here is an encore presentation of the paradise ambulance saga, in its complete unedited unabridged entirety. i thought this would make it easier for those who have not yet read it and those feeling the need to reread it. now that the new year and my birthday have come and gone, it is time for me to start edits and rewrites. i will post the edited chapters as i finish them, so you can all tell me what you think. then i will be sending it out in the hopes of getting published. then i will start on book 2. thank you all for taking the time to enjoy my work, and as always, please share with anyone you think might enjoy a good laugh.
and remember, THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION.
without further adieu…
JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE
Look at me. Look what I’ve become. Sitting here, my boots unzipped, one foot propped up on the dash, slouched in the passenger seat. Hat pulled down over my eyes partly obscuring a five o’clock shadow that’s about 36 hours past the point of needing to shave. The proud star-of-life emblem blazing on the shoulder of my unbuttoned, wrinkled, and untucked “uniform” shirt. To complete the ensemble a slight drop of drool exits the corner of my mouth and I give a little slurp to capture it.
Look at me. Look what I’ve become.
I work at a “private”, Paradise Ambulance Service to be specific. Our squads are the ones you see cruising down the roads with the palm tree and the gaudy orange and pink sunset blazing on the side. We charge by the mile, so we’ll go anywhere, and we go everywhere. I’m sure dispatch would tell us to drive Jesus into the bowls of hell if he was paying the fee, that is, of course, if our ancient, busted ass trucks actually make the trip.
Now, don’t get me wrong, we EMS professionals are very proud to be what we are, and worked very hard to get our certifications, but private EMS is not what you dream of when you say to yourself that you want to go work on an ambulance. Imagine, you take an adrenaline junky, say a race car driver, for example. You train him to drive this bad-ass car at super speeds. You give him all the knowledge of the vehicle, how it runs, how to fix it, how to push it to the max and win. You show him how to drive different tracks and give him skills and techniques for being at the top of his game. Then, you hand him the keys to a station wagon and tell him to take granny to get groceries.
That’s what you have when a fireman/EMT works a private ambulance.
Why do we do it? It boils down to one simple word: MONEY. Getting on a career fire department is the goal of most of my brothers and sisters, but it isnt always so easy. No openings, budgets cuts, or maybe you just don’t have a career department all that close by. There can be a lot of reasons, but the simple fact is that most of your fire and EMS are volunteers who get paid very little, if anything, and do what they do for the love of helping people who need them. But this dosnt put food on the table.
So we get a job for a private, and become jaded.
And bored.
So bored.
Today I’m posting at a hospital. Posting is when an ambulance sits in the parking lot of a hospital, or a specific area of a city, in order to be close by when a call from a hospital comes in. the theory being that if you’re close by you will get there faster, and if you get there faster you will get called before one of the other companies. It really doesn’t seem to make much of a difference from the ambulance crews’ perspective, and really just comes down to equaling paid loitering.
Why would a hospital call an ambulance? Unlike your local fire department, privates don’t do a lot of emergency calls. When a person is in the hospital and needs to go to a nursing home, or another hospital, someone has to take them. Privates are also called to take people to doctor’s appointments that can’t sit in a car or get around very well, be it from home or from a nursing home. Your local fire department doesn’t have the resources or time to do these things, so someone has to do it. Occasionally we are called on an “emergency” call to a nursing home which usually consists of something not serious enough to call 911 for and could probably be fixed if the nurse had half a brain. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll get one eventually, then you’ll see what I mean.
So here I sit. I’m Red, by the way. It’s not the most original nickname, but its mine and I’ve had it my whole life, so it is what it is. I have a partner here at Paradise, Barry Glazer, I call him “the bear”. He’s six foot eight, about 180 pounds, and has a handle bar mustache; he’s the guy you want pulling you out of a fire. He’s snoring on the cot in the back of the truck. Bear and I both volunteer for the township fire departments where we live, but met very oddly on my first day of work at Paradise.
It was a cold, miserable day in north-eastern Ohio. If you don’t know what a Cleveland winter is like, you don’t really know the meaning of the word “winter”. I was finally done with my week’s worth of training videos explaining everything from company policy to the proper way to work a patient cot. I got out of my little jalopy and skated through the parking lot on an inch and a half of ice. After nearly falling twice, I paused at the door to the squad bay hand out-stretched, trying to remember the damn code to the lock. The door flew open, almost taking my hand with it, and out barreled an angry Bear. I looked up, and up, till I finally found eyes full of flame.
“You the new guy?” He asked with furry.
“Yeah.” Was all I had time to reply.
“You’re a fucking idiot for working here!”
He crossed the parking lot in three of his gigantic strides, his truck door slammed, and he was gone. The entire exchange took just long enough for the door to close again as I watched him pull from the parking lot. As I turned back to it, two thoughts went through my head: “that’s officially my favorite employee here” and “damn, I still can’t remember that code”.
So, after working with various characters, which I’m sure you’ll meet in time, I ended up happily on a shift with Bear. We work a 12 hour shift that rotates on a biweekly basis. Its more trouble than it’s worth to explain, just rest assured that we spend a lot of time together. Now, a fire department is kind of like a high school, it includes all the drama, ribbing, and relationship hopping you would expect from a high school student. A private is more like junior high. The difference between private ambulance and junior high being we can’t fight without going to jail and the relationship hopping is between partners on the squad, not male/female reproductive issues. Though, that does happen too. Simply put, everyone has a “niche” within their “click”.
At Paradise, we have two “clicks”: the east side base and the west side base. Bear and I work out of the west side base, which means that’s where we punch in every morning only to be sent anywhere but close to base. We, of the west side base, do more work than the east side base, always coming across town to catch the over flow of runs they have while they are all sitting on their lazy asses doing nothing. And the east side base is full of scrubs and worthless EMTS. These two opinions are the exact same opinions the east side base has of us.
They are wrong of course; remember they’re all worthless scrubs.
As for our “niche”, I like to think of myself as the “smart well educated guy amongst hill jacks”, but I’m probably the “idiot”. We never really know our own social niche, do we? Bear is the “chatty” guy, which makes him less desirable to some as a partner, but I love him for it. It makes the day go faster, when he isn’t snoring.
“Base to 202.”
“Go for 202.”
“201 did you get the page I sent?”
With the mic button pressed: “that’s a negative, no page received”. After releasing the button: “If I had received a page I would have called you over the radio and told you I received a page, you fucking moron”.
“Okay, I’ll send it again” (as if she sent it the first time) “start heading toward Our Lady of the Alms hospital”.
“Copy that, dispatch, You can show us enroute”.
I hear The Bear stir in his cave of hibernation, “We got one Red?”
“Yup”
“Smoke first?”
“Better not, I’m sure it’s an emergency.”
We laugh, get out of the truck, and light up.
“Base to 202.”
Bear grabs the mic, “Goat head”.
“What’s your ETA?”
“Traffic was pretty backed up on the highway; we should be there in about five minutes.”
It’s Sunday morning. 0930am Sunday morning. No one believes that. Five minutes later we pull in the ER of the hospital and notify dispatch that we still have not received the info page, without which we have no clue as to what we’re doing here, who we’re picking up, what room they’re in, or where we’re taking them. She informs us that she will send it “again”, we roll our eyes. As were getting the cot ready, it has to made up after having Bear asleep on it, my pager goes off. Bear doesn’t have a pager, he “accidentally” broke his and they haven’t got around to replacing it for him; it’s been over a year.
We punch in the code and enter the ER. Immediately we hear the song of the nurses: “Who are you here for? Who are you here for?” They all hope it’s for their patient so they can get rid of them and get paid way more than we do to sit around and do nothing. They all become crestfallen when we inform them our patient is from upstairs, and we make our way through the maze and to the elevators.
After exiting the elevators and having a lively debate over which direction the room is (Bear was right, he always is) we approach the nurses’ station. Two nurses are seated there and are having a discussion about someone else, I can only assume, a third nurse. Let’s put it this way: they aren’t talking about how much they like her. I wait patiently for them to acknowledge my presence, it shouldn’t be long, it’s pretty hard to miss a 200 pound red haired guy and a guy that’s six-eight, right?
So we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Did I mention that the military has it all wrong? If they just put our soldiers in navy blue uniforms, they would be invisible. Just like EMTs. Finally one of them forgets not to make eye contact with me and can no longer pretend she has no clue I’m standing less than a foot away from her.
“Can I help you?”
“Hello, were here for room 5, a Mr. Calloway.”
“Oh, that’s Lisa’s patient.”
”Where is Lisa?”
She checks a board on the wall, shuffles some papers, looks at her watch, gets a shrug from her fellow worthless nurse, then says, “she’s in the room with the patient.”
“Ah, perfect, thank you.” I call over my shoulder as Bear drags the cot and I toward room 2305.
We get to the room, don our personal protective equipment, in other words, gloves, and go into the room. Bear gives a knock and a “helloooooo” as we enter.
Guess who’s not there? Nurse Lisa. You’re half right, the patient isn’t there either.
We give each other the “what the fuck?” look as we hear a bubbly voice in the hall say: “Oh look Mr. Calloway, you’re ride must be here!” Back into the hallway we come face to face with a wiry, not completely unpleasant looking young woman in scrubs holding a catheter bag connected to the penis of a little old man with crazy gray hair and a wide grin.
“Are you the nurse?” I ask.
(Giggles) “No, I’m just the patient care assistant.” That’s the modern, PC way of saying “nurses’ aid”. “Lisa should be up at the desk getting the paper work together.”
Imagine my joy.
The old man looks from me to Bear, Bear to me. “Okay, fellas, I’m ready to go! Do you boys own all this? You must be brothers!” He begins to try to get on the cot which has not yet been lowered to facilitate getting on to.
My well honed reflexes, all the speed, agility, and know how I received from grueling months in paramedic and fire school kick in. My hand shoots out like a coiled snake and snatches my pager from my belt. I read it again. How did my mad medic skills miss this? My advanced training allows me to miss not even the slightest of details. This fine gentleman is being transported back to Babbling Brook Nursing Facility, the home for dementia patients. I mutter as much to Bear, he gives back a “go fig”, carefully moves the old man, and lowers the cot for him.
A voice behind me says, “Are you the drivers?”
I turn to see Nurse Lisa who should be called Fat Nurse Lisa, and say, “Yes, are you the secretary?” Give me some small measure of pride here people, yes its basically adult night school, but medic school was not easy. I didn’t go through 10 months of hell on an accelerated program to be called a driver. Nurses really don’t like being called secretaries.
“I’m the nurse. Here’s his paper work. Have a good day.” She turns to leave.
“Um… is he going back with that IV? Do you want your cardiac monitor taken off him?” Ha! My powers of observation caught something! “What was he here for?”
As she is taking off the monitor and the IV: “Change in mental status.”
“He is a dementia patient who was brought to the hospital for a ‘change in mental status’?
“Yes.”
“Is this his normal mental status?”
“Yes.”
“What was his mental status when he arrived?”
“Just like this.”
“So, why was he admitted?”
“Observation. He has three bags going with him; I told his family you would take them. They will be meeting you over there.”
“Does my truck say “U-Haul” on the side?”
She actually looks at me for the first time, “What?”
I give her the “I don’t know what you mean” shrug, Bear gives the go ahead that were ready, and we begin to wheel Mr. Calloway through the hospital.
The trip to Babbling Brook was about as uneventful as one could expect when transporting a senile old man. He was actually quite pleasant. He thought that he was on vacation on a tropical island. As we walked through the hospital and out the doors he marveled at the architecture of the natives and questioned many times how they could have built such marvelous structures. He believed that we were brothers who owned a tour guide company on the island and that we were taking him for a boat tour of the island. It was a pleasant fiction that was only more convincing when he saw the god-awful mural on the side of our ambulance. We did nothing to try and dissuade his belief; in fact we even played along a bit. When we got him to his room, he said “hello waitress” to the nurse and ordered a Mai Tai. He thanked us for the trip and asked us to stay and have a cocktail with him. We respectfully declined, claiming we had other people waiting to go on the tour. A few quick signatures from the nurse, a smoke in the parking lot, and then it was off to our parking lot to sit and wait for the next run.
And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
CHAP 2… CROSSING THE RIVER STYX
“Hey, Bear, what day is it?”
“Does it really matter?” He responds from the back of the squad, I hear the clanking of O2 bottles as he answers.
“Yeah, kinda. I was hoping for Sunday, no dialysis, no doctor’s appointments.”
“It’s not Sunday.”
So here we are again, on a beautiful not-Sunday morning. The Bear and I are in the squad bay, checking our ambulance at the start of our shift. The check-out is really just a formality; we were on this truck yesterday, and the day before that, though I have no idea what days of the week those were. In EMS, especially the privates, we do the same thing every day, holidays, Mondays, Groundhog Day, your birthday, it doesn’t matter, so the days all kind of blend together. Point is we were on this truck for twenty-four of the last forty-eight hours of our lives, so we know what’s on it and what isn’t.
My pager suddenly roars at me from my belt.
Bears voice rings through the squad like a cave whose ursine inhabitant just woke from hibernation. “That better be an info page looking for someone to work today. We’re supposed to have 15 minutes to check the squad. Those fu-“
“It says we got one coming out of Holy Heart going back to Whispering Willows.”
The handle bars of his mustache quiver, shooting waves of ever darkening red through his face. “That’s like, thirty minutes away, on the East Side, then twenty-five minutes south –east of there. What the hell are the East Side crews doing?”
“They’re doing what they always do, nothing. Come on; let’s go do their job for them… Again.”
The thirty minute drive turns into forty-five after a quick stop at a Circle K for some coffee and to burn a smoke. The forty-five minute trip turns into an hour after fifteen minutes of trying to figure out which floor the dialysis center of Holy Heart Hospital and Health Haven is on. The hour turns into an hour and twenty-five minutes, because the patient is not yet done with their dialysis. One hour and thirty-five minutes after the page, we lay eyes on the patient.
The transport goes easy enough; Bear is in the back with the patient, a pleasant little old guy who is very, very pleased to be going back to his own bed. He sleeps during the ride, so does Bear. I call into dispatch as were pulling into the parking lot.
“202 to dispatch, we’re arriving at destination.”
“Copy that 202. You’re going to have another one out of there when you’re done. I’ll send the page.”
I press the mic button: “That’s clear…” I release the mic button: “…you stupid whore.”
Bear throws his pillow.
We get the nice old duffer all tucked into his bed and remove ourselves to the lobby. Don’t let this fool you; due to the fact that we are wearing our navy blue camouflage it took forever to find a nurse and obtain our required signature that states she accepted the patient and witnessed his return.
I check the pager…
Nothing.
We wait…
Bear looks at his watch…
I check Facebook on my phone…
Bear takes the pager from me and checks it…
Nothing.
Bear gets a text message, replies to it…
I update my Facebook status to something that insults the maternal ancestry of the dispatcher…
Bear mutters something that sounds like “ducking floor” under his breath…
I take back the pager and check it…
Nothing.
“Smoke?”
“Smoke.”
Shades on, we exit the building. We light up. The Bear exhales angrily and throws open the driver’s side door of the truck. The dent he kicked in it last week sparkles in the sunshine. He grabs the mic.
“202 to dispatch.”
“Go ahead 202.”
“We still haven’t received a page.”
“I’m sorry, 202, a page?”
“Yes, the page for our next run… from this facility.”
“202 where are you?”
“We are at Whispering Willows, we dropped off the patient, and now were waiting for the page for our next run.”
“202, you don’t have a run out of there.”
“You said we had another one coming out of here.”
“Negative 202… but I do need you to head back to Holy Heart.”
“Um, okay. I guess that’s where we’ll go.”
“That’s clear 202.”
We throw the cot in the back of the truck and hop in. Bear slams the gear shift into drive.
“Dispatch to 202”
Bear responds through clenched teeth, “Go ahead.”
“Head back to the West-side.”
Bear goes for the coveted mic throw, I grab it out of his hand during the wind-up. “That’s clear, dispatch. We’re enroute.”
The profanity that issues from Bears mouth is as blue as our uniforms and as long as our trip back to base.
On our way back to North Olmsted, that’s where the West-side base is, we make a quick stop up at Kam’s Corner. There is a pipe and tobacco shop there we like to frequent. The Bear fancies himself a bit a of a tobacco aficionado, and has decided that on this fine day he wants some high quality tobacco to roll his own smokes rather than the “swag” we usually smoke. Now, do not mistake me. This IS NOT a head shop, that’s down the street. We do not smoke the illegal substances, and are randomly drug tested just to make sure. There is no innuendo here. However, it is truly hilarious to see a guy in an EMS uniform, standing next to an ambulance with a palm tree and sunset mosaic, smoking a rolled cigarette that looks like a blunt. I swear I’m going to buy one of those Rastafarian hats with the fake dreads on it and make him wear it. The picture would be epic. Maybe when we decide it’s time to get fired.
Back in the truck, Bear rolls himself a smoke, and one for me, while driving with his knee, a trick he says he learned from his mom. We light them and smoke them with the windows down. About the time were getting ready to pull into base I receive another page. It instructs us to head back to the East-side, in fact to head to Holy Heart, to take a patient to the HOC, the Hospice of Cleveland. Apparently some poor soul is on his way to die, and I have the honor of being his ferryman. The Bear is far too angry for words by this point, so I lean back and close my eyes.
We back the squad into the bay. Its dark and most of the lights in the base are out. There are two empty spots next to us, the other crews are still out, and the others are all home for the evening. Bear takes up watch near the door into the offices and says “I got this, be quick”. I creep through base, quiet, cold, calculating. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I’m tachycardic, and my blood pressure must me in the 150’s. I see the dispatcher now, her back is to me, and she’s watching TV and eating something. Go figure she’s eating something. I kick the corner of the chair and send her fat ass whirling around. As her surprised face comes into view crumbs fall out of her powdered sugar caked fat lips. She gasps in horror as my hands clench around her throat. She tumbles backward out of the chair, me on top of her. I squeeze. Suddenly Bear is behind me, he grins as I release her and her immense head thuds off the floor. Her head lolls to the side and her tongue hangs out, as if trying for one last taste of her donuts before death. Bear kicks the lock on the front door of the base, forcing it open from the outside. Then we load her into the back of the ambulance and roar lights and sirens to the hospital. I vigorously give her CPR, trying to save this poor woman’s life while Bear calls the hospital and tells them how we returned to base to find someone had broken in and attacked our dispatcher.
It’s the perfect crime.
My head gets jolted forward. Were pulling into Holy Heart and Bear had to slam on the breaks; another driver must not have seen the giant box on wheels rolling down the road and cut us off, rousing me from my pleasant dreams. We pull into the ER and I tell him all about my dream. We laugh, consider it for a moment, then laugh some more.
“Nah, we’d never get away with it.”
“You’re probably right, Bear. You ready to go get this guy?”
We head in to the hospital.
Up on the floor Bear chats with a nurse that used to work for our company as an EMT while I get report on the patient from the nurse discharging the patient. It turns out among other various issues that are killing him; the patient has a nasty case of MRSA in his sputum. In other words if you get his spit on you your going to get the nastiest case of cooties you ever had.
We get him into the back of the truck and I jump in with him, it’s my turn to right the report. No sooner do the doors shut than the guy starts hocking up so nice juicy phlegm. I truly could not be happier. It sounds like he’s got a good one working up, so I grab him a basin. I hold it up to his mouth and he lets fly a good one, then goes right back to hocking. I inform him that I will leave the basin there for him to spit into if need be, and return to my chair at the head of the cot.
Not only does the patient proceed to hock and spit more of his infectious disease, he decides to make a game out of it. Instead of picking up the basin and holding it to his mouth, he just leaves it where it is and loogies for distance. He is a fine specimen of humanity; very civilized. I think maybe his arms are tangled in his blankets so I make sure they’re not and encourage him politely to hold the basin to his mouth. He leaves his arms where they are, he can use them, I saw him do it earlier, and just keeps on “spitting from the hip”.
My mind set has officially gone from “poor soul on his way to die and I have the honor of being his ferryman” to “can get the old bastard there fast enough”. I signal bear in his rear view mirror to step on it then turn on the power vent in a futile attempt to usher the patients’ virulent air born spit particles to the outside.
We drop the filthy old bastard off with little ceremony and pile back into the truck. Bear grabs the mic from the passenger seat and calls that were back in service.
“202, you’re going to have another one at your current location.”
Bear looks at me with fire behind his aviator sunglasses and responds, “are ya sure?”
“The page is on its way.”
The page informed us that we had about a half hour until the pickup time. A quick bite from the subway on the corner, a smoke, and were back at the HOC.
This lady was going from the HOC to one of the middle class burbs on the East-side, to die at home. She was a sweet, though weighty old bird and Bear had an easy time sleeping during her transport. The GPS took us to her residence straight away where I hopped out of the rig and knocked on the front door. She assured me that “someone” would be home awaiting her arrival, which is good, as the law frowns upon us just abandoning a patient with no one to care for them.
So, I knocked…
And waited…
Nothing.
I knocked again…
I rang the broken looking door bell…
I knocked harder…
Aha! I hear something. Wait, it’s a TV…
I knocked on the glass…
I knocked like the police on a raid…
Nothing.
I went back to the squad and informed Bear and the patient of our predicament. She stuck to her story of someone being there. The Bear suggested I ring the bell instead of knocking. I gave him a dead pan look and asked him if the paper work had a phone number. As he looked, I returned to the front door to try again.
This time, after knocking I tried to open the front door. I could hear the TV, surely someone must be there, so I decided to use the time honored tradition of opening the door and yelling “EMS” in your best baritone. Locked. I walked around the side of the home, to see if maybe someone was out back. It was fenced in with a 7 foot fence and a pad lock, I saw no one through the slats in the fence.
