For weeks we’d heard rumors that Troy was coming back, but we never saw him walk in the door. There were other rumors too. The place was going bankrupt. We had been sold. Champion was going to take us over by court order. No, a national corporation was coming in. No, the Fire department was going to take over the service. No one knew what was going on. The paper had stepped up its attacks on us. We were all on mandatory overtime. Working extra days – always being held over. If the men and women of Capitol Ambulance and its ambulances were a building, I wouldn’t have been surprised to walk in one morning and just find a pile of rubble. We were at the breaking point.
“Why are we busting our butts for this stinking city,” Andrew Melnick said. “They don’t give a shit.”
“It’s your rock to push,” Brian Sajack said. “Now get on the road.”
“My rock to push? What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means get your ass in the seat, and get out on the road and do your job!”
“Why do I even bother getting up in the morning? What’s the point?”
“453” the dispatcher came over the radio. “I need you to sign on and take Martin and Capen for the MVA. On a one.”
“I need a new life,” Melnick said.
“Copy, Martin and Capen,” I answered. “Let’s get pushing,” I said to Melnick.”
If there was an order to the universe, the gods would have gone easy on us for a couple weeks, given us a chance to find our bearings again, time to absorb what had happened and deal with it. But hell is random, and it kept ringing our number.
A tractor trailer driver suffered a heart attack at the wheel, went out of control, and plowed into a minivan holding a family of seven. There were five fatalities. Audrey Davis crawled into the car and tried to comfort the mother who was entrapped and crushed at the waist. Her husband was dead beside her. Her older daughter was also trapped and dead. A child in the back was taken out screaming. Blood had flowed from the mother’s forehead blinding her vision. When Audrey had staunched it enough to let the mother see the carnage around her, she felt like she had done her no favors. I could hear her screams from twenty yards away as we waited for the fire department to extricate them. The mother died as soon as she was cut free. Only the four and five year old survived. One was maimed physically. The other child hadn’t a scratch, but had been so covered in blood, the crew had rushed the child to the trauma room, terrified by the sight and the soundless child.
A tenement caught on fire. Four small children were killed, each carried out of the fire by fireman handed over to EMS, blackened by soot and lifeless. Each was taken to the hospital, worked on by the crews even though they were long dead.
A disgruntled employee at an insurance company shot seven co-workers, killing five of them before shooting himself. As we worked our way through the maze of cubicles looking for victims, it seemed every phone in the building was ringing. I stood in one cubicle starring at a man who had been shot twice in the head and another three times in the chest. A radio on his desk broadcast early news of the shootings. I looked at the pictures of his smiling family. His phone rang and his answering machine picked up. I heard a woman’s voice say, “Bill honey, call me, I’m worried about you. I’m watching the TV. Are you all right? Please call me. I love you, honey. I love you. Please call.”
