“What’s your name?” I ask.
“I don’t talk to strangers,” the older boy snarls. He whacks the head of his brother, who is smiling at us, and forces him to face the door.
“We’re not strangers,” I say. “My name is Mufasa, and this is my trusted friend, Riffiki.”
He looks at me with disgust. In his eyes I see nothing but hardened—I’ve had enough bullshit in my life—disappointment. “You ain’t no Lion King,” he says.
The door opens on the first floor. He pushes his brother out, keeping hold of his shirt.
I watch them trudge down the hall.
I remember back when President Reagan was shot. There was an NCAA championship basketball game on that night, and there was some controversy over whether or not they should play in light of the day’s tragic events. They asked one of the players what he thought about the issue of playing that night, considering the president was lying in the hospital with a bullet wound. The young man—a black kid from the ghetto—allegedly answered, “He ain’t no kin of mine.” There was a lot of outrage made over his statement, which was an offhand comment in the locker room. At the time I thought it was bad; a college basketball player ought to be more sensitive and respecting of the position of the president. But thinking about it today, what these politicians are doing in Washington is similar. Don’t you think you ought to quit playing political games and do some serious work out of respect of the position of children in America? And it’s like the whole Congress is saying, They ain’t no kin of ours.
The Corner
I’m reading this book called The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns, a journalist and a retired detective who spent a year hanging out in a drug-ridden inner-city neighborhood in West Baltimore. I bought the book to see if it would give me an insight into some of the people we deal with. The book depresses me. I see enough lives destroyed by drugs that much of the book is information overload for me, but what I find fascinating is the authors’ description of how the drug trade changed over the years from a highly organized and disciplined venture into the street-corner chaos that exists today. They claim it was the introduction of crack cocaine in the early 1980s that changed everything.
Crack cocaine is cheap, plentiful, and you can’t ever get enough of its rush. You don’t need a syringe to get high. It begins with a pipe or a snort up the nose. It may lead to the syringe and a speedball mixture of heroin and crack, but its initial appeal brought in the young mothers who’d been squeamish about heroin and needles. Families started falling apart. Kids running wild. When federal law enforcement efforts had put the older dealers in prison, the new line of dealers started using kids to carry their stash. The dope was so potent, the dealers started using themselves. Soon everyone was cheating everyone. Crew members stealing from each other. Mothers stealing their kids’ stashes. No one could trust anyone. Before crack, violence was punishment for specific infractions of rules. After crack it was a by-product of emotion or gesture. With prison overcrowding, fear of arrest was little deterrent. With a hundred dealers on the street, the herd provided protection. The cop cars roll up, everyone runs. Even the weak who are picked off are back out on the street in no time.
The authors write:
The old code of the dealers is useless now; the new rules are different and have to be. Because, by necessity, any new logic must allow for a mother to stand on Monroe Street and tout Red Tops with her two-year-old in tow. It must allow for a fiend’s theft of the television set from the recreation center, of chalices from the corner churches, of the rent money from his mother’s bedroom. And the rules of the corner cannot stand if they prohibit a thirteen-year-old from holding up a single vial of coke and telling a playmate with brutal honesty that for one of these, your mother will step up and suck my dick.
* * *
The book is a vivid account of how our inner cities have become a wasteland of the disenfranchised. It doesn’t offer much in the way of solution, but I really wonder if there is one, at least one simple and catchy enough to garner popular support. You have some serious history and time to undo here.
It’s three in the morning. An icy, rainy night. I drive down Edgewood Street. A man in a hooded black sweatshirt wanders out of an abandoned house. Two men stand against a fence, fading into the darkness. Up on the corner, a boy stands, hands in pockets, eyes alert to the oncoming traffic. Any hour of the day. Any weather. Always there.
Mother
She is in the bathtub, fully clothed, soaking wet. Her son, a boy of fourteen, is patting her face, calling her name, pleading with her to wake up. Two smaller children watch from the bathroom door. An old woman gets them away.
I can see the track marks on her arms. The surroundings of the house look familiar. I think I have been in this spare apartment before, for this same woman.
“How much did she do?” I ask the boy. He says nothing. I look at her pinpoint pupils. Heroin. “I’m not the cops,” I say. “How much?”
“A couple bags, I think,” he says. “She doesn’t tell me.”
She is breathing four times a minute. “Don’t throw water on someone like this.” I say. “It’ll just give her a cold.”
“She wouldn’t wake up,” he says.
“It’s okay. We’ll take care of her.”
I put the tourniquet on her arm, look hard for a vein. Her arm is familiar. I know I have treated her before. I remember the tattoo of the butterflies and the names Maria and Anna inscribed under each. I got the IV the last time right above the butterflies’ antennae. A hard stick. Nothing doing this time. I can’t find or feel a thing. Screw it. I draw up the Narcan. I will give it to her IM, intramuscularly. It will take a little longer but will get the job done. I roll up her sleeve and see another tattoo, a heart with the name Roberto under it. I swab it with the alcohol prep, then, feeling poetic, jab the needle right into the heart, push the Narcan in.
“Mami, Mami,” the boy says.
