Bad Call

by Mike Scardino

  I no ride in no ambulance.

  Nothing sweet about her demeanor now. I think she’s channeling Nana.

  One of the cops chimes in, Dear, you need to come along with these nice men and you don’t want to make a fuss for your neighbors to see, do you.

  They no gonna see me go in no ambulance.

  There’s the rub. She’s embarrassed to ride in an ambulance. So many people are. So many people—even the ones who don’t have paper on them that says they have to go—turn RMA (refused medical aid) on us. These are people with all kinds of ailments, most often men with chest pains. We sometimes literally beg them to go, and they still refuse, often with dire consequences. Not the manly thing, you know. But it isn’t just the men.

  Once Jose and Eddie had a midnight call for a thirteen-year-old girl with abdominal pains. They were sure it was appendicitis. They begged her to go with them. Her parents begged, cried, yelled, and pleaded, and she still wouldn’t go. In the early morning a call came in at the same address: possible DOA. This did not have to happen.

  But it won’t happen in this case. This lady can’t RMA, and Lenny and I gently take her by the arms to escort her out into the ambulance, where she is the obvious center of attention of a couple dozen pairs of neighborly eyes. She is silent now, staring straight ahead. She’ll never live this down, and I feel sorry for her for that.

  She won’t sit on the stretcher, so I sit her down on the bench next to me. Her daughter says she’ll meet us there. I guess she doesn’t want to be seen riding in an ambulance, either.

  Mom is suddenly very quiet, with her eyes closed. We’re under way to EGH. Her eyes are opening very slowly, and only the whites are visible. I have to stifle a smirk. We see the old white eye a lot, and it always means one thing: phony baloney. We see it the most when people are trying to fake unconsciousness. Very often in family disputes, where someone collapses in a fake faint or when someone is pretending they’ve been knocked out by a blow or other injury. You open their eyelids to take a look at their pupils and whoa, what’s this—there are no pupils. They’ve rolled up their eyeballs in a creditable imitation of a voodoo celebrant in maximum mojo mode.

  The thing is, when you’re really out, or dead, your eyes relax into the pupils-straight-ahead position. So if you’re planning to fake being out or dead anytime soon, keep this in mind and try to stare straight ahead.

  Her eyes are all white and scary when I begin to ask her the personal information we need to fill out our pink call sheets. What’s your full name, date of birth, all the standard stuff. I’m in the middle of a sentence when we have the following conversation. She speaks in a firm, loud, and surprisingly unaccented monotone:

  I AM THE VOICE OF JESUS CHRIST.

  LET GO A THIS WOMAN RIGHT NOW.

  SHE AIN’T GOT NOTHING WRONG WITH HER.

  LET GO A THIS WOMAN RIGHT NOW.

  Dear, when is your birthday…

  I AM THE VOICE OF JESUS CHRIST…

  DO NOT INTERRUPT.

  I’ve only cried a couple of times on the ambulance, but those were tears of pathos rather than suppressed mirth, which is now the case. Lenny is hearing all this and looking back. There seems to be the faint outline of an actual expression on his normally blank face. I would have to describe it as a smile. Lenny has smiled. The voice of Jesus has worked another miracle. The Miracle of Roosevelt Avenue.

  Ma’am, you need to tell me how old you are. We’re approaching the Roosevelt Avenue–Seventy-Fourth Street IRT elevated station. We’ll be passing under it. For a split second, I see her pupils flip back down. She sees where we are.

  I AM THE VOICE OF JESUS CHRIST.

  IF YOU DO NOT LET THIS WOMAN OUT I GONNA MAKE THESE TRACKS FALL DOWN AND KILL ALL A YOU.

  Lenny taps the brakes almost imperceptibly when he hears what she—I mean Jesus—has to say. Not enough to come to a stop but enough to slow us down so he can digest the full import of what our onboard prophet has just said. When Lenny touches the brakes, I burst out roaring with laughter. Completely out of control. I was trying so hard to keep it in. Now I’m whimpering into my elbow with high-pitched laughter, wiping off the tears on the short sleeve of my shirt. Through all this, I have to say that I am actually just a little curious as to what will happen when we go under the El tracks, as we must, to get to EGH.

