Chapters Six to Nine

Chapter Six

I knew pretty early on that I was going to have some problems with Fred as a partner. What I liked best about the job – aside from firing up the lights and sirens and parting the traffic like Moses himself – was when I would come into a house and find a sick person there in need of help, and see them look up at me like they were seeing an angel. I felt needed. I was there to help -- no matter who they were of what had happened to them. There was an instant connection between me and the patient that had nothing to do with anything either of us may have done in our lives. It didn’t matter who we were, where we were from, or how we felt about anything. We were bonded by the simple need for help and by the basic human desire to help. Then Fred would go and make some rude comment like, “Did you call your Doctor?”

Now I know a frustrating part of the job was that too many people used us as a taxi ride to the ER whenever they had a sniffle instead of making an appointment and taking a cab to their private doctor if they had one, which many didn’t. But why embarrass a sick old grandmother in front of her family, particularly one who feels awful and is vomiting up her breakfast. Fred seemed to get off on an EMT power trip like he had some kind of authority over these people. I did not like watching as he made an old woman walk or wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom if she needed too. “You called 911. Let’s go. We came here lights and sirens. You have an emergency, you’re going now. You’re not the only sick person in town. There’s people getting shot, having strokes, heart attacks, cars wrecking, even babies not breathing. They call for an ambulance. Sorry, Charlie. They’re all busy. We go now or we don’t go at all. Make up your mind. Capice? Now let’s go. Chop chop.” I guess I was more in the “Why make it harder on someone than it is?” camp than in the “Bust them because you can” modus of operation. Still I kept my mouth shut because I was the newbie. Kept it zipped.

“483, Pig’s Eye pub, on a one for the unconscious.”

“Someone had too much beer,” Fred said, “Let’s hope it’s a frauline.”

Fred got his wish. We were led to the ladies room where we found a young woman passed out in a stall. I recognized the red hair and the lime green dress. It was the girl I’d driven home in my cab that night. She’d puked a fair amount, and her freckled face was pale, cool and wet, but I thought she was still pretty. She moaned as we picked her up. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. If she was a dancer, even I could have lifted her above my head by myself and twirled her around though I suppose in her present state she wouldn’t have appreciated it. I caught Fred taking a glance up her dress as we moved her to the stretcher. He raised an eyebrow at me.

We wheeled her through the crowded bar with all the people drinking with the music blaring, and not one person coming up and claiming to be her friend.

“Mind if I tech this one?” Fred asked, as I lifted the stretcher wheels up and he pushed the stretcher into the back. We were supposed to alternate and it was my turn to be up.

I jumped in. “It’s my tech,” I said.

“Your tech? What kind of gratitude is that? After all I’ve done for you,” he said, and then added, “Check her out good. She ain’t wearing panties.”

I ignored him.

“Like they say in EMT class,” he said. “You’ve got to expose. Check for injuries. Be a good EMT now.” And he shut the back door leaving me alone with her.

She was out cold, her head on the pillow, moaning softly. She didn’t resist as I took her arm and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around it.

“I’ll take a few spins around the block,” Fred called. “I’ll try not to get to the hospital too soon.”

Her vital signs were all fine – she was just drunk. I moved her into what they call the Sims’ position on her side in case she vomited. She didn’t even seem to know I was moving her. I sat there on the bench looking at the poor girl. I tried to imagine myself as her boyfriend, watching her sleep at night, wishing I could curl next to her, her back into my chest, as I kissed her behind the ear and told her things would be all right, told her that she’d feel better in the morning. Of course I would have made her drink water and take Tylenol before helping into bed.

I had to dig through her purse to get her ID. I wrote down her name. Sarah, along with her address. I admit I did look through her pocket book some. She had twenty dollars and two credit cards, an ID from Glastonbury High School, a library card, her license, a fake ID that said she was twenty-one, a small pack of Big Red gum, several things of lipstick and other makeup type stuff. There was some crumbed napkins with names and phone numbers on them. I thought about taking out those napkins and replacing them with one with my name written down on it along with my number. Maybe she’d find it and call me sometime. It’d be nice just to hear her voice on my answering machine. For a moment I fingered her little vial of perfume. I opened it up and smelled it. I thought about taking it, and keeping it by my bedside. But then I thought that would be sort of the thing a pervert might do, so I put it back, feeling guilty for having invaded her privacy.

