“Troy Johnson’s a punk,” Nestor said. “Good for entertainment, a few yucks, but that’s about it. He thinks being a medic is a gag, a gig for himself to strut his hoodoo.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t know where he’s from. He’s got no sense of history -- the people who came before him. We deserve some respect for the path we forged.”
I was driving us back from Hartford Hospital where we’d gone to pick up a Kendrick extrication device -- left by a crew who’d brought in a trauma earlier -- along with extra backboards that were overflowing the hospital’s EMS locker. It was Troy’s day off and Victor had to take his wife to the doctor, so I didn’t have anyone to work with until the afternoon when Andrew Melnick was going to come in on overtime. Nestor, bored with his paperwork, had invited himself along for the ride.
“Hartford was a great city once. It’s all crack houses and burned out buildings now. I’m glad I’m not out on the streets anymore, though I would be if the company would let me. Maybe in another year the doctors will give me the go ahead again if I can just drop some weight, though fuck my hip hurts just walking. Too god damn many carry-downs. Takes a toll on the body. All that lifting. I worked seven days a week. Everybody knew me. People were always coming up saying ‘Remember me. You took care of me. You took care of my mother. You took care of my grandfather. You delivered my sister.’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, how’s everybody doing?’ I didn’t remember them. After awhile the people -- the calls -- they all flow together. I delivered twenty-seven babies. Called the time on a cemetery full of people. I’ve got stories.”
I could see being in an ambulance lifted his spirits.
“Let’s go see Sidney,” he said. “You been introduced to him yet?”
“Sidney?”
“Sidney Seuss -- the Boss -- the man who started it all. May he rest in peace. Not likely.”
He directed me to the Zion Hill Cemetery. We drove through the gates and up to the crest of the hill. We got out and walked across the grass to a site he pointed out.
A big marble tombstone. “Sidney Seuss, Beloved Husband and Father, Founder of Capital Ambulance.” By its base were nearly thirty matchbox ambulances of different types and styles.
Nestor reached into his pocket and took out another small ambulance and laid it down beside the others. “Another car for your fleet, old man,” he said. “You’re still the King.”
He stared at the tombstone. It was quiet except for Nestor’s wheezes and the faint hum of traffic.
Nestor laughed then. “The old bastard’s still watching over us. ‘How come you’re not out humping a stretcher right now, Davey, boy?’” he said in an oddly high voice. “’I don’t want to see you slacking today. There’s money to be made out there.’” He laughed, and then sighed deeply.
From the gravesite, you could see downtown Hartford below, the capitol dome, the downtown skyscrapers, Bushnell Park.
“Sidney owned this town,” Nestor said. “Some people thought it was an embarrassment to work for him, but I admired him. You had too. He was one of a kind. You know how he started? He was a tow-truck driver. He’d listen to his police scanner for accidents. He always beat the ambulance to the scene. He did it so much; he started carrying medical supplies in his truck. He felt bad standing there not being able to help. This was back in the late 1960’s before there were EMS systems. There was no regulation, no EMTs. Sidney saw a business opportunity. He went out and bought himself an ambulance, then two, then three. Next thing you know he was running the town.
“Other people got in the business. But they couldn’t compete with the old man. He lived it day and night. It was the Wild West then. They didn’t have assigned responder areas like they do now. It was first come, first serve. The unwritten rule was first company to pull their stretcher got the patient. It wasn’t unheard of to have fistfights over who got the transport. You didn’t think you could lick the other crew you let the air out of their tires.”
“You let the air out of their tires?”
“Ever see the movie Mother, Jugs and Speed?’”
“No.”
“You should check it out. It’s based on EMS in this town in those early days. Raquel Welch is in it. Larry Hagman. He plays the Sidney part. And Bill Cosby. The Bill Cosby character – you wouldn’t know it by the color of my skin, but he was based on me. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Can’t say that I did. Who did Raquel Welch play?
“They just threw her in there to add some sex appeal, not that there haven’t been any ambulance babes working these streets. You know, Hollywood --they changed things. Take my character. Made me a black man if you can imagine that. Then they set us all in California. Still the movie captured the spirit of EMS in the old days. It was about craziness and making money. We had to live by our wits in the early days of EMS. Sidney – that man knew how to make money. He’d give fruit baskets and prime steaks to nursing home administrators and their nurse supervisors. Get them to call us instead of the competition when they needed to send a patient out. Sidney used to drive around the city handing out bottles of Mad Dog and Thunderbird to the local drunks. Then he’d send the ambulance by to pick them up. Take them to detox at $100 a pop. We’d put four or five in the same ambulance. Talk about a racket.
“We had any problems with the city, Sidney took care of it. A councilman had a complaint; Sidney would take him out to Carbones. Wine and dine’em. No problem too big a veal marinara and some wine couldn’t solve.
“He bought out all the competition – Eastern, T&C, Ace -- all except Champion. I think he kept them in business just so no one could accuse him of having the monopoly. He had forty ambulances, fifty wheel chair vans and ten livery cars. We’re barely running half that now. We had this town locked down. We had all the 911s, ninety percent of the nursing homes, and forty dialysis patients – talk about cash in the bank. And Sidney was out there on the road every night, being driven around in his Cadillac with the red lights in the grille. You could hear his voice on the radio, ‘Where are you going Davey Boy? You’ll be in China before you get to Clark Street the way you’re headed.’
“He could be a bastard, but people liked working here. Every week, he took the crew that did the most calls out for a steak dinner. You had a sick kid at home, he’d palm you a fifty. Every Christmas he threw a big party -- open bar, lavish buffet everything from leg of lamb to chocolate covered strawberries, door prizes like TVs and Caribbean vacations, and nice party gifts with the company logo. It was a big deal. He might not have paid us the best wages, but he knew how to make us feel special.
“And he was the one who first brought paramedics to the city. The other companies were all running just EMTs, but he went out and got paramedics. I was in that first class. I worked the first ALS code in this city. I got a save too. Sidney put the paddles in my hand. He was ahead of his time. Now his legacy is on the verge of being obliterated up by the big corporations.
“It’s funny, you think you’re going to be on these streets forever, but then before you know it, its over. If only he’d lived. He’s got to be banging on the lid of that fancy box they’ve got him nailed in, wanting to get out and straighten this place out. A fine mess it’s in now, with all the bullshit going on. New rules and regulations, fucking with our schedules, fucking with people’s lives, fucking up the place.”
He stared at the tombstone. “I guess that’s how we’ll all end up -- leaving behind a fucked up world as if we’d never been here. Nothing to do but let the bugs eat us. A hell of a reward for your life’s toil.”