I returned to the truck where Bear was leisurely thumbing through papers, trying “with all his heart” to find a phone number. The poor old lady insisted again that someone must be there because of the two cars parked in the driveway and was almost in tears stating that she really didn’t want to have to go back to the hospice center. I don’t really blame her. I returned to the front door, big softie that I am.
I passed the open garage on my way up the drive way…
Wait. Super-Medic powers of observation don’t fail me now; that was not open before. I peered inside to see a man. He was skinny, bald, child molester mustache, wearing shorts that were too short in the ‘70s and a raggedy T-shirt. When he spotted me and the large white box on wheels sitting behind me in the street, he put down the vacuum cleaner he was emptying, removed the large, full ear covering ‘70s style headphones, then the ear plugs, and asked me if he could help me.
Soon thereafter we hefted the nice old lady into her bed and beat a retreat, leaving the gold shag carpet of her sons’ house far, far behind us.
As we were jumping on the highway, dispatch informed us that we would have another call coming out of a residence in some rural ass-backward place halfway to Pennsylvania going to the hospice center near that area. Imagine my joy. Bear was thrilled. We plugged the address into the trusty GPS and were on our way.
After a few stops along the way for smokes, we ended up dead in the middle of nowhere. We turned on the road the GPS indicated and looked for the address in question.
“131, 133, 135, 139, wait a minute… Bear, did we miss something?”
He turned around, we looked again. Still no 137.
We went for another pass, still nothing.
We saw a man flagging us down on the opposite side of the road. Bear pulled up to him and rolled down the window.
“Y’all lookin for old man Vicker?” he asked around his sparse teeth.
I replied from the passenger seat, “yeah is-“
“Did he pass away?”
“No were jus-“
“I knowed he been sick.”
“yeah, but-“
“I seen y’all passin and knowed that’s who y’all comin fer.”
“Wher-“
“Foller that dirt drive over yonder.”
Bear uttered a belated “thanks” as his window rolled back up and down the dirt road we went. We came to a small dwelling on a plot of land behind another house. It looked like it was perhaps intended to be a ranch style on a slab, but to call it such would be a gross misuse of the English language. The dirt trail we were on just sort of ended, and Bear tried to find a level spot to stop on as a cute little brunette in scrubs came out of the house waving at us. We informed dispatch that we had arrived, received static in reply, and jumped out of the truck to meet her.
Before she could say a word I asked: “do you hear banjos?”
My question caught her off guard, and she looked at me confused, “what?”
The Bear looked down at her, “you know, banjos” and he sang that fateful song from Deliverance.
She laughed, probably having no clue what we were talking about. “I am so glad you guys are here! I was about to call, I figured you might get lost.”
“Yeah.” We replied in unison.
She told us all about how she was happy to see us because that meant that she would not have to sit there any longer; the cockroaches were creeping her out. Then she led us around back to where there was a “ramp” (a couple 2x4s and a piece of plywood) for easier entrance with the cot. We entered with her in the lead, and I have to say, it was not what I expected. The outside of the house looked like a dirty old shack, but the inside looked like it had once been very nice. Hard wood floors, descent furniture, a lot of space. With a little love and a lot of exterior work, it wouldn’t be that bad, actually.
And, granted they may have scattered on our approach, but I saw no signs of cockroaches.
Passing through the living room, Bear asked the nurse, “Does he live here by himself?”
I responded and pointed, “Yeah, Bear. That’s the 85 year old hospice patients Xbox 360.”
He responded with the same look I gave him earlier, vengeance was mine.
The poor old guy didn’t speak to us when we entered. Weather he didn’t know we were there or didn’t care I can’t say; but he did smile when the nurse told us that he had lived in that house his entire life and the room we were taking him out of was the room he grew up in. We told him we were going to take him to the hospice center where the nurses would make him comfortable and happy. We lifted him easily to our cot, he looked like he may have once been built like me, but those days were long over. I got a copy of his DNR order from the nurse, so that if he tried to die during the trip I could legally respect his wishes and let him go quietly into the light… and he did. He slipped away quietly with a smile on his face and my hand in his.
And still no sign of cockroaches.
Funny how you never get what you expect.
Chapter 3… On The Run
One of the first things they teach you in fire school is: “we don’t run”. A fast walk is the most acceptable form of locomotion when a firefighter, EMT, or a combination there of, is on the scene of an emergency. “Running gets you nowhere, fast” they always say. First of all, much like when you’re a little kid at the pool, it just isn’t safe. An injured EMS provider who tripped over a hose line or slipped on an oil spill isn’t helping anyone. Second, what kind of confidence do you instill in your patient when you are running around like a chicken with your damned head cut off.
This isn’t a fire department.
This is a private.
The Bear and I are on the run…
I leap into the driver side, slam the door and hit the ignition. The as I’m flying out of the bay, The Bear comes running from his truck, his satchel slung over his shoulder, IPod in hand. He was “running a little late” this morning. There’s no time for him to go clock in, but that will help facilitate the story that he has been here the whole time and forgot to clock in. I slow a little and he hops into the passenger seat less than gracefully. With his face in the back of his seat, he yells a stifled “Go! Go! Go!” He barely gets his foot in the truck before the force of my gunning the gas pedal slams his door shut. He gives a quick call on the radio letting dispatch know we are on our way, and then he flips on the lights and sirens. I put the hammer down.
Were head across town, lots of intersections and red lights to cross; its Sunday morning so traffic should be light. The Bear keeps a sharp look out from behind his aviators for traffic; he calls out when it’s clear to cross a red light and helps spot potential hazards that may be oblivious to the screaming, flashing, white box hurtling down the road toward them. The first intersection we come to is green, but the cars all remain stopped in our path. People forget the simple rule of pulling to the right when they see an ambulance coming, if they actually see it. I yell over the siren blare that I’m heading left of center and guide the ambulance to the left. I pause to check for oncoming traffic, Bear lays on the air horn, calls the all clear, and we proceed through the intersection.
As we’re crossing through the intersection we spot another Paradise squad on the other side, apparently heading back to base. I quickly lock eyes with the passengers and give the two fingers off the steering wheel wave. One of our 24 hour crews, Hoyle and Jules, wave back. The Bear lets out a groan and pulls his hat lower over his face, like they haven’t already noticed the six foot eight man crammed in the ambulance next to me. “Oh, man. Hoyle and Jules are on shift today?” he says, “now I’m gonna have to hide all day.” I chuckle and again put the hammer down.
Woody Hoyle and Katie Jules, Squad 2402
At six foot four, 230 pounds, your first instinct is to be afraid of Woody Hoyle, and then he tells you his name in that cowboy drawl of his and you just kind of laugh. Woody is a real “good ole boy”, he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it, always offers you a pinch of his Skoal, and has a sunny smile even in the darkest of situations. Woody is originally from Southern Ohio, and I mean SOUTHERN Ohio, where he grew up on a corn farm, was a militant member of 4H, worked his way to the lofty rank of Eagle Scout, and was a bull rider. An unfortunate tumble where his chest ended up under the hooves of a particularly angry bull, cut his rodeo career short, so he turned to his second great love: Firefighting. He decided to try his luck up north to get on a big department and “see what all that there city life is about”, and ended up at the door step of Paradise ambulance until he could get that dream job.
Woody loves to play cards, and he’ll look at you from across the table from under his 10 gallon cowboy hat and quote the Hoyle book of rules to you, all the while claiming family ties to its author. To this day I’ve seen no proof of these family ties, though I can tell you that he is the cousin of none other than the illustrious Barry “The Bear” Glazer. Apparently some uncle in the Glazer family married some aunt in the Hoyle family, or vice versa, so cousins are what they claim to be.
Now Bear does have some cowboy tendencies, a punch to the sternum will teach you not to call it redneck or hillbilly, but his passion lies more with the great outdoors of upper Michigan and Americas Hat, Canada. On one particular day I came into work to find The Bear leaning against a railing, smoking one of his hand rolled cigarettes laughing at Woody who was twirling a lasso.
I looked from Woody to Bear and back again, not quite believing what I was seeing and said: “Woody, what the hell are you doing?”
“Practicing, man.” He threw the lasso at a yellow pillar we have outside the bay doors, missed, and pulled his rope in to try again.
“Practicing for what, man? Are they remaking Hee-Haw?”
“Hey now, Hee-Haw was a great show. I’m practicing to keep my skills up.” He flung the lasso and again ended up with nothing.
“Yeah, skills…” Bear chimed in from behind me.
I joined Bear in a smoke as Woody continued his practice.
A twirl and a miss.
And another.
And another.
About this time the Bear threw down his smoke and snarled: “God damn it, Woody give me that damn thing!” and snatched the rope from Woody’s hands. Woody just lifted his hands up, palms out, and stepped out of the way. He leaned against the railing next to me, tipped his hat up a little, gave a spit of his chew, and crossed his arms.
The Bear fumbled with the rope for a second, and then got it in the spot he wanted.
He began to twirl it above his head.
Stopped.
Adjusted the rope again.
Removed his sunglasses.
Went for the twirl again.
And the release…
And he actually lassoed the pillar, first shot. Thank god for Woody’s hat or else his eyebrows would have hit a passing plane. Bear pulled the rope, firmly tightening the knot around his catch and said “That’s how you do it”.
Astonished, I asked him how he knew how to do that, his only reply was: “Clearly it doesn’t run in the family”.
And then there is Katie Jules, Woody’s partner…
Let me start by saying in this business, there are two types of women: the baddass bitches that no matter their size or stature are going to become a fire fighter and prove they are every bit equal to their male counter parts, and they are. Then there are the chicks that get into this because they want to have sex with firemen and become private ambulance runners for life.
Jules is the latter.
She’s tall, she’s thin, and she’s not bad on the eyes. She’s got a nice butt, it’s got a little of the “mommy butt spread”, but that will happen when you have two kids from two dads. She’s been here longer than anyone can remember. She pretty much gets away with murder around here, and can get you fired in a minute if you piss her off. I’m pretty sure she has been under the owners’ desk on more than one occasion, and that is the source of her power. But then, that’s really not surprising she is the Paradise ambulance bicycle.
My first day on the job, after my fateful encounter with The Bear, I entered the building to discover that Jules would be my “mentor” for the day. She immediately sat me down at the kitchen table and gazed at me with her big brown eyes.
“There’s one thing you have to know before starting here.” She said, wetting her lips with her tongue.
“Okay…” I replied.
“In order to make it at this company, you have to fuck me.”
Let’s just say, after a free ride to medic school, my pick of any shift with any partner I wanted, and a raise, I have made it at this company.
I’m not the only one. As far as I know every guy, and some of the girls that have come through the front door have exited Jules’ backdoor. Even Mr. Eagle Scout Woody enjoys the fruits of being her partner on a cold Cleveland night, so I’m told.
Only one man has escaped her perfectly manicured clutches.
Only one man who has never given in to her feminine whiles.
The one man who is public enemy number 1.
The one man who told me that I was “a fucking idiot for working here”.
Barry “The Bear” Glazer.
Oh, but she tries. Like a tigress after a gazelle, she runs after him.
Back to the task at hand, The Bear and I are streaking across our little suburb, lights and sirens blazing. The ambulance is running in and out of traffic. Between blowing the horn and calling out traffic, Bear turns on his IPod and blasts “Ready to Die” by Andrew W.K. As we’re blasting past the ER entrance of Our Lady of the Alms, I swerve at the last second to avoid peeling off the bumper of another Paradise ambulance squad who’s nose is out past the lip of the drive way.
Bear gives a hard look and points his finger at the kid behind the wheel. “Fuckin Probie!” he yells like they will be able to hear him. I give my two fingers off the steering wheel salute. Bruce and Probie, the other 24 hour crew on today, wave back.
Bruce Reagan and The Probie, Squad 2401
Bruce Reagan has been here almost as long as Jules, and to my knowledge has not slept his way to the top. He is a captain at his fire department and has reached the lofty position of “trainer” here at Paradise. I was his partner when I was attending paramedic school and he taught me more than the book and the instructor ever could. He taught me valuable lessons like be stingy with the drugs unless it’s a serious problem, never lift a patient that has at least one good leg, never be afraid to call for help if you need it, and never carry all kinds of equipment on your belt and in your pockets; to do so makes you look like a tool when all the equipment you need is in the back of the ambulance and in your Jump Bag.
Bruce is also our unofficial “Lead Medic”. If you have a problem, go to him. If you’re wrong, he’s going to let you know. If he does it, you can do it. If he doesn’t do it, best not to do it either. At any given time, he may have a shaggy black beard, but if he comes in to work clean shaven, it behooves you to have a razor handy and to tuck in your shirt. He has an ear on the ground and his finger on the pulse around here. He once put in for a supervisor position and was passed over for a less than qualified subordinate who had been here less time. Since that day he has passed two offers of promotion, thumbing his nose at the offer. He is, however, always respectful in the presence of higher ups. In the squad bay, it’s his self appointed job to cost the company money, waste time, undermine dispatch, and bitch mercilessly, from the shadows.
He’s the passive aggressive kind of trouble maker. Get away with what you can, but don’t get fired. He does, after all, have a wife and kid to support.
After knowing all this, I’m sure you can guess that Bruce’s partner, Probie, is the new kid. I stress the word kid. All of 19 years old, fresh out of EMT Basic school, been employed here for two weeks. I’m sure his mother gave him a name, and his father gave him a last name, but he doesn’t get to use I; he’s The Probie. He’ll fit in nicely around here, Probie’s got potential, he was top of his class in Basic school, I know, I helped instruct it.
Plus, Jules already showed him around the back of an ambulance, so I’m sure he’ll do fine.
On his first day, he came in hesitantly to the kitchen where Bruce, Woody and I were all gathered around the TV in the day room playing Call of Duty (The Bear lay asleep in the back of our squad hiding from Jules). I remember Probie peaking around the door jam, his sandy hair was a bit mussed and his wiry frame trembled a little with the excitement of being “a real honest-to-god life saver”. His familiarity with me from his class must have given him the misunderstanding that he could speak when not spoken to.
“H-hey, guys. What ya playin?”
“Well, tha book a’ Hoyle calls it Euchre. What in the hell does it look like?”
“Oh, like Call of Duty. I’m J…”
At that moment Woody scored a shot on Bruce and ended his kill steak.
“You prick! I’m so mad I could punch a baby!”
“So, I’m the new g…”
“Woody I’m gonna shove this controller up your ass!”
“Now, Bruce, that’d be awful homosexual of you.”
Bruce grinned as he took aim on Woody with a sniper rifle, “Remember, only the guy in front is gay, the guy in back’s just gettin some.”
“Has anyone seen Bear?” It was Jules, carrying her morning bowl of cereal. She looked hungrily at Probie, a little milk going down her chin. “Hello there, I’m Jules, you must be the new guy?”
“Um, yeah. I was told I’m with Bruce Reagan.”
“Oh, well he’s the one with the scruffy pubes on his face.”
“I know its scruffy, Jules, but we can’t all grow a mustache as full and thick as yours.”
“Whatever.” She licked the milk from her lips, “Well, come on, I’ll show you around the back of a squad and tell you everything you need to know to make it at this company.”
As they exited she gave us a predatory look over her shoulder.
Probie looked scarred.
Bruce told him to run.
He didn’t.
It gets better…
There we sat, in the day room, and we hear the front door open and the dispatcher talking to someone. Not unusual, there is always a delivery or someone looking for an application. Then we hear a name called over the intercom. After deciding it must be Probies name, we headed upfront to see what was going on.
We arrive to find an older couple, dressed in their finest golfing attire. Probies parents decided to stop by and see their only child hard at work in his fresh new uniform.
He was on the job, alright.
Before we could stop her, the dispatcher informed the parents that he must be in the squad bay and offered to take them back there, telling Bruce to watch the phones. Off they went; Woody and I ran around the outside of the building and in through the bay doors so we wouldn’t miss the show. We all walked into the bay to see an ambulance rocking rhythmically. Dispatch, oblivious as usual, stated that this was the squad he was assigned to today and without a glance flung open the rear doors. We all gazed inside, my jaw hit the floor, Woody pushed up the brim of his hat with a finger, whistled, and said “well, I’ll be…”
There was Probie over Jules.
His face streaked with sweat.
His sandy hair pointing every direction.
Jules lay on her back on the cot.
She bounced up and down as he pushed on her over and over.
He was counting: “1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6…” His hand placement was perfect, I taught him that.
He glanced up and stopped. “Oh, hi mom and dad. Katie Jules was just helping me run some CPR drills.”
“Son that’s wonderful! You can never practice your skills too much.”
It turns out in the time it took us to reach the squad bay, Bruce, in dispatch, called them on the radio and gave them a heads up. Later when Probie thanked him over and over, Bruce just looked at him coldly and said “I own you.” Bruce hasn’t written a report, washed the truck, nor done a morning check-out since.
Did you forget The Bear and I are on a run across town, lights and sirens?
After almost peeling off Bruce and Probies bumper, we continue across town. I check the time, 1026. “It’s coming up on your left” Bear calls from the passenger seat. I guide the ambulance into the drive way, putting the truck up on its two passenger side tires as we fly by. Bear cuts the lights and sirens and we run inside.
We’re greeted as we walk through the door: “Welcome to Mcdonalds, can I take your order?”
Bear whips off his aviators and looks down at the adorable jail bait at the counter. “Yeah, I need a steak egg and cheese bagel meal” he chucks his thumb toward me, “and two sausage mcmuffins for him.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Breakfast ended five minutes ago.”
“Wait, what? Its 10:28.”
“Sorry, sir, our clocks have 10:33. Can I get you some lunch?”
“No. I don’t eat at Mcdonalds. I would never eat here.”
We turned, deflated, and exited the establishment.
We exited in a quick walk.
We don’t run.
Episode 4…. POKING AN ANGRY BEAR
As I’m checking expiration dates on saline bags I hear a large crash, the entire truck shakes violently, and a string of profanity that would make a sailor blush rings out through the squad bay. Apparently Bear is pissed.
I drop the bags on the cot and hop out the side hatch. I immediately spot the dent in the passenger door that is roughly the size and shape of Bears steel-toed size 13’s. I look up and up into the eyes of my 6 foot 8 partner, and the blue blazes of hell stair down at me. The other crews doing the checkouts are beginning to assemble around us as the cloud of profanity lingers up around the halogen garage lights. Woody finally breaks the silence, I sure as hell wasn’t going to; I was always told “never poke an angry bear.”
From his height, Woody’s the only one among us that can look Bear in the eye. He gives his hat a push upward and does so as he says, “Well, goll-lee son, what’d ya go an do that fer?”
Bears anger is now successfully directed at someone else, so I feel safe to speak. “…and where the hell did you come from? I didn’t think you were here yet.”
Bruce speaks as he’s crouched next to the truck, inspecting the dent, “you’re lucky Jules isn’t out here, Glazer. Had she seen you dent this truck, even I couldn’t save you.”
Probie just stood by the back bumper and trembled; he knows enough to keep his mouth shut and let the adults talk.
The Bear looked at us each in turn, except for Probie. Bear doesn’t look at Probies. “I been here since before you guys. Thought I would come in and get an early start on the check out. Got called into the office first thing”
Bruce: “Oh, shit.”
Woody: “Well don’t keep us in suspense”
Me: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Probie just let out a little whimper and continued to tremble.
“God damned right it don’t!” Bear pulled out a hand rolled cigarette, struck a match on the side of the ambulance, and began his story…
-BEAR’S STORY-
So I roll into work this morning, early, cause you assholes are always talkin about how I’m always late. I was at the firehouse last night. We had a couple of bull-shit calls that kept us up all night, so I figure I’ll get here, bust out the check-out, and get some damn sleep. I’m not here two minutes and I get a page on the over head to come to the office. Mind you, I came in through the front door, walked past the office, clocked in, ran into Bert in the kitchen where he hands me a cup of coffee and says good morning, and then the fucker calls me over the P.A. to come to his office.
Well, it’s not a very good morning is it mother-fucker?
I walk my happy ass all the way back up to the office and walk in. He’s sitting there at his desk like he didn’t just see me and didn’t just have the opportunity to talk to me like two seconds ago. And who’s in there with him?
Fuckin Jules.
Eatin her god-damned cereal.
Bert looks at me from under his comb-over and asks me to have a seat and shut the door behind me. Jules says “I’ll get it” in her little sing-song voice and shuts the door, but stays in the god-damned office. Now, keep in mind, I don’t know what the hell is going on or how long it’s gonna take, but I now realize that I’m gonna have to listen to Jules slurp her damn cereal through the whole thing.
“Barry, I’ve had some disturbing news brought to my attention.”
I just look at him and say, “Okay”.
(Slurp)
“One of the local Basic instructors called me recently. Do you know what he said to me, Barry?
“Um, that they want me to teach a basic class cause as an Intermediate I don’t think I’m allowed.”
(Slurp)
He looked at me with his beady little eyes and said, “Yes, that’s true. You have to be a paramedic level provider to teach basic school.”
“Okay then its settled,” I said, and got up to leave. It was that easy. I was up, at the door, and had the god-damned knob turned.
Then fuckin Jules chimed in.
(Slurp)
“Um, Bert, I don’t think that’s what he called about, is it?”
“Huh? Oh, right. No it is not. Barry, please sit back down.”
I sat.
Bert continued.
(Slurp)
“The head of one of the local basic schools called because one of their students gave them some depressing news. Apparently a few weeks ago, we had a rider from one of the classes in here for the day. While she did not ride with you and Medic Finding, she reports that you spoke with her at length while you were on station. She reports that when asked how you like working for Paradise Ambulance Service, you gave her some disheartening feedback. Specifically, she says you told her that our fine institution is a terrible company that does not care about its employees and that if she was smart she would not work here.”
