Rescue 471

by Peter Canning

  I hesitate a moment, an ominous mood shift. “ ‘O they swelled and they died: mother, make my bed soon, / For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and I fain would lie down.’ ”

  “They died?” he says.

  “ ‘O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randall my son! / O I fear ye are poisoned, my handsome young man!’ ”

  I hold my hand to my chest. “Oh yes, I am poisoned: mother, make my bed soon, / for I’m sick at the heart, and I fain would lie down.’ ”

  “That’s good,” he says. “I like that. Poetry.”

  “It’s called ‘Lord Randall,’ ” I say.

  “They wrote that about me, huh?”

  “Or maybe some other Randal like you.”

  “Let me tell you one. It’s not really a poem, but I am going to tell it anyway.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s more like a story about what happened to me.”

  “Okay.”

  He motions me closer, but the alcohol on his breath causes me to pull back a little.

  “It’s a funny little world,” he says in a soft voice, his eyes looking right into mine. “Sometimes, you just want to draw a big question mark, and say why.”

  “I guess.”

  “Eighteen years old, I’m lying in some country I never heard of before. I’m just a Puerto Rican. I don’t know why I’m there.” He shrugs. “But it doesn’t matter. No matter what I think, I’m still there. Can’t do nothing about it. My friend, lying next me. I’m a medic, but I can’t do anything.”

  I nod.

  “When I came back to Brooklyn, it was raining. I went to my house, and my wife, she was in bed with a man.” He pauses. His eyes are looking back into his mind, then he focuses back on me. “I threw them both out into the rain. The guy had three hundred sixty-five dollars.” He pats his side. “I pocketed it. He said, ‘I want my clothes.’ I said, ‘No, but you take her with you.’ ”

  “That was telling him.”

  “Take her with you.” He nods. “I was a hell-burner. My friends came to me and said, what’d you want to do about it? I said nothing.”

  “What happened?”

  “They killed them.”

  “They killed them?”

  “They killed them.”

  “You’re kidding. Both of them?”

  “I was a hell-burner. Eighteen years old.”

  “That’s some story.”

  “It was raining,” he says.

  We’re at the hospital. Arthur opens the back door and we pull the stretcher out.

  “Hey, Randal,” the security guard says. “Back again.”

  “Hey, man, how are you?”

  In triage, we put him in a wheelchair. Arthur takes him to the back while I write up the run form. When I finish, I see them walking back down the hall. “He didn’t want to be strapped down,” Arthur says.

  “Fuck that,” Randal says. “I don’t need the straps today.” He looks up at me. “You’re a big guy. You play basketball?”

  “I used to,” I say. “Not much anymore.”

  He edges in close to me. “Put your arms up like you’re going for a rebound.” When I do, he pokes an elbow at my belly. “I could clear you out under the boards.”

  “You probably could. You’re a hell-burner.”

  “Hey, how’d you know that?”

  “I know a lot of things.”

  He laughs and nods, then says, “See you later, man.”

  We watch him walk out—stumble out—the ER door.

  “Scumbag,” Arthur says.

  I say nothing. I just watch him make his way down the street. The afternoon is cloudy and overcast.

  What About the Man?

  We’re taking a forty-year-old woman with body aches to the hospital on a priority three, no lights, no sirens. I’m driving, talking to her companion, the man who called 911.

  “But she says she ain’t feeling right,” he says, “and I don’t want to mess around with that, you hear what I’m saying? She’s just an acquaintance, but she got a heart murmur. Is that bad? I know she had a few cocktails, but I said, honey, we going to take you to the hospital. Can’t mess around with that. My friend died last week. Gone from the world. He’s a diabetic, got so bad, he lost his bowels. We drive together. He said he want to carry his load. I said you can’t be driving shitting all over the place, messing up, long drive, you going to the hospital. I took him. He went into a coma, and now he’s gone. I told the boss, and the first thing he say, ‘How’s my load?’ How’s my load! He asking about the load. What about the man! You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I do,” I say.

  “What about the man? Work for him making him money all these years, and he asks about the load. What about the man? What this world coming to? He trained me, that man, I known him twenty years. Hardworking man. You hear about those three people shot? Man walks into another man’s house he don’t even know, shoots three people over drugs. What the world coming to? Right in front of his kids. People dying. Friends dying. Damn. I’m a hardworking man myself. I can’t understand it. You hear what I’m saying?”

  I nod. “Yes, sir, I do. You’ve got a point.”

  “I know I had a few cocktails, but I don’t get much chance. I’m working all the time. I’m a truck driver, hauling those loads, can’t be drinking with those eighteen-wheelers cutting in front of you, can’t be drinking when you carrying a load, you know what I’m saying. I hope she all right. She got a heart murmur. I know both of us had some cocktails. I hope she all right. You can’t mess around with someone’s life, you hear what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” I say. I do.

  An Old Man, a Crack Girl, and a Rat

  We’re called to an unknown on Albany Avenue. It is seven-fifteen on a cold, rainy morning. The address is an old private home. There is a weathered FOR SALE sign out front; the paint is chipped and faded. We’re on the sidewalk looking up the cracked stone steps at the house, which looks abandoned. I’m thinking maybe this is another heroin OD. I’ve done them up and down this block.

