“You still working with Verdis?” he asked me.
“For now,” I said. “But I still consider you my partner. I’d transfer in a minute to work with you if you came back.”
“Like that’s happening,” he said.
“I’m just saying I would.” Then, “Have you looked anywhere else?”
“Fuck, no. They’d say. ‘What’re you applying for, you baby-killing skel?’”
“Like they’d say that.”
“Maybe not to my face.”
“You’re a great medic, Rut. Everyone knows that.”
“Was. Not anymore.”
“Someone would hire you if you really want to work,” I said.
I took the application from my pocket and unfolded it. I held it out.
“I got this at NYU. You should apply.”
“Ah, fuck that, you’re dreaming,” he said. “They’d send me to the psych unit.”
He dropped the application on the sidewalk. I picked it up, made as if I’d try to hold it out to him again, but he just kept walking. I folded it and hurried after him. I could see he’d gone from imagining he’d work as a medic again and that it would all blow over to imagining that everyone had written him off and thought of him as a total skel. They were two extremes. Neither was true.
We stopped at a bench in Morningside Park. We sat near a little oak tree with skinny branches and the dried leaves still on the twigs rattling with the wind. I said, “I saw the kid the other day in the NICU.”
“So what?”
“So he’s alive. He’s healthy. Nothing wrong with him.”
His face lit up for a moment. Then he was angry at himself for being happy. He sat there, head turned away.
“You think that’s good news?”
“Yeah.”
“It’ll just make it worse later on. He’ll end up an orphan, brain-damaged, crack-addicted, HIV positive. The state’ll spend a million dollars on him—and for what?—what kind of life?—wouldn’t it be better to give that million dollars to someone else?”
“Yeah,” I said faintly. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“So why you bring it up like it’s a good thing he’s alive?”
“Cause nothing bad’s happened to the kid. So, we didn’t do anything bad. I mean, I thought ... I’d go see the kid again. And you could come.”
“Oh, come on, Cross. Do you really think I want to see that fucking kid?” I was quiet. “You’re not that much of a rookie. You know the deal.”
“I know I was glad he was OK,” I said.
Rutkovsky made a noise in his throat like he’d spit.
“Why should I care what happens to that fucking kid? No one else gives a fuck. The newspapers don’t report anything above Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. The city doesn’t spend any money up here. Landlords walk away leaving burnt-out shells. The place goes to shit. No one even notices. And they definitely don’t give a fuck about what happens to me or anyone in EMS. We grind ourselves down trying to make it a little better until we can’t do it anymore and we get kicked out with a shitty pension that I can’t live on and shitty health care. That’s the reality. We all know it. I was getting put out to pasture. So, fuck it. I see some bitch cutting the cord with a crack pipe, kid addicted to crack at birth, lying there in that infected blood, set up to have a miserable fucking life. I think, What chance does that kid have? What’s it gonna be like for him? What does he have to look forward to? So, I said fuck it. I was in a position to help him. Where it didn’t fucking matter for me. I chose not to treat.”
I looked at him. I didn’t say anything.
“And don’t think I’m claiming to be some do-gooder. I didn’t do it to save the kid his miserable fucking life. At least I can look at it honestly. I did it cause I was sick of it. Cause I’d had enough. Big deal. Whatta ya care?”
I was quiet.
“Oh, fuck, Ollie. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.You’ve only been out here nine months, but it doesn’t take long to figure out what the fucking deal is. It sucks up here. No one gives a fuck. And we have to wade through all the miserable shit. That’s our job. Don’t you get sick of it?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m already sick of it. But I had no idea what you were doing with the baby. And I’m glad he’s OK.”
He laughed.
“You’re a coward,” he said.
“What are you, then?”
“Not a coward,” he said.
A black cloud crossed my brain, and I whispered, “Murderer.”
We were both silent, looking at each other—a feeling like we’d been coming to that moment for a long time. He held his lips shut and then said, “At least I’m not a coward.” I thought he’d just walk away, but he didn’t. He turned, but after a moment he turned back, suddenly penitent, and reached out to shake my hand.
“You came out to try to help me. I get it. I’ll see you later, Cross.”
I didn’t shake his hand. I was angry. He drew his hand back, turned abruptly, and left without saying good-bye.
Later that day I lay in bed with the lights off thinking about how he’d said he’d done it because he felt like it, because he could, because why not. He had all the excuses for what he’d done—that the kid was HIV positive, was probably brain damaged, would have a horrible life—but in the end he had not used these excuses. He said he did it because he felt like it. I thought about that for a long time.
“Where the fuck is he? Just tell me where he is?”Verdis shouted, pacing back and forth in the middle of the street, furious. I’d never seen him lose his temper like that. I’d never even heard him swear. “Where the fuck is he?”
He was looking for a perp who’d put a gun to Marmol’s head.
