weren’t breathing,” the coach said.
“I’m fine.”
“Well, you are and you aren’t,” Troy said. “Here’s what happened. Your heart beats like this.” He made a squeezing motion with his fist. “The ball hit your chest when your heart was in what we call a vulnerable state, so instead of refilling, it got knocked out of sync and started beating spastically like a handful of worms. It was in what we call ventricular fibrillation. The heart can’t pump blood. No blood gets to your brain, you pass out. When I punched you in the chest – you may not remember and if it’s sore I apologize – I did it to send an electrical change into the heart, which seemed to have worked. It reset it, and now it’s back beating right. So you’re fine, but you need to get checked out, and probably be observed overnight just to make certain everything is back to normal. No one can promise that it is. We need to be on the safe side, besides all the chicks will bring you flowers, you’ve got to take advantage of that. Trust me.”
“It’s best, Adam,” the mother said. “You know we want you to play, but you scared us.”
“My chest is sore,” the boy said.
“Attaboy,” Troy said. “Now hop up on the stretcher. We’ll give you a hand.”
The crowd stood and applauded as we placed him on the stretcher. Troy took off his Yankees hat and acknowledged their ovation like he was Mickey Mantle himself.
Troy said later, “My mother told me once everyone has two choices in life -- to be on the stage or to be in the audience. I like the stage.”
“I can see you do.”
We were often on the news, but in critical cases still we had a point of pride to try to get off the scene before the cameras arrived. But even more important than beating the TV cameras was beating Ben’s arrival at the scene.
“482, shooting at Edgewood and Homestead. On a one, wait for police.”
“482 acknowledges, Edgewood and Homestead, going to wait for the cops.”
We were just three blocks away at Albany and Magnolia.
“404, I’m at Sigourney and Farmington, headed there,” Ben came over the radio.”
“Scoop and skee-daddle,” Troy said. “Burger King is on me if we get out of there before Ben.”
“They want us to wait for the cops.”
“Let’s see what we find.”
We came screaming down Edgewood. A crowd was in the street. There were no police cars. “There he is,” Troy said.
A man lay face down on the sidewalk. Troy was opening his door before I had even come to a stop. With him running to the patient, I had no choice but to pull the stretcher and join him in the crowd. Troy had rolled the man on his back. He pulled an ET tube out of his right leg pocket, just above his knee, ripped open the wrapping, and then shoved his hand into the man’s mouth. The proper way to intubate someone -- to put a breathing tube down their windpipe -- was to kneel by their head and use a steel bladed laryngoscope to move their tongue to the side, and look down their throat for the vocal chords, which should be illuminated by the tiny light bulb at the end of the blade. Troy several times at shooting scenes, stuck his hand down the patient’s throat, and used his fingers to feel for the epiglottis, the little piece of tissue that guards the opening to the chords. Once he found it, he could blindly manipulate the tube into the trachea. It wasn’t easy, but if you knew how to do it was a time saver.
“I’m in,” Troy said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
We got him on the board and managed to get him in the back of the ambulance without being knocked over by the crowd fighting to help us. Troy did CPR while I drove. As I turned right on Homestead, I saw Ben’s fly car come wailing up the street following two police cars. The police cars pulled on to Edgewood. Ben followed us.
“82, pull over, I’ll hop in.”
“I don’t know if you want to leave your car here,” I said.
“Cross the Woodland Bridge and stop there.”
“Don’t stop!” Troy shouted. “Get him to the hospital.”
“Troy’s already got him intubated,” I said. “Help us unload at the hospital. I’m patching it in now.”
He followed right on our tail. When I parked a minute later at Saint Fran, he was out of his fly car and reaching to open up the back. “We had to go quick,” I said. “We were on the scene before we could holdup.”
Ben nodded, and then looked to Troy, who was still doing compressions. “What do you have?”
“Shot to the chest. By the way, nice to see you.”
“I’ll do the compressions,” Ben said. “Pull the stretcher.”
He stood on the stretcher rails and did compressions all the way to the trauma room, then left without saying a word.
