by J. D. Glass
“I’m just going to take your watch off so you’re more comfortable. Okay, Mom?” I told her cheerfully as I did so. The band had started to cut into her wrist. I pocketed it and got out the crew’s way.
“PSVT,” the medic by the monitor said.
“BP a hundred over sixty,” the medic who’d been evaluating the vitals said. “Adenosine?”
“Yep. Hi, Scotty.”
I glanced over at the familiar voice. Holy shit—it was Jean. I hadn’t even noticed.
“Jean! What are you doing here?”
“Well, I wanted to send you an early Valentine, and I was in the neighborhood, so…” she quipped as she loaded a syringe, then angled it into the port on the IV line. She flashed me a warm grin. “Actually, I got called for a per diem at University.”
That made sense; per diems were hard to get, no one gave them up unless they absolutely had to, and they were always a source of income and references, if needed.
Jean grew sober again. “Scotty, does your mom have a cardiac history?” She studied the monitors, and I watched with her as the other medic adjusted the oxygen tank for transport.
“No…” my mom managed to moan out from under the mask.
“Okay, Mrs. Scotts,” Jean said, “we’re going to take you to the hospital, okay?”
My mother shook her finger back and forth in negation, and I ached to see her, famous for her words, unable to speak.
“Tori will come ride in the back with me, right, Tori?” Jean gave me that warm smile again.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m coming with you. Elena’s going to take my car.” I handed my sister my keys, and her eyes, so like mine, were large as she nodded in agreement.
“Uh, Scanlon, protocol—” the other medic protested as they moved my mom to the stairs and I walked behind them.
“Burns, she’s the member of service,” Jean interrupted.
“Oh.”
I helped them carry the stretcher up the narrow stairway.
“Hey, just like old times, right?” Jean grinned at me.
I snorted. “Yeah, just like ’em.”
Once in the rig, I sat at the foot of the bench so my mother could see me while Jean worked.
“Saint Vin’s?” called Burns from the front.
“Redirect,” Jean called back. “U South is closer.”
“Saint Vin’s is cardiac today,” Burns reminded her.
“I want the closest ER,” she said as she did whatever voodoo magic medics did, “and run lights-only.”
Jean was breaking protocol to go to the closest ER, which was about two minutes away, instead of the designated cardiac center, which was about ten. I was relieved because from what I could see, my mom’s eyes had closed, her skin had gone from ashen to milk white, and her face had developed the mask, where the skin appears to be stretched too tightly over the bones. I hadn’t looked or asked Jean what her vitals were, but I knew enough to realize Jean thought what I did: time was critical.
“Hey, Mom, that’s not too far away.” I rubbed her foot—it was cold. “Oh, and hey, since Elena’s driving my car, we’ll bring you home very quickly.”
She bobbed her head and gave me a weak smile. I glanced at Jean, who was still doing the voodoo she did so well.
“Anything I can help with?”
“No, just fine,” she drawled. “Why don’t you fill us in on who…what you’ve been up to?” She smirked.
I chuckled anyway. Trust Jean to make jokes. But it was the right way to go, and as we rode to the ER I talked about my classmates, my instructors, Bennie and Roy, and the couple of funny things I’d seen on my rotations.
My mom didn’t open her eyes, but she did try to nod in all the right places and occasionally managed a weak smile.
Things were a blur when we got to the ER, but I helped take the stretcher out of the rig, which was the least I could do.
The receiving nurse was about to protest my presence until she recognized me. “Oh, hey, Scotty,” she smiled, “didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”
“Me either,” I said as my mom was set up in a bed and a twelve-lead portable monitor attached to her. I held her hand and told her what they were doing so she’d be less anxious.
Eventually, I really had to leave so a proper evaluation could be performed, but I knew I could come back in as soon as they were done, since such were the perks of being an EMT.
I stepped outside the bay to have a cigarette, wanting to clear my head before I tried to find Elena in the waiting room so I could let her know what was going on. Not that I knew much at the moment.
The rig we’d arrived in was still there.
“Hey, Tor.” Jean’s voice sounded behind me.
“Hey, Jean, thanks for everything.”
“Yeah, don’t mention it,” she laughed, and clapped my shoulder, “not unless you want to get me fired or something.”
I gazed directly into her eyes as I chuckled. “Not hardly. But thanks, truly.”
“You’d do it for me,” she said, her voice low and sincere.
“You’re right, I would.”
Silence stretched between us. “So…I heard you’re at the academy now?”
“Yeah, I started three weeks ago. I’m going three to eleven,” I answered. “You?”
“My last week, next week—I’m ten to six. Maybe I’ll run into you during a break or something?”
“Yeah, maybe, that would be cool, right?” I don’t know why I said that. That…sounded monumentally stupid, but her hair had grown since I’d seen her last, and she’d taken such good care of my mom, and she was so pretty and tough and…the last time we’d seen each other, she’d told me she liked me. And I’d kissed her, a kiss I hadn’t forgotten, as much as I’d tried to.
“It would be.” She nodded. “We get a couple of breaks, about every hour and a half. I go outside, by the grease truck. You know, the van sitting out by the lot with the guy that sells the coffee and the sandwiches? But I don’t stay very long, because it’s too cold.”
I laughed. I knew the spot she was talking about. “Yeah, I go there too, but you know, if you go down a level, where the phones are?”
I was grateful for cell phones because there were only two public phones in the entire building, and they were on the landing of the first sub-level.
“Yeah?”
“There’s a room off to the side where you can hang out; people have left books and board games and stuff—I discovered it when I got lost trying to find the facilities.”
She laughed. “Cool, very cool. You would find something else when you get lost. Maybe I’ll see you there sometime?” she asked, a slight curve lifting her lip.
“Maybe.” And suddenly it hit me, I was standing out there because my mother was inside.
“I’ve got to go find my sister. I’ve got to go.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, look, I’m on for another few hours. I’ll check in from time to time?” Jean’s face was the picture of friendly concern.
“That’d be great, thanks,” I said, walking back to the bay doors.
“I’ll see you later, then,” she said as I punched the key code that would slide the door open.
Elena was pale and anxious when I found her