Marmol had been sitting in his ambulance near the hospital when a paroled convict jerked the door open, held a gun to his head,yanked him from the seat, got in himself, and drove away. Two seconds later Marmol was on his portable radio, laughing as he told the dispatcher that he was out of service because his ambulance had been hijacked. The ambulances were about the most conspicuous vehicles on the street, and the hospital was two blocks from the precinct. It was all pretty stupid.They caught the guy within five minutes, and afterward, Marmol, Rivett,Verdis, LaFontaine, and I were standing on the street outside the hijacked ambulance, which was half up on the sidewalk near the playground at 135th and Madison. There were eight patrol cars parked at crazy angles, lights flashing, and Verdis was pacing back and forth on the street, looking through all the cop cars, muttering, “We’re out here trying to help people and he’s pulling a fucking gun. I wanna see him. Where is he? Where the fuck is this guy?”
Verdis saw a cop get out of the ambulance and realized the thief was handcuffed to the stretcher in the back. Verdis jumped inside. A moment later three cops came out. Apparently Verdis had told them he wanted to be alone with the guy. Verdis was such a do-gooder that no one imagined anything really bad would happen.
Through the windows we could see Verdis leaning over the stretcher, thrashing the guy around, shouting at him: “Pulling a gun on my partner. On my fucking partner!”
“Gotta love it,” LaFontaine said. “He’s supposed to be the good one.”
“He is the good one,” Rivett said. “Never gonna see him get angry at a patient or a family member. But you mess with one of us, that’s another story. That’s him protecting his home. You forget that he was a soldier.”
“That guy’s not gonna forget,” LaFontaine said, almost with admiration.
We could see Verdis inside the ambulance, arms reaching down, shaking a little.
Marmol was talking to two cops, telling them what had happened, sketching the whole thing out on a notepad in a series of frames. He glanced up to see Verdis’s shape through the back window of the ambulance. He walked over and peered in the window. Then opened the door and said, “Hey, enough,Verdis.” We could see Verdis with his hands on the guy’s neck. Marmol watched a momen
t, then slammed the door and stepped back. “Someone do something. You know Verdis. He’s a nut. He’ll kill him.”
“Let him,” LaFontaine said. “The guy pulled a gun on us. Fuck that skel. And think about it. If it’s Verdis who does it ...” Rivett was already stepping up. “Leave him,” LaFontaine said again. “Let’s see what happens.” But Rivett had opened the back door. He jumped into the ambulance. I followed him. Verdis was leaning over the stretcher, very calm, his eyes distant and flat, like he was concentrating. The thief’s face was purple. He’d stopped struggling and was lying there looking up, eyes glazed.
“Verdis!” Rivett said in a hard voice. “Verdis! You’ll kill him.”
You got the feeling Verdis didn’t hear anything Rivett said. Rivett tried to pry Verdis’s hands off the guy’s neck. He couldn’t do it. Finally he grabbed Verdis by the jaw and turned his head. Rivett looked Verdis in the eye.
“Stop. Stop. You’re killing him. Stop.”
Verdis’s hands loosened. The guy gasped for breath.
“You wanna kill him, do it when I’m off duty. Jesus. Give me a headache.”
Verdis jumped out of the ambulance and started pacing. The cops went back in. I heard the guy saying, “He tried to kill me.You saw that.”
“Shut up,” the cop said, and there was a smacking sound.
Outside the ambulance, LaFontaine stood on his heels. He looked disappointed.
“You had to interfere,” he said to Rivett. “Think of what that would’ve done to Verdis. If he killed someone. I mean, God, it would’ve been beautiful.”
Later that night, in the slow hour before midnight, Verdis told me the story of how he became a paramedic and why he’d freaked out that afternoon.
“I was in a seminary high school, getting ready to be a priest. My mom was religious. She dressed me in this little black suit with a clip-on bow tie and I got all kinds of shit in the neighborhood. Hey, Verdis, nice tie! Hey, Verdis, shine my shoes ...’ So then I’m seventeen, don’t know anything, and I’m getting ready to go to a seminary college. But they don’t give the SATs at the seminary high school and I had to go to a regular high school to take them. I met a girl that day after the tests. That night there was a Sadie Hawkins dance. And, oh Lord, she asked me to go with her, and that was it. I went to the dance. I decided I wasn’t going to be a priest. It was 1969. Within the year I was drafted. My mama had always made sure we enunciated clearly. So they made me a radio operator. I was attached to the worst sergeant in the army. I was just a kid and suddenly I’m sending these orders that killed hundreds of people. I’m not exaggerating. Hundreds of people died because of those orders. And I knew it. I thought the best thing I could do was to kill the sergeant and then commit suicide. I’m serious. If I was brave, that’s what I’d have done. I saw it clearly. The best thing I could do was kill that sergeant. I loaded my gun. I came up behind the sergeant. I raised the gun to his head. But I couldn’t do it. I put the gun to my own head. I couldn’t do that, either.And so I just went on. I kept relaying the orders. For two years. When I got back to New York I started in on drinking, drugs. I lost a few years. But my people looked out. Friends in this neighborhood. My family. People at church ... You know, in my mind, the orders I relayed, I was responsible for hundreds of deaths. I’ll never make up for that. Never. But you can sit around and worry about all the bad things you’ve done, or you can look forward to what you can do now. And I do look forward to it. I love this job. I hope I never have to do anything else. So when someone interferes with us, tries to keep me from treating, I lose it. I freak out ...”