(Slurp)
“Okay” was my reply.
“Mr. Glazer, what do you have to say about this?”
“Sounds like me.”
“What?”
I spoke slower for him. “I don’t remember having that conversation with her, but that sounds about right for how I feel.”
He looked at me with his mouth open for a minute.
Literally a whole minute.
Jules poured more cereal.
I could almost see the words forming under his comb-over. Finally he spoke. “Barry, That really hurts my feelings. How could you say that? This company and I personally have always gone to bat for you.”
(Slurp)
Lack of sleep, lack of coffee, lack of respect, lack of honesty; it just all caught up with me at once. “When Bert? When you took away vacation and sick time? When you dropped our insurance for the joke we have now? How about all the times we get off shift late because of a stupid discharge? I’ve been here three years and haven’t had a god-damned raise!”
(Choking slurp)
The bastard didn’t even miss a beat in his response. “No one gets raises, not in this economy, business is tough. As for getting off on time, 202 is rarely off late. I’ll prove it to you.”
He turned to his computer, printed something out, and immediately began highlighting things. When he was done I took the paper from him and looked at it. It was a list of what time I punched out over the past year. He highlighted all the shifts I got off late.
Sort of.
What I noticed is that what he actually highlighted was every time I got off more than thirty minutes late.
Really.
So I took his highlighter and did a little marking of my own. I marked all the times I got off more than two minutes late. I handed it back to him and waited.
(Slurp)
“You’ve marked over three fourths of your shifts. What is this supposed to mean?” He asked.
I had him now. “You just proved my point for me. That clearly shows that I have gotten off late more than 75% of the time over the last year. When we clock in, we get two minutes to be late. When we clock out, you should only have that same two minutes; anything else is being held over.
He just stared at me, mouth open. That fucker.
Jules dropped her cereal.
As he helped Jules clean her cereal off his desk, he muttered something about dealing with me later. I slid out the door, came back here, and dented the squad.
That’s my story.
-BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL-
So, that was Bears story. As you can see he has a flair for colorful language and the innate ability to be an insufferable smart ass. This is why we love him. When he finished his story and half a pack of hand rolled smokes, we all just sort of looked at him in disbelief. A couple of the part-timers came in as his story rolled on and realizing the situation must be dire they listened in quietly, occasionally whispering a question to me in order to catch up.
Six pairs of eyes fell on Bruce, our fearless leader. He shook his head a few times, told us we better find something to do, then informed The Bear he was going to go and attempt to save his ass. He exited the squad bay, letting the door slam behind him.
“You might be DOA on this one Bear,” I said.
I was tapped on the shoulder from behind, “Hey, Fin, that reminds me. We got a run about ten minutes ago. You and Bear, me and “whistle dick” gotta go get a DOA outta some residence across town.” It was Ronnie Johnston, our favorite part-timer.
-SNAP AND “GEORGE”-
Ronnie, or Snap as we call him (because he snaps, crackles, and pops when he lifts a patient), is the oldest member of the Paradise Ambulance work force. His head of white hair, matching mustache, and rotund frame may mislead you at first, till you shake the man’s hand and discover he is a grouping of steel cords wrapped in a teddy bear. He works full time for the city fire department and has done so since he was 18. He knows everything about everything, especially emergency medicine; his paramedic class was literally taught by the first guys to become paramedics.
Why is he here? The wife wanted the kitchen redone, he took a second mortgage, and works here to pay it off more quickly. Does he really need this job? Nope. And, we all envy him for it.
Aside from his vast knowledge of the fire service (I wouldn’t be able to tie my fireman knots without him), Snap always has a witty one liner, comment, or insulting name to say about someone or something. He has imparted such gems as “The definition of TACT: the ability to tell someone to go to hell and have them happy to be on their way”, “Be careful when arguing with an idiot, he may be doing the same thing”, and one of my personal favorites, calling someone a “whistle dick”.
The Whistle Dick in question at this time is Snap’s partner, George. George is a foreign exchange student from India who is studying medicine in the U.S. He was a doctor back home, but apparently a medical degree from India doesn’t quite mean the same thing here in the states, so he was forced to start at the bottom rung. He breezed through basic school, and works with us part-time to help pay for food and housing.
His name is not actually George; that was my fault. On his first day, I was assigned to show him around the base and the trucks. He was introduced to me, and his name was a mile and a half long in a language I can’t even begin to pronounce. I proudly announced that from that day forward he would be called George, and it just sort of stuck. That’s what everyone calls him now. Sometimes I feel a little bad about it, because I’m pretty sure he hates it.
But, I get over it.
***
“202 to dispatch.”
“Go ahead 202.”
“We’re en route to that DOA. We’ve got 204 in tow.”
“You’re clear 202”
On our way to the residence, I turned and looked at my soon to be jobless partner. “Seriously, Bear. When the boss asks you if you said the company sucks, you should probably say no.”
“I’m not gonna do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t lie.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake Bear, it’s not really lying.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s more like saving your job.”
“They aren’t gonna fire me. They aint got enough guys to fill the shifts anyway.”
“You know damn well they would fire anyone of us like they would throw out an expired bag of saline. And, there is always going to be some idiot that doesn’t know any better that they could hire to work here.”
“I said what everyone else thinks.”
“But we don’t say it!”
“I wasn’t gonna lie to him.”
“Alright, fine. But if you get fired, I’m going to be so pissed at you. You know they’ll stick me with some schmuck as a partner.”
“Yeah, that’s what happened to me when my last partner got fired.”
“Ha, ha. Let’s just get this run done.”
We pull up to the house, a little one story one car garage, lots of cats outside, dirty; about what you would expect. A police cruiser has the driveway blocked. Never mind we’re the ones that have to carry the body; they should feel free to park wherever they please.
Why not?
The four of us approach the door to the house which is just hanging wide open.
I walk in first with Snap right behind me, and ask, “Where are the blue canaries?”
In the fire service we call police “blue canaries”. Miners had canaries to make sure the air was safe. We have cops. Send the cop in. If he lives, well then, it’s okay for us to enter.
In response to my question, Snap just closes the door behind us. It reveals two police officers standing in a hallway behind it, looking not too happy about my previous comment.
They led us to the body and explained in as few words as possible that the poor old bastard we are here to get was in the hospital for chest pains, left against doctors orders, was urged to come back if he felt bad again, and seems to have been in the process of doing so as evidenced by his body laying next to the open door of his 1963 split window Corvette, keys in hand.
Immediately George was down next to the body, checking it over.
Snap didn’t miss a beat, “I don’t know how they do it in India George, but when the patient is grey, cold and stiff, we usually call it dead.”
George either ignored the comment or didn’t understand it, so we proceeded to let him give the “patient” a full work up of vital signs before informing him that the man hadn’t been heard from for a week and the coroner had already been here and pronounced him dead.
After prying the body off the garage floor, only a little of the skin stayed attached to the concrete, we placed him in a body bag and hauled him out to the truck, then to the coroner’s office for autopsy.
***
When we got back to quarters, Bruce was in the squad bay, waiting for us. He told The Bear he needed to speak with him in private about this morning, so Snap, George, Woody (who was out practicing his lasso) and I all gathered around them.
“So, I had a talk with the management.”
Bear was deadpan. “Okay.”
“They have decided not to fire you because you have no other major issues in your file.”
“Okay.”
“I wasn’t able to talk them out of the suspension, but I know someone who can.”
Shit. I saw where this was going.
“But there’s a catch.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, Bear, I’ll just spell it out: you either bone Jules, or you are suspended one week without pay.”
Bear looked at Bruce from behind his aviator sunglasses.
He slowly pulled out a hand rolled cigarette and put it in his mouth.
He took out a match in his other hand, lit it with his thumb and held the flame to his cigarette.
Deep breathe in.
Exhale.
“See you fuckers in a week.”
With that, he turned on his heel, got in his truck, and was gone.
And I was left without a partner…
Chapter 5… 2,880 Minutes
Look at me. Look what I’ve become. Sitting here, my boots unzipped, one foot propped up on the dash, slouched in the passenger seat. Hat pulled down over my eyes partly obscuring a five o’clock shadow…
Wait a tick.
I already gave you this speech, didn’t I?
So here I sit, loathing my existence more than usual.
As if the blanket of stupidity that dispatch weaves isn’t thick enough, now I will be dealing with whatever random joe they throw at me for a partner because The Bear went and got himself suspended for a week.
4 shifts.
48 hours.
2,880 minutes.
172,800 seconds.
Of hell.
Near as I can tell, The Bear is having fun, doing what bears do; sleeping, salmon fishing, playing Call of Duty. And here I sit, at work on a Monday morning.
2,875 minutes left to go.
-DAY 1, MONDAY-
I’m roused from my slumber by a high pitched, reedy voice asking me if we’re going to do the ambulance check-out. I peer out of one eye from under my Paradise ambulance cap and see a thin, lanky, bespectacled guy whose looks match perfectly the assault his voice just had on my ears. I grunt an affirmative and throw the clip board at him.
I get out of the truck and immediately go into the crew quarters to find Bruce. He’s in the kitchen, reading the paper, eating a donut, and drinking a chai latte. Jules is sitting across from him, eating cereal.
“Bruce, seriously, I can’t be with him today.”
“Nothing I can do Fin, he signed up for the open shift.”
“Dude, he doesn’t even show up for his shifts on the East side half the time, why the hell did he have to show up here, today, on my shift?”
“He calls off all the time, maybe he needs the hours.”
I open my mouth to tell Bruce where to go and how fast to get there when my pager goes off.
I’m in the kitchen.
Dispatch is literally six feet away down a hallway.
She knows I’m in here, she saw me walk in.
I can hear her chewing, so I know she can hear me.
And she pages me.
It’s an “emergency” run to Nestling Pines, a rehab and care facility about 10 minutes across town. The page says it’s for shortness of breath and high blood pressure. They want us to run lights and sirens. We pass three full-time fire departments on the way there, I think not. If it’s really that crucial they wouldn’t call us, they would call 911.
I double time it back to the squad bay, whip open the driver’s side door, and hop up into my seat as usual… and slam full body check into my “partner”. He looks at me says “we got a run.”
“I know this. How the hell do you know?”
“I got the page.”
“You have a pager?”
“Well sure, everyone at the East-side base has a pager.”
Keep in mind; I’m one of the few people at the West-side base to have a pager. Bear had one three years ago. He “dropped” it and it broke. He’s been waiting on a replacement ever since. When I got mine, they called us up to dispatch and Bert said “I’ve got a pager for you.” Bear said, “Oh my god, it’s about time” and reached for it. He looked at Bear and said, “I’m sorry, this is Finding’s pager.”
I go around to the passenger side of the truck and hop in. My “partner” pulls out of the bay and gives a big fat ketchup-dick grin as he fires up the lights and sirens, roars out of the parking lot and turns in the complete opposite direction of where we are supposed to be heading. Then he tells me he doesn’t know how to get to Nestling Pines.
Side note: The Urban Dictionary defines Ketchup-dick, or KD as, “the volunteer fire fighter who returns from his bi-yearly trash can fire and spends the next two hours talking about how fucking cool he is for slaying the dragon and saving the day. He then masturbates to such an excess that his dick turns bright red and starts to bleed. A KD will drive a large red pickup truck with a light bar and sticker of fire fighters in the rear window. A KD will wear a bat belt of pagers, radios, flashlights, knives, CPR pocket mask, etc… A KD will have several tattoos of fire fighter themes.” Now you know.
Over the blare of the sirens, I tell him how to get where we are going. Then, because I genuinely don’t know, I ask him what level of EMT he is.
“I’m a paramedic student.” He shouts.
“So you’re a Basic.” I shout back.
“No. I’m a paramedic student.”
Yeah…it’s going to be like that today.
“Okay, medic student, since I’m babysitting you today, what’s wrong with this patient and what are you going to do for them?”
He began to rattle off all kinds of possible diagnoses and their treatments, each one more absurd than the last. Honestly, I tuned him out about halfway through. When he was finally done I replied.
“Incorrect.”
He looked at me dumbfounded and nearly blew through an intersection full of traffic. After I yelled at him and he recovered control of the squad, his knuckles white on the steering wheel, our discussion continued.
“How am I in correct?”
“You are wrong because there is nothing wrong with the patient.”
“What?”
“There is nothing wrong with this patient.”
“Then why are we being called there lights and sirens?”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
“The page said the patient has shortness of breath and increased blood pressure, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet you 20 dollars this patient has a history of COPD and Hypertension.”
“Okay…” he replied. I waited for it to dawn on him; it took a minute. “So COPD would cause shortness of breath and Hypertension is high blood pressure.”
“Therefore…” I prompted him.
“Therefore, there is nothing wrong with the patient!”
“Aha, his eyes open and he sees the light.”
“I don’t believe that. They wouldn’t call us for something that was normal. I’ll take your bet.”
Just when I thought the douche-bag had potential…
We pulled into the parking lot and made our way up to the patient. First off, I asked the nurse, when we finally found her, what the patient’s medical history was. Let me put it this way: Ketchup-dick handed me 20 bucks on the spot. We took the patient to the ER. I gave my “partner” the impression that the patient’s heart rhythm on my monitor was worse than it was (in fact it was fine) in order to get him to run lights and sirens and get this over faster: the less time in a truck with him, the better.
It didn’t work.
We got discharge after discharge after discharge for the rest of the day, and he talked and talked and talked the whole time.
12 hours of his high pitched reedy voice.
Tomorrow I’ll bring my head phones.
And what’s really funny? Without The Bear here, we got out ten minutes early.
Coincidence? I think not.
-DAY 2, TUESDAY-
2,160 minutes to go.
I enter the squad bay and see that the hood of my ambulance is open. Under it, checking the oil is Snap. He turns to look at me and the corners of his walrus mustache turn up. He is a sight for sore eyes.
“Holy shit, Snap, what you doing here?”
“I thought I’d save you from working with some of them whistle dicks they got workin’ here and signed up to work with ya today.”
“You, sir, are a lifesaver.”
Snap and I get the check-out done then hang for a while and shoot the breeze. About an hour after shift starts I get a text from The Bear. It includes pictures of salmon that he has caught on his trip to Michigan. I reply to it with a scathing tongue-in-cheek statement, and then Snap decides it’s time to go get some donuts.
“Let’s go, young man, I need some breakfast.”
“You know what will happen if we leave.”
“Hey, man. Us old, fat guys need to eat.”
“Alright, Snap. But when we get a call, it’s on your head.”
We get in the truck and fire it up… well, try to fire it up. It makes a few clicking and whirring noises, then nothing. We get out the charger, give her a jump and were in business. As we’re rolling out of the squad bay, Snap grabs the mic and calls dispatch. I try to stop him but it’s too late.
“202 to dispatch, were gonna be on the air in the area getting some breakfast.”
“202 I’m going to need you to head toward the east-side, post at Holy Heart Hospital.”
I shoot Snap a look that could castrate an elephant.
45 minutes after a stop for half a dozen donuts and a separate stop for coffee we pull into the parking lot of Holy Heart. We stop in a nice secluded area of the parking lot, one where I can hop out of the truck and catch a smoke or two while Snap reads the paper and receives his usual 20 calls from his wife. “Yes dear. No dear. I will certainly do that dear. I can make reservations dear. What time do the kids expect to get there, dear?” I swear the cell phone is the worst thing that ever happened to that man.
We’re in the parking lot for literally two minutes, I barely have time to put fire to nicotine, and the radio beeps at us.
“Dispatch to 202.”
Snap grabs the mic, “This is 202, go ahead dispatch.”
“We have a crew that needs a lift assist, were going to need you to head to Bay Village.”
“I’m sorry dispatch, can you repeat, did you say Bay Village, on the West-side?”
“Affirmative, 202.”
“Copy, we’re en route.”
50 minutes later, were back on the West-side, farther west than where we started.
As we are finally pulling up on the little cottage in suburbia hell that we have been looking for, I grab the radio and it beeps in my hand.
“Dispatch to 202.”
“Goat head dispatch.”
“The crew needing the assist said they were going to go ahead and try getting the patient inside on their own so you’re going to be placed back in service.”
“Copy that dispatch, but we are pulling up on the residence now.”
“Well, in that case, go ahead and give them a hand.”
We pull up to the house just in time to see Woody piggy-backing a little old chubby lady up the steps of a front porch while Jules stands by, holding his hat. I run up and help him ease the old broad off his back. He explains with gasping breaths and sweat pouring down his face how they had been waiting here for over an hour and the poor old lady had to pee. Instead of letting her pee in the back of his squad, he took it upon himself, literally, to get her into the house so she could use her own toilet.
I’m about to ask him why he didn’t just give her a bed pan, when my phone starts playing Time to Die by Andrew W.K.
My phone only plays that song for one man.
“Hey Bear, you bastard, what’s up?” (Hey Bear! Woody yells from over my shoulder.)
“Dude, you are never gonna believe who I just got a call from.”
“Who?” (What ya been up to son?)
“Dispatch.”
“What? Why?” (Score any tail on your vacation?)
“She said that they are short staffed on the East-side. Got a lot of call offs. Offered me a double response bonus to come in and work.”
“No way. I thought you were suspended.” (Your hand doesn’t count.)
“That’s what I said. She said that Bert thought that I had learned my lesson and that I could come in and end my suspension early.”
“And you said?” (Woody turns to Jules and says, He said he aint got no tail cause he likes men.)
“Tell Woody he’s an idiot. (I heard that!) I told her no. I wouldn’t have done it anyway just on the principality, but I’m still in Michigan. Idiots.”
“Shit Bear, I gotta go, my pagers goin off, Snap and I have a run.” (Bye, Bear. Tell your Mama I’ll see her tonight.)
“Alright man, I might be home in a few days; we’ll grill up some of this fish and drink some beers. Later.”
Back in the truck, I check the page. It’s for a patient going from their home to a hospice center. And, of course, they live on the east-side.
I should say they LIVED on the east-side.
Past tense: lived.
Allow me to explain.
40 minutes later we pull into the parking lot of an apartment complex. The page had the address, but no numeric on an apartment number. I know, I checked. We call dispatch over the radio and ask if they have the appropriate information. She informs us that she did not realize it was an apartment, and did not get a call back number. Off the radio, we thank her for doing her job so well. On the radio, we ask her what it is she wants us to do. She tells us to stand by and she will try to get the info.
20 minutes later, a chubby little chick approaches the truck.
“Hey guys, I’m the aid for Mr. Walthers. I don’t think he’ll be going with you today. I think he’s dead.”
“Um, what?”
“I called the nurse; she’s on her way out here now to take a look at him.”
“Did you want us to come take a look?”
“No. The nurse said that I shouldn’t have you guys come in cause then you would have to start CPR and stuff.”
“No we wouldn’t cause of the DNR order.”
“He doesn’t have a DNR order.”
“He’s a hospice patient with no DNR order?”
“Yeah. But I think he’s dead. His bowels all evacuated and stuff. Don’t it do that when you’re dead?”
That’s about the time that Snap has heard enough and he gets on his phone to call dispatch. She’s is still in the process of trying to find what apartment we are supposed to be going to when he calls. If it were on the bottom of a bucket of chicken, I bet she would have found it by now. Dispatch advises us to hang out and wait for the nurse.
So we wait.
And wait.
It takes a solid hour for her to show up. She goes inside for a couple minutes then comes back out and tells us he’s dead and that the coroner is going to have to come and pronounce him dead. We go back in service and are immediately sent to Holy Heart to post.
The rest of the day is pretty uneventful; we sat for a few hours at Holy Heart and then got a call back to the West-side for a discharge that got canceled before we got there. Then we got out of work… 20 minutes early. I’m starting to notice a trend. No Bear = early out.
On our way out the bay door, Snap looks at me and says: “Hey, Fin, you can’t be mad at me for leaving to get donuts.”
“Why is that, Snap?”
“Cause man, we never actually got a run.”
-DAY 3, SATURDAY-
1,440 minutes left to go.
Being excited that my week of random partners is half way over, I get to work bright and early, exactly two minutes after shift starts. I walk back to the bay, shuddering to think what I’ll be partnered up with today, and find Bruce leaning against my ambulance arms folded across his chest.
He grins at me through his scruffy black beard, “You won’t be needing this truck today.”
“Wait, what? For real? Where’s Probie?”
“I convinced Probie that he needed to take 12 hours off today and pulled a few strings. You’re with me today.”
I think I cried a little.
The morning was superb. We did the check out. We sat in the kitchen and had some breakfast and some Chai Lattes from the Dunkin (didn’t even catch a run when we went out to get them). We went in the day room, booted a few of the part-timers off the TV, and played some call of duty. The morning was superb.
The page came at 11:47 am.
Both our pagers screaming in unison.
The page that kicked off what shall forever be known as “THE INCIDENT”.
The incident in which one two-man crew from a small ambulance company caused the shutdown of one of North Eastern Ohio’s primary emergency rooms.
The fire departments were pissed.
Patients had to be rerouted to different hospitals.
Patients in that ER had to be moved to different ERs.
It was pandemonium.
Here’s how we did it…
-THE INCIDENT-
Occasionally, and I mean very rarely, a private ambulance company can get an honest to goodness emergency run. If the fire department is busy on a lot of calls or all its firemen are busy on a big fire, then there may not be another choice. Or sometimes, there are patients that call the fire department so many times for so many bull shit reasons that the fire department may be inclined to not go to that house anymore, so we could get the run that way.
We discovered after the fact that this was one of the latter.
The call was for “shortness of breath and change in mental status”.
We hopped in the truck and roared across town with a purpose. Finally, we had a real run; a break from the mind numbing pace of discharges and dialysis appointments; a real patient with a real problem; a chance to do real work and save a real life.
And, The Bear is missing it.
