Troy was a half hour late the next morning. I had already checked out the ambulance, including all of his ALS gear. I was gassing up the truck when he finally showed up. “I was worried about you,” I said.
He had deep bags under his eyes. “I stopped and saw Pat’s father.” His hands shook as he drank from his bottle of Coca-cola.
“How’s he doing?”
“Okay, he’s all right.”
“How are you?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Did you get some sleep?”
“A little.”
He still looked awfully pale.
“You sure you don’t want to just go home?”
He shook his head.
“This is where I belong.”
“You need something to eat?”
“I’ve got a sandwich.”
I didn’t question him further. I noticed he had a small ceramic box with him that he set on the console.
Our first call was for an elderly woman with a fever, who’d spent the night vomiting. The visiting nurse said, “I’ve already called in the report. They know all about her at Saint Francis. I promised her you wouldn’t try to stick her with any needles. You’d leave that to the nurses in the ER.”
I was putting the sheet across the stretcher when she said that. I turned to look at Troy. I awaited his explosion. “Thank you for your report,” he said instead, without sarcasm. He knelt down by the patient’s side and took her wrinkled hand. “Hello. My name is Troy. I understand you’re not feeling very well.”
His voice sounded a little mechanical, but not insincere.
“I’ve been a bit queasy,” the woman said.
Troy patted her hand. “Well, we’re going to do our best to see that you have a comfortable ride in to the hospital. I’m going to do a couple things on the way there. I’m going to take your blood pressure, listen to your lung sounds, put you on our heart monitor, and ask you some questions I know the nice woman here has already asked you. They’ll ask you the same questions at the hospital, but we’re doing it just to make sure you get the very best care. We want to get you healthy and get you back here to your lovely home as soon as you are well enough.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I hate to bother you.”
“It’s no bother at all. It’s our job, our pleasure.”
When we got to the hospital, Troy had an IV in her arm, running in normal saline to hydrate her. She was smiling like a schoolgirl. “Light as a ballerina,” he said as we moved her across to the hospital bed on the sheet. He said to the nurse “Mrs. Greenspan’s son is an internist in New York, and her grandson’s following in his footsteps in medical school.” He went on to describe why we had brought her in and his physical findings, and then he patted her shoulder. “I wish you good health. You’re in good hands here.” She looked up at him with a light that must have been similar to the one she shone on her grandson.
“What’s going on with you this morning?” I asked as we walked back down the hall.
“Just trying to be a good paramedic,” he said.
“Well, you reminded me of one.”
Around ten thirty, we were sent for an unresponsive at the funeral home on Wethersfield Avenue.
Cars were double parked on both sides of the Avenue. “Hector R.I.P.” was white-washed on their rear windows of several of the cars. Police patrolled the grounds of the funeral home. A line of mourners stretched out the door and around the block. Many wore tee-shirts with Hector’s picture them.
“Look,” I said. “Why don’t I call in that our engine died and they’ll send someone else? I don’t think it’s a good idea going in there.”
Troy shook his head. “It’s our call, it’ll be all right.” He got out of the ambulance, took the monitor and blue bag out of the side door, and then laid them on the stretcher that I had pulled out.
We moved in through the crowd which slowly made way for us. People were dressed in black, many weeping. There were more flowers than I had seen in one place before.
Troy wore his Yankees hat. I kept vigilant.
We were led through a hallway into the receiving room. Hector lay in an open casket. Papa Ruiz sat slumped in a wheel chair. People gathered around him.
“What’s going on?” Troy said.
Helen Seurat was there. She nodded to Troy. “He’s the father of the deceased. He is not responding to anyone. I told the family I thought it was emotional, but they are worried maybe he had a seizure.”
I saw Hector’s wife holding Hector’s son, standing with the other family members, all watching Troy.
Troy nodded. “Did he fall over or have seizure activity? Bite his tongue? Wet himself?”
“No,” she said. “He just lay his head forward and hasn’t moved since.”
The family pressed around, looking at us. There were several small children.
Troy looked down at the man whose eyes stared nowhere. Troy touched his forehead. “Warm,” he said. He touched a finger to his eyelids, which twitched. Troy looked at me.
I shook my head. Don’t do it, I thought. Show some respect.
Troy knelt beside the man, felt his pulse. But he wasn’t looking at his watch. He watched the man for signs of movement.
“Blood pressure cuff,” he said. He held out his hand.
I gave it to him. He wrapped the cuff around the old man’s arm, pumped it up, and then slowly letting the air out, took his reading.
“How is it?” a woman asked.
“130/70.” Troy said, “That’s good.”
“What is the matter with him? Did he have a stroke?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What is wrong?”
I watched him look around at the faces of the others in the room. He took his cap off. He hesitated a moment.
“Take him to the hospital. He could be dying,” a man said.
Troy shook his head.
“Look at him. He’s having a stroke. He needs to go to the hospital.”
Troy gestured to a little girl, who stood behind a woman’s leg. “Come here.”
The girl went to Troy. He nudged her toward the old man. He beckoned to a woman, who held a baby.
She approached.
He held his arms out for her to hand him the child.
He took the baby, and set it in on Papi’s chest, and moved the old man’s arms until he was holding the child. Papi held the child close to his heart.
Troy said to the others, “He doesn’t need to go to the hospital. He needs to be here with his family.”
Troy stepped back.
While everyone watched the old man, Troy picked up his gear and walked out.
That afternoon we sat at Kenney Park.
“So what do you think of me?” Troy said, finally.
I looked at his dark eyes. “We all do things we regret,” I said. “It’s how you deal with the aftermath that matters.”
He looked out at the park now, at the tree limbs swaying in the light breeze, the children playing down by the pond. I don’t know where his mind was.
At dusk we drove up to Zion Hill. He took the box off the console, and we walked up the incline. “Pat’s Dad gave me some of Pat’s ashes. I’m supposed to disburse him where I remembered him best. Allison spread hers at Kent Falls where they had their first date. His mother spread hers at the playground she used to take him to when he was little. His father spread his over the high school football field. I think they wanted me to spread them out in the woods or at the next Super Bowl. I’m going to spread them here. Those were all places he played. Here is where he lived. You can say none of this makes a difference, but it’s got to count for something.”
On the radio dispatch sent out calls. “463 to Main and Tower for an MVA. 451 take Ashley Street for the asthma.”
Troy opened the jar and held it aloft to the wind that swirled down and took the ashes and whirled them out over the city. “Look out for us, old friend,” Troy said. “We need it. Even Lee, here.”
After I punched out, I saw Troy talking to Linda in the parking lot. It was unusual for her to be there that late, but they’d needed her to fill the shift of a sick employee.
Troy and Linda got into separate cars, but drove out together. Instead of turning down toward New Britain Avenue, Troy followed her car out South Street toward Newington where she lived.
And as for me, that night I did not drive home. I went to Kim’s. I sat at the curb for awhile, and then shut off the engine and walked toward the front door. With a rising in my heart, I knocked.
The light came on. She peered out through the curtain, and then opened the door. I believe she saw in my face then what she had been looking for, what I had kept hidden even from my own heart. She took my hand and led me inside.
