I limped around to the front, and put the car in gear.
“Drive!” Ben shouted again.
A police car led the way in front of me. Two followed behind. At each intersection, police cars appeared to block traffic as I sped toward the hospital.
I radioed. “Gunshot to the chest.” My voice cracked. “CPR in progress. One of our own.”
A crowd waited outside the ER. I saw Dr. Singer, Raul Martinez, Candy Bird, and two Capitol Ambulance crews. They had the doors open before I had even put the ambulance in park. I opened the outside door as the procession rolled him in. Everyone gathered around the stretcher—Audrey not relinquishing compressions, Ben holding up two IVs, Andrew bagging. Raul pulled the front of the stretcher. “He got intubated right away,” Ben told Dr. Singer. “He’s gotten an epi down the tube, one epi and one atropine IV. He’s been in asystole the whole way. It started getting harder to bag as we pulled in. I popped his right chest as we pulled in.”
In the trauma room, they cracked his chest with the rib spreaders. Blood splashed all over the floor and onto Dr. Singer’s white lab coat. I watched as Dr. Singer reached her hand in and squeezed Pat’s heart. They opened up the blood bank. After twenty minutes a trauma resident wanted to call it, but Mary O’Toole told him, “No, keep going.”
“He’s asystole.”
She glared at him.
“Keep going,” Dr. Singer said quietly.
I found out later they called in volunteer ambulances from the suburbs—Bloomfield, Windsor, Newington, Granby, Canton, Windsor Locks, Glastonbury and others—to handle city calls while nearly every crew of ours held vigil at the hospital. The trauma team worked him for over an hour. Dr. Singer didn’t call it until she had seen the assent in each of our faces. It was time. I stood in the room watching them disconnect the monitors, unhook the ventilator, and then sew his battered body back up. Mary covered his naked body up to his neck in a warm white blanket until they brought the body bag. The floor was pooled with blood and medical wrappers. I heard a page for environmental services to report to the trauma room.
Then I heard screaming from the hallway. Raul Martinez and two nurses held back Allison, who howled like a wounded animal. She screamed “No! No!” Her face was angry and wild. She scratched Raul and kicked at him. “He’s not dead! He’s not dead!” she shouted. “Let me see him! I want to see him!”
Raul and the nurses held her while a now crying Dr. Singer sedated her.
I felt suddenly dizzy and had to sit down. I held my head between my knees. I felt a hand on my shoulder, but felt too nauseous to even look up.
“God bless you poor boys,” Mary O’Toole said.
Later I wandered to the snack room, where I found Andrew. His eyes were red. He wouldn’t look at me when I asked him if he was okay.
“You did the best you could,” I said.
“I should have got the tube quicker.”
“Andrew, he died before he hit the floor.”
“I didn’t save him.”
“No one was going to save him.”
“Troy would have.”
“No, and he wasn’t there. You were. That’s what matters. You tried. He would have been proud of you.”
Andrew just shook his head. He didn’t speak.
I sat down next to him.
My shoulder and knee throbbed, my head hurt. I felt like my muscles, my chest, were empty.
Chapter 36
I drove downstate to Troy’s. His pickup was in the driveway, a light on in the house. The remnants of a bonfire burned in the front yard. A small pit had been dug, surrounded by stones. I saw burned ends of photos and newspaper clippings, blackened metal trophies, chards of glass from smashed frames. By the fire was a folding chair. Empty bottles of Budweiser were scattered on the ground.
I walked up the steps to the open front door. In the living room I saw Troy sitting on the couch. I saw a broken chair, a smashed lamp. The wall at several places looked dented with fist and head marks. His eyes were dark, inconsolable when he looked up at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Were you there?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Tell me.”
I told him what I knew. Pat and Audrey had responded to an unknown at the abandoned building on Lawrence Street. They’d gone in. There was a shot and Pat had fallen. Audrey was too shaken up to give a clear picture. The cops found a dead junkie in the building later, but from his rigor and lividity, he’d been long dead. They had no clues to go on.
“Why didn’t he wait?” Troy said suddenly. “He always does.”
“He didn’t,” I said.
“Everyone knows you’re supposed to wait for the cops on calls like that. If there’s any doubt, you wait. And what about his vest? He always wore a vest.”
“He stopped wearing it,” I said.
“What was he thinking—he’s invulnerable? Jesus, Pat.”
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Troy said. “I should have been there to protect him. Here I’ve been these last months sitting on my duff living the good life, while you guys are getting killed up there. My friends.”
“There was nothing you could do,” I said.
“I could have saved him. You need me up there. I should never have let them force me out. I need to be back there. You need me up there.”
“Take it easy,” I said. “Now’s no time to make decisions.”
“Decisions? I’d be better off dead than feel like I do now.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said again.
I sat with him most of the night. A couple times I went out and got more lumber for the fire. He alternately ranted and wept.
Chapter 37
Pat’s wake was held on Wednesday night. The line out of the funeral parlor stretched for four blocks. There were EMTs, commercial and volunteer, police, fire, nurses and other people from the hospitals. I even saw some patients he’d treated, who must have recognized his photo in the papers or on the news.