On a side note, when I left for work this morning, Xbox live said Bear was playing Call of Duty and had been doing so for 6 hours. Upon my return home after the events of The Incident, more than 12 hours later, Xbox live will report that he has continued to play Call of Duty the entire time.
But, where was I?
Right, we were hurtling through town, lights blazing and sirens blaring. We turned down the street the house was on and immediately knew which house we were supposed to be responding to.
We couldn’t miss it.
It was the one with all the cop cars parked out front.
And all the cops standing around in the drive way.
Those paramedic powers of observation hard at work again.
So we roll up to the house, call on scene, and interrupt the policeman union meeting to ask what the hell is going on. One of the blue canaries spoke up. I assume he was their leader: he was the oldest and fattest one there. He even had powered sugar on his collar. As he spoke, I noticed odd noises coming from inside the dwelling.
“We were called out here (crash) by some concerned neighbors (slam) who heard some odd (cat howling) noises and were worried (loud yelling) about their safety and the safety (glass shattering) of their neighbor, who they(nails on a chalkboard) can’t recall seeing for days.”
As though to punctuate his statement, a 52 inch flat panel television came crashing through the front window.
We stared with mouths open. Bruce was the first one to break the silence. “That’s a damn shame. I’d give my left nut for a TV like that.”
I tried to steer the confab toward something slightly more productive. But, I have to agree with Bruce. My left nut would be a fair trade for that TV.
“What do we know about the patient?”
“Well, he has a lot of medical issues, not sure what. The fire department used to be called out her a lot, but the last time his family called three times in one day and refused to go to the hospital they told them not to call again. So they had us call you.”
Imagine our luck.
“Can’t say as I blame the fired department. I would have done the same. Fin get on the horn and tell dispatch we’re gonna need some muscle out here: Woody and Snap if they are available.”
“You got it boss.” I got on the radio and told dispatch what was up and who we wanted. She gave a 5 minute ETA.
Jump bag in my hand and metal clipboard in Bruce’s, we approached the house. As Bruce lifted his hand to knock on the door the cops announce, as an afterthought, that the patient does own a gun. I took two steps to the left so as not to be in front of the door and gave Bruce a nod. He knocked on the door.
“Sir, EMS. Your family called us because you seem to be having some trouble. We’re going to come in now.”
He slowly opened the door.
Like lightning, a hand the size of my head lashed out, grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him inside. One second Bruce was right there. I blinked and then there was nothing there but his left shoe and the clipboard. With a thought of “THIS IS SPARTA!” I flung open the door and rushed to Bruce’s rescue.
The house was dark: the day was overcast and the light barely shone through the windows. The carpet was dark, maybe a black or dark brown, and seemed crunchy and sticky beneath my feet. I swear the walls were speckled, but then it was dark. My eyes focused on what appeared to be a white foot gleaming in the dark. It was Bruce’s shoeless foot. My eyes followed it up to a large shadow, holding Bruce with both hands.
Bruce with remarkable calm said, “Fin, he smells fruity, like acetone, I think we got a Brimley here.”
You know, Wilford Brimley: Quaker oats, Cocoon, Diabetis’. In this case the acetone breath is an indicator of raging unchecked high blood sugar which can lead to intoxicated type symptoms, coma, and then death. Not much we can do for it except an IV and get them to a hospital.
I approached the two of them slowly, trying to speak softly, urging the guy to put my partner down, telling him that we want to help him and that we aren’t going to hurt him. He seemed to be going for it when the front door slammed inward and startled the hell out of all three of us. Our back-up had arrived in the shape of George and Jules.
Thanks dispatch.
In one fluid motion, the patient swung Bruce around by the collar and slammed him to the wall. Not sure if it was the plaster or Bruce’s vertebrae, but there was a loud crack. George, all 115 pounds of him, made a move like he was going to try to rush the guy, tripped over the jump bag, and hit the ground in a jumble of equipment.
Jules turned and ran.
Thanks dispatch.
The patients back was to me, he was completely focused on Bruce. I took my opportunity and ran right at him. I came in low, shoulder first. My football coach would be proud. I wrapped my arms around his waist, or at least tried to. He was so fat my hands wouldn’t touch.
He didn’t budge.
But, I did get an elbow in my eye for my trouble.
Through the stars, I saw something moving toward me. It was Jules. She was running back in the house, something clutched in her hand. She tripped over George where he was still trying to get himself untangled from the oxygen tubing and fell directly on top of me.
She pushed something into my hand and said “Haldol”.
Holy shit. She brought the Haldol.
Thanks dispatch!
I crawled over to the patient, my head swimming, pulled the cap off with my teeth, and jammed it in his right butt cheek. I pushed it all.
Not long after that, he let go of Bruce, staggered around a little, and hit the floor.
Yeah, good old Vitamin H will do that.
Bruce looked at us in the dark, “Jules, nice work. George, get the cot. Fin, you look like shit.”
“I’m cool man; let’s get this fucker outta here.”
We rounded up the Blue Canaries and together we all got the guy on the cot. He had to weigh 450 if he was a pound. We got him in the back of the truck, Bruce and I worked in tandem on IVs and checking his blood sugar (which was so high the meter only said HIGH), and Jules drove us to Our Lady of the Alms Emergency Room.
When we arrived, they were waiting for us in one of the trauma bays. I got some looks as my eyes was already swelling, but we gave report as the nurses went to work cutting off his clothes and examining him. I turned just in time to see one of the many nurses jump back and her equipment hit the floor.
Here it comes… You ready?
The one nurse was going to put a Foley catheter in. You know… the tube in your pee-hole with a bag on it. But in order to do this, she had to find his penis. In order to find his penis, she had to lift up a massive roll from his belly. When she did, she discovered a black mass covering the entire area.
It started crawling.
My mind flashed back.
The stiff, disgusting carpet that was crunchy and sticky.
The speckled walls.
Bed Bugs.
For the first time I looked at Bruce.
Really looked at him.
He was covered in them.
So was I.
And now, so was the ER.
Oops.
They had to shut the whole place down, evacuate the patients, and bring in the Haz-mat team. As for Bruce and I, after a serious decon shower, we spent the entire rest of the shift pulling apart every little part of the squad in the parking lot and cleaning it, trashing anything that could have gotten bed bugs in it, and then restocking it. I looked like some kind of a crazy pirate with a cold pack bandaged over my eye while we worked. The hospital was kind enough to give us scrubs to wear, since our uniforms had to be decontaminated as well. But it would have been nice if they were ones that fit. The last thing I needed was my good eye full of Bruce’s’ man camel toe.
-DAY 4, SUNDAY-
720 minutes to go.
I had worked with a ketchup dick, know-it-all paramedic student, ran my dick into the dirt for no good reason, and been at the epicenter of a serious Haz-mat crisis in one of the largest ERs in the area. And, got a black eye for my trouble.
What else could happen?
I decided not to find out.
I called in dead.
Chapter 6… The Arkham Flu
It’s night.
I gaze out over the city. The air is cool and crisp on my face. I extend my paramedic powers of observation to their limits, looking for someone who may need my help.
All is quiet.
Too quiet.
The tranquility is broken by my radio roaring in my ear. “Go ahead”, I growl.
“You’re needed at Our Lady of the Alms on the lickety-split…”
“I understand, I’m on my way,” I reply. But before I can spring into action, the voice on the radio continues.
“It’s Barry, son. The Bear has gone and got hisself in a mess a trouble.”
I speed through the city at a break neck pace. The few civilians who are out and about at this time barely catch a glimpse of the palm tree logo on my uniform as I steak past them. I pass through intersections, across traffic, and weave between buildings until finally I come to the hospital.
The emergency room parking lot is dark and quiet. An ambulance is parked, the engine off. The tires seem flattened and the back doors are splayed open. All types of equipment lay strewn about the ground, reminding me of a slaughtered cow with its entrails dangling.
A dark figure approaches me in the darkness. I whirl around at the sound of his foot falls. It’s The Blue Canary.
“Thank God you’re here! I didn’t know what to do! They’re going to kill him. You’re the only one who can save him!”
I grab him by the shoulders and shake him; powdered sugar fills the air like tear gas. “Canary, calm down. Tell me what’s going on.”
“They have The Bear. I don’t know how many, but I know they have him. I knew I couldn’t handle it so called for you.”
“You did the right thing. You just stay here, I’ll handle this.” I turn and begin to approach the ER entrance.
“One more thing! I think it’s a trap. They know you’re coming.”
I give him a knowing nod over my shoulder. “Of course it’s a trap, my timid friend, but fear not: they don’t call me PARAGOD for nothing.”
With a flourish, I disappear into the shadows.
I type in the code for the EMS entrance to the ER and the doors open with a SWOOSH. A mist about knee high bellows out and swirls around me as I pass cautiously through the doors. Suddenly, a snap of a switch and the buzz of electricity hit my ears and I’m blinded by a large spot light shining on me. A voice rings out through the large empty emergency room, bouncing off the walls, making pinpointing the source difficult.
“We knew you would come, Paragod. We knew you couldn’t resist saving your precious partner, and after we kill him, we’ll kill you too!” Laughter rings out all around me.
“The Ketchup Dick gang, I should have known you KDs were behind this.”
“Oh it’s not just us, (us us usssssss…) but you won’t live long enough to find out who is really behind this (this this thissssss).”
With para-magic speed, I throw a red-cross shaped shuriken into the light, shattering it and dousing everything in darkness. I activate my night vision goggles and see a group of men of various shapes and sizes wearing red full body condoms complete with reservoir tips on their heads. Their utility belts of useless equipment do them no good as I pummel them all fluidly and expertly, striking with a precision to render them incapacitated while expending as little energy as possible.
I straighten my gloves, crack my neck, and step over the inert bodies of the Ketchup Dick gang. They were a good warm-up, but I know the real villainy is yet to come. I find the switch for the lighting and activate it. At the far end of the ER, I see a single curtain drawn around an ER bed. I move to it and throw back the curtain.
The sight behind the curtain is horrifying.
The Bear lay on the bed, beaten and bruised. His limbs are each tied to a corner of the bed. His bear costume has been torn and cut to shreds. The only parts remaining are the bear head obscuring his true identity and, thankfully, below his belt to make it appear as if he is wearing a furry loin cloth.
Like I said, HORRIFYING.
I hear foot steps behind me and I turn. Behind me is a group of people who look oddly familiar. They are my most devastating foes, apparently all banded together for this evil plot.
First I see a young Indian man in a green costume and turban with question marks all over it. He is the first to speak, but no one, including his villainous friends, can understand a damn word he says. Hence the question marks. He is known as “WTF?”
Next to him are three midgets. They each are rounder than they are tall, have grey hair, walrus mustaches, and monocles. They begin to speak in three word spurts, each one continuing where the last left off. They don’t get very far in this manor before a cell phone rings and they answer it, speaking to their wife in the same three word broken sentences as they pass the phone from person to person. They are known as “SNAP, CRACKLE and POP”.
Next to them is a hulking land mass of a man. He looms over me with a large dark beard that seems to encompass his entire head and eyes that shine like onyx. He is holding a tiny puppet that glares at me with vapid eyes. Its teeth clack as it tells me “there is no escape this time” and the bearded man looks at me with sympathy as if he wishes he could do something. They are “THE VENTRILOQUST and PROBIE”.
Bouncing around behind them like a squirrel on meth is a skinny little man with an annoying, reedy voice. He sings a song about how someday he’ll be as great as The Paragod and plays a little tune on a phallic shaped flute. He is “THE WHISTLE DICK”.
The final two, the real masterminds of this scheme, are standing together in a lovers embrace. The male of the couple is known as “TWO-FACED”, he is the true boss of this little rag tag crew. He is known for saying one thing then doing something shady and underhanded behind your back. He grins at me from under his comb-over and says, “You’re doing a great job here, Paragod, but I’m afraid it’s just not working out. We’re going to have to let you go.”
And lastly, “The Penis Flytrap” untangles her vines from Two-Faced, one of which is holding a bowl of cereal and addresses me. (You don’t want to know where the vines are originating from.)
“You’re too late, Paragod. You can’t defeat us all. The Bear will be mine.”
I finally speak, “Wait a sec… make him ‘all yours’ how?”
“I will have him. I will use him to satisfy myself sexually in every way you can imagine!”
That familiar southern drawl comes over my radio, “Hoooo-weee! That’ll be like throwin a hot dog down a hallway!”
I look at Penis Flytrap in disbelief, “So you want to have sex with him?”
“That’s right, Paragod, and there is nothing you can do to stop me!”
“You don’t want to kill him?”
She looks at me puzzled. “No, who told you that?”
“The Blue Canary.”
As a group we all yell, “Fucking blue canary!”
After much cursing and shaking of heads, I continue. “So, you want to have sex with The Bear. He has refused you, so you had these guys rough him up, kidnap him, tie him down, and now you are going to have your way with him sexually?”
She shakes her head, “Yeah that was pretty much the plan.”
“Well, hell. I’m good with that.”
“You’ll never stop me… wait, you are?”
“Sure, it’ll do him some good.”
“Oh, well, okay then.”
I turn to the others: “You guys up for a beer?”
They all give me approving nods and chuckles. We all agree that Whistle Dick can’t come. As were leaving, we here the muffled screams of The Bear echo across the cold cloudy night.
I’m startled awake from my dream by the sound of the squad bay door kicking into motion. I have time to think to myself “damn I need to quit playing Arkham City all night before work” before I’m blinded by the sun blazing through the door as it gets higher and higher. Coincidentally, someone, probably Snap, has the classical channel on the radio while doing the squad checks and Sprach Zarathustra, the song from 2001 A Space Odyssey, is playing. I make out a form in the bright light. It’s tall, very tall, and thin. It’s wearing a ball cap, aviator sunglasses, and is smoking a hand rolled cigarette.
It’s The Bear.
It’s his first day back.
And of course, he’s late.
He approaches the truck and says, “Hey man, nice shiner, how was your day off?”
“Ha ha, Bear. It never gets old does it?”
The Bear has just uttered a very old, very tiring joke that everyone loves, except me. You’ll notice I have not told you my first name, and I’m not about to do so now. I will say this. Back in 1986, my parents, Richard and Kathy Finding, saw a movie and were quite taken with it. So in 1987, they named me after the title character. This has led to several jokes in my life regarding various things I may have done during my day off like going to an art museum or singing Danke Schoen in a parade, am I know as “The Sausage King of Chicago, and inquiries as to the health and well being of Cameron and Mr. Rooney.
HA HA HA.
I’ll let you figure out the rest.
Anyway, I hop out of the truck and give Bear a man-hug, you know the kind during which you slap each other on the back. The kind that says,” I’m hugging you, but I’m still hitting you, so it’s not gay.”
He hugs me back, chuckles, and says, “Alright man, let’s not get too dedicated.”
This brings me to my next story…
-THE DEFINITION OF “DEDICATED”-
About a year ago, I made the horrible mistake of signing up for overtime on an open shift at the East-side base. I got stuck working with a KD by the name of Derek Hatfield. Hatfield and I got a call to Holy Heart for a discharge, no big surprise there, but it was when we got on the elevator to go upstairs that things got hilarious.
We entered the elevator. I was furthest from the door, at the head of the cot. Hatfield was at the foot. He pushed the button for whatever floor we were headed to, and as the doors were closing a large, black hand thrust itself into the elevator and stopped the doors from closing.
Hatfield pried the doors open and allowed the person connected to the hand to enter. He was a very dark skinned black man in beige hospital scrubs, probably some kind of orderly. He had a head full of braids that were pulled back in a pony tail. He wore a rainbow beaded necklace with matching bracelet and he sashayed, literally, into the elevator. He then proceeded to look Hatfield up and down like he was sizing up a prime cut of beef.
He was without a doubt the gayest man I have ever met, before or since. In a voice you would swear was female over the phone he said, “Thanks for holding the doors fellas” and gave Hatfield a wink.
We both just smiled and nodded. Now my own brother is gay so you can imagine I’ve certainly never had a problem with gay men, and I love lesbians, though they never look like they do in the movies. Anyway, Hatfield politely asked what floor he was going to and pushed the appropriate button.
As we ascended through the hospital, the gay gentleman’s eyes landed on Hatfield’s’ forearms. Now remember, Derek Hatfield is the text book example of a Ketchup Dick. His forearms are full of firefighter tattoos that range from classic “343 never forget” all the way to the actual EMT-Basic seal that is on our patches. When asked, Hatfield proceeded to raise his arms and turn them this way and that so our new friend could get a good look at all his “sweet ink”.
The gay gentleman in turn, made some “hmmmm, mmmhmmm” noises, licked his lips and then proceeded to utter this phrase:
“Yes, I see, that’s dedication. You are very dedicated.”
With a “stay safe out there boys”, he exited the elevator and we were once again left alone. As soon as the doors shut, Hatfield spun so fast I thought his head would twist off.
“Dude, I think that guy was gay!”
“Gee, you think?”
“Do you think I just got hit on?”
“Um, I know you just got hit on.”
“Oh my god! That’s so fucked up. I’m not gay. In fact, I’m homophobic! That’s not cool. I’m not gay!
To which I answered: “You may not be gay, but you sure are DEDICATED.”
And so a new slang term was born.
Hatfield then told me I was to never tell anyone what I had witnessed that day for fear of people thinking he is gay because he got hit on by a gay guy. I told him not to worry because I would definitely be telling everyone.
And I did.
And “Dedicated” just sort of stuck.
Sometimes I feel a little bad, but then I get over it.
So, The Bear and I are back on the rig and ready to rock.
We did the check out and shot the breeze with the guys who decided to show up on that particular day. It was only a couple of days after the release of the new Batman: Arkham City, so a lot of people, including Bruce, Woody, and surprisingly George were all out with a case of the “Arkham Flu”. The Bear was taking this news extremely hard because while he’d had a great time fishing and playing Call of Duty on his suspension, that suspension was unpaid and he would not be buying any video games or even getting paid for three weeks.
He had some choice words for Bert and Jules that I won’t even repeat here.
We had some lunch and at some point in the afternoon, Bear was called over the PA into Bert’s office.
He got out of the back of the truck where he was napping and hiding from Jules, muttering as he slammed the door shut: something about having to piss, how he would get to Bert’s office when he was good and ready, and that he should piss on Bert’s desk.
Two smokes, a stop for coffee, and twenty minutes later we pulled into the occupational health parking lot. The powers that be at Paradise Ambulance Service Inc. decided, randomly mind you, that it was time for Mr. Barry Glazer to have a drug screening.
Random, my left ass cheek.
It’s funny how when someone takes a vacation, or in this instance an extended suspension, they are suddenly and randomly popped for a drug test the minute they get back. It’s like they are saying they just know that when we are on vacation clearly we took a trip to Amsterdam and smoked more ganja than a donkey can carry. In point of fact, the only one among us who could afford to do that is Snap, and he did do it, last summer. He said he smoked stuff that had him hearing colors and seeing music.
Of course, Snap wasn’t drug tested.
When you are a part-timer and “don’t need this job”, they don’t fuck with you.
We called dispatch and told them we were out at the health center, had a smoke, and went inside. We approached the counter and the tubby nurse put down her Twinkie and addressed me around a mouth full of cream filling.
“Mmmmph mmm mmm mmmmmph?”
“I’m sorry, say what now?”
“Are you here for an eye injury? Fill out a form and take a seat.”
I looked at Bear, confused, and then it dawned on me. My shiner was still pretty noticeable from “The Incident”. “No ma’am. My partner is here for a drug screen. I just came in to see if you had any more Twinkies… I’m betting NO.”
Bear took the form and had a seat. When he was done filling it out he returned it to the nurse who told him it would only be a few minutes.
32 minutes later, he was called back to take his test.
I sat and waited.
I watched some Springer.
And waited.
I’m pretty sure the guy on Springer was a patient of ours.
And waited.
I posted on Facebook about how the guy on Springer looked like a patient of ours.
And waited.
45 minutes after The Bear disappeared into the bowels of the med center, my pager erupts. It’s the typical “STATUS AND LOCATION PLEASE” text that translates into “where in the hell are you guys?” I run out to the squad and radio that we’re still at the facility and that I haven’t seen The Bear for 50 minutes. I’m politely commanded to find out what’s going on if I don’t see him in 10 minutes because there is a call waiting for us.
Yeah, that’s going to make me hurry.
20 minutes later, I head back to where the examination rooms are. The nice thing about having a paramedic patch on your sleeve is if you’re in a place that has anything at all to do with medicine, you can walk around at will and no one, not even the staff, will question you.
I have no idea where Bear might actually be, so I text his phone, hear it beep, and then head that way. I turn a corner to find the Bear sitting on a little bench next to a bathroom. His phone and other pocket items are in a basket on a counter and he is stripped down to his work pants and a wife-beater undershirt. He doesn’t even have boots on.
“Bear, what in the hell is going on?”
“I’m waiting to take my test.”
“Why the hell are you practically naked?”
“Because, Twinkie Nurse is a god-damned Piss Nazi.”
“Come again?”
“In order to make sure I wasn’t concealing anything, I was forced to empty my pockets and remove my hat, work shirt, and boots.”
“Okay, so piss in the damn cup and let’s roll.”
“I did.”
“Okay…”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t enough?”
“Well, remember how I had to piss when I got called to the office? Well I did. Then we got sent here and I didn’t have to piss cause I just went. I finally squeezed some out, and it wasn’t enough. So here I sit, waiting till I can piss enough to fill her little cup to the line.”
“For Christ’s sake, Bear. Just drink some water.”
He held up a Dixie cup. Apparently that was all he was allowed to have.
I informed Bear that I would be in the truck and got out of there before the nurse saw me and accused me of slipping him something to help him cheat on the drug test.
I made a B line for the truck and immediately gave dispatch the update she so desperately wanted.