“How’s her titties?” Fred called back.

“Real nice,” I said. “First rate.”

I wouldn’t have minded seeing them, but not that way.

After the call Fred asked me for all the details of what she looked like.

I gave him a line of bull, which caused him to cackle, and slap me on the shoulder. “You owe me good,” he said.

I admit to being depressed about it. If she had hooked up with me, she’d never be passed out alone in some ladies lavatory. We’d have spent the evening in the style. A nice dinner, wine, maybe I’d pay for the violin guys to come around and play for her. We could have a flaming desert, and go for a nice walk afterwards. She wouldn’t even have to let me kiss her. She’d say, “You’re different from the other guys I’ve known.” And she’d ask to see me again. I could close my eyes and hear her say that just like it was real.

“I knew she’d have nice titties,” Fred said, still cackling. “I should have come in back and gotten a look.”

At least he was in a decent mood, as at times he was subject to fits of rage. If he thought someone was fucking with him he got right in their face, and so I avoided upsetting him if I could, as I didn’t like confrontation and he’d gotten big enough in the gym that any battle between him and me wouldn’t have been pretty. They even suspended him for a week for throwing a fellow employee up against the wall when he thought the guy had called him an ass when the poor guy in fact hadn’t even been talking about Fred. He would have gotten fired, except he was a good employee in the sense that he showed up to work and put his butt in the seat for twelve or more hours a day most days of the week.

I enjoyed working with other people in his absence. EMTs like Faith Creer and Eddie Bozigalup made me feel much better about the work, made me believe you could actually see it as a profession. They didn’t bitch, they didn’t complain; they treated people with respect. I wanted to be more like them. I needed a new partner and role model.

Chapter Seven

I hadn't been there two months when Tom Higgins approached me about being his partner. "Herb's out permanently with his back," he said, "I could use someone with a cool head who knows his way around, and doesn't talk too much," he said. "Looking at you, I didn't think you'd be a good lift, but you look like you're putting some muscle on. I've heard no complaints about you."

I jumped at the chance to work with him. While I told him, I'd have to check with Fred first, which was a commonly recognized courtesy, I was excited, and Fred told me to go for it. I think he was aware of the occasional tension between us, and was looking forward to a break from me. Besides he had his eye on another new hire -- a plump pretty girl named Terry, who every time we saw her, he told me how much he would like to poke her.

Working with a medic meant, I'd tech the bullshit calls, the medic would do all the serious ones. I saw it as an opportunity to learn more about the medicine side of the job. As a basic EMT, all I could really do was put the patient on oxygen and hope my partner drove like hell to the hospital if a medic wasn't available. Working with a medic, you actually saw drugs being given. The patient would get put on the heart monitor, Tom would do an intravenous, through which he could give drugs which he carried in a hard black suitcase called a Biotech. If the patient wasn't breathing, or was having a very hard time, he could put a breathing tube down their throat. All of these required a smart partner to assist him. I wanted to be that -- a good partner.

We got a call for abdominal pain. Eighteen-year old girl. Fat, two hundred twenty pounds. Meets us at the door. Now we get lots of BS calls. People calling the ambulance for a tooth ache, calling for a runny nose, calling cause they cut their finger and need a Band-Aid. People call because they don't know better or they do, but they call because they use the ER as their private doctor and they know if they call 911, they'll get a free ride courtesy of their state card, and the ride will come within a couple minutes. Freddy, as I’ve said, liked to give people shit. You called an ambulance for this? Do you know how much it costs the state to transport you? My fucking tax dollars. Blah, blah, blah. Tom, on the other, except on rare days, had had learned it wasn't worth getting worked up about. Now I would not consider him to be a man of great compassion – he was as cynical as the next guy, but he was after a number of years on the job, a realist. "Give me the choice between a bullshit, walk'em out to the rig, sit them on the bench, drive to the ER, and walk them into the waiting room versus a third floor carry down, rectal bleed, vomiting blood, three hundred pound person who codes on you half way down, I'll take the BS call," Tom said. "I mean, I get paid by the hour, not by the pound or by the number of times I stick them with needles."