“Give it a couple minutes,” I say. “She’ll come around.”
He looks at me, uncertain.
Arthur takes the gear down and gets the stair chair.
The woman’s breathing is picking up. She opens her eyes and is groggy. She coughs, then throws up on herself.
“Mami, Mami,” the boy says.
“We’re going to take you to Hartford Hospital,” I say.
She looks at me, then up at her son, then at the neighbors in the doorway to the bathroom. She closes her eyes.
“Mami, Mami, are you okay?” the boys asks.
She rubs her head with his hand but says nothing.
We carry her out in the stair chair, down the hall, past the neighbors’ open doors, down the old wooden stairs. I look at their eyes, the neighbors, old women and kids, young men. This is a familiar sight. An overdose. An ambulance.
The boy comes with us.
At triage, the nurse recognizes the woman and says, “You were here yesterday.” She shakes her head and asks me for the name for her chart.
I look back at the woman and her boy. He rubs his hand against her face. Fourteen years old. His mother lies there, eyes closed. She’s thirty and looks fifty. “What’s your name?” Arthur asks the boy.
“Roberto.”
Childhood
They say the seeds of the man are in the child. I am looking through some old papers when I come across my kindergarten report card.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Sense of Humor
Generally good—likes humorous incidents, very adverse to teasing
Interest in Stories
Very interested
Interest in Conversation
Normal interest, can carry on a very intelligent conversation
Reasoning
Exceptional except during occasional streaks of anger
Purposeful or Random Activity
Purposeful
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Temperament
Generally even with occasional streaks of
emotion, conscientious, strong-willed
Ability to Face New Situations
Has shown no fears or worries
Independence in Work and Play
Sufficiently independent in both
Kindness, Responsibility Toward Others
Very kind and responsible as a rule with occasional impulsive response when angry
Self-confidence
Appears sufficient
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
Large Muscle Coordination
Sufficiently developed
Small Muscle Coordination
Crayon and pencil sufficiently controlled
Ability to Relax
Sufficient
Dressing Habits
Dresses and undresses self
Speech
Distinct
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Cooperation
Cooperative as a rule but will occasionally choose not to do as others; separates himself occasionally from others
Leadership
Has shown leadership qualities in his ability to plan activities, courses of action, a good organizer
Ability to Follow
Has the ability to follow, but will quite often attempt to change plans with a little original idea of his own
Reliability
Dependable in the right place at the right time, comes when called
Defense of Own Rights
Very good at reasoning his differences with others as a rule but can become very emotional on occasion
Consideration of Others
Takes turns, is polite
I think that report card is remarkably accurate to this day. While I can cite major factors in my later life that shaped me in one way or another—in high school, not able to be a leader, I chose not to be a follower; not getting into Harvard as my relatives had made me question my self-worth, but enabled me to choose a nontraditional path; discovering literature, and then striving to live up to it, to be a worthy companion of its heroes; having few close friends, but holding them tightly; disappointing myself occasionally when love was on the line and I chose self-survival, but feeling all its cost—they didn’t change the essential person I am.
I am basically moral. I am generally even-tempered, but I do get pissed off every now and then. Still, I am polite, and as the report says, I come when called. I had parents who cared about me, who gently kept me in line and tried to show me the straight path.
I wonder about these kids in the city, from birth to five: who is shaping them, nurturing them, directing them, loving them? And even those who get love and direction, what will happen to them in the world they live in? Some days I think if I had been a black kid living in Hartford then I would have easily gotten into Harvard, but then I think that’s ridiculous. What I achieved was achieved with advantages. What would I have become if I had grown up with a drug-addicted single parent in the inner city? Would I be a kind drug-dealer, a considerate gang member, an impulsive thief? Would I be writing this book or instead would I be sitting on the cold floor of some crack house, entertaining my doper friends with dazzling tales of capers and thievery, as I used my IV skills to find the last hidden vein in their withered arms and scarred necks? Would I even be alive?
French Fries
The mother meets us at the door. She is maybe nineteen years old, a huge beefy girl, wearing an apron with a name tag that says CHANEL. She is crying. The call was for a small cut to a child, but her tears have me wondering. She leads us up the stairs, then disappears behind a huge straw curtain that separates two rooms. She comes back holding a tiny little girl in her huge arms. The girl has a small cut to the side of her face. It has stopped bleeding but may need a stitch or two to close. “I just come to pick her up after work and she playing, and she got pushed into the bed frame. I knew something was wrong. Her friend Taimika said, ‘Tay, I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to hurt you, Tay.’ They both named Taimika. I saw the bleeding and I got so worried, and I give her this towel.” She starts crying again.
“Calm down,” I say. “She’ll be okay. Hey little girl, what a pretty little girl, you are.” She has the most beautiful smile, and her hair is neatly done in cornrow braids. I hold her in my arms. She can’t weigh twenty pounds. “She’ll be all right,” I say.