Inside the funeral home, there was a display of pictures and mementos from Pat’s life. A smiling four-year-old made Popeye muscles at the beach. A Little Leaguer looked determined, batting helmet on his head, as he waited for the pitch. A sophomore in high school, hair to his shoulders, played the guitar. A high school senior posed for his class photo, his hair shorter, quite a handsome young man, the world before him. With Troy in Colorado, they both wore ten-gallon hats. Pat stood with his arm around Allison at Carbone’s just a few nights before, a ring around her finger, a smile of amazement on his face.
There were blue ribbons, a report card with A’s, an essay about his father he’d published in his college literary magazine, a copy of his paramedic license, postcards to his family from the places he’d traveled. There was a framed newspaper article—the front page of the Courant the day Pat appeared on the cover carrying a child out of a burning building.
Allison stood next to his mother. She looked tired, strained, but they both stood and shook hands and talked with everyone who came through, thanking them for coming, hearing their remembrances of Pat.
Ahead of me in the line, a young EMT shook Allison’s hand and said, “Pat was a role model for all of us. He belongs to the city now.”
“No, he doesn’t,” she snapped. “He belongs to us.” She turned to hide her tears. Pat’s mother touched the shocked young man on the shoulder and taking his hand said, “You’re nice to come.”
“I’m sorry,” Allison said, composing herself. “This is just hard.”
Pat’s father had been in the receiving line, but he sat now in a chair before the casket. He was considerably older than Pat’s mom. He looked feeble.
I saw Troy out in the parking lot, smoking a rare cigarette. He’d been a part of the reception line, but had had to take a break. I mentioned how frail Pat’s father looked.
“He’s seventy-five years old,” Troy said. “He used to play baseball with us when we were kids. He’d be out there for ho
urs throwing tennis balls at us as hard as he could. By the time we got to Little League, we could hit anything. He coached us and took us to the state’s regions, which was quite an accomplishment for a town of our size. He’s a doctor. Up until a couple days ago, he was still going into his office every day.”
“How about you? How are you doing?”
He shook his head. “I should have been there,” he said.
“They shot him in the heart, Troy. You couldn’t have saved him.”
“I still should have been there.” He threw his cigarette down. “I’ve got to go back inside.”
They held the funeral service the next day in West Hartford. The turnout was remarkable. Police, fire, and EMS came in full dress uniform. Ambulances came from every service in the state and from as far away as Georgia and Iowa—such was the bond of those who put their lives on the line in EMS. Service differences aside, fire, volunteer, municipal, or private ambulance, it didn’t matter, the people who did what Pat did—worked the streets—they came out.
The ambulances staged in a vast empty parking lot on Washington Street in Hartford. There were still ambulances in the parking lot when the first ambulances were reaching the church in West Hartford where the ceremony was held. The line of ambulances was over five miles long.
They closed down South Main Street and had us line up service by service in formation on the road in front of the church. The ceremony was broadcast by loudspeaker. The space in the church was limited. I chose to stand outside. I didn’t want to be in a confined space, didn’t want to have look again at the grief on the faces of Pat’s family. And besides I wanted to honor him and what he did with his life by standing with those he was a hero to—his brothers and sisters who worked the streets.
Billy Dalton gave the eulogy, his voice clear and strong through the speakers. “Pat was all of us on our best days. He taught us that there was as much glory in holding a patient’s hand as in putting a tube down their throat, as much grace in a simple touch of a forehead as in compressing a dying heart. Because he stood among us, because he was our partner, we believed no one could say were not the best.
“Don’t think for a moment that he won’t live on within us—that what Pat taught us will not be used and passed on. When a child is sick, when a grandmother struggles for breath, when a father is injured, and we are called upon to respond, Pat will be there with us, in our touch, in our words, in our belief in ourselves and what we are capable of. And on quiet nights when we grieve his loss, as we will, close our eyes and listen, and his voice will be on the wind. ‘Four fifty-one, roger Laurel Street on a one…four fifty-one clearing Hartford, George-eleven… four fifty-one, copy the backup on Bellevue.’
“Pat always had our backs, now God has his.
“Watch out for our friend.”
As people filed out of the church, Scott Dykema and Scott Cummings played “Amazing Grace” on their bagpipes.
The Life Star helicopter made a pass overhead.
That night, we went out for beers and to reminisce about Pat. I don’t know if we went back to the Brickyard Pub to feel the pain of his passing or to remember the warmth that filled the place just a few nights before when we had all gathered there in what now seemed like a different age of our lives. There was no music, no dancing on this night. We were the only customers there.
People told stories about him; about the lives he’d saved, his amazing skills, the things he and Troy had done.
“Why Pat?” Audrey asked. “If you had to pick anyone who earned the right to live, I mean, he didn’t have a single mean thing in him. If there were any job that would make you a nonbeliever it would be this. How can you believe in anything but death? How can you believe that you will ever be rewarded by anything but suffering? It makes me want to go out and drink, and fuck every good-looking guy, and blow my money on Caribbean vacations and not give a good goddamn about anything.”
“Hey, I’m with you on that,” Victor said, “When do we leave?”
