When we got to the hospital, Troy had an IV in her arm, running in normal saline to hydrate her. She was smiling like a schoolgirl. “Light as a ballerina,” he said as we moved her across to the hospital bed on the sheet. He said to the nurse, “Mrs. Greenspan’s son is an internist in New York, and her grandson’s following in his footsteps in medical school.” He went on to describe why we had brought her in and his physical findings, and then he patted her shoulder. “I wish you good health. You’re in good hands here.” She looked up at him with a light that must have been similar to the one she shone on her grandson.
“What’s going on with you this morning?” I asked as we walked back down the hall.
“Just trying to be a good paramedic,” he said.
“Well, you reminded me of one.”
Around ten thirty, we were sent for an unresponsive at the funeral home on Wethersfield Avenue.
Cars were double-parked on both sides of the Avenue. “Hector R.I.P.” was whitewashed on their rear windows of several of the cars. Police patrolled the grounds of the funeral home. A line of mourners stretched out the door and around the block. Many wore T-shirts with Hector’s picture them.
“Look,” I said. “Why don’t I call in that our engine died and they’ll send someone else? I don’t think it’s a good idea going in there.”
Troy shook his head. “It’s our call, it’ll be all right.” He got out of the ambulance, took the monitor and blue bag out of the side door, and then laid them on the stretcher that I had pulled out.
We moved in through the crowd, which slowly made way for us. People were dressed in black, many weeping. There were more flowers than I had seen in one place before.
Troy wore his Yankees hat. I kept vigilant.
We were led through a hallway into the receiving room. Hector lay in an open casket. Papa Ruiz sat slumped in a wheelchair. People gathered around him.
“What’s going on?” Troy said.
Helen Atreus was there. She nodded to Troy. “He’s the father of the deceased. He is not responding to anyone. I told the family I thought it was emotional, but they are worried maybe he had a seizure.”
I saw Hector’s wife holding Hector’s son, standing with the other family members, all watching Troy.
Troy nodded. “Did he fall over or have seizure activity? Bite his tongue? Wet himself?”
“No,” she said. “He just lay his head forward and hasn’t moved since.”
The family pressed around, looking at us. There were several small children.
Troy looked down at the man, whose eyes stared nowhere. Troy touched his forehead. “Warm,” he said. He touched a finger to his eyelids, which twitched. Troy looked at me.
I shook my head. Don’t do it, I thought. Show some respect.
Troy knelt beside the man, felt his pulse. But he wasn’t looking at his watch. He watched the man for signs of movement.
“Blood pressure cuff,” he said. He held out his hand.
I gave it to him. He wrapped the cuff around the old man’s arm, pumped it up, and then, slowly letting the air out, took his reading.
“How is it?” a woman asked.
“One thirty over seventy.” Troy said, “That’s good.”
“What is the matter with him? Did he have a stroke?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What is wrong?”
I watched him look around at the faces of the others in the room. He took his cap off. He hesitated a moment.
“Take him to the hospital. He could be dying,” a man said.
Troy shook his head.
“Look at him. He’s having a stroke. He needs to go to the hospital.”
Troy gestured to a little girl, who stood behind a woman’s leg. “Come here.”
The girl went to Troy. He nudged her toward the old man. He beckoned to a woman, who held a baby.
She approached.
He held his arms out for her to hand him the child.
He took the baby, and set it in on Papi’s chest, and moved the old man’s arms until he was holding the child. Papi held the child close to his heart.
Troy said to the others, “He doesn’t need to go to the hospital. He needs to be here with his family.”
Troy stepped back.
While everyone watched the old man, Troy picked up his gear and walked out.
That afternoon we sat at Kenney Park.
“So what do you think of me?” Troy said, finally.
I looked at his dark eyes. “We all do things we regret,” I said. “It’s how you deal with the aftermath that matters.”
He looked out at the park now, at the tree limbs swaying in the light breeze, the children playing down by the pond. I don’t know where his mind was.
At dusk we drove up to Zion Hill. He took the box off the console, and we walked up the incline. “Pat’s dad gave me some of Pat’s ashes. I’m supposed to disburse him where I remembered him best. Allison spread hers at Kent Falls, where they had their first date. His mother spread hers at the playground she used to take him to when he was little. His father spread his over the high school football field. I think they wanted me to spread them out in the woods or at the next Super Bowl. I’m going to spread them here. Those were all places he played. Here is where he lived. You can say none of this makes a difference, but it’s got to count for something.”
On the radio dispatch sent out calls. “Four sixty-three to Main and Tower for an MVA. Four fifty-one take Ashley Street for the asthma.”
Troy opened the jar and held it aloft to the wind that swirled down and took the ashes and whirled them out over the city. “Look out for us, old friend,” Troy said. “We need it. Even Lee here.”
After I punched out, I saw Troy talking to Linda in the parking lot. It was unusual for her to be there that late, but they’d needed her to fill the shift of a sick employee.
Troy and Linda got into separate cars, but drove out together. Instead of turning down toward New Britain Avenue, Troy followed her car out South Street toward Newington where she lived.
And as for me, I went to Kim’s. I sat stood for a moment by the front door, and then knocked.
The light came on. She peered out through the curtain, and then opened the door. She took my hand and led me inside.
Chapter 47
Troy’s pickup wasn’t in the parking lot the next day when I got to work.
“Your partner booked,” Brian Sajack told me when I checked in to get the vehicle keys and radios.
“Is he okay?”
“Hmm. How to answer? Let’s say this, after he told me he wasn’t coming in, Linda comes on the same phone and says she’s booking off too. I’d say he’s doing okay. I didn’t write a reason down on the book-off form. Bruce’s in a stew this morning.”
