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.
