It was a Tuesday afternoon at three minutes past one. We were standing outside Hartford Hospital when we heard an explosion that sounded like a B52 dropping a five-hundred pound bomb. It rocked us where we stood.
“What the f—was that?” Melnick said.
Already black smoke was rising to the north. It came from downtown.
We swore in unison, and then jumped in our truck and started in that direction.
It was the Civic Center. The explosion had ripped through its south side. The force of the blast shattered glass and overturned cars. Melnick and I were the second car on the scene. The smoke was thick and black. Stunned bleeding and burned people stumbled onto the glass-strewn street. Flames leapt through the smoke.
“Medic! Medic! We need a medic!” A man, his clothes torn, bleeding from the head, helped another half naked man along who was burned, his skin peeling off his arms and chest.
“Get the stretcher!” Andrew shouted at me. “Get me a burn sheet.”
“Help, can’t you please help? He’s not breathing.” A woman knelt over an obese man who lay on the sidewalk. A hunk of concrete lay across his legs.
Andrew grabbed the blue bag and ran to his side. I watched as he took out his intubation kit.
“Do CPR!” he shouted at me.
A huge cloud of black smoke blew at us. I lost sight of him for a moment. People running from the building jostled me.
Andrew and I coughed heavily. He had the laryngoscope in his hands. I looked closer at the man.
“He’s dead, Andrew. Leave him.”
He looked up at me, his hands shaking.
There was another explosion. A car burst into flames. I felt the heat on my back.
“Over here, over here.”
A mother carried her daughter in her arms. Their faces were blackened with soot. The girl’s leg dangled at a grotesque angle.
“Everyone back!” a police officer shouted, while another cop grabbed my arm and tried to pull me forward. “There’s a guy over here who’s hurt real bad.”
The smoke cloud again obscured our view.
More units arrived, but we were lost. No one was in charge. There were patients all around us. Someone said it was a bomb, another said a transformer had blown, another a gas line. Voices shouted over each other on the radio. Andrew stood there dazed.
I heard a shout. I turned and looked up the street and saw him. Troy – in full paramedic uniform . A car fire blazed behind him.
“Tercelli, get these people out of here. Melnick, set up triage in the Laz E Boy lot. Nelson, find the fire commander and tell him what we’re doing. Lee come with me.” Troy barked orders into the radio, talking to dispatch, to Ben Seurat and to the C-MED dispatcher.
A fireman came out of the building carrying a motionless bloodied girl.
Troy took her in his arms. He gave her two breaths and handed her to me. “Keep breathing for her and get her up there. You can do it.”
I put my mouth on hers and breathed. My god, I thought, I can feel her move. She was moving.
Troy nodded. “Get her up there and come on back. I’ll need you here with me.”
I walked fast with the girl in my arms, holding her up to my mouth, breathing for her. With each breath, I felt more movement. Com’on, little girl. Com’on, little sweetheart.
I followed the flow of people down Asylum Street. People made way for us as if I were carrying the Olympic Torch. They steered me into the Laz-Boy Lot where Andrew had already set up a small station.
As I held the girl, Kim Dylan put an oxygen mask on her face, and listened to her lungs. Her partner brought over their stretcher.
“You all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “Stay safe,” she said.
“You too.”
They loaded the girl and headed off to Saint Francis.
Ambulances lined up on the far side of the lot. Andrew radioed for them to come over one at a time. Patients sat on the ground or leaned against cars in the lot. I saw other medics checking them out, sorting them into groups by urgency of their injuries.
I turned and headed back up the street.
Troy, his face now covered with soot, leaned over a motionless fire fighter, surrounded by three of his fellows. Troy raised his fist up and smacked the firefighter in the chest.
The man coughed and began to breathe. He said “Huh?”
The other firefighters looked to Troy, but he was already leaving. The firefighter wanted to get up and get his hose.
“No, he’s got to come with me,” I said. “He has to go to the hospital.”
“No way. I’m fine.”
“You have to understand,” I said.
“Com’on Frankie,” his fellows said. “Listen to the man. I saw it. He’s telling the truth. You scared the shit out of me. You weren’t breathing.”
They helped me load him on the stretcher, and take him down to the triage area.
Kim who was already back from Saint Francis after taking the girl, who she said was doing much better, took the firefighter. I manned a stretcher and headed back toward the smoke where Troy and others raged against the chaos.
By three o’clock we had treated over two hundred patients. The day went by in a blur. There were fourteen fatalities. Seven criticals. There could well have been more but for the efforts of the firemen and police and EMS.
Later, I saw Troy at the hospital. He sat on the bench in the back of his ambulance. His pale face was still covered with soot.
We hadn’t had time to talk. “Howdy, stranger,” I said. “You came back.”
“Yeah, I was bored.” He rechecked a laryngoscope blade.
“You were the best out there.”
“Thanks.”
“You look wiped out.”
His eyes were drawn, his hands shook slightly.
“I’m okay.” He started to speak, but had no words.
We took stock of each other.
“Let me get you an orange juice,” I said. “I’m buying.”
“Okay.”
When I got back with the orange juice he was out cold. I thought about trying to find a medic, but I didn’t. On this night, after all he had done, I didn’t want anyone to see that he was mortal. I closed the doors, strapped the tourniquet on his arm. I was about to stick the catheter in his vein when Ben opened the side door.
“He’s out,” I said.
Ben nodded. He reached over and felt Troy’s cold, wet forehead. “Give me that,” he said.
I handed him the catheter. He hit Troy’s vein, and attached the IV line. I handed him the D50. He screwed the amp into the Bristo Jet, pushed out the air, and then stopped. Maybe it was because of all that happened with Pat, or what had happened that day or maybe it was just that he realized that what mattered was not all the bullshit, but actually doing the job – whatever – he clearly had a change of heart. He handed the D50 back to me. “Go ahead, you know what to do.”
I nodded my thanks. I know Troy wouldn’t have wanted to awaken with Ben standing over him.
Just as he was about to go out the door, I said, “One thing?”
“What?”
“How’d he get back to work?”
“He showed up with his note.”
“Marcus Welby?”
He smiled. “Who am I to say he’s not a real doctor somewhere? Now all I have to do is tell my brother about it.” He looked at Troy a long moment. “When he comes to, get him something to eat.”