Just then Bruce Atreus walked in. “You know where Troy is?” he demanded of me.
I shook my head. “I heard he called in sick.”
“Did he say anything to you about booking today?”
“Last I knew he was coming in.”
“How about Linda?”
“Didn’t talk to her.”
He said to the supervisor. “How are the order-ins going?”
“I’ve got Melnick coming in to work with Lee. Aaron Dix, Larry Watts, Len Wik and Mike Rosen are coming in. Scott Thompson and Ron Talit said they’d come in when they get off at the firehouse.”
“Keep working the phones. And don’t accept any more book-offs.”
“What’s up with all that?” I asked when Atreus had left.
“You mean aside from Troy and Linda? We’ve got Senator Lamb coming in to town to announce his candidacy and the Hector Ruiz funeral, which the word from the cops is might be a bigger parade than New York last gave the Yankees. We had to call Ben in on his wife’s birthday to replace Linda on the Lamb standby. He’s on his way to the airport. Now Lamb’s a presidential candidate, the little man’s getting Secret Service and the works.”
Melnic
k and I were told to station ourselves down by the funeral service in case there was any violence or anyone got sick. In the event anything happened, we needed our response to be quick.
It was cloudy with an imminent threat of rain. The air was damp and the wind picked up occasionally and brought an unseasonable chill. The procession began at the funeral home on Wethersfield Avenue, turned left at Park Street and went all the way to Pope Park, where an open-air service was to be held. Shops closed down. People lined the streets. Many ran out into the road and laid flowers and offerings on the small flatbed truck that carried Hector’s casket, guarded by six mourning friends who wore dark suits. Hector’s family and friends rode behind. Many of the onlookers joined in as the parade went past.
Marchers carried photos of Hector, other held signs. End the Violence. No to Drugs. Save our Streets. Some carried the flag of Puerto Rico, others the American flag.
“I don’t get it,” Melnick said. “What’s the big deal? This guy was a hoodlum? How does he rate a funeral procession?”
“He’s a symbol,” I said.
“A symbol?”
“They aren’t mourning him,” I said. “They’re mourning what’s happening in their community, and mourning they can’t figure out how to stop the violence.”
“Put away the guns and pick up the books,” he said. “Get a job.”
I handed him the ambulance’s PA mike. “You think it’s that easy, go ahead.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m not wearing a vest.”
There were over two thousand spectators in the park. On the stage community leaders, ministers and people who knew Hector addressed the crowd. His grade-school teacher read a poem he had written. An old coach spoke of athletic feats, of the promise he’d held. His minister told of his struggles with faith.
Think what you want about Hector, about the gang-bangers and the violence, being there listening to the voices from Park Street, hearing their stories and their pleas, you couldn’t help but feel the pain of their struggle. These were people like anyone else. People who just wanted their children to grow up with a chance for a good life. One by one they spoke of their hopes, their dreams for a real world where they could just be left alone to live their lives.
Helen Atreus stood on the stage next to Papi Ruiz and other members of Hector’s family. She spoke only briefly. “Hector adore su familia,” she said in a slow steady Spanish. “Pero de este amor, su familia vino a saber solamente dolor.”
Even Melnick listened.
“El era un hombre,” she said, “que perdió su camino.” He was a man who lost his way.
When the service was over, they carried Hector’s casket up the hill to the cemetery. They buried him and covered his grave with flowers.
Afterword
Capitol Ambulance was sold to a national corporation. Shortly after the state made them give up the south side of the city to Champion Ambulance in a deal brokered by politicians. The fire department has started going to EMS calls as first responders.
Helen Atreus now runs Champion Ambulance, and continues to be active in the community. Her company has trained over fifteen Hartford residents to become EMTs; four are now paramedics. She remains close with the Ruiz family. Hector’s youngest boy is a top student in one of the public school system’s magnet schools.
Kim and I were married that fall. She works as a nurse now. I am still out in the street, though not working nearly as much as I used to. Last summer we went up to Maine and I showed her the town where I grew up. In front of the library, thirty years after we left together, the town had erected a small monument to their sons who died in war. I ran my fingers over my best friend John White’s name and wept. I had borne his death on me for a long time, but I had learned to remember more than just coming home alone. I had memories of how we lived as well. No small memories—they fill a once-dark void.
Two months after Hector’s funeral, Troy Johnson was critically injured in a car accident. He spent the next ten years in a convalescent home by the Connecticut River. Linda Sullivan used to visit twice a week, until she married and moved to California. I visited him once a year. The last time I saw him he sat erect in his wheelchair. His eyes gazed hard at me, but I never knew if he recognized me or even knew I was there or what I was saying. I told him that Linda had written to say his son had hit a home run in his first Little League game. She said he won a track race at his school, beating even the fifth- and six-graders, and that though he struggled at times with his studies, the girls seemed to all adore him. A picture of the boy was taped to his mirror. Troy Patrick Johnson Sullivan. He had his father’s mischievous sparkle.
Troy died last year. His father and I took his ashes and spread some of them over the playing fields at Thorton High and then took the rest up to Zion Hill and let the wind carry them out over the city of Hartford. He and Pat are together again—I like to think of them looking out for the people of the city, and looking out for the rest of us who still work the streets. It may not have been where they dreamed of ending up as boys, but it is who they became. It was their place in the world.
On Friday nights we still raise a beer at the mention of their names.
-the end-
About the Author
Peter Canning has been a full time paramedic in the Greater Hartford area for twenty years. His first two books, Paramedic: On the Front Lines of Medicine and Rescue 471: A Paramedic’s Stories were published by Ballantine. He is the author of the popular blog: Street Watch: Notes of a Paramedic (www.medicscribe.com).
Mortal Men Page 19