  It is impossible not to look up as we approach the overhead rails.

  Our patient is smiling smugly, eyes shut tight. She’s waiting for the doom she knows will claim us all. As we ease our way under the elevated tracks, a passing number 7 train, as if on cue, produces a racket loud enough to give us a start. But we emerge safe and sound. Her smug smile turns into an impassive mask. Neither she nor Jesus has another word to say to us.

  I can’t believe Lenny was spooked enough by the voice of Jesus to hit the brakes. He’s not a Catholic. He’s not even a Christian. But I guess it really doesn’t matter.

  When it’s Jesus talking, you pay attention.

  The Least We Can Do

  This is more like it. It’s unusually quiet tonight, thank God. It’s past midnight, and we’ve only had a couple of calls since we got on at 6:00 p.m. Looks like I may get some sleep in the meat-locker-cold X-ray room. I can’t wait. I am so exhausted all the time because of this job. The hours are really killing me. The worst part about getting some sleep is you’re always on edge. It’s rare that you can sleep more than fifteen or thirty minutes without a call coming in. On rare occasions, you can get a couple of hours or more. But it only helps a little. This interrupted sleep cycle has really messed me up, to the point where I can’t sleep well even when I’m home, after working twelve hours all night or for twenty-four—sometimes thirty-six—hours straight.

  I’m on tonight with Andy. We get along great. We’re both aware that this might be a night to catch a few winks, and it has us in a jolly frame of mind. Like they say, It’s the simple things. But there’s a problem. We’re both so stoked at the prospect of sleep that we’re not sleepy. So we’re sitting up talking when a call comes in. It’s a man down—on a ship.

  A ship. Man down. Don’t they say man overboard when it’s a ship. Why not call the Coast Guard, Andy says, only half kidding. Do we even do ships. I certainly never have. It’s almost 2:00 a.m., and the call is at one of the piers in the East River, so we’d better get moving. It’s about as long a run as we ever make, and it will take a bit of time to get there, even with negligible 2:00 a.m. traffic.

  I’ve never been down here before, and Andy says he hasn’t, either. There are no police to be seen, which is unusual. Maybe they have more pressing business elsewhere or maybe the call just got lost in the shuffle. We can’t wait for them. We’ve parked the bus behind a building that seems to house equipment and the office section of the piers. There’s a lone man waiting here, apparently for us, because he’s walking over even before Andy shuts off the engine. He says he’ll take us to the ship, with a slight accent that I can’t immediately place. He says a crewman has hurt his back and needs to be looked at in a hospital. How did he hurt his back. The man isn’t sure.

  We turn the corner of the building, and there’s the ship. Holy Mother of God. It is absolutely huge. Stories and stories high, towering against the Manhattan skyline. It’s just gigantic. The Mount Everest of all ships. Am I challenged to make an ascent. Hell no. Why not. To deliberately misinterpret George Mallory: Because it’s there.

  I’m afraid of heights. Not heights per se, but being in high places. They make me sweaty, panicky, and disoriented. The usual. I’ve been afraid of heights all my life and take little comfort in the fact that I share this fear with millions.

  The closer we walk to this natant Godzilla, the bigger it gets and the sicker I feel. We’re at the edge of the pier, and the black water is far, far below. Way down there. So we’re already pretty high up—and the ship climbs monumentally higher from there. She’s riding high—the red paint that marks her waterline is well out of the water. She’s empty of cargo.<
br />
  Our guide sees me staring at the ship and must be reading my mind, because he starts to tell me about it. It’s a cement ship from Sweden. What’s that now. At this hour of the morning, or probably at any time of the day, the idea of importing cement from Sweden just doesn’t make sense. Anyway, this explains his accent. He nods and points to a very high spot on the ship as a signal that we need to get on up there. Is that where he is. The man nods.