  “You in the right place.” A woman wearing a green snow jacket and eating a sticky bun walks past us. “Up here.”

  We follow her through the door, which she opens without a key. The odor hits us before we are in the house. Garbage. Urine. The house is dim and looks ransacked.

  “He in here,” she says, leading us into a back bedroom that is pitch-black.

  I hit the wall switch, but nothing comes on. There is no bulb in the ceiling fixture. “Do you have a light that works?”

  “No,” she says, “He there on the floor.”

  In the darkness I can see the shape of a man, lying on his back. I grab his shoulder and give it a rub. He is breathing. “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. He can’t walk.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I already tried to get him up.”

  I shine a penlight in his face. He is probably in his seventies or eighties, strongly built. I feel a hand grab my leg. I am thinking maybe a stroke.

  “Let’s just get him out of here,” I say to Arthur. “Get him in the front room where we can see what’s going on.”

  We lift him up. He has only one leg, and no balance.

  “Maybe diabetic,” Art says.

  “Good thought.”

  He grabs us hard with his arms, fighting us, but we lug him into the front room and set him on the couch.

  “What kind of medical problems does he have?” I ask the woman.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know what medications he takes?”

  “No.”

  She is probably in her middle thirties, but is watching us with all the fascination of a five-year-old as she chews her cinnamon bun, the sticky goo collecting on her lips and face.

  “Who are you?”

  “I just look after him.”

  He is battling with us, his eyes open, but doesn’t speak. He is strong for an old man. Arthur is holding him down so I
can get an IV in. I sit on his arm and stick him and get a flashback, but suddenly he gets his arm loose and knocks me off balance. His head flies back and hits the wall behind the couch. It stuns him for a moment. The needle falls to the floor. Just as I reach for it, something furry runs across my boot. “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?”

  “A mouse,” Arthur says.

  “A mouse! It was a fucking rat. Hold him down for me.”

  We get back on him, Arthur pinning his shoulders, me sitting on his arm again. Instead of going for a smaller gauge, I go for one bigger. I take a sixteen out of my shirt pocket and jab it hard through his tough skin at the vein that runs along his wrist. I’m in. I draw off four tubes of blood, screw on the IV line Arthur has spiked for me, and tape it down. Only then do I get off the patient’s arm.

  Art checks the blood sugar on our glucometer.

  “He got one of those machines, too,” the woman says.

  “Are you related to him or are you his girlfriend or something?”

  “No, I just stay here.”

  “Blood sugar thirty-nine,” Arthur says.

  “Well, there you have it.” His sugar should be up above eighty, at least. The brain needs sugar to function.

  Arthur hands me an amp of D50 from the bag. I push it through the line into his vein. He starts to come around.

  He looks at me, puzzled. “Did you hit me?”

  “No, you banged your head against the wall.”

  He looks about the room. His eyes focus on the woman. “Is that Mary? Hah. It is. Look at her eating.”

  “Your blood sugar was low,” I say. “We just gave you some sugar right into your veins. Now we have to take you to the hospital.”

  “I go to the VA.”

  “If Saint Francis is all right, we’ll take you there.”

  “That’s okay.” He looks back at the woman. “You always eating. Look at her. That’s my girl. Always eating my food.”

  “Put your leg on and go to the hospital,” she says.

  “Mary, Mary, Mary,” he says. Then to us, “She wants me out of here, so she can have a party. Bring all her friends.”

  We help him get his leg on and get dressed.

  “You got your money?” she says.

  He reaches under the cushion and takes out three crumpled dollar bills, which he sticks in his pocket.

  “You got your hat?”

  He looks around and finds it on the floor on top of some loose newspapers.

  With his hat, overcoat, and cane, he looks distinguished. We walk him slowly down the steep stairs.

  “Don’t let all the heat out,” he calls back to Mary, who stands in the doorway.

  “You go to the hospital,” she says.

  * * *

  In the back of the ambulance, I ask him where he was in the service.

  He smiles. “Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Saipan.”

  “Iwo Jima,” I say, impressed. “Were you one of the guys who raised the flag, who held it high?”

  “Marine Corps. Semper fi.”

  “So who’s this Mary?”

  He laughs. “Mary? She’s a street girl. She’s out all night looking for crack.”

  “She lives with you?”

  “When she’s not out looking for crack.”

  “So what’s her relation to you?”

  “There’s no relation. I met her at McDonald’s about a year and a half ago. She followed me home. Next thing I know she was living there. She’s got a room and bed. She eats all my food.”

  “You don’t sleep with her or anything do you? She’s not your girlfriend?”

  “I wouldn’t put it in there. You don’t know what’s been in there.”

  “A man has to have standards.”

  “She’s no good. She just wants me out of the house, bring her crack friends over. Have a party.”

  “Why don’t you toss her out?”

  “She said I send her back out on the street, she’ll break all the windows in my house. When she gets too wise with me, though, I put her in the death hold.”

  “The death hold?”

  “The two of us have an understanding.”