Tom sees the girl, and just says, "What hospital?"

"Saint Francis."

He says to me, "She's all yours."

We walk her out to the ambulance, she steps up in back as I say "watch your head, and "be careful," then I get in next to her, and grab the BP cuff. Tom is already driving to the hospital. At first I used to get annoyed that he didn't even wait for me to take the blood pressure before he started, but over time, it forced me to get better at taking pressures, preparing me for real life situations when hopefully one day as a Medic, I'd be taking pressures on critical patients, while going down the road, hurtling over the bumps and potholes at seventy miles an hour.

"Tell me about the pain you're having?" I asked.

"It’s real crampy," she said. "It comes and goes, but it’s been coming quicker and lasting longer."

"Cramps?" I said.

She nodded.

"When did you have your last period?"

"It hasn't come for awhile."

"Are you having a cramp right now?"

She nodded. "It feel like I've gotta go to the bathroom. I think I just wet myself."

There was a dark wet splotch growing around her groin, and it didn't smell like pee or shit.

"Tom!" I called.

"What?"

"Get back here."

"I thought you had it."

"Oh, I think she's having a baby," I said.

"Oh, Christ!"

He pulled over and joined me in the back. I had already moved her from the bench to the stretcher, and after covering her with a blanket, with her help, started pulling down her pants.

Tom and I looked and there was a head coming out from between her legs.

"When's your due date?" Tom asked.

"Due date? I don't owe any money."

"Due date. You're pregnant. You'd didn't know that?"

She looked like she didn't understand.

"You're having a baby!" Tom shouted at her.

"That can't be. My boyfriend said not to worry."

"Well, I've got news for you, he was wrong."

Tom, who'd gloved up, delivered the head, then the shoulder. I stood there, useless as tits on a bull. What a sight it was. A crying baby boy born out of between the legs of that teenage fat girl. She didn't even know she was pregnant, but when Tom put the baby on her breast, she looked at that infant with a smile of wonder like I believe Mary must have looked at baby Jesus. Tom let me cut the chord, my hand was shaking. I even had tears in my eyes. "Just cut it already," he said.

He made sure the baby was kept warm. He wrapped the baby up in towels and taped them together so the baby looked like he was in a papoose. He told me to drive the rest of the way, while he made certain everything was fine with the mother and child. At the hospital, when I went around back to pull the stretcher, Tom was telling her, “You have to name the baby Thomas Timothy in honor of the two of us. It’s the law you have to name the baby after the paramedics if you delivered in an ambulance. It’s also good luck. You can call him Tommy Tim for short."

"Okay," she said, "But he look just like Shariq."

"Too bad for Shariq," Tom said.

But she didn't hear him. She was looking in the baby's eyes like there was a magnetic field between the baby's eyes and hers.

Two weeks later we got called for an unknown. The mother found a newborn baby in the toilet. Tom did CPR on the baby and breathed in its mouth as he carried him down to the ambulance. He passed a breathing tube into the baby's mouth, and turned that blue baby nearly pink. Another girl who didn't know she was pregnant.

"They either need to improve the schools around here, which they do, or else God is in this city and working in mysterious ways. If he is going to be knocking these chicks up, he's got to tell them they're carrying a child, not just getting fat from too many Big Macs," he said.

I certainly was getting a view of life -- the view of seeing the rich and seeing the poor as just people, people who had to deal with their bodies failing them, people who would all one day die. That was the great equalizer.

One evening I even went to the top of City Place where coat and tie security men led us to the office of a powerful man who’d lost his bowels sitting at his mahogany desk looking out over the lit up city. I saw his shame and fear; but I did not mock him. Millionaire or pauper, I treated everyone the same. I laid a fresh sheet on the stretcher, put the oxygen on his pale face, patted his clammy hand, and told him not to worry. When we got down stairs, we paused before we wheeled the stretcher out into the wet street where 452 idled, the red and white lights reflecting in the dark street puddles and the glass of the building across the street. I pulled the wool blanket up to the man’s neck, draped a white towel over his head and tucked it under his chin like it was Mother Teresa herself I was protecting from the rain. And I drove smooth and steady over the city worn streets, while Tom did his job in the back, giving the man IV fluids, medicine and attaching him to the monitor to check his beating heart.