We take them to Saint Francis. I have the little girl on the stretcher. Her mother sits on the bench leaning over her, still wiping her eyes. The girl looks up at her, eyes wide open, uncertain, bordering on fear. The mother cries, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry, Tay, Mommy loves you. Mommy loves you.” Her beefy hand caresses her daughter’s cheek. “Tay, Mommy got you dinner but she left it at home. Mommy got you french fries cause Mommy knows you love french fries. Mommy loves you, Tay, Mommy got you french fries.”
I have this vision of the little girl eating nothing but french fries for the next ten years until she is as big as her mother, and has a child of her own, whom she, with all the love in her great heart, can give french fries to.
“Mommy loves you, Tay, Mommy loves you.”
Social Club
It is 2:54 early Sunday morning when we get the dispatch. “Four-seven-one, respond priority one for the shooting.”
We are just blocks away from the address—a popular north-end social club. We race down Woodland while three cop cars, their lights whirling up Homestead, swing in, fishtailing behind us. It feels like a scene right out of a movie.
Car 601 is also dispatched. “They’re saying there are three people shot,” Suzy Ribero, our dispatcher, says.
The club is ahead on the right. Cars are parked up and down the street. A mob of people running out of the building. Chris Carcia, my partner, parks in front. I get out, grabbing the green bag. The scene is chaos. “Who’s shot?” I ask.
“In dere, in dere, mon!” a man shouts. The crowd is dressed all in white and black, dresses and evening suits. I look to the front door and see a man running out toward me, gesturing angrily. “Run, mon, run! He’s hurt bad!”
Chris and our rider are pulling the stretcher out. The crowd is glaring at me. Someone grabs my arm and yanks. I swing my arm loose. “Easy,” I say. I start toward the door. I walk deliberately. I need to be careful, alert.
“Get the fuck in here, mon. He’s shot bad,” a young man with a glistening bald head and an earring shouts at me.
I keep coming. As I go up the steps, the crowd that has been running out seems to stop. They swing around me, sweeping me up, rushing me in. I see a blood trail on the foyer floor, leading out. “Who’s this from?” I ask.
“He already left. The man’s hurt bad, inside.”
Women are crying. The men look angry. The second entrance door slams shut; I can’t open it. The crowd around me starts to beat on it. The crowd inside turns and rushes back and opens the door. “You stand there and hold it for my partners,” I shout at a woman as I am pulled forward.
“This way, mon, this way!”
I am taken down a hallway, following the blood trail. I can see another crowd gathered around what I presume is the victim.
“Clear way!” I shout. “Clear way!”
“He got a pulse. He still got a pulse. He going to be okay. He going to be okay,” a man shouts.
The victim lies against the wall. He is a young man in his twenties with a goatee, nattily dressed. He is not breathing. He looks like a man laid out in a coffin taking a nap. I touch his neck. Nothing. I pull back his vest, find a bloodstain on his right lateral chest. I turn and look back for my partners. All I see is the black-and-white dressed wall of people pressing against me.
“Who else is shot? Is anyone else shot?”
“No, just him, just him.”
“Do something, mon! Do something!”
“Back off. Make way. My partners are coming. Give them room.”
I turn back to the victim. I notice a champagne bottle by his side. I pull out the ambu-bag from the green bag. Chris comes through with the stretcher.
“We have a traumat
ic arrest,” I say. “Let’s get him up and out of here.”
We lower the stretcher down, start to lift him. Several people try to help us. We flop him down, pop the stretcher back up and head for the door. I throw in a few compressions. Our rider bags. We wade back through the crowd, shouting at them to part. At the doorway the stretcher jams. We spin, pivot it, while a cop manages to unhook the second glass door to give us maneuvering room. The light of a videocamera held above the crowd shines on us. We race to the ambulance, lift him in back.
“We need a board under him,” I shout to Chris. “Let’s get his clothes off and get him on the monitor. I’ll get the tube.”
I pull out my airway kit, go in with the laryngoscope. I can barely see the cords. I ask for cric pressure, but my view is obscured. I see a hole but no cords. I pull out, and bag for a moment. I look to my left and see heads pressed against the window and the glare of cameras. I go in again but see nothing. The back door opens and it’s John Burelle from 601.
“What can I do for you, Pete?” he asks.
Chris does CPR. The patient is in an idioventricular rhythm on the monitor. Only the lower part of his heart is working, but is slowing rapidly to an agonal, dying rhythm. My rider is going for an IV line.
“Drive to the hospital,” I say. It’s just blocks away. “Drive and patch.”
I throw the laryngoscope aside and plunge my hand into the man’s mouth. With my fingers I feel the soft epiglottis, the piece of flesh that guards the vocal cords. I lift up on it, then pass the tube between my fingers, using the tips to turn the tube upward, and feed it into the trachea. I feel the slight vibration in my right hand as the balloon at the end of the tube rubs against the bumpy cords. I’m in. I yank the stylet out. I inflate the cuff, then quickly tie on the mouth holder. “Where’s the ambu-bag? I need the ambu-bag.”
“It’s at your feet,” Chris says.
I grab it, attach the end to the top of the tube. I ventilate. It compresses easily. I have Chris squeeze, while I listen. Positive lung sounds. Nothing over the belly. I’m in.
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