  “She looks after you.”

  “Eats all my food.”

  “Well, she did you a service today.”

  He laughs. “She’s just out for herself.”

  After the call, Arthur and I talk about the old man and the woman. I wonder whether or not her living off him constitutes elder abuse and whether we ought to report anything to the authorities. The guy is pretty much at her mercy. His sister lives in a nursing home. His wife is dead. But she did call 911, after all.

  “I get the sense he likes having her around,” Arthur says.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  A month later we get called for an unconscious man, police and fire on the scene. “We were here before, weren’t we?” Arthur asks as we walk up the steps, carrying our gear. “What was it for?”

  “It was the diabetic.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Sure you do. Remember that guy and the crack girl?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

  A fireman meets us at the door. “I don’t know if they told you. He’s been here awhile.”

  “Oh, okay, no they didn’t.” He leads us into the room, and there the man is on the couch, lying on his side, one arm dangling down to the floor. He is dead, cold, and stiff. Long gone. Days.

  “Look out, there’s a rat around here,” the fireman says.

  “I remember him,” I say.

  “That’s right,” Art says. “We’ve been here before.”

  We attach our monitor. I put one lead on each wrist, the third on his left side. I run the six second strip. Flatline.

  “The hero of Saipan, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima.”

  “At least he died at home,” Art says.

  I unhook the monitor. “Beats a nursing home.” I rewind the cable chord.

  A cop comes in. He is trying to find out who the guy is.

  We tell him his name. His sister lives in a convalescent home. There’s a crackhead named Mary who lives here.

  The cop nods. “Yeah, we know her. No one has seen her for a week.”

  “That explains this,” I say to Art.

  “No one to call for help.”

  Then I look down at his hand on the floor. “Look at this,” I say. I shine my light on his fingers. The meat of one fingertip has been eaten down to the bone. Another chunk of flesh is gone from his thumb. He has been nibbled on by the rat.

  “There you have it,” I say. “End of story.”

  Story of a Life

  Sometimes at the health club, my feet whirling around on the exercise bike have slowly come to a stop, and I have gotten off the bike and walked out in the middle of a workout, tired, discouraged, beaten. I go home and sit on the couch. I look at the paper without reading it. I watch TV. Hours pass. I wonder what’s wrong with me. Where’s my motivation? Where’s my energy? I’ve struggled against this fatigue almost all my life. I think how when I was a little boy walking to the store with my mother, sometimes I would get tired and just stop and squat and refuse to go on. But then she would either pick me up or more likely grab me by the arm and yank me along. Today life is sort of like my mother. I can sit for a little while, but life swoops me back up and pulls me along till I gain my feet and keep going on my own. I do get in funks and get depressed, but I’ve never been to the point of just plain not going on.

  I’m working with Pam Duguay. She is a tall, athletic twenty-six-year-old who is going to paramedic school. I like working with her because she is enthusiastic and wants to learn. We’re out in an exclusive neighborhood in West Hartford on a chest pain call. We’ve been there with a cop for ten minutes, trying to get into the locked house. The cop says the dispatcher has the man on the phone, but the code he’s gotten for the garage door doesn’t work.

  I think he’s probably on the floor, having the big one, one hand clutched to his chest, the
other holding the phone, as he gasps out the numbers to the garage door, barely able to say the words to the nervous dispatcher.

  The cop breaks a windowpane in the garage, unclasps the window lock, and lifts it up. I lay a towel over the broken glass and climb into the garage over a large bag of peat moss. I check the door leading into the house. It is unlocked. I run up the stairs, then up to the second floor, where I enter the spacious bedroom.

  A man in his sixties sits in a king-size bed, covers pulled up to his waist, the night table light on. The TV plays Good Morning America. “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “No, I’m not well,” he says.

  His face is flushed—he doesn’t look too bad. I touch his forehead. He feels a little sweaty.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t get up.”

  “Are you having any chest pain or discomfort?”

  He shakes his head.

  I have him squeeze my hands and wiggle his feet, which he does without a problem.

  “I was in the bathroom shaving,” he says, “and I felt weak, so I got back in bed and was afraid to get up. Maybe I can get up now.”

  I excuse myself for a moment and go downstairs and open the front door for Pam and the cop. “He’s okay,” I say. “I think we’re dealing with a psych case.”

  Back upstairs, we give him a full checkup. Aside from his blood pressure being a little high, physically he seems okay. We agree to take him to Hartford Hospital to get checked out. “I know it may be a waste of time, but I’ll feel better about it. I’m just afraid of going out, afraid something will happen to me.” He starts to sob.

  Pam pats his shoulder. “It’s all right. You’ll be okay.”

  The cop shakes his head and walks out of the room.

  Twenty minutes later, we are finally leaving the house with the patient. I carry his suitcase, which he has spent twenty minutes packing: walking about his room, getting his slippers and green bathrobe out of the closet, two pressed white shirts from the bureau, along with socks and underclothes, and his shaving kit.

  “It’s not a good idea to take all this stuff to the ER,” I tell him. “It may get lost. In all likelihood, you’ll be back home later today.”