  It gets worse. Our guide (he says his name is Jim, which doesn’t sound very Swedish) is leading us to the gangplank. Oh holy shit. It’s really long and really narrow and really flimsy, and it slopes up to the ship from the side of the dock. There are thin ropes on either side. It’s barely wide enough for a normal-sized person to walk on—and Andy and I are far from what you would call normal sized. Each of us weighs in excess of two hundred pounds, with Andy well in excess of that. Not fat, stocky. Heavyset. Okay, maybe a little fat. So we’re heavy and wide is the point. That water is way down there. We have to go across. There is no other way onto the ship.

  Not only is this one of my worst nightmares, sprung to synapse-triggering, adrenaline-spurting life, but I realize I will have to repeat it, maybe three more times, depending on what equipment we will have to bring up from the ambulance to remove the injured sailor. Imagine the most flexible diving board you’ve ever been on. Then imagine it with four-hundred-plus pounds of human flesh flexing it up and down. Then imagine it being, I don’t know, maybe forty feet or more from the water’s surface. You may be close to forming an image of our journey across the gangplank.

  This is absolutely and without a doubt shaping up as one of the most terrifying experiences of my nineteen-year life. I can’t even imagine what may be yet to come. Maybe I won’t have to worry about that. Maybe it will end right here, tonight.

  Our patient is way the hell up in a room somewhere at the very top of the bridge, which is like a small skyscraper at the rear of the ship. Like a city stuck on top of a boat. On a ship like this, as on most ships, there are no staircases, just ship ladders, nearly vertical steps with handrails on either side. The kind the navy guys slide down in the movies when the captain sounds general quarters. What fun they seem to have doing that.

  Andy and I look at each other. How are we going to bring this guy down these ladders, much less climb them with our stuff: stretcher or backboard. It has to be one or the other, since we’d never transport a back injury any other way than flat. Well, let’s get up there and see what we’ve got.

  Up and up and up and many ladders later, here we are—and someone is not a happy Swedish camper.

  Our patient is on his side, slightly bent, lying on the floor. His name is Sten. He won’t let anybody move him. He won’t let anybody even touch him. Jim says nobody has, although this is clearly not where he got hurt and he has to have been moved, which could have caused worse damage. I think this must be Jim’s office area or something. No one knows what happened—they just found him like this. So we don’t know if it’s a possible fracture or he just bent over and slipped a disc. Sten isn’t talking, either. Just yowling at the top of his lungs.

  Sten is experiencing what, in my brief and purely empirical study of the subject, I have come to term maximum pain. Maximum pain is scream inducing and will not abate without the advent of shock or drugs or death. This is pain during which the patient is fully conscious and probably aware of the fact that this pain is not normal pain and will not necessarily go away without dramatic intervention. So there is terror in the screams. Because of these criteria, even though it is intense and scream inducing, I don’t include labor during childbirth in this category. I understand the pain of childbirth is horrendous, but it has peaks and valleys and, of course, hopefully, a wonderful reward when it’s over.

  The kind of pain I’m seeing has no peaks or valleys or reward at the end. It’s all peaks. My list so far of things that cause maximum pain: burns, kidney stones, and a good many back and neck injuries. Other than treating screamers as gently as we can and trying to keep our own nervous systems in check, there is absolutely nothing we can do. We have nothing to give them. No drugs. None of those little morphine syrettes you see the medics give the wounded in war movies. Not even aspirin. Not one thing.

  We need to get Sten to the hospital as soon as we can. Do we climb back down all the stairs and over the (insert expletive here) gangplank and back with our stuff. What stuff do we bring with us. The stretcher. The backboard. If we bring the backboard, we’ll have to literally lash him to the board—we have straps for that in the ambulance, like seat belts.

  Andy and I agree—there is no time to lose, and it’s questionable whether we can make it up the ladders with either the stretcher or the backboard.

  Jim, do you guys have a hoist or something.

  No.

  Do you have a stretcher on board.

  No. All we have is this. It’s a folding aluminum wheelchair, the kind with the tiny rubber wheels and red vinyl padding, virtually identical to the one we have on the ambulance.

  Does Jim have any straps. Yes, he has those, too.

  Andy is deep in thought, looking at the chair, then at me, then at Sten. And he makes a decision that makes me glad I’m not him. We can take Sten down strapped into this chair.