Chapter Eight

“I can’t believe how you’ve changed,” my mother said. “You seem like a grown man and it’s been a while since we’ve had one of those in this house. I’m not even sure we did when your father was here. You know you are welcome to move back in. Mr. Thompson had a stroke you know.”

“I know. I heard that. But that’s okay. I like where I’m at.”

“You just don’t want me to meet your girlfriends.”

“You are so astute,” I said.

“I knew it. Are you using a condom because…”

“Mom, I’m not seeing anyone right now. I’m just working a lot.”

“You’d bring your girl to meet me, wouldn’t you? You’re not embarrassed of me?”

“No, now why would you say that? Of course, I’d bring her here.”

“And we’d have Sunday dinner together. That will be so nice.”

I did not want to move back. I had dreams of moving into an apartment of my own. I hoped in another year to be done paying on the garage -- even though old Man Thompson was in a nursing home, his daughter was monitoring my payments. An apartment and a car -- small things to some people, but to me they were stepping stones, out of my immediate reach, but clearly someday attainable.

I had decided that the way to get ahead was to focus and work toward those goals with steadfastness. Paying off my debt, an apartment, a car with a nice stereo, maybe go to medic school, and of course the one that consumed me the most, find a good woman, get a home, have a family of my own.

Three mornings a week, I worked out in the backyard of my boarding house, lifting cinderblocks. Ben had given me some routines I could do: presses, curls, squats, step-ups onto the picnic table. I liked walking around in sleeveless tee-shirts when I was off duty. For the first time in my life, I had muscle definition. I liked posing for myself in the mirror. I began to believe that I might be attractive to women. I had seen that girl Carrie a few more times at the bar, and while I still had not spoken to her, I knew that one day I would, but I needed to be careful. I didn’t want to appear desperate. I had faith my opportunity would arise.

“Dude, you’re looking okay,” Fred said, “But if you really want to get pumped up, I’ve got the shit for you.” He showed me a little vial. “Deca-durbolin. I inject twice a week. Man it gives you monster workouts. Check out my guns.” His arms were massive with veins bulging out of them like ropes. I didn’t say anything but his head was bigger than it had been. It looked almost swollen.

“I’m not injecting myself with anything, I don’t like needles.”

“It’s not just the muscles, but the sex drive. I’ve got three broads I’m doing now, and a waiting list. I’m telling you this shit pumps you up.”

I didn’t say anything to Fred, but I had read about that stuff, and while I heard it could increase your sex drive, in the end it caused you to grow breasts and made your nuts shrink. I wasn’t that desperate -- at least, not yet. I had faith in my own plan.

I got up every morning, and if it wasn’t a day to lift weights, I ran. That’s right I ran. I started out going maybe 150 yards, worked it up to a half mile, and before I knew it I was running three miles a day. I was eating well, and I was working all the time. My existence was like that of a soldier. Sleep, exercise, work, and occasionally drink lots of beer with the guys.

Chapter Nine

I loved my new job. I was working 90-100 hours a week. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like being on Cops or one of those TV trauma shows. I saw some weird fucking shit.

A woman in a dress passed out in a hotel, who turned out to be a man. I did that call on my last day with Fred and I think the encounter permanently damaged his psyche. He was doing one of his full body surveys, when all of a sudden he jumped back like he’d stuck his hand in an electric socket. I made him give me ten bucks to tech the call because it was his turn, but he wanted no part of the she-man. “That’s fucked up,” he kept saying all day at odd times. “That’s fucked up.”