Over the radio.
For everyone to hear.
Later I would be told that Snap nearly wrecked a squad laughing so hard. Bruce and Woody are still pissed they missed it.
Eventually, The Bear was able to fill his plastic cup to the appropriate line, after another hour and a half, during which time dispatch paged me after a half hour, then 15 minutes after that, then every 10 minutes after that until we were done.
I didn’t get much sleep.
But I laughed like crazy.
By the time we were finally back in service, the call had been canceled, the hospital called one of our competitors, and we had about 25 minutes till our off time.
To top it all off, dispatch asked us if we would hold over and take a run from Our Lady of the Alms on the Westside to Holy Heart on the Eastside.
I told her I couldn’t because I wasn’t feeling well and had to go home.
I had a serious case of the Arkham Flu.
Chapter 7… THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
The Bear looms over the dispatchers’ desk like… well, like a bear.
A really, really pissed off bear.
His eyes beat down upon dispatch from their lofty perch. His face is red, his chest heaving, his muscles taught like the cables on a suspension bridge. I’m fairly certain I heard a growl that originated from somewhere around his boots, worked its way up through his 6’8” frame, and exited beneath his twitching handle bar mustache.
Our only male dispatcher, Dick (Dickie if you are one of the fat cows who work in dispatch), looks up at him like a tourist in New York City trying to see the top of the Empire State Building from the street. Dick is about 40 years old; he has a short graying mustache and is bald on the top with the grey horse shoe around the sides and back of his head. He is a volunteer fireman and used to be on the road at Paradise Ambulance until he got the lofty promotion to sit on his ass and tell the real workers what to do.
And, it’s no secret he has a hard-on for running The Bear ragged.
He adopts a look of sweet innocence on his face and says, “Mr. Glazer is there something I can do for you?”
“Yeah, Dick, you can kill yourself. The world will thank you.”
“Mr. Glazer, that is an inappropriate way to speak to your supervisor, I could…”
The Bear cut him off, “Do what? I’m clocked out and I’m not in uniform. What can you do?”
It was true; there was a trail of uniform parts leading from the time clock all the way to the dispatch desk by the front door. In his anger, the bear had stripped off every part of his Paradise ambulance uniform and was now standing before me in boots, pants, and his famed “wife-beater” undershirt.
On a side note: I swear to god, I see that kid in his skivees more than anything else. I’m going to have to mention something to him about keeping his clothes on. He calls me dedicated? And don’t get me started about the smell in the squad when he takes his boots off.
But, anyway.
So here I am, standing behind an angry Bear, trying to talk him off of his present path to self destruction. Dick stands up and comes around the desk, toe to toe with The Bear. Of course, he is a good foot shorter than Bear, but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. The air between them is thick and cold and smells like death. Well, the last part could be the Chipotle Bear had for lunch. Dick’s jaw clenches beneath his unblinking eyes, and The Bear’s fist clenches at the same time. Then Bear’s fist is in motion.
I grab for his arm.
There is a loud and sickening CRACK.
The Bear hits the ground.
His wrist is still in my hand.
I basically just gave dispatch a free crack at him.
And, he got knocked on his ass because of it.
Oops.
The Bear looked at him, wiped a trickle of blood from his lip and said, “You hit me first. It’s self defense, now. IT’S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, MOTHER FUCKER!” And then, he lunged at the aged dispatcher.
I just stood there in disbelief and thought to myself “okay, this has got to be another kill dispatch dream. Just wake up”.
“Wake up.”
“The Bear is going to roll in late for work any minute now. He’ll wake me up and we’ll go lights and sirens across town to make McDonalds breakfast.”
“Wake up.”
The Bear didn’t roll into work late.
He didn’t wake me up.
There were no delicious Egg McMuffins or hash browns.
How in the hell did this happen?
-THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED-
It was a typical morning at Paradise Ambulance Service. Things were getting back to what passes for normal at our little private company. The Bear’s suspension was over and forgotten, except for where his wallet was concerned. The events of The Incident were becoming nothing but tall tales to all that heard them. My epic black eye was now a sickly shade of yellow and was back to normal proportions. And of course, The Bear and I were off on a bull shit run as soon as we walked in the damn door.
At least, we were supposed to be.
Our shift starts at 0700 AM. We got the page at 0702 AM. . We are supposed to receive fifteen minutes at the start of shift to do a check out and make sure we have all the equipment we might need throughout the day. So when we get the page at 0702, we do what any rational human being would do.
We ignore it.
To make matters even better, it’s a run to a doctor’s appointment in Akron, roughly an hour south of our current Cleveland suburb, so we really drag our feet finishing our check-out. Yes, Bear and I actually do the check outs even though Bear was told once by management that they don’t believe we do it; the day we don’t is the day we would actually get a patient in bad shape and we don’t have the right equipment. We receive the page two more times during the subsequent thirteen minutes we are supposed to have to do the check out. We finally call over the radio that we received it, each have a smoke, stop for a cup of coffee on the way, and roll into the nursing home at about quarter till eight.
We get the cot out of the back and wheel inside to the elevator and up to the second floor. On our way past the nurses’ station, we are actually noticed by the worthless, second rate nurses that this home has on staff. I know. It’s amazing. We are wearing our navy blue camouflage and they still notice us? Mind you, they don’t say anything to us. They just stare at us with dumbfounded expressions on their faces and let us walk all the way down the hall to the last room on the left.
It’s always the last room. Whether the patient is coming in or going out, they are always in the room that is at the absolute furthest place from where you started. I think they rearrange the rooms according to who is coming or going, just so we have to walk that much farther.
We park the cot next to the door of the room, not bothering to look inside. If the patient notices you, then they try to talk to you. No one wants to deal with that until you have to, especially not this early in the morning. This is also why we sit behind them during the transports. Patients are like birds. If they can’t see you, they forget you are there and don’t talk to you.
We walk all the way back to the nurses’ station where Debbie, the too thin piece of trailer trash who went to LPN school to try to make something of herself, finally speaks. “whatch ya’ll doin here?” She says with a not so toothy smile.
I handle the talking on account of the Bear is already spiraling into a world of pissed off because of this run. “We’re here for Mrs.…” (Her Hindu-Indian name is too much of a mouthful for my heathen, American tongue) “…For room 2208.”
“Oh, you’re here for Patty. We just call her Patty.”
I laugh, “How funny. We have one of those too. We call him George.”
She looks at me, confused.
“Anyway, yes, we are here for room 2208, taking her to a doctor’s appointment.”
“She isn’t here.”
Now, it’s my turn to look confused.
White-trash Debbie continues, “She went to Akron three days ago; she was admitted to the hospital there because her condition got worse. We called your company and canceled the appointment.”
We head back down to the truck and The Bear lets fly some opinions on the mental capacity of the dispatchers. He grabs the mic and calls to dispatch.
“Go ahead 202”
“Apparently this run was canceled 3 days ago, so we’re in service.”
Dickie’s voice comes back all sunshine and roses, “That’s clear 202. I’ve got another one coming out of a residence for you; the page is on the way.”
The Bear throws the radio mic, it bounces off the windshield and hits the floor. “Apparently we’re the only crew on today! What the f…”
“Chill, Bear. Maybe everyone else is out.”
“Yeah, out getting breakfast. Why would that stupid old prick, Dickie, send any other crew to do a run when he has us to send all over Northeastern Ohio? That stupid old prick can’t even read the book and see a runs been canceled. If I’m ever on a real fire scene with that worthless…”
My pager beeps and Bear hunts around on the floor for the mic. We find it on the floor wedged between the center console and the seat. We notice that the way it landed, combined with the way it was wedged into a tight spot, the mic button was pushed in.
We were transmitting the entire time.
Every squad between here and the Eastside could hear us.
People randomly listening to scanners could hear us.
I’m sure Dickie, sitting up in dispatch with his feet kicked up on the desk, heard us.
I snatch up the mic and give a hasty “202isclearonpage” and hang the mic gingerly back into its spot on the dash.
We don’t get any response from dispatch.
The GPS takes us to one of the more rural sections of the Westside of Cleveland. When we identify the exact residence, we are greeted by a driveway full of cars. I pull the squad over and park in front of the house. You would think that when someone is expecting an ambulance to pick someone up at their house, they would at least leave enough room to maneuver a cot up the driveway. But, such was not the case. The only walkway from the front door runs parallel to the house over to the driveway and doesn’t do us a damn bit of good, so we take the only option left to us and drag the cot up over the lawn, through the bushes, and to the front door.
As I’m about to knock, the door creaks open a few inches and an eyeball surrounded with wrinkles peers out at me. The eyeball says, “You boys are here already?”
“Yes sir, we’re here to pick up a Miss Freda Johnson to take her to hospice care.”
The eyeball replies, “We weren’t expectin’ you boys till 10:30.”
I look at my watch. It’s 0858.
The eyeball continues, “When we called for the appointment, we wasn’t given no time, so we were expectin yuns at 1030. We ain’t even got her fed or warshed yet.”
“No problem, sir. I’ll let our dispatcher know and I’m sure we’ll have someone back here and ready for you at 1030.”
The door closes the few inches it was open, and the eyeball is gone. Back through the bushes, over the lawn, and back into the squad goes the cot. I get on the horn with Dickie. I explain the situation and receive a terse “remain in the area” for my trouble.
The Bear and I find a nice spot to park where we can smoke and joke for a while. I doze off as The Bear talks about the history of his beloved Canada, where I’m sure he would be very happy living alone somewhere on some frozen tundra, hunting and fishing for food and living off the bounty of the land.
He says, “Canada has some beautiful architecture; they have a bunch of medieval castles and stuff”. But all I could think as I fell into unconsciousness was, “Wasn’t Canada full of Indians during the medieval times?”
I wake up to Dickie’s voice on the radio and the smell of The Bears feet filling the truck. I roll down the window to get some fresh air and respond over the radio as Bear snores from the back of the squad.
“This is 202, go ahead, Dispatch.”
“202 did you receive the page?”
“That’s a negative, dispatch.”
“202, you’re gonna have the same patient and same info as earlier.”
Making sure the mic button is NOT pressed I reply “no shit, you idiot” then press the button and respond “copy that”. I hop out of the truck, grab a quick smoke, and then head the truck back to the residence, leaving The Bear asleep in the back till we get there.
When we get back at 1030, the cars are still blocking our approach in the driveway. We head to the door and it turns out the talking eyeball is attached to a wrinkled little old man. We load up his wrinkled little old wife and take her to the hospice of Cleveland. I sit behind the patient, and she quickly falls asleep and stays that way for the duration of the transport. (See, patients are just like birds.) I check a few times to make sure she is actually still alive, and, thankfully, she makes the trip. It’s a lot of extra paper work when the patient dies on you.
As we’re moving the patient from the cot to her new bed, my pagers goes off.
“You have got to be kidding. We’re in the middle of a run and he pages us with the next one?”
“Now, calm down, Bear. It might just be a page out for an open shift or something.” I check the pager, “Nope, it’s another run.”
“That son of a…”
I cut off his rant by counting “1… 2… 3…”, and we lift the patient to the bed. We get our paper work signed in all the appropriate places, flirt with the hospice nurses for a few minutes (hospice hires the hot nurses), then grab a smoke in the parking lot, then pretend we didn’t get a page and call that we are back in service.
“Dispatch to 202, did you receive your page?”
“Uh, that’s a negative dispatch. No page received”, I lie.
“Copy 202, I’ll resend. Your next one is out of Holy Heart care and rehab going to Holy Heart Hospital.”
Bear grabs the mic from my hand, “Dispatch, what time is the pick up?”
“As soon as you can get there 202.”
Translation: “We’re already late for this run because I over-booked us.”
“Well, Bear, back to the Eastside, again. If only I were surprised.”
“Whatever, man. We’ll get there when we get there. Let’s stop for lunch.”
After a quick stop at Chipotle, a few cigarettes in the truck, and a completely unnecessary stop for fuel, we arrive at Holy Heart care and rehab center. As you can probably guess from the name, Holy Heart care and rehab is affiliated with Holy Heart Hospital and actually shares a parking lot with it. The official mileage from one to the other is about 2 tenths of a mile, and I make no exaggeration when I tell you we could literally walk the cot across the parking lot in the time it takes us to load the patient into the squad, drive over, and unload them. Combine that with the time it takes to drive there from the Westside, the wages of a medic and an intermediate, and the cost of fuel and this run becomes completely absurd.
But then, I don’t get paid to think.
We call on scene, grab the cot, and enter the building. In his hastiness to get this run over and done with, The Bear misses the key pad beside the door and just attempts to pull it open. It doesn’t open, but it does set off a wailing alarm that pierces our ears and sends his ever growing anger to the next level.
After what feels like an eternity to my poor bleeding ear drums, we spot a squatty little nurse taking her time coming down the hall. She waddles over to the door, types in a code, and pushes it open for us.
She looks up at us from her 4 foot tall, 5 foot wide frame and asks, “Who you all here to get?”
“We’re here to get a Hildegard Buchanan,” we say in tandem.
She looks us and the cot up and down and says, “Where’s the rest of ya?
“I’m sorry?” We say, again in tandem.
“Child, you gonna need more help!”
Miss Candy, as her name tag read, lead us down the hall to Hildegard Buchanan’s room. Through the entire journey she would turn to any employee that passed and told them we were here to pick up Hildy, and would receive replies ranging from “Mmmmm, mmmmmm, mmmmmm”, “Oh no they didn’t”, and we even got an “Awww, hell naw!”.
I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this particular run.
And when I laid eyes on Hildy, I discovered why.
She was at least 300 pounds, but my guess was closer to 400.
Company policy states we get an automatic lift assist, in other words a second crew, for any patient over 300 pounds.
I looked at The Bear, but he had officially entered the level of pissed where you can’t speak.
I looked at Miss Candy and said, “Please excuse us. We’ll be right back,” and we exited from the direction we came. We got outside and The Bear let loose a string of profanities rivaled only by Mr. Parker when the Bumpass Hounds ate his Christmas turkey. (By the way, did you know that movie was filmed in Cleveland?) The only thing I heard for sure during Bears tirade was that he was calling Dickie.
And call Dickie, he did.
“It’s ringing.”
“Jules, let me talk to Dick.”
“It’s Barry. Who cares who it is? Let me talk to him.”
“Just put down the cereal and put him on the phone.”
“You won’t see me later if I can help it.”
“Dick, this is Glazer on 202.”
“Damn right there is a problem!”
“We need a lift assist and the bariatric cot.”
“You had to know. We’ve taken this patient a dozen times before.”
“Because I didn’t recognize the patient till I saw her.”
“Bull shit! I took her last time and we certainly did have an assist and the bari cot.”
“What do you mean you don’t have anyone available?”
“An hour and a half? You’re joking.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Yeah, no, I understand there are other runs. We’ll wait.”
“Fine. Whatever. We’ll fuckin do it somehow.”
CLICK.
And that was the first time The Bear hung up on dispatch that day.
With the help of four worthless nurses and Miss Candy supervising, we hefted this extremely large woman onto our skinny cot, hauled her to her doctor’s appointment across the parking lot, then back again.
I damn near dropped a nut lifting her.
The next few runs went on without much problem: just your typical run of the mill discharges. The real problem was the fact that we didn’t stop. Hungry, sore, and getting our dicks run into the dirt didn’t improve The Bears mood one bit. Then, 6:45 pm came.
At 6:45 we were finally pulling into our home base on the Westside when my pager went off.
Again.
We looked at the page. In theory, it was a nice quick discharge from Our Lady of the Alms to a nursing home right down the road.
It was anything but nice or quick.
We haul balls to the hospital to get this run over so we can just go home. A normal person would think this is not really a big thing to ask, but a normal person has never worked for a private. We grab the cot and double time it across the parking lot and through the ER. Let me add that at 6 foot 8, Bear’s double time is my jogging. We get the usual hopeful stares from the ER nurses, all hoping that we are there to take a patient off their hands, but we ignore them and head for the elevators. We press the up button and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Finally the door opens. The elevator is full with a hospital bed, a patient in said hospital bed, intubated, and all manner of equipment and personnel all chirping at each other. I flashed my best “Em Effer” smile and told them “we’ll take the next one” as the doors slid shut.
Then we waited some more.
Finally, we got a lift and headed to the fourth floor.
Again, we double-timed around the corner, down the hall, past the nurses’ station, and to the patient’s room, where The Bear stopped short, the back of the cot stopped short, but I didn’t.
I walked straight into the cot, dick first.
It didn’t feel like kittens licked it, I can tell you that.
“Son of a… Bear, what the hell?”
“Where the hell’s the nurse?” With that, he pushed his way past me as I was swallowing the nauseated feeling that was rising from my groin. I hobbled to the door of the room and laid eyes on our patient. He was a large man, missing his right leg from the knee down (that should make him lighter) and sitting in a bariatric wheel chair.
I followed The Bear up to the nurses’ station in time to hear him grilling the nurse.
“Why is he going by ambulance if he can sit in a wheel chair?”
“Your dispatch said an ambulette was not available.”
“Did you tell our dispatch how much the patient weighs?”
“Of course, I told him the patient weighs 155.”
Bear scoffed, “Yeah right, 155 kilograms.”
She just looked at him, “Exactly, 155 kilograms.”
“You know that’s 343 pounds right?”
“Of course I do.”
“Son of a… where did you get your nursing degree, England?”
I interjected, “Maybe from Canada, Bear.”
“You’re not helping Fin.” He looked back at the nurse, “You know what? Fine, whatever, we’ll take him, but company policy states we can’t take the chair. It would be a danger in an accident because we have no way of securing it.”
“What? What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Call our dispatch. They can send an ambulette to pick it up later.”
In what appeared to be three massive strides, he crossed the hall and disappeared into the patient’s room. Bear explained to the patient that we weren’t taking his chair and why, but he didn’t care as long as someone brought his food to him. As we were heaving the patient out of his chair and onto the cot, I heard the nurse saying, “Okay, I’ll tell them.”
Oh, no.
I poked my head out of the door to test my theory, and sure enough, as soon as I came into view the nurse waved and announced in her prettiest sing-song voice that our dispatch said we could take the chair.
I turned to Bear.
“She says dispatch says we can take the chair.”
“Oh, okay, how are we supposed to secure it?”
I turned to the nurse.
“How are we supposed to secure it?”
“How are they supposed to secure it?”
“He says you don’t have to secure it.”
I turn to Bear.
“She says he says we don’t have to secure it.”
“That’s against the damn policy book.”
I turn to the nurse.
“It’s against company policy to take an unsecured wheel chair in an ambulance.”
“They say it’s against the company policy manual.”
“He says dispatch can over-ride the company policy manual.”
I turn to Bear.
“She says he says he can override the policy manual.”
“What? Since when?”
I turn to the nurse.
Bear pushes his way past me and in a flash he is at the nurses’ station. He says “let me talk to him” and snatches the phone from her hand. I just stand there and give my best impression of a reassuring smile as we hear him on the phone.
In fact, everyone can hear him on the phone.
I think coma guy on floor two can hear him.
“Dick this is Glazer.”
“How are we supposed to secure it?”
“And what if we get in an accident; it becomes a huge projectile that endangers me and the patient.”
“I don’t really care what you did when you were on the road ten years ago, that was your life.”
“Who says dispatch can override the policy manual?”
“The policy manual says you can override the policy manual?”
“Fine, whatever, I don’t care anymore.”
CLICK.
And that was the second time The Bear hung up on dispatch that day.
Well, we got the run done. The patient literally spilled over the side rails on the cot, and if we didn’t drop a nut earlier, we certainly did on this one. We finally rolled back into the squad bay at 7:32 pm. The Bear was pissed, but still the camel’s back was not broken.
What finally made The Bear snap?
-THE STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMELS BACK-
The final straw was when we got back to the base to discover that the two 24 hour crews on shift were sitting in the base chilling and had not run one call all day.
-YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT-
“IT’S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, MOTHER FUCKER!” And then he lunged at the aged dispatcher.
And Dick lunged for the front door.
The Bear was off balance from his lunge, giving Dick just enough time to get the door open and give me a pleading look to which I reply with a shrug and say, “You better run, squirrel.”
He did.
Bear ran after him.
I just went and got in my car.
The last thing I saw, illuminated by my headlights, was Dick running as fast as he could around the corner of the building with The Bear about twenty feet behind him. From the level of fatigue Dick was showing, I’m sure this was not their first lap around the Paradise Ambulance Service Westside base. He was moving at a pretty good clip for an old guy, but with a 6 foot 8 stride, it was only a matter of time before The Bear got his claws on him. I actually think Bear might have been going a little slow on purpose, savoring the chase as it were.
The old adage says, “You don’t have to out run the bear; you only have to out run the guy next to you”.
Poor Dickie didn’t have that option.
Chapter 8… TROUBLE IN PARADISE
Look at me.
Look what I’ve become.
I wish I could tell you I’m just sitting here, my boots unzipped, one foot propped up on the dash, slouched in the passenger seat.
If only my hat were pulled down over my eyes partly obscuring a five o’clock shadow that’s about 36 hours past the point of needing a shave.
It would be far more comfortable if my “uniform” shirt were unbuttoned, wrinkled, and untucked .
No, look what I’ve become.
I’m sitting here, in the conference room of Paradise Ambulance Service, where the interviews and orientation usually take place, next to The Bear, across the table from Dickie and Bert. Bruce mans the left flank of the table; across from him Jules sits languidly on our right.
Bruce is clean shaven, hair combed, shirt tucked in just right. His boots look polished and he has a look on his face that says he could be chewing nails like they were Dentine Ice. As soon as we walked in the squad bay today, The Bear and I noticed his appearance, took our silent queue, and got the razors out of the lockers and tucked in the shirts.