Over the next week I tried to see Rutkovsky three times. I wanted to tell him what had happened with Verdis and to tell him the story Verdis had told me. I thought it would make him feel better. Like if Verdis could lose it, then it could happen to anyone. Each time I knocked at Rutkovsky’s door for at least five minutes. I called Rutkovsky’s name. I heard the television going, but he never answered.
The call came over as “a man shot in the park.”
We arrived to find three Dominican kids standing in a group pointing toward a lump in the grass near some trees. When I asked how the guy was doing, the one kid shook his head and said, “He ain’t makin’ it,” and turned away.
The guy’s jacket and wallet were in a pile ten feet from where he’d shot himself As soon as we saw him Verdis waved for me to go back to the ambulance and set up. Meanwhile, Verdis cut the guy’s clothes off and lifted the guy into the stretcher with the help of the three kids and rushed him to the ambulance. Unbelievably, the guy was still breathing when I got him. From what I’m told this is not uncommon. If the gun is placed beneath the chin and fired up vertically, the entire face can be shot off without hitting the brain. The patient dies gradually from blood loss or suffocation. This guy’s face was simply not there: one eye, like a ball, hung by its ganglia, the tongue was only attached by a narrow isthmus of flesh, and the face, or the place where you normally look for the face, was a blasted, ragged, unrecognizable mess of red meat with a hole where the mouth should have been. The guy’s upper airway was relatively undamaged. I slipped the tube in and started bagging, though without any real hope that the guy would make it. He still had a pulse when we got him into the back of the ambulance, but he lost it somewhere on the way to the hospital.
As I did chest compressions blood oozed from his face, ran in rivulets down the tube, and bubbled from his ears.
We rushed him into the trauma room and flopped him onto the stretcher where four doctors surrounded him, but could not get his pulse back, which is what they all expected. Traumatic arrests almost never come back. After I washed up and tried to scrub the blood from my clothing, I went out into the lobby to see a growing number of techs, medics, and lieutenants, all wandering about crazily, saying,“Who’s the M.O.S.? Who’s the M.O.S.?” I had no idea what they were talking about. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back I was practically stampeded.
“Hey Cross. You treated him. Tell us! Who was it?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Your patient was a member of the service.”
“He wasn’t,” I said. “He was a civilian.”
“The cops said he was M.O.S.”
“Well ask the cops, then. They have his wallet.”
The medics cornered the policeman. A cry went up. When I heard who it was my heart dropped. It really wasn’t such a coincidence. There were only three medic units above 125th Street. That was my area. And perhaps he even knew I was on and did it at that time on purpose, as a last gesture, or even, maybe, as a joke, by the man who I once thought could make a joke about anything.
I identified the body at the coroner.They don’t show you the actual corpse, but a Polaroid of the head and torso. In the picture the coroner had draped the loose skin back over the face so it had a gross resemblance to Rutkovsky. I only glanced at the photograph, then looked away quickly, not wanting to remember him like that.
For months I dreamt of him in that picture.
To avoid an explosive birth, which can damage both mother and newborn, a single hand is placed gently on the head, counterpressure is applied, and as the baby emerges, it is turned clockwise, ninety degrees, to the right.
We were around grieving families every day. Half the time we were the ones telling the family members matter-of-factly what had happened, then turning away, trying not to roll our eyes at the hysterics that followed, feeling all that carrying-on was tiresome, embarrassing. For us, some random person dying was part of the job. It was no big deal. But when one of our own died we did all the theatrical things that everyone else did—we bawled and broke things and hung on each other.We got drunk and wept in public.We cursed the station and the city and the job and the neighborhood and ourselves. At Rutkovsky’s wake half the station was bawling. At the funeral practically everyone except me got up and spoke and said what a great guy he was and how he gave everything to the neighborhood and for the service and how it fucke
d him in the end and how he was a martyr for EMS, though we all knew it wasn’t as clear as that. At the burial I was asked to stand up front, but I refused. I don’t know why. I didn’t want to be part of the proceedings. I didn’t even want to be there, really. I stood in the very back and lowered my head and hardly listened. It was snowy and frigid—a windy, miserable day—and we were all dark lumps in the gray winter light. As soon as it was over I walked away quickly. I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t accept a ride home. I took the subway and the first thing I did when I got to the studio was unplug the phone. It was months before I plugged it back in.
Two days after the funeral I walked back into the lounge of the station. I had two weeks off, but I came back after two days. The conversation died down as I entered. Marmol put a hand on my shoulder.
“How you doin?”
“I’m all right.”
Verdis got up and patted my back.
“Hang in there, Cross.”
LaFontaine said, “Best medic in New York. Left hanging. A fuckin’ tragedy.”
I nodded, murmured it was true, it was a tragedy, and went on past them and on into Rivett’s office. He was at his desk holding a plastic fork over a plate of rice and beans. He was surprised to see me.
“I got two weeks off,” I said. “I know that. I don’t want it. I want to work.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. I’d rather work. Give the time off to someone else.”
Black Flies Page 13