You never knew what your day held for you or what you would discover next. Nothing was as it seemed. You can hold no assumptions about the world. We went to a group home for a patient with a UTI. It was a 57- year old woman with a famous last name – a name of a prominent political family. She had no history other than suffering a bout of scarlet fever as a child, and coming out of her coma with the mind of a twelve year old girl who would never grow older. Her mental development frozen in time. She was a delightful conversationalist in the way that twelve year olds are, and I was able to get from her the story of how she came to be in that home, while her family members partied on exclusive islands, promoted liberal social agendas, yet hadn’t been to visit her for years. “They are very busy important people,” she said without a hint of irony. The same day I responded to the house of notorious scoundrel, a man who had defrauded thousands of area people in a stock scam, and was soon for prison. We found him calming his handicapped son, a boy with Down’s Syndrome, who had fallen and broken his leg, the bone breaking through the skin. I will never forget that way he rubbed the boy’s hair, and whispered in his ear, calming the pain he had to be feeling long enough until Tom could give him some morphine.

Appearances could fool you. I went into hole-in the wall restaurants whose kitchens were as immaculate as if they had scrubbed the floor with toothbrushes, and went into the kitchen of trendy restaurants where people waiting in line to get in, but where after seeing the caked grease on the walls and watching the roaches skitter across the floor, as we treated a cook who had fallen and injured his shoulder, I would not send my dog in there to eat.

I saw lots of gross stuff. I had thought Fred was making some shit up when I listened to his stories before I had put the uniform on myself, but having been out there I could only say, you couldn’t make the shit up. I saw maggots growing out of people’s heads, a man chopped up by an mechanical hole driller, and turned into hamburger, I saw another man cut completely in half in an industrial accident. You learned there was good ways to go and bad ways, and all I could say was take me in the night while I sleep, but not in a fire, but if it is in a fire, let the smoke kill me before the flames touch my skin. If hell was a real place and sometimes I thought it was, if there was fire there and people knew what that would be like and that it would burn them, we would have no problems here on earth. There would be no need for police officers. And I would have no story to tell.

The worst thing I saw a police officer later told me was called anthropophagi. You could look it up in the dictionary, or wait a moment and figure it out for yourself from what I will tell you. The story comes in two parts. Part one, we are called for weakness. It is a nice house in a middle class neighborhood in a suburban town. The door to the house is locked, but with the dispatcher communicating with the caller over the phone we learn there is a key under a flower pot outside the front porch. “The key under the flower pot routine,” I say to Tom. “I should have thought that. Forgive me.”

“Don’t let it happen again,” he said, and cuffed me on the back of the head.

We open the door and are met by two dogs, a tiny white poodle and a larger mixed breed. They bark, then turn and head down the hall, just as we hear a female voice from the end of the hallway, say, “I’m down here.”

The house is dirty and with the empty feel of someone who has moved out, but not cleaned up yet. There is missing furniture, partially filled boxes, take out cartons of Chinese food and pizza boxes on the table in front of the TV, some beers cans, cigarette butts overflowing their trays. The carpets smell of urine.

She is lying on a mattress on the floor. A skinny woman maybe in her mid thirties with long blonde hair and the most beautiful blue eyes, eyes that grab you even though she is skanky, eyes that make you see the beautiful woman she was once. You could imagine her younger at a bar or a party on the arm of some charismatic bad boy who no doubt led her down a wrong path, and then left her. “My back hurts and I can’t get out of bed,” she says. “I’m out of my pain meds. I need to go to the hospital. I can’t take it anymore.”

I can see the track marks on her arms. She is just wearing a thong and a loose armless tee-shirt. I can see Tom despite himself, is checking her body out. I am too. I guess if I was a skanked out heroin addict, I could see myself spending the afternoon shooting up with her.

We help her up on to the stretcher, and get her bundled up.

“You have someone to take care of the dogs?” Tom asks.

“No, I just got rid of my boyfriend,” she says. “I’m all alone. I haven’t fed them for a couple days, but as soon as I get my meds, I’ll get to the store and take care of that. Maybe you could check their water bowls for me?”

Tom filled their bowls and teched the call, even though he didn’t do any ALS. I wondered if it was just her eyes or if maybe he was dog enough to be angling for something else. Tom had more women than I could imagine, but it seemed he was never satisfied.