And did I mention Jules is missing her usual bowl of cereal?
Hope you brought your hip waders; it’s going to get deep in here.
I sit here, fidgety in my seat, not from fear of Bert, but from the massive amounts of Mountain Dew I’ve been inhaling. COD Modern Warfare 3 has finally arrived, and the over caffeinated beverage of choice is giving codes for free double XP time in the game.
Call of Duty is a hell of a drug.
The only thing my racing brain can think about at this particular moment, however, is a little nugget of gold Snap once told me: “Threatening a man’s job only makes him work hard enough to not get fired.”
And “fired”, my friends, is the name of the game.
If you’ve been keeping up then I’m sure we all know how we have come to be in this precarious predicament.
The stage is set; the players have all taken their marks.
Here is how The Bear got fired…
-HOW THE BEAR GOT FIRED-
“Mr. Glazer, I think we all know why we’re here?”
“Yeah, Bert, I know why I’m here, ‘cause Dickie is a snitch and a pussy. What I don’t know is why everyone else who wears a palm tree on their shirt is here too.”
“Bruce is here because he is the lead medic of the Westside branch and was the ranking officer on duty on the evening in question; Mr. Finding is here because he witnessed the events in question; and Katy Jules is here because as lead Basic, she is your supervisor and therefore acts as your defense council.
The Bears face reddened, “I’m an intermediate.”
“I’m aware of your provider level Mr. Glazer,” Bert said with a confused expression, “What is your point?”
“I’m an Intermediate, Jules is the lead Basic. She is in charge of Basics, not of me.”
“Mr. Glazer, we have been over this before. Paradise Ambulance Service does not acknowledge the intermediate here. You are a Basic at this job and will be paid as and are subject to the rules of the other Basics.”
“Unless I’m with a patient who needs an IV or other ALS care I’m trained for then I can use my skills.”
“Of course, for you not to do so would be neglect.”
“So you get to charge for ALS care, but only pay for a BLS worker.”
Bruce cleared his throat and gave the slightest shake of his head, telling Bear now was not the time or place for this old argument. Thankfully The Bear dropped it and Bert continued.
“The fact of the matter is that we are here because you chased a fellow employee with the intent to harm him, forcing him to abandon his post and resulting in the shutdown of this station for the night because a replacement dispatcher could not be found. We missed several calls that evening, losing uncountable dollars for the company and damaging our reputation in the area.”
“Self-defense.”
Bears words stopped Bert short, “I’m sorry. What?”
“Self-defense, he hit me first. He provoked me and I was defending myself.”
“Dick tells a different story; he says you threatened him verbally, provoked him, as it were, and rather than risk a confrontation with you, he left the premises.”
“He is lying.”
“Yes, he said you would say so, that’s why we have Mr. Finding here with us.”
Damn. Bear did provoke him. But he hit Bear first. Then Bear chased him around the parking lot for 45 minutes before the guy was smart enough to get in his car and take off. It was hardly self-defense. I blurted out the only thing I could think of that might save Bears ass, “I didn’t see anything!” If they can’t prove it, then no one gets in trouble, right? No proof, no blame.
And like I’m going to roll over on my partner?
“Mr. Finding, Dick says you were standing there in the dispatch office watching the entire altercation.”
“Nope, he’s wrong. I wasn’t there and didn’t see anything.”
The Bear grinned with the predatory smile that matches his nickname, leaned forward, and asked Bert in a smooth voice, “So you see, Bert, we can’t prove what happened, so who you gonna believe?”
“I believe Dick.”
He just flat out said it. I mean we all knew inside he wouldn’t believe Bear, but he actually picked a side. I picked my jaw up off the floor. I looked around and everyone else looked just as shocked, even Dickie. If Jules had been eating cereal, she would have dropped her spoon.
Scratch that.
Everyone looked surprised except Bruce.
Bruce just sat there, hands folded together on top of the table and elbows resting lightly on it. The right side of his jaw twitched ever so slightly. I think he may actually have been chewing a nail. What Bert said next seemed to faze him even less: almost like he was expecting it.
“That being said, Mr. Glazer, I think it best for everyone and the company if we part ways here.”
The room exploded. Dickie sat with his arms crossed, nodding proudly. I was on my feet, the room spinning, yelling. The Bear was pounding on the table with his fist to emphasize some words I missed. Even Jules was up in Bert’s ear, prattling on about something. Bruce never moved a muscle except for the little one in his jaw.
Bert brought the room back in order by speaking softly but firmly, so that everyone had to shut up to hear what he was saying. “This is not up for debate people. This is not a democracy. This is my decision.”
“Barry Glazer. YOU. ARE. FIRED.”
That was it. It was over. The Bear had no job; I had no partner; and work was going to seriously suck from that point forward.
How the hell could Bear possibly keep his job?
-HOW THE HELL THE BEAR KEPT HIS JOB-
Bruce finally spoke. He still had his hands on the table and he spoke coolly and with purpose, as if every word were carefully considered before they were uttered. He looked directly at Bert and said, “Before another argument starts, I believe I have a solution to this entire problem.”
Bert’s eyebrows went up to his comb-over and for a moment, it gave him the illusion that he had hair.
“I believe the problem has been solved with the termination of Mr. Glazer,” he said from underneath his hair-brow.
Bruce, nonplussed, continued, “With all due respect sir, and keep in mind I’m not taking sides here, but I feel that if the security camera footage were to fall into the hands of a court of law, the termination of Mr. Glazer would be just the beginning of our problems.”
The room stopped spinning around me and then began to spin in the opposite direction. “Bruce you clever, clever bastard!” I thought, then “goddamn, the room really needs to stop spinning. I think I need an IV.”
Without another word, Bruce rose from his chair, exited the room, and returned after what felt like an eternity with a tape that he popped into the TV/VCR where the new hires watch the incessant, droning training videos. The tension in the room was thick as everyone leaned toward the small television to get a better look at the black and white video footage. I feel certain in saying it was probably the first time anyone was interested in any video that was being played on that television.
Static swooshed across the screen with that “white noise” sound as the tape started to roll. After a moment, the picture popped and there were little black and white people standing on the screen moving in that twitchy way that security footage does. A time stamp at the bottom corner of the screen showed that it was truly the night in question.
The first thing everyone noticed on the screen was me, standing right there, slightly behind and to the right of The Bear. I know this was the first thing they noticed because they all turned to look at me.
Bert seemed un-amused, “You weren’t there and saw nothing, Mr. Finding?”
What could I do? I just shrugged.
Back on the screen you could clearly see me, The Bear in his “wife-beater”, and Dickie sitting at his desk. The video had no audio, Bert’s way of saving money I suppose, and so from the looks of things on the grainy footage, it appeared The Bear was having a nice pleasant conversation after his shift with dispatch before exiting the building. Next on the video, Dickie got up and moved around his desk and struck Bear in the jaw. The Bear fell down and out of the range of the camera, taking me out of range with him.
I couldn’t believe it. From this camera angle, you couldn’t see when Bear made a fist, when he tried to swing, or when I grabbed his hand and stopped him. All you could see was Dickie come around the desk and punch The Bear.
We continued to watch. Shortly after the punch, Dickie went running out the front door, and The Bear followed. Dickie turned away from the television and seemed to visibly shrink in his seat as the rest of us remained glued to the TV. We watched the still-camera footage of the front door. About every minute, Dickie would run past the door looking terrified with The Bear trotting leisurely on his heels. We watched this occur three or four times, with Dickie looking more and more haggard with each passing, before Bruce finally pushed EJECT on the VCR. He placed the tape in the center of the table and took his seat, again folding his hands in front of himself and looking relaxed. I noticed the muscle in his jaw no longer twitched; He must have pulverized the nails he was chewing and swallowed them.
Everyone looked at Bert silently, except for Dickie, who found something in his lap very interesting. He was done for. He knew it. We all knew it. We were all just waiting for Bert to say it.
And he did. “Barry, in light of new evidence you are no longer fired.” He turned to Dickie, “Dick, my old friend, I’m sorry. My hands are tied. You struck an employee unprovoked. You are fired.”
Here is the really shocking part.
In an act of mercy I never thought him capable of displaying, Barry “The Bear” Glazer spared the life of his mortal enemy. He looked at Bert, and in a low growl said, “I don’t want to press any kind of charges against Dickie. It was all a misunderstanding. The way that old man throws a punch, no one actually got hurt. I don’t want anyone to lose their job. I would like to drop the entire thing.”
It was an amazing act of compassion that I know I would never have been capable of.
He then continued, “However, I will be keeping this, just in case I change my mind.” And with that, he snatched up the security camera video tape off the table and left a room full of wide eyes and shocked faces in his wake as he strutted out of the conference room.
“HOOO-WEEE, that’s one heck of a story, son!”
Woody Hoyle’s hands moved fluidly over his Xbox controller as he spoke. I lay on the couch in the day room with an IV in my left arm and a bag of saline taped to the wall above me. Woody was kind enough to start the IV on me to counteract the effects of my Mountain Dew hangover. Then I gave him the 411 on the demise and resurrection of The Bear as he played Modern Warfare 3.
The Bear entered the room and stated he had next game.
“Alright man, I gotta know. What’d ya do with that tape?”
With no humor in his eyes or voice Bear simply replied, “Put it under my gun.”
Have I mentioned that The Bear has his concealed carry license and that if he isn’t at work, you better believe he has a gun on him? I have no doubt that there was not the least bit of irony in his statement. I’m sure that at that moment he indeed had a .45 caliber handgun secured somewhere in his truck and that there was a tape of Dickie punching him tucked securely underneath it.
Woody was thoroughly getting his ass handed to him and cussing a blue streak in an online team death match when Bruce entered the room. The Bear was immediately on his feet.
“Bruce, man, I don’t know what to say.”
“son-of –a-bitchin snipers!”
“Can it Bear. You lost your cool, and it almost cost you.”
“God- damned campers!”
“But Bruce, I…”
“They’re cheatin’! Fin you see this shit?”
“But, nothing! Don’t you “but” me! He goaded you, and you let him!”
“Hackers! They got some kinda’ cheat runnin!”
“Bruce, he…”
“I shot him square in his chest, how is he not dead!”
“He, nothing! You don’t know what to say? I think you do! Now say it!”
“They said the servers in the new one were gonna’ be more secure, damnit!”
“Bruce, I’m sorry.”
“How’d these techno-bastards hack it already?”
“And?”
“The damn game’s only been out a week!”
“And you own me.”
Woody dropped his controller.
“God-damn right I own you Bear! Someday I’m gonna’ need a favor, a BIG favor, and when I do, your ass better be there. In the meantime when I want something, it’s in my hand. When I tell you to do something, it’s done. If my ass needs wiped, you better be standing there with a handful of toilet paper. Are we clear?”
Bear wisely said nothing, just gave a curt nod.
Bruce is like a mob boss; it’s great to have his protection until you owe him. Depending on Bruce’s mood on any particular day, The Bear may wish he was fired. Generally when you owe Bruce, you work for him when he needs days off. For Bear, that just may be a fate worse than death. But, as is the case with EMS providers, business had been taken care of and all was forgotten.
Bruce smiled, gave Bear a slap on the shoulder, and picked up the Xbox controller. “Whose turn is it?” he asked.
Woody replied, “The Bear called next.”
Bruce took the prime spot across from the TV, planted his ass, and said, “That’s what I thought, it’s my turn.”
A chuckle from the hallway caught our attention. We all looked and for the first time noticed Probie standing in the door way. “What the hell’s so funny, Probie?” we all asked in some fashion.
“Nothin’, guys. It’s just nice to not be the bitch anymore.”
Bruce snorted, “Shut-up Probie and go get me a soda!”
Probie wisely turned tail and went to fetch Bruce his frosty beverage. Bruce began a new team death match and quoted Mel Brooks to no one in particular. “It’s good to be da’ king.”
Later, after a quiet morning and some lunch, we were all standing in the squad bay, smoking and joking before a scheduled, wait and return, lift assist run scheduled for a 13:30 pick-up. Of course by “all”, I actually mean Woody, Probie, Bear, and I. Bruce and Jules had some admin work to go over with Bert, so Jules switched with Probie for the afternoon: convenient considering the nature of this particular patient.
The Bear and I were smoking like chimneys; Woody had a big chaw of tobacco in his lip and was practicing his lasso work; and The Probie stood quietly to the side. The bay door was standing open. It was an unusually warm day for the time of year, and there were leaves that swirled in and out of the bay as we all talked.
From around his cheek full of REDMAN, Woody said, “Man, I tell ya, Fin, I’m the only person I know who can end up naked in a hot tub with a chick and not get laid.”
“Yeah, Woody,” I replied, “you’re the only one I know of too. Was she naked too?”
“Yup.”
“Then she wanted it.”
“Well, I think she did, but…”
“There is no ‘but’. If she wants it, you give it to her.”
The Bear chimed in with a movie quote, “Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, YOU SAY YES!”
“Twern’t that simple, fellas. “
“What do you mean ‘not that simple’? You know what I always say? Bear, tell him what I always say.”
“He who hesitates, masturbates,” Bear chanted my mantra.
“That’s god-damned right. He who hesitates, masturbates.”
“Well, this particular filly wanted some forma’ commitment.”
“So promise to call, then don’t call.”
“Ya see, I thought about that. But thisun’ strikes me as the ‘stalker’ type.”
“Well what the hell you out trolling for strange for anyway? You work with Jules. Just get it there.”
“Now there’s the heck of it. Jules won’t put out no more.”
“Um, what?!”
“Yup, she won’t give it up no more. Says she is seein’ some guy. Won’t say who, but I git the feelin’ we know ‘im.”
Three pairs of eyes fell on The Bear. He looked back at us, exhaled a long stream of smoke, and said, “As if. I took a week off with no pay instead of bangin’ her. You really think I’d date her?”
“Good point,” I said, “So then who? Enquiring minds want to know.”
“Ya’ll can rest assured I’ll be tryin’ to pump her for the information.”
“Or just pump her,” I added.
Just then my pager rang with the info for the trip. It read: ILSA BOVINE/SHADEY SHOALS CARE AND REHAB 205-1/TO DR. MANTOOTH, 8014 LORAIN RD FAIRVIEW PK/ WOUND CARE FOLLOW-UP/BARI COT, LIFT ASST, O2. It was the trip we had been waiting for. I got on the horn to inform dispatch that we’d received the info. Dickie, sounding like my best friend in the whole world suddenly, informed me without my asking that Bear and I would only be the assist on this run, meaning all we had to do was lift. The rest of the transport, care, and paper work would be on Woody and Probie.
And, if I know Woody, Probie will be the one in the back with the patient.
I placed the radio back in its base and looked over at Woody’s squad to see him talking to dispatch as well. He tossed his radio mic aside and yelled, “Saddle up boys! Let’s go tater totin’! Probie she’s all yours. Grab us the big-boy cot, if you please.” Probie did as instructed and went and got the cot as Bear and I decided we had time to smoke one more before we left.
We heard Probie roll the Bari cot over to his squad.
We heard him open the door to the squad.
Then we heard him say, “Um… Hullo. Can I help you?”
I looked at Bear inquisitively.
He looked back and shrugged.
We moved around the back of Woody’s rig to see what the matter was. Probie was standing there with the rear doors hanging open, dumbfounded. I put my shoulder into him to move him out of the way, and The Bear and I peered inside.
Everything was in order and where it should be, except for the little blonde sitting cross-legged on the cot. Her hair and make-up looked like they took hours to get just right, and she had on a tight sweater with A LOT of cleavage; so much “Cleveland” you could see all the way to Cincinnati. She was holding a little pink IPod with pink ear-buds in her ears and she was just kind of swaying to what sounded like country music. She noticed Bear and I, removed one of her ear-buds, and looked at us expectantly.
Probie’s question seemed to be as good as any, so, “Can I help you?” I asked.
She answered in a light, aloof voice, “Nope, just waiting for Woody,” then placed her ear-bud back in her ear and went back to her music.
Um, okay. Do the letters W-T-F mean anything to anyone?
I decided maybe the man in question could shed some light on the subject, so I turned and yelled for Woody. He came strolling over from the trash can where he’d found an empty Mountain Dew bottle I had already stolen the MW3 code off of to spit in.
“I’m a comin’, fellers. What the hell’s the hurry? It ain’t like Ilsa’s gonna’ get up and run away.”
I motioned with my chin for him to take a gander in the back of his truck. With a shrug and laugh, like he thought we were playing a prank on him, he looked into the truck.
And immediately dove back to the side of the vehicle, like a rodeo clown dodging a raging bull.
He spoke in a hushed excited tone, “what in the hell is she doin’ here? You guys messin’ with ole’ Woody Hoyle?”
“Woody, we don’t even know who the hell she is,” I replied impatiently.
“That’s her.”
“Her, who?”
“The broad.”
“The broad? What broad?”
“The hot-tub filly.”
“The hot- tub… Oh. Oh! That broad! The chick you were in the hot-tub with.”
“What the hell she doin’ here?”
“You tell us, Woody.”
Probie chimed in, “Hey, guys, we really need to go. We’re going to be late for the pick-up.”
In unison three voices yelled, “SHUT UP PROBIE!”
I turned to Woody, “Dude, you have to talk to her. Get rid of her or something.”
“You do it. She ain’t seen me yet. Tell her I’m not here or somethin’.”
A light, airy voice echoed from the rear of Woody’s squad, “Yooo-hoooo, Woody! I came to surprise you at work!”
Woody looked at me, “Damn the blue blazes of hell!” then turned to the back of the ambulance, “Hey there, darling, what’s a pretty thing like you doin’ in a dirty ole’ place like this?”
“Nice, Wood, that’ll get rid of her.”
He spit some tobacco juice at my feet, removed his hat, and said, “Well, gosh, it’s awful sweet o’ ya’ to come visit me like this, but me an’ the fellers here got to go get a patient.”
She smiled, “Neat, sounds like fun. I’ll go too. I’d love to see what you guys do!”
“Now darling, I don’t think that’s gonna’ be okay.”
“Sure it will sweetie. The boys don’t have a choice since you’re the Lead Medic and all.”
I actually guffawed, “Oh Woody, Bruce is gonna’ LOVE that.”
His chew spit landed closer to my boots this time. “Now darling, what kind of example would I be settin’ for my men if I did that?”
The Bear had had enough after that statement, “For Christ-sake, Woody, just tell her you were just trying to get some ass in a hot-tub ‘cause Jules won’t put out no more, and let’s go.”
The little blonde visibly reddened and shot daggers at The Bear. I turned to him and said, “Jesus, Bear. It’s called tact, fuck-rag!”
The Bear just rolled his eyes and informed us he would be in the truck.
Finally the little blonde could take no more, “WOODROW EUGENE HOYLE, YOU TOLD YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE HOT TUB? HOW COULD YOU? I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL! WHO THE HELL IS JULES?!”
Woody cut her off, “Look sweetie, I got to go. We can talk later. I’ll call you, I swear. Cross my heart.”
She would hear none of it, “NO! I’M STAYING RIGHT HERE ON THIS COT UNTIL WE GET THIS FIGURED OUT. I ALREADY ASKED DADDY FOR MONEY FOR THE WEDDING AND THEY ARE EXPECTING TO MEET YOU NEXT WEDNESDAY FOR DINNER!”
I looked at Woody and shrugged. He said, “Alright, darling, you stay right put on that cot.”
Then he grabbed the cot, pulled it out of the truck and wheeled it against the squad bay wall. The Probie and I placed the bari-cot in to his truck, and the last thing I saw in the side mirror as we pulled out of the bay was a very red, very deranged little blonde with so much Cleveland you could see to Cincinnati, choking on diesel fumes.
We shortly arrived at Shady Shoals retirement center and picked up the 417 pound Ilsa Bovine. No one really said much: Probie knows better than to speak unless spoken to, The Bear was back to his usual disgruntled self after the high of his victory this morning wore off, Woody seemed to be pondering his stalker predicament, and I was silently running through the possible candidates for Jules’ love interest.
Now, invariably when we take a gigantic patient to a doctor’s office, it is always the absolute smallest office in the history of mankind. Doctor Mantooth’s humble office, nestled in the heart of suburbia hell, Fairview Park, was no exception.
After fumbling our way through the doors into the outer waiting room, banging doors, furniture, and once catching the patients foot on a door jam, we were ushered into a narrow hallway and to the storage room, the only room big enough to hold: the bari-cot, the patient on it, two paramedics, an intermediate, a basic probie, and two nurses.
After a great heave to lower the cot to a position that the nurses could work with, we all began filing out of the storage room while Woody informed the nurses that we would be awaiting the patient in the waiting room. Jolene, the older and more bull-dogsish of the two nurses looked displeased.
“We need someone to turn her and hold her on her side while we check her decubs.”
Side note: decubs is slang for… Bedsores, more properly known as pressure ulcers or decubitus ulcers, are lesions caused by many factors—such as unrelieved pressure, friction, humidity, shearing forces, temperature, age, continence, and medication—to any part of the body, especially portions over bony or cartilaginous areas such as sacrum, elbows, knees, and ankles. Although often prevented and treatable if found early, they can be very difficult to prevent in frail elderly patients, wheelchair users (especially where spinal injury is involved) and terminally ill patients.
Thank you Google search and Wikipedia. I highly recommend looking up pictures if you have just eaten a nasty meal that you just can’t seem to get to come back up.
Anyway, yeah, bed sores on her ass because she is too fat to get out of bed, so she lays there with sub-par care and festers. We take patients in these instances to the doctors so that the wounds can be cleaned, measured, packed with whatever the hell they pack them with, and sent back to the nursing home where they won’t be taken care of.
You would think it would be easier on everyone if the doctor just came to the nursing facility, right? And cheaper for the patient?