The ED doctors cracked the man’s chest, and did open cardiac massage, while they tried to tie off the hole in his heart, but he’d already pretty much bled out. They pronounced him dead before Troy had even turned in his paperwork.
“Did you see the look on Ben’s face – foiled again,” Troy said gleefully. “That was a classic.”
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“I’m always out of there before him. Always. Too quick.”
I tried not to encourage his behavior.
Billy Dalton was a veteran medic, who after ten years in the street, had started medical school a year ago. He was back for the summer to make some money before heading off to school again. He asked me about the shooting, and I told him how Troy had digitally intubated the man.
“Did he tell you who taught him how to do it?”
“No.” It was hard for me to imagine anyone teaching Troy anything.
“I precepted him when he started here. He’s crazy, but he has a gift. Did he tell you about the time we delivered triplets? They were all premies, barely the size of my hand. I delivered them, handed them to Troy. They were so small they just slipped out. I didn’t think any of them would make it. They were twenty-four weeks. I handed them to him blue and he raised them to his mouth and blew pink air into them. All three lived. The most amazing thing was it was the only time I would see his hands shake. He’s smart too. You know that, you’ve worked with him. I tried to get him to go to school at night, but he’d have no part of it. I told him he’d be an awesome trauma surgeon. He said he’s not the book type. ‘You and Pat can be the doctors. I’ll caddy for you at the club on Sundays,’ he said.”
I brought it up with Troy later. “You’d be in your glory running a trauma team,” I said.
“I don’t think so.”
“You just have to put the work in. If you haven’t figured out by now that you can do anything, I don’t think you ever will.”
He just grunted. “Books aren’t for me,” he said, and hid his face in the sports page.
Many people think in terms of career advancement, making money, climbing the ladder, but for those like Troy, there was nothing above being a paramedic. The adrenaline, the freedom, the sights of the city, the stories, the view of life and the unique understanding of its fragile balances – you didn’t get that in an office job. He was a soldier, not a general, and the streets of the city were his turf, his home.
“482, Sigorney Park, male unconscious, on a one.”
In the bushes by the basketball court, we found a homeless man sleeping. We woke him up and moved him on his way. As we walked back to the ambulance, a ball from the basketball court bounced toward us. Troy snatched it, and spun it up on the tip of his finger.
A boy, who looked to be about ten, wearing an overlarge Isaiah Thomas basketball jersey approached to reclaim it. “Can I have the ball back?”
Troy stopped spinning the ball, took it in his hands, and looked at the basket. He had to be thirty feet away. “You think I can make it from here?” he said to the boy.
The boy shook his head.
Troy fired a high arching shot. The ball swished down through the torn net.
“Nice shot,” I said.
Troy clapped his hands. The boy who’d rebounded the ball threw him the ball back instinctively.
Troy hit a second shot, then a third and a fourth.
“You good,” the boy said. “Can you jam?”
In an instant Troy drove to the basket. He leapt high, swiveled his body, held the ball aloft in one hand, and slammed it down through the net.
A crowd had gathered now as Troy spun the ball again like a globe on the tip of his finger. He passed it from the finger on his right hand to the pointer finger on the left and back again.
“Maybe you’ve seen him in the NBA,” I said.
“Who you play for? What’s your name?” a boy asked.
“Get his autograph,” a thin boy with a toothless grin said.
The ball slipped off Troy’s finger. A small boy with a gold chain around his neck had caught his eye. The chain spelled the name “Troy.”
“Where’d you get the necklace?” Troy asked.
“My momma gave it to me.”
“That your name?”
He nodded.
“Where’d you get that name?”
“My momma gave it to me.”
“She named him after a taxi driver,” another boy said.
“A taxi driver?”
“Yeah, he was born on the way to the hospital. My mama named him after the driver man like the law says.”
Troy looked down at the birthmark on the kid’s neck. He’d tell me later, “My first week on the job I had a seventeen year old mother in labor. Corner of Collins and Sigourney, she says ‘I gotta go.’ Kid popped out just like that.”
“Here,” Troy handed him the ball now.
The kid smiled.
“Your mother doing all right?”
“She’s home with my baby sister.”
“Be good to her,” Troy said. “Stay in school.”
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