“She was a skank,” he said, “when we cleared the hospital. “A drug seeking skank.”

“Is that why you teched the call?”

“She’s got the virus,” he said.

“There went your dinner date.”

“Ha ha. I was just protecting you in case she offered to service you for a ten spot. I know it’s been awhile since you’ve had it, and she had that desperateness in her eyes.”

I never pretended Tom was my friend, but I looked up to him, and it hurt when he ranked on me. Other people I didn’t mind.”

“I know you’re not like your pal Fred,” he said, “But I can’t be too sure. Better safe than sorry.”

I just looked out the window. Was I that desperate for companionship that it showed so clearly?

A week later we were called to the same house on a welfare check. We didn’t realize it was the same house until we found ourselves standing at the doorway with a police officer, unable to get in. He was calling back the dispatcher for information about how to get in when I announced, “The keys under the flowerpot.” I lifted the pot up and produced the key. The cop was impressed.

“He’s clairvoyant,” Tom said.

“Well, Mr. Kreskin, what are we going to find inside?” the officer asked as I turned the key in the door.

I looked down and saw the little white poodle with a splotch of red on his cheek.

“Nothing good,” I said, and then the smell hit us.

The floor was littered with dog shit. We stepped gingerly as we went slowly through the house looking for the source of the odor, which we knew too well was a decomposing body. Suddenly down the hall I had a quick glimpse of big dog darting past – almost like a wolf in a scary movie. There one moment, then next gone.

“She’s down there,” I said. “Pointing to the end of the hall. “That’s where she was when we were here before.”

I followed the officer down. He had his hand just a few inches from his holster. I have to say there was a good deal of suspense as we tiptoed down that hall like we were trying to sneak up on death itself, which we were, although it, as always, had a surprise for us.

The officer swore, and then turned and left the room retching. I stood in the doorway and stared. Tom who despite being an absolutely top of the line medic, had a weak stomach when it came to dead bodies. He usually let me handle the presumptions, relaying on me to alert him to the borderline calls. There was nothing borderline about this call. The woman wasn’t just dead. She looked like a character from Raiders of the Lost Arc. Her head was a skeleton. It looked just like one of those bony skeletons that used to hang in the classroom. Where her pretty eyes had once been there was nothing. Her face had been eaten off so much that the back of her head had fallen away like a ripped bag. You could see tufts of her long hair scattered about the room. I imagined the dogs ripping the hair off her head.

The officer stood beside me now. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You think there’s foul play in this?”

“More like canine play,” I said. “I think they just hadn’t been fed for awhile. She was a junkie. We’ve picked her up before. She probably shot up and died, and they were just trying to get her up so she could get them some food. That’s why they pulled her hair off. I guess they were just really hungry and she was the only food they could get. “

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Of course, I suppose it could be a crime. It wouldn’t have been a burglar because there’s nothing to steal here. Maybe her ex-boyfriend came back, strangled her, and smeared puppy chow on her face.”

“You’re sick,” he said.

“She had the most beautiful eyes,” I said, remembering, and I thought about them now, rolling around inside one of those dog’s stomachs, and I confess I felt a little nauseous myself.

Tom gave me the monitor and let me run a strip for him. I found her name on a state welfare envelope. While we wrote up the paperwork, a couple other officers and animal control had arrived. They were trying to corral the dogs. The little dog they already had in a small cage. The big dog was more of a problem. The animal control officer held a pole with a noose around the end. The police officer, his hand shaking, held out a dog biscuit.

The dog growled, showing his teeth.

He didn’t appear interested in the biscuit.

For a long time afterwards I wondered what the woman of the house was thinking as she looked down on what had happened or looked up from the hot seats. Would she be horrified? Watching as her loved pets ripped her face apart? Or would she have some empathy for them, understanding that they had done what they had done to fill a basic need – the need to survive, and maybe even being glad that she had been able to keep them alive in their days alone in the wilderness that house had become. I like to think that she was in place where she knew no pain, where her face showed no sign of the hardships of her life, and that there was mercy in her beautiful eyes.

Chapters Eleven to Fifteen