Well, now, we can’t have that.
Well, let me tell you, a 417 pound woman in the best of cases does not smell like a bed of lilacs. Couple that with not the greatest of hygiene and a not nearly frequent enough sponge bath and you have a whole new definition for the phrase “stank crotch”. Now, add to that, the decubs, which are nothing more than rotting, decaying, dead flesh on someone’s ass, and you have a truly wonderful afternoon on your hands.
We used the draw sheet that we used to hoist Ilsa to our cot to turn her precariously on her side. This unleashed the afore mentioned stank . Then we got to stand there and hold her by the hips and shoulders to keep her on her side while Jolene and her fellow nurse dug around in the wounds, which were large, deep and plentiful.
And of course, then she farted.
A lot.
I tried to lighten the mood as best I could.
“So, Woody, nice girl you got there. COUGH.”
“Yeah, yeah. GAG. Laugh it up cowboy.”
Squeaky fart.
Bear chimed in with tears in his eyes, “Um, your middle name HACK is Eugene?”
“Yeah, I know your mama named you Barry Lee, CHOKE. What of it?”
Series of short pulsing farts.
“No, nothing, man. COUGH. Just sayin.”
“I done told ya’ll the gal is nuts. CHOKING SOB.”
Loud trumpeting fart followed by an apology from the patient.
“Yeah, man, you weren’t kidding, for sure. GAG WITH A LITTLE PUKE IN MY MOUTH (IT TASTED BETTER THAN THE FARTS).”
Probie chimed in between gasps for air, “CHOKE, yeah you sure can pick ‘em Woody. GAG”
In unison three, weak, air deprived voices yelled, “SHUT UP PROBIE!”
Thankfully, the nurses ended their prodding and probing. We turned the patient back to her back, wrapped her up in the sheets to try and contain the stank, and were dismissed from the storage closet. We ran outside of the doctor’s office like recruits running out of the gas chamber. Eyes were watering, snot was running down our noses, and I was pretty sure I was going to die; The Bear commented that he already had; and Woody said that if something HAD died in that room, it would have been like an air freshener.
When the patient had seen the doctor, was given instruction for caring for her wounds (like she could touch her own ass), and a new appointment was set, we were cleared to return her from whence she came. I made a note in my phone as to the day of the next appointment. It was on one of my days off and I certainly wouldn’t be picking up overtime that day. Then we bounced and banged our way back through the office, into the truck, and back to Shady Shoals.
We returned to base in less than triumphant fashion: dirty, tired, and the stench still permeating from our uniforms. Woody’s stalker was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, and we walked up to the front to turn in paperwork and check in with dispatch. You know, get a peak at the books and see what might be in store for us.
We stopped dead in our tracks. There sat Dickie, per usual. But behind him was Snap in street clothes, chatting amiably with him. He saw us and the corners of his walrus mustache turned upward.
“Welcome back. I don’t think I ever seen a bigger ragtag bunch o’ whistle-dicks in my life.”
Cutting right to the point, I replied, “Snap, what the hell you doing here? Isn’t it your day off?”
“Yeah, it is. But after the station shut down the other night, Bert realized he needed an extra backup dispatcher, so I volunteered. The wife wants one of those big swirly tubs in the bathroom we’re redoin’, so I could use the extra cash.”
As if she could hear him talking about her, his phone rang. He excused himself and exited the front door to talk to her. I was grateful because it gave me an easy out of an awkward situation. The Bear and I immediately beat feet to the squad bay to discuss.
“Fin, this is gonna’ be great. Snap is one of us. We’ll finally have a dispatcher without his head up his ass.”
“I don’t know, Bear. Dickie used to be on the road. Look how he turned out.”
“You’re overreacting man. This is gonna’ be good.”
“Bear, he’s going over to the dark side, man!”
“Well, I…”
“It’s us and it’s them, Bear, and you know it. There is no riding the fence.”
“They do say when you sit in the dispatch chair, your brains fall out your ass.”
“God-damned right, man, and I tell you this: we gotta’ save Snap…snap him out of whatever delusion this is, no pun intended, and until we do, we better be god-damned careful what we say and do around him. He already knows too much.”
Bear and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out the bay door: smoking in quiet contemplation and watching the sun go down. It was a dark day, indeed, lit occasionally by the headlights of a little blue car with a little blonde driver who kept passing by the station.
Chapter 9… THE SUN STILL SETS IN PARADISE
The blood pounding in my ears drowns out the wail of the ambulance sirens. I lean into the sharp turns, and my knees absorb the impact from road bumps like shock absorbers. I’ve entered that state of mind in which everything important is in slow motion and everything else is sped up. It’s that emergency “fight or flight” response in which your brain just knows what to filter out and what not to without your conscious mind focusing on anything but the task at hand.
All the superfluous parts of my environment streak by my senses.
The Bear is furiously doing chest compressions on our patient.
Bears handle-bar mustache is only half a handle bar mustache; half is singed off and the skin underneath is now red and angry.
A Broslow Tape for measuring the size of a pediatric patient lies on the floor.
The Bear’s aviator sunglasses crunch under my foot as I reposition myself in the airway chair.
The Paradise Ambulance Service logo on Bear’s sleeve is dark and smudged with soot.
I visualize the patient’s vocal cords and slide an endo-trachial tube between them.
The EMT-Basic/Fire Fighter whose department squad we’re in steps on my Paradise cap as he takes over for Bear on chest compressions.
I cough: my lungs hurt from all the smoke.
The Bear hands me IO drill, used for drilling into bone and placing a line when a normal IV is too difficult or not possible, then begins bagging the patient through the ET tube.
I feel the crunch of bone as the drill hits home mid femur.
I secure a line and begin running fluids.
I’m weightless for a second as the squad gets launched over train tracks and I’m launched into the rear doors.
All these things run through my head in a matter of seconds, my mind filtering out the unimportant parts, as the squad races toward the Emergency Room. The patient and my training are the only important parts; the rest is just unimportant stuff.
-THE UNIMPORTANT STUFF-
It was a cold December Sunday, the first Sunday of the month. In Cleveland that means it’s been full blown winter for about three months. A light dusting of snow was falling around our squad as we blazed lights and sirens down the road. The Bear got to work on time, but we got caught up playing Modern Warfare 3 and lost track of the time, so we were once again on the run to make it to the Golden Arches before breakfast was over.
The Bear was behind the wheel, driving like a bat out of hell, the snowflakes glinted off his aviators like shooting stars. I was in the passenger seat, calling clear at intersections and hanging on to the “oh shit” bar for dear life. My partner was extremely determined not to miss his steak, egg, and cheese bagel on this fine morning; consequently he did not see the guy in scrubs with a coffee in his hand crossing the driveway as he was guiding the ambulance into the parking lot.
Fortunately for all involved, their eyes locked at the last second, and The Bear swerved, sending the squad over the curb and air born. At the same time, the guy in scrubs leapt backward and out of the way, but lost his coffee in the process. The steam of the warm coffee and the cold air rose from his chest as the coffee dripped all down the front of his shirt.
Sucked to be him, but we’re on official business here.
Bear parked the truck across three parking spots and we beat feet into the McDonalds. Luckily, we made it with a couple minutes to spare; it was looking like it was going to be a great day. As we were waiting for our orders, standing to the side of the counter, an angry tap on my shoulder caught my attention.
I turned to see a man, about my height, with long hair, tattoos on his forearms, eyes that blazed with a crazy gleam, and a scruffy un-shaven chin.
And he was wearing a set of scrubs full of coffee.
It was Murse Andrew.
Murse Andrew is a nurse in the ER at Our Lady of the Alms hospital. We see him all the time. We call him “Murse” because he is a male nurse. We call him “Andrew” because he bears a striking resemblance to Andrew WK, one of our favorite rockers. I’m sure he has a real name, which is probably not Andrew, but I couldn’t say for sure because his name tag is always backward. It’s a little ploy nurses pull because they are required to wear the name badge, but they don’t want patients to actually know their name. Anyway, in every hospital, there is that one nurse that doesn’t treat the EMS like dirt; that is cool to talk to; will be upfront with you; and appreciates the job we do in reference to their job. That’s Murse Andrew. Plus, it helps that he used to be a Medic and then took the bridge course to RN. So on paper, he’s really one of our guys. He just works on the other side of the table.
I smiled at him, “Oh, Murse Andrew, I almost didn’t recognize you!”
“My own mother wouldn’t have recognized me if you guys had turned me into street pizza out there.”
The Bear stepped forward with a chagrinned look on his face, “That was my bad bro; let me make it up to you.” He turned to the counter and flagged down one of the girls, “Hey will ya add a large coffee onto my order?”
Her little blonde pony tail bobbed above her McDonalds visor as she said “Sure thing Barry!” and immediately ran to grab the coffee.
In a matter of seconds a fresh piping hot coffee was handed to The Bear, and then handed to Murse Andrew. Murse Andrew looked at Bear inquisitively.
The Bear laughed, “We don’t pay for coffee, bud.”
“Must be nice,” He retorted. “Nurses always pay for OUR coffee.”
I slapped him on the shoulder, “With your salary, you can afford to.”
He nodded knowingly, “How are things in Paradise these days?”
The Bear snorted, “Saving the world, one discharge at a time.”
I said, “Oh you know, the usual. Snap is turning to the dark side.”
He shook his head, “He’s learnin’ to dispatch, huh?”
“Yup. Oh, and Jules is seeing some guy; won’t put out anymore.” Then a thought added up in my super-medic mind, “Hey! You’re not…”
He cut me off, “Stop right there. I been wonderin’ why she quit puttin’ out too. I don’t love no hoes.”
I laughed, “I should have figured. Ben Folds said it best: ‘bitches aint nothin’ but hoes and tricks.’”
Side note: Ben Folds did PERFORM that song. If you have never heard it performed by a skinny white boy playing a piano, I highly suggest you look it up.
About this time, the little blond with the eyes for The Bear placed our food on the counter and we grabbed it and turned to say our goodbyes to Murse Andrew. He stopped us short and explained that he had to be at work at 11:00 am, (McDonald’s breakfast ends at 10:30) and that he usually walks since its right down the street. In all the confusion with the coffee, he was now going to be late and was hoping we could “help him out”.
The Bear put on his aviators and grinned, “I think we can do that.”
Our ambulance tore ass out of the parking lot, lights and sirens with me once again gripping the “oh shit bar” and Murse Andrew sitting in the back desperately trying not to wear a second cup of coffee.
We got Murse Andrew to work right on time. It took us skidding tires in the ER parking lot, then pulling out the cot and running through the ER with him on it to the time clock. He swiped his badge just before the clock changed to 11:01 and he never even spilled one drop of his new coffee. The man truly was a paramedic to have those kinds of skills.
We chilled with him for a bit because the ER was dead on this bitter Sunday morning; dead, metaphorically, not actually. We leisurely ate our breakfast and flirted with nurses until my pager rang out and echoed off the emergency room walls.
“STATUS AND LOCATION PLEASE” it read.
We gave Murse Andrew a dirty look. He looked back innocently, “It’s not me. I got nothin’ to discharge.” We said our goodbyes, assured him that no doubt we would see him later, and headed out to the rig where I pulled out my cell and called dispatch.
A familiar voice greeted me from the other end, “Fin, where the hell you whistle dicks at?”
“Hey, Snap, were at the ER. So you’re in…”
He cut me off, “No time. We just got a call from Fire Comm. The city is all busy and we’re the closest squad. You guys got a real call.”
I jotted down the info, and we were off, lights and sirens, only a few blocks from the hospital to a private residence for a call of “non responsive patient”.
We played this one by the book. We moved across town smoothly and safely, but quickly. Bear piloted the truck in and out of traffic, heading left of center when necessary. We arrived at the address, a large ritzy house in the rich part of town with a long driveway that wound around the side and to the back of the house. The Bear swung the nose of the truck into the left lane and backed expertly into the driveway.
As we were backing I called Snap on the radio and told him we were “on scene”. We jumped out of the squad and grabbed the jump bag and some gloves. We left the cot in the truck, deciding that we should “see what we’ve got” before hauling it out.
This was it.
We were ready.
We strode up the drive way like that scene in Reservoir Dogs.
The Bear had the Jump bag slung over his shoulder; he carried it easily on his 6’ 8” frame.
I had the cardiac monitor slung on my shoulder; it bounced slowly with my steps.
The sun gleamed off our sunglasses and highlighted the reflective strips on our Paradise Ambulance jackets.
Our breath came out of our mouths in smoky waves into the cold air.
We pulled on our pink “breast cancer awareness” exam gloves as our strides took us around the corner and to the back of the house.
…and into an explosion of activity.
All of my senses were assaulted simultaneously. The cold wind chilled my bones as it whipped around the house. I could hear the crying of a woman yelling from the back porch, “MY GOD, HELP HIM!” The smell of diesel fumes crept up through my nose and onto my tongue. And, the glare of the flashing lights on the ambulance beat on my eyes through my sunglasses.
Wait a minute.
Didn’t we leave the ambulance behind us, in the driveway?
Yeah, we did.
A city fire department squad was sitting half on the lawn behind the house. Next to it was a city department rescue fire truck. A small female fire fighter was holding onto the middle aged woman who had been doing the screaming. A few yards away a middle aged man was lying on the ground with firemen all around him. One was hooking up a cardiac monitor, another starting an IV, another holding a bag of saline, another was preparing an ET tube and a laryngoscope in order to intubate, and another was performing chest compressions.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
The fire chief, who was standing around orchestrating all these goings on as only a chief can, spotted us and began to swagger toward us. His polished fireman badge sparkled as he approached. He smiled, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “Ummmm, yeah. You boys can go ahead and take off, now. We’ve got it all taken care of.”
SON. OF. A. BITCH.
Deflated, ego-bruised, and just plain pissed, we turned and shuffled back to our squad as the chief called after us, “And if you could hurry and move that truck, that’d be great. We might need to leave in a hurry.”
The Bear dropped the jump bag and turned to tell the chief where he could shove his badge, but I grabbed him by the sleeve and steered him toward the squad.
We got in our rig, shut down all the emergency lights, and called Snap to let him know what was going on. He apologetically told us how two 911 calls were made on the same emergency, making it look as though the fire department didn’t have enough man power to cover the situation. Not so apologetically, he gave us our next assignment: to go post at Holy Heart on the Eastside. We pulled out of the driveway and headed down the road. In our rear view mirror, we watched the city ambulance go screaming, lights and sirens, in the opposite direction.
“Son-of-a-bitch, I hate this god-damned job!”
“I know, Bear. I know.”
“We never get anything good. We never do anything that matters!”
“I know, Bear. But we got to eat somehow.”
“We can barely do that on what Bert pays us!”
The Bear kicked the side of the squad, putting another dent in it next to the one he had put there a few months back. I just stood there, agreeing and letting him vent. It’s best to let The Bear vent.
We spent the rest of our Sunday shift sitting in the parking lot of Holy Heart, cramped, angry, and spoiling for some action. The Bear tried to nap, but couldn’t. I tried to read, but couldn’t focus. We watched the sun set in beautiful oranges and pinks and yellows, and even that didn’t calm our mood. Little did we know that following that amazing sunset, our every wish to fight raging fires and become heroes would come true.
And afterward, we would be wishing that it hadn’t.
It was about a quarter after six when we got the page to head back to base on the Westside so we could get off shift at seven. It was dark and had been for about an hour, as is the case in December in Cleveland. The Bear flipped on the headlights and headed for home. We were quiet on the ride back; I drifted in and out of sleep as The Bear played some Christmas music from his IPod through the trucks radio.
We got off the highway at our exit and were cruising through town toward base when Bear spotted some smoke rising on the next road over. He turned, just to be nosey and see “what the real firemen were up to”.
We expected to see the city trucks on the scene with their lights illuminating a pack of firemen rushing around clad in Turn-out gear and SCBA respirators. We didn’t. All we saw was a house with fire coming out one of the top windows and a woman standing in the middle of the street, waving her arms frantically and yelling things we couldn’t hear with the windows up and Jingle Bells playing on the radio.
The Bear looked at me and said, “I hope she doesn’t expect us to do anything, we got no gear, no water, no nothin’.”
I agreed, but suggested we pull over and assess the situation as he was already switching on the emergency lights and pulling toward the curb.
I exited the truck, and she was upon me yelling about how she needed help. Something about “fire” and “911” and “paying with latches” and I don’t even know what else. I told her to calm down. Bear asked if she had called the fire department. She said yes. We asked if everyone was out of the house. She began her frantic rambling again, and Bear and I looked at each other, bewildered.
Then something in my brain clicked.
I shook her by the shoulders, “Ma’am, your kid has been playing with matches?”
She nodded and sobbed.
The Bear got in her face, “Is your kid out of the house?”
Tears streaming down her face she said, “I don’t know.”
That was the end of all the unimportant stuff.
Bruce’s beard.
Who Jules is banging.
Murse Andrew’s coffee.
Modern Warfare 3 and Batman Arkham city.
Snap becoming a dispatcher.
Woody’s stalker.
How bored we were.
Dicky punching Bear.
None of it mattered anymore.
None of it.
-THE IMPORTANT STUFF-
We didn’t think about the fact that we had no gear, no water, and no back up. We just knew we had to find the kid in the burning house. We ran to the front door. It was standing open and heat was rolling out in waves. The area inside was dark, but clear; visibility was about as good as we could expect.
We moved inside, Bear first. The heat washed over us. The Bear took a quick visual of the living room to our left as I did the same for the kitchen on our right. No luck. We gave each other a nod and moved toward the steps. We kept low as we moved up the steps as quickly as we could, keeping our feet wide to stay on the sides of each stair where the supports are.
The heat quickly became stifling on our ascent, and smoke filled the hallway ceiling. We stayed low, crawling on our hands and knees to try to stay under the heat and deadly gasses. I had never been in a fire with no turnout gear on. I was guessing neither had Bear. I could feel the tips of my ears and nape of my neck beginning to cook like sunburn.
We spotted a closed door and could feel the heat intensify as we approached it. The Bear looked at me and pointed. I coughed and nodded in reply. We removed our Paradise Ambulance jackets; Bear placed his over his head, I used mine to turn the red hot door knob, and then did the same. The Bear flung the door open and we looked inside.
A large fire burned in the far corner of the room, which was what we call “the seat of the fire”. The fire had spread to the curtains, the bed, and had shattered the window with its heat. It was now being fueled uncontrollably by the cold night breeze coming in. The breeze was helping with the visibility a bit, and I tapped Bear on the shoulder and pointed upward, where we could see the flames above our heads, rolling out into the hallway. I yelled, “WE HAD BETTER MOVE FAST!” He nodded and we went in the room.
The flames reflected like the earlier beautiful sunset off the lenses of Bears aviator sunglasses, the arm of which was still tucked into his front shirt pocket where he had put them earlier. I moved to the closet and opened it using the same jacket method as before, hoping the child had tried to take refuge inside. No luck. Bear moved to the bed, the top of which was ablaze and lost half his mustache for his trouble. He was on his belly now and he lay there for a moment, motionless. I feared the worst.
Then with a heave The Bear pulled up to his knees away from the bed, and he was holding a small ankle. I leapt across the small room on hands and knees, like a skittering spider, and helped him pull a little girl, not more than 7, from under the bed. She was unconscious. The left side of her head was hairless, and she was badly burned. Further examination would have to wait. I yelled, “LETS MOVE!” And we moved as quickly as we could back out the door, through the hallway, down the steps, and out the front door.
We came spilling out of the front door and into the arms of a fireman in full gear with SCBA. We pushed past him and placed the girl on the lawn. I gave her a quick check and found she was not breathing. We began CPR. The fireman took off his respirator and helmet and I could see it was Ross Daniels, an old Paradise employee who got lucky and made it to a real department. His cherub like face yelled at me that they could take the patient.
“No way, Ross. This is our patient,” I replied.
“Fair enough, I’m with you guys. Let’s take our rig!”
We moved the girl into the back of the city fire department squad and put her on the cot. On the way to the truck, I grabbed the first fireman I saw and told him he was driving as the three of us jumped in the back.
The same fire chief who had dismissed us so cavalierly earlier in the day, looked at me and said, “You got it,” and jumped up front.
The blood pounding in my ears drowns out the wail of the ambulance sirens. I lean with the sharp turns and my knees absorb the impact from road bumps like shock absorbers. I’ve entered that state of mind in which everything important is in slow motion and everything else is sped up. It’s that emergency “fight or flight” response in which your brain just knows what to filter out and what not to without your conscious mind focusing on anything but the task at hand.
All the superfluous parts of my environment streak by my senses:
The Bear is furiously doing chest compressions on our patient.
Bears handle-bar mustache is only half of a handle bar mustache; the other half is singed off and the skin underneath is now red and angry.
A Broslow Tape, for measuring the size of a pediatric patient, lies on the floor.
The Bear’s aviator sunglasses crunch under my foot as I reposition myself in the airway chair.
The Paradise Ambulance Service logo on Bears sleeve is dark and smudged with soot.
I visualize the patient’s vocal cords and slide an endo-trachial tube between them.
The EMT-Basic/Fire Fighter whose department squad we’re in steps on my Paradise cap as he takes over for Bear on chest compressions.
I cough: my lungs hurt from all the smoke.
The Bear hands me an IO drill, for drilling into bone and placing a line when a normal IV is too difficult or not possible, then begins bagging the patient through the ET tube.
I feel the crunch of bone as the drill hits home mid femur.
I secure a line and begin running fluids.
I’m weightless for a second as the squad gets launched over train tracks and I’m launched into the rear doors.
Ross’ arm shot out like a steel cord and grabbed the front of my shirt to steady me. I looked into his face, sweat pouring down it from his matted sandy hair, and thanked him. I checked my line; thank god the bump didn’t dislodge it. I used the pause in CPR to check the cardiac monitor, still flat line. Ross continued his chest compressions as Bear maintained the airway and I pushed drugs.