She punched his shoulder. “I’m serious. This isn’t right, it being Pat. He had so much more to give.”
“Maybe it’s a message,” Andrew said.
“What the fuck kind of message would that be?” Audrey was hot. She was right up in Andrew’s face. “Like ‘Eat Shit and Die’ or ‘Have a Nice Life Go Fuck Yourself!’ Or ‘Be a Decent Guy—Get Shot in the Heart!’”
“Easy,” Andrew held up his hand. “Maybe it just means live your life.”
“Hey, we’ll all drink to that,” Victor said, filling our beers from one of the pitchers on the table. “We can all drink to that.” He put his arm around Audrey, who wept. “We all miss him,” he said to her and gently kissed her head.
“It’ll never be the same without him and Troy on the street, that’s for sure,” she said.
At last call, Victor talked the bartender into selling us a six-pack to go wrapped in a brown bag. We got into our cars and drove to Lawrence Street. The drug dealers came out as we approached.
“Yo yo yo, I got Red Dancer,” one dealer said. “Red Dancer.”
“Fuck off,” Victor said.
We stood in the yard. Victor had taken a small wooden shrine out of his trunk. He’d built it out of plywood. Its roof was slanted like a church. Its front was open. Pat’s picture was taped inside. Victor lit a candle that illuminated the photo.
We each held a beer up in salute.
“To our brother,” Victor said.
“To Pat.”
We tipped our beers, spilling a taste into the earth.
“Always in our hearts. Never to be forgotten.”
We left offerings—a Red Sox hat, a paramedic rocker, a book of matches from the Brickyard. Our bottles made a circle around the shrine.
Chapter 38
Victor came back at work, though only temporarily, he said. Medical control had lifted his suspension and Bruce Atreus had convinced him to come in and work some shifts while we were so short-handed. If the bounty hunter he was apprenticing with didn’t need him that day, he’d come in and work. It was good to have him back.
We drove past the courthouse on Washington Street. It was the first day of Felipe Ruiz’s trial. A large crowd had massed outside. “The big day,” Victor said.
“Troy should be up tomorrow.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s hurting. He tries not to let it show, but he blames himself for what happened to Pat.”
“He’ll come back to work. He’ll get one of those new insulin pumps—they’re working for a lot of people, helping keeping their sugar regular. He gets one of those, he’ll be back.”
“You think?”
“I just can’t see him not being here. It’s where he belongs.”
“Maybe being up here tomorrow and seeing the ambulances going by will do it.”
“He’ll be back before the month is out, I predict. He’ll be back as soon as the trial is over.”
Troy and Linda had been deposed to give testimony about what happened the night Felipe shot Joey Diaz on Afflect Street. The prosecution had Troy set to be a prime witness. Linda’s testimony was less important because though she had been there she had her back turned and couldn’t actually testify she saw Felipe shoot the other man.
We hadn’t gone three blocks past the courthouse when we heard sirens and saw three police cars heading north on Washington.
“Four sixty-three, one hundred Lafayette in the courthouse, shooting to the head on a one.”
“I don’t believe this,” Victor said.
I hit the lights and pulled a U-turn.
The scene outside the building was chaos. People spilled out of the courthouse, while others tried to get inside. We had to push our way through the crowd to get to the door. I saw two burly courthouse guards wrestling with a man who spat at them and cursed. Two police officers raised their nightsticks to clear a way for us. Just as we went through the front door, I thought I heard gunshots on the street. On the portable I heard
the call go out for two more ambulances.
We went through the metal detectors that beeped, and then were led into the first courtroom.
“Head and chest shot,” an officer said to us.
Papi Ruiz howled. His son Felipe lay bleeding in his lap. I could hear the gurgling in Felipe’s lungs. The officer had to hold Papi down as we pulled Felipe off him and onto our stretcher. “Easy Papi, easy Papi,” Victor purred, but I doubted Papi could hear above his anguished cries as he tried to hold onto Felipe.
Papi’s white shirt and black pants were drenched with blood.
Victor slapped a dressing on the open chest wound. Felipe’s teeth were clenched. His gurgled breathing was erratic. I put on a non-rebreather.
“We’ll strap him down later. We’ve got to move,” Victor said.
Felipe started seizing. It took five deputies to clear the way for us back to the ambulance. We saw three more ambulances and a fly car at the curb. When the crowd saw Felipe shaking, a man shouted, “Do something, he’s dying! What’s the matter with you? Don’t let him die!”
Someone pushed me from behind. I turned and decked the man. Victor kept pushing the stretcher forward and in the confusion, we made it through. Three cops came to our aid and held the crowd back while we loaded Felipe.
In the back, Victor gave Felipe Valium to stop the seizing, and intubated him while I drove and patched. “Shooting to the head and chest. Two minutes out,” I said. “We’ll need help unloading.”
The hospital sent out two techs to greet us. When they opened the back door, Victor was doing CPR. In the trauma room they opened Felipe’s chest and did open cardiac massage just like they did with Pat, but to no avail. With his head injury, it was surprising they even went that far.
“Wild scene, huh?” Victor said when he met me outside while I cleaned off the stretcher.
“Did you hear who shot him?”
Mortal Men Page 16