  This is definitely not protocol and extremely risky. Sten is screaming a little less now—I check his pulse, and it’s still strong, and his color is good. In fact, it’s great—his face is red as a tomato from yelling. Jim, please ask Sten if he can move his feet. We ask Jim to ask Sten, because we assume Sten has no English—but he understands us, and it seems to help him focus a little, between his spasms of agony. Sten obligingly moves his feet. At least he isn’t already paralyzed. If we make him paralyzed by bending him to fit into the chair, God help us both and Sten, too. Andy seems to think it’s an acceptable risk. Best not to ask Sten what he thinks, just now.

  We’re going to have to move you, Sten. We’re going to put you on this chair and carry you down. We need you to cooperate. Can you do that. It’s going to hurt. We hope it will hurt. If it stops hurting, we’re all in big trouble. Sten gets a very thoughtful look on his face and grimly nods okay. I’m thinking that he’s thinking, How are these two bozos going to do this. So at least we’re all on the same page with that. None of us has a clue. We’re just going to have to do it.

  Sten screams when we lift him. Horror-movie caliber. Bloodcurdling. My nervous system is getting the workout of a lifetime tonight. Now he’s in a sitting position in the chair, groaning loudly. We cover him with a blanket and strap his arms to the sides of the chair as well as we can—there are no armrests. We strap his legs. Bitter experience teaches us that, in the patient-toting business, loose arms can spell disaster when a panicked patient reaches out for a handrail, banister, or newel post, and everyone goes down the stairs in an avalanche of arms, legs, brainpans, and spinal columns.

  Andy and I don’t have to ask each other how we’re going to do this, at this point. I will take the bottom and go down backward, and he will take the top, as always. Sometimes, when there are cops on the scene, I’ll get a helpful hand in the form of a fist wrapped around my belt, pushing in and upward against the small of my back. Not this time.

  Also, this time, I will be able to use only one arm on the chair. The other will have to hold the railing. Andy will go down face forward, holding the top of the chair with one hand and the railing with the other. It all sounds pretty cut-and-dried in theory. In reality, it will take everything we’ve got to pull it off.

  No one I work with at St. John’s is what you’d call Charles Atlas material or even close. We’re as strong as we have to be. Some of the people we have to carry—when it’s possible for only two to make the carry—are very heavy. A lot of them live in walk-up buildings, several stories up. We have our techniques, but at the end of the day, it comes down to strength, balance, and that secret ingredient, adrenaline. I have to think that this indispensable hormone may be good for at lea
st a 50 percent increase in carrying power.

  And I am going to need all the carrying power I can muster to get Sten down these ladders backward, one-handed, then over the bouncing gangplank (now to be burdened with around six hundred pounds) and into our waiting ambulance. I should have plenty of adrenaline available, because I’m scared shitless.

  We begin our descent. Thankfully, Sten has settled down. Abject terror can temporarily override even the worst pain, and I have to think Sten is even more terrified at the thought of making this trip—from this height, facing forward into the night air, with arms and legs immobilized—than we are. So is this your first trip to the Big Apple, Mr. Sten. How do you like the view.

  I’m trying not to think about the height or the fact that there’s no one behind me or what will happen if Andy loses his grip or balance or if Sten frees an arm and grabs the railing. I’m trying not to think at all as I feel my way backward down each step. It’s exhausting, and we have to rest after each ladder. We’re finally down. Oh Jesus: we’re going to walk the plank. At least if this is our time to go, it will be with some sense of the romance of the high seas.

  Well, we made it. Thank God—I sincerely mean that, God.

  Move your feet for us, Sten. He still can. One more tricky part to go. The Unfolding of Sten. Could be a good title for an Ingmar Bergman movie. If we can get him laid out more or less flat on the stretcher without any obvious bad effects—like paralysis, for instance—we’re almost home free. We begin unfolding. Sten resumes screaming. Oh man. At last, Sten is out flat, if not cold. His screaming has stopped. We take our time strapping him down and lift him very deliberately into the back of the ambulance. One more time:

  Sten, can you move your feet.

  Yes.

  Ready to go.

  On the way, Sten asks for a cigarette. This is taboo in the ambulance, because of the oxygen. Just something you don’t even think about doing—and we all smoke like fiends.