At the hospital, Murse Andrew met us at the door. The chief had called them while driving, and they knew to expect us. Murse Andrew jumped up on the rail between the wheels on the side of the cot and took over compressions for Ross, who jumped to the head of the cot to push so Bear could focus on ventilating the patient. I steered the cot into the first trauma bay.
We moved her to the bed, and the hospital’s trauma team swarmed into the room. The room was a bustle of activity, everyone moving quickly and efficiently. A doc in a gleaming white coat stood at the foot of the bed and gave orders smoothly and succinctly. The Bear, Ross, and I stepped aside to let the hospital’s staff take over; we didn’t want to, but she was their patient now and that’s how our job works. Bring them in, drop them off, and run for the next one.
We all quietly went to the EMS room where I wrote a report on one of Ross’ run sheets since I was the paramedic in charge of the call. We said our goodbyes to Ross, who had to go since he was on shift. The Bear and I were technically off duty at this point, so we went to the waiting room and sat with the little girls’ mom.
We denied her claims that we were heroes. “Just doing our job” is the mantra. We were in the right place at the right time with the right training, that’s all. When the doc came out and told us that the little girl had died, we hugged her and she thanked us for trying our best. We told her we were sorry we couldn’t have done more.
That sunset we watched earlier seemed so very, very far away now.
It granted us our wish for all the action and heroics we could want.
But all we wished for now was that it hadn’t.
Chapter 10… MERRY EFFIN’ CHRISTMAS FROM PARADISE AMBULANCE SERVICE
Twas a week before Christmas, and all through Paradise Ambulance, not a crew was working.
…Except for The Bear and I.
Actually, it was Saturday night, technically one week before Christmas Eve, and it was the evening of the Paradise Ambulance annual Christmas party. In an act of rare kindness on the part of our employers, they always offer time and a half pay on the evening of the Christmas party to anyone who volunteers to work instead of attending the festivities. The Bear and I were in no mood to hang with the Paradise big-wigs; we were still hung up on the little girl who wouldn’t be getting to open her presents on this upcoming Christmas morning.
It didn’t help matters that the funeral had been on this day as well, and we had attended at the request of the family. So we put on our dress uniforms from our respective fire departments, paid our respects to the family, had an interview with the news stations, and ended up back at Paradise to work a little overtime.
I sat on the couch in the day room, quietly getting my ass handed to me in an online team death match on Modern Warfare 3. The Bear lay draped across the love seat to my left, watching, still in his dress uniform. His jacket was thrown carelessly over the back of the love seat and his shirt was unbuttoned to reveal his trademarked “wife-beater” undershirt. His handlebar mustache was still just a baby ‘stache, since it was still growing in; he was going to leave it half on his face until the other, singed half grew in to match, but decided to shave and grow the entire thing when we were asked to come to the funeral. As my game ended, the Bear gave a little snore, and l looked to see a bit of drool following one of the arms of his baby ‘stache. I decided it was time to attempt to lighten the mood a bit.
I reached over into the jacket of my dress uniform, which was thrown across the arm of the couch and pulled out a package I had been keeping there all day, waiting for the right moment to present it to my partner and best friend. The paper was wrinkled and it was torn on one corner from sitting in my pocket all day, but the cherubic little Santa faces on it still smiled and winked at me with their jolly old world charm. I turned it over in my hands once, tried to smooth out the paper a bit, and then tossed it lightly onto Bears chest, startling him awake.
“Wha’s this?” he asked with a stretch.
“Just a little something I picked up, no biggie.”
“Man, I told you not to get me nothin’”
“Indeed you did, Bear. You specifically said not to get you nothin’, so I followed you instructions and got you somethin’.”
He shook his head and just gave in to the inevitable; by this point The Bear knows that playing semantics with me is as futile as getting involved in a land war in Asia. The Bear turned the small package over a few times, then found the seam in the paper and carefully slipped his finger through and daintily tore the tape holding the paper together. Who would have ever imagined that Bear opens presents like a chick? When he finally had the present unwrapped he pulled from the box a new pair of pristine aviator sunglasses.
He immediately placed the glasses on his face, “Oh man, these are great! Just like my old ones!”
“I figured I owed you for stepping on the others, a fact you haven’t let me forget for the last two weeks.”
He laughed, “How did you find ‘em?”
“It wasn’t hard Bear; your tastes range from Crazy Joe’s Army Surplus to whatever’s cheap at the gas station. Let’s just say it didn’t take me long to nail it down.”
The corners of his handle bar mustache twitched as he gave me his big cheesy, shit-eating grin from behind his aviators. The Bear was back in full effect. He grabbed the Xbox controller and settled in for some cyber-violence as my phone “blew up” in my pocket.
The ring tone was “Get Drunk and Be Somebody” by Toby Keith… I think we can all guess who was calling me.
-MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM WOODY HOYLE-
I pushed the talk button and put my phone on speaker. The Bear and I were assaulted with the sounds of merry-making and then the true assault to our eardrums began.
“YEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAAAW! Merry Christmas cowboys! What ya’ll up t’?
“Hey, Wood. Apparently the party is goin’ well?”
“Sheeeeit, it was…”
He was cut off in mid sentence by a familiar feminine voice asking him to get off the phone and dance.
The Bear looked at me incredulously after pausing his game, and then addressed the phone. “Woody, did you take Stalker Chick to the Christmas party?”
Woody lowered his voice and responded, “Not exactly.”
Rolling my eyes, I asked him to explain.
“I was here havin’ myself a good ole’ honky tonk time, then went outside with some o’ the fellers to have a chew while they smoked.”
Come on sweetie, who you talking too?
“Now just hang on a minute darlin’. So when I mosey outside what do I sees but Stalker Chick sittin’ on the curb lookin’ like somebody just shot ole’ yeller.”
I interjected a “go oooon”, giving the last word the three syllables that indicated I was waiting for the other shoe to fall.
“Come on now, quit tuggin’ on my arm. So I feel bad that the poor filly is sittin’ on the cold curb all by herself, so I go over and say howdy.”
Woody Hoyle, who on earth can you be talking to that is more important than the love of your life?
The Bear asked, “Why didn’t you just ignore her?”
“I’m talkin’ to Fin and The Bear. Gimmie a minute, gosh darn it! Anyway, she had already seen me, and I felt bad. Like I was sayin’ she was a sittin’ on the cold curb, and she had on a purdy little cocktail dress, and I was a feelin’ real bad ‘cause her lips were turnin’… I SAID LET GO MY ARM WOMAN! …her lips were turnin’ blue. So I invited her inside to get herself warmed up.”
The Bear and I both exclaimed “Ooooooooh! Man you didn’t!” simultaneously and physically cringed.
“And then, she stayed.”
Woody, I’m thirsty. Get me some punch?
“I’d like to give ya punch.” WHAT!? “Hang on fellers. Now just hang on darlin’. Ole Woody will be right back with yer punch.”
There was a pause as I can only assume Woody walked across the room.
“You fellers see that interview in the news?”
The Bear summed up our feelings succinctly with “Hell, no! We don’t want to see that crap!”
“You really otta’ see it…”
I cut him off, “Woody, don’t change the subject.”
“Ah, right. So anyhow, she stayed at the party. The heck of it is, I cant for the life o’ me figure how she knew where I was or where the party was bein’ held fer that matter.”
Bear looked at me accusingly from over his aviators.
I looked at him with my best chagrinned face and said, “Yeah, Wood, that might have been my fault.”
“Now how’s that son? Damn it! I just spilt punch on my good boots!”
“Yeah well, she was here looking for you, per usual. She was pestering the hell out of Bear and I. So I may have told her exactly where you were and how to get there so that she would leave us alone.”
I heard a glass of punch crash to the floor.
“He even drew her a map, Woody!”
“Bear, that’s not helping.”
“Dag-nabbit, Fin. What’d ya go and do that for? You know I brought a date to this party?”
I answered honestly, “Um, no. I was unaware of that fact, but it really wouldn’t have factored into my decision.”
The Bear, winded from laughing so hard, asked in a horse voice, “So you got two dates?”
“Not just two dates, ya horse’s ass, I WAS on a date with that hot little respiratory therapist from Our Lady of the Alms.”
Bear: “Woody’s tryin’ to get him a sugar mamma.” Me: “Damn, that’s what I should have went to school for. Those guys don’t do anything but give breathing treatments and smoke cigarettes.”
“YER BOTH HORSES ASSES! NOW YA DONE RUINED MY CHANCES WITH A REAL CATCH!”
In hind sight, it may have been better if Woody had not lost his temper and shouted his last phrase. The Bear and I heard a lot of screaming of profanities, then shouts of alarm from others at the party. We listened as it sounded like all hell was breaking loose.
Finally Woody spoke, “Gotta go fellers. She just took my gun.”
My phone beeped twice telling me the call had been lost.
Merry Christmas, Woody Hoyle.
The Bear and I looked at each other in disbelief for a moment and decided to turn on the news to see if any of our friends had been shot. We hoped, out loud, that maybe she would take aim at some of the management or dispatchers and do us all a favor. If she did that, she would have our blessings to marry Woody.
Hell, if she did that, I’d consider marrying the crazy bitch myself.
After fishing through the couch cushions for a few minutes and finding things that had been there so long their owners probably forgot they existed, we found the remote and changed the input on the TV. As the picture changed into something that passed for watchable on a television older than I am, we saw two familiar faces staring back at us. It was The Bear and I being interviewed by one of the local news factions at the funeral earlier that day. The Bear immediately threw a couch pillow at the TV, as I frantically mashed buttons to turn on anything else.
The power button finally responded and Bears face faded into obscurity before he could finish explaining to the news woman that we really aren’t heroes, just guys with a job who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
As if to assure us that we couldn’t get away from the outside world no matter how hard we tried, my phone immediately rang again; this time it was playing the theme from the movie Boondock Saints, a nice Irish jig for a nice Irish boy.
-MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BRUCE REAGAN-
I once again tapped the speaker phone option and without preamble, yelled into the phone, “Bruce! Who’s dead? You need us out there?”
His response was a slow chuckle which did give us any hope that one of our “favorite” dispatchers had bitten a bullet. “Calm down, Medic of the Year. No one got shot. Fuckin’ Woody doesn’t even keep rounds in the damned thing. For hillbillies like him, guns are like jewelry.”
Disappointed, I scoffed, “Medic of the Year my ass.”
He continued, “No, it’s true. I nominated you and Bear for co-nominees for the Paradise Ambulance: Annual EMS Provider of the Year Award, myself. After that superman shit you guys pulled, how could you not win it?”
“It wasn’t superman shit. Superman saves people. Anyway, I just did what Bruce Reagan would have done.”
“Damn right, I would. And I couldn’t have done it any better. Hey, have you guys seen that interview on the news? There is something there you should see.”
My level of annoyance grew even larger. “No, man. We don’t want to see that, and if that’s why you called then have a Merry Christmas, Boss. I’ll talk to ya’ later.”
As I reached for the “END” button on my phone, the serious tone in Bruce’s voice halted my hand. “That’s NOT why I called.”
The Bear suddenly became more attentive, and his posture straightened. I leaned closer to the phone and simply replied, “continue”.
“I’ll start by saying, even I didn’t see this one coming; I wasn’t in the loop.”
The Bear looked at my quizzically from behind his aviators. I simply shook my head and gave him a half shrug.
Bruce continued, “Bert and the other owners of our fine institution made a big announcement tonight. Through a long, drawn-out, practically incoherent speech delivered by Bert, he explained all about how profits are down, the economy is bad, and how things are generally bad for everyone.”
“As if we didn’t know all this,” I interjected.
“Exactly. Then he highlighted the fact that nowadays we’re all lucky just to have a job in this economy.”
“That’s debatable if the job is this one,” I added, not liking the direction this was going.
“Right?! So, then he goes on about how they really hate that they had to take away our raises, vacation time, and paid time off due to budget cuts, even though I personally know that all management got year-end bonuses.”
Now it was The Bear’s turn to interject and interject he did with a very loud, very off color string of profanities, which brought the maternal heritage and religious beliefs of all the managers into question.
The Bear’s tirade cut off most of what Bruce was saying and we caught, “…has been canceled.” I hushed the Bear and told Bruce to repeat. “The moral of the story was that due to all the financial trouble the company has had, they sincerely regret to inform us that as of January 1st 2012, our health insurance has been canceled.”
I wasn’t too sure I had heard him right. “Wait… What?” was all I could come up with. The Bear had a rare moment of complete silence.
Bruce continued, “Yeah, apparently they felt that the best way to soften the blow was to make an announcement at the Christmas party.”
“Merry Fuckin’ Christmas.” The Bear had found his voice again.
I was certainly not surprised and said as much to Bruce.
“Well, that’s why I called. Fin, Bear, have a good Christmas if I don’t see you.”
I had one more question for Bruce. The investigation was still ongoing, and since I had chosen not to attend the Christmas party to personally do recon, I had to get my intel through an inside source. I hadn’t had time to ask Woody, since we were so rudely interrupted.
“Wait, Bruce, who is Jules there with? She must have brought the mystery man to the party.”
Bruce’s only reply was a hurried, “Sorry guys. I gotta’ go,” and then my phone beeped twice telling me the call had been lost. I looked over at The Bear; he didn’t return my gaze. He was intently shooting little enemy soldiers on the Xbox, and I’m sure he was envisioning all the managers’ heads on each and every one of them.
Shortly after getting off the phone with Bruce, The Bear and I got a page to return one of our regulars back to the nursing home after her dialysis treatment.
Easy enough, right?
The Bear and I hopped into our rig and headed over to the local dialysis center. Our destination nursing home was also local, so all told this particular run should only take half an hour or so.
SHOULD take half an hour or so.
Now the Bear and I usually only work until 7pm; this later night time shift is an anomaly for us, however we were familiar with this patient from our day shifts when we take her to her dialysis appointments. We were familiar with the fact that she was a rather weighty individual, but nothing that two strapping young lads like us couldn’t handle even though she does push the envelope into required lift assist criteria.
However on this crisp December evening in Cleveland, we decided that a lift assist would be prudent; we wouldn’t want to hurt our backs or anything.
After all, we don’t have health insurance anymore, do we?
We informed dispatch of our need for a lift assist. She reminded us that we were the only crew on the Westside and that she only had one crew on the Eastside due to the Christmas party. She then told us that to get us a lift assist from the only other Paradise Ambulance Crew on duty would take well over an hour, since they were just starting a run and then would have to drive all the way out here.
We informed her that we understood.
And that we would wait.
I sat in the driver’s seat, reading a book with the dome light on. The Bear sat in the passenger seat. His head bobbed as he dozed in and out of conscience; he was still wearing his aviators. After about half an hour of waiting, my phone rang. This time my phone played the theme song from the old 70’s TV show EMERGENCY!
I reached into my pocket for my phone.
-MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM RONNIE “SNAP” JOHNSTON-
The Bear rose from his slumber as I hit the speaker phone button, once again.
“What you whistle-dicks up to?”
“Hey, Snap!” we chimed in unison.
“Just wanted to call and wish you guys a Merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, Snap! What’s going on?”
“Hey, you guys see the news? That interview they did with you…”
“Yeah, yeah, we know. We should watch it,” I said annoyed.
“Frankly Fin, I don’t give a rats ass if you watch it or not. My point is, you two were on the TV, so you owe us all ice cream.”
Now I was confused, “ice cream?”
“Yeah. Back in my day, you got your picture in the paper or on the TV and you owed all the guys at the station a beer. Now-a-days, with our new friendlier, more PC fire department, alcoholism is frowned upon so ice cream is the standing order.”
“So, alcoholism is out, but it’s okay to be fat?” I deadpanned.
Snap told us to hang on a minute. My first thought was that his wife was probably calling on the other line and he had to answer it, but then we heard his voice ring in the distance, as if he had taken the phone away from his mouth.
“HEY! YOU WHISTLE-DICKS LEAVE OLE’ GEORGE ALONE. HE’S A GOOD GUY AND DOES A GOOD JOB!” We heard George mutter thanks to Snap in broken English, then “BESIDES, GEORGE IS MY BITCH! IF ANYONE IS GONNA DOG HIM IT’S ME!”
Snap brought the phone back to his ear and Bear and I laughed as we imagined the crestfallen look on Georges face. Snap continued, “I wanted to tell you guys that as the oldest EMS provider at Paradise Ambulance, the duty fell on me to present the award to the EMS provider of the year.”
“Yeah, Snap, Bruce told us he nominated us for co-winners. And let me just say that as big of an honor as it is to be EMT of the year at such a “prestigious” private ambulance company, I really couldn’t care…”
“You didn’t get it.”
“Wait… What?”
“You didn’t get it. Neither one of you did.”
“Son-of-a-bitch! Who did?”
“Brian got it.”
“What? The new kid? Brian Fitzwater? He’s been here for two damn weeks!”
-MERRY CHIRSTMAS FROM BRIAN FITZWATER: PARADISE AMBULANCE LEGACY-
Exactly two weeks prior to Woody’s stalker drawing his pistol at the Christmas party, us losing our health insurance benefits, and The Bear and I not being awarded co-EMS provider of the year, we stood in the squad bay of Paradise Ambulance Service smoking and joking instead of diligently working on our morning squad check-out.
We heard the door to the crew quarters open and close and heard voices echoing between the trucks in the bay. We turned to see Bert and Dickie giving a tour to a husky, fresh faced young punk in a crispy new uniform with a shiny palm tree on the sleeve.
“…and this is our squad bay, where we clean and store our ambulances, do daily and monthly check-outs, and keep all the cleaning and disinfecting supplies for the equipment,” Bert was saying, then his eyes fell on us.
“Ah, and these are two more of our employees here.” He motioned toward me, “This is Ferris Finding, Paramedic.” As I shook the new kid’s hand, Bert continued, “And this is Barry Glazer, one of your fellow EMT-Basics.”
Bear cut him off, “I’m an Intermediate.”
The new kid put his hand out to shake The Bears claws and said (rather unwisely, if you ask me), “Bert says that at Paradise Ambulance, Intermediates are not acknowledged and are treated as Basics.”
The Bear did not shake his hand, but did blow smoke in his face.
Dickie piped up in an attempt to change the subject, “This is Brian Fitzwater. He’s our new hire. His father was my partner here, back when I was on the road.”
Without missing a beat, Bert added, “And his mother is the head of the ER at Our Lady of the Alms Medical Center, here in town.”
“Well that explains the personalized tour.” The words just kind of flew from my mouth before I could stop them.
Bert looked appalled, “I try to give every new hire a personal tour of the facility on their first day.”
“Yeah, I didn’t get that. All I got was ‘here’s the key to your truck’ and then Jules told me that in order to make it at this company…”
My statement got lost as Bert grabbed Brian Fitzwater by the arm, spun him around, and quickly ushered him over to the storage closet where we keep all of our equipment for restocking the ambulances. We could hear him telling the son of the head of the local ER all about how “we always restock our own equipment from our own supplies and never cost the hospital revenue by taking theirs.”
Snaps voiced pulled me out of my flash-back, “Yeah, the new kid. Management and dispatch had a vote, and it was almost unanimous that he should receive the award and the cash bonus that goes with it. Just wanted you to know before you heard from someone else.”
“Almost unanimous? Who didn’t vote for Mr. Legacy?”
Snap laughed, “Me, you whistle-dick! I voted for you two chuckle heads.”
We smiled; maybe Snap’s trip to the dark-side was only a bit dusky. We said our goodbyes to Snap and told him to enjoy the party and have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. He wished us the same and then told us he had to go because his wife was calling him on his other line and he had better answer it, even though she was at the party with him.
We waited a while longer and then a truck from the Eastside pulled lazily into the parking lot of the dialysis center. Out of the truck came the ketchup dick, medic student I worked with while Bear was suspended and Hatfield, Mr. Dedicated himself.
We went to find a very disgruntled dialysis staff that couldn’t leave until their last patient got picked up by the ambulance company they had been waiting for. We hefted our weighty patient to the cot, loaded her in the truck, and convoyed three blocks to the nursing home.
On the backside of the run, we hauled her down her hallway and found which room she belonged to by following the deafening volume of her deaf roommate’s television. The deaf woman had it tuned to the news and at the volume it was at we could hear every word crystal clear from across the tiny room.
We tried to tune it out as we began to move the large woman to her bed, but it just wasn’t possible.
“We aren’t heroes, we are just guys with the right training who were in the right place at the right time.” My voice rang out through the room.
“And that was the interview with local firemen Ferris Finding and Barry Glazer. Their words would like us to believe that they are just normal men doing their job, but the family of the little girl who regretfully died says otherwise.”
“They tried their best and risked their own safety for our little girl. They are truly heroes to us and we will always be grateful for their help.”
“Also at the funeral was Fire Chief Glenn, and he had this to say:”
“Medic Finding and Intermediate Glazer went above and beyond in service of their community. Their actions do us all proud. It is my belief that any fire department would be lucky to have them on their department. I’m guessing they will have their pick of jobs after this. I, for one, hope they apply at my department.”
The Bear and I stopped lifting and almost dropped the patient. We got her into bed, went over, grabbed the DVR remote from the deaf roommate, and rewound the news.
“I’m guessing they will have their pick of jobs after this. I, for one, hope they apply at my department.”
My thoughts, my hopes, and my dreams all came rushing out of The Bears mouth in one smooth easy statement:
“Fuck this shit, man. I’m puttin’ in apps tomorrow.”
thank you all for reading. hope you enjoyed it and look forward to future chapter that have yet to be written. until then, be patient and wish me luck on getting published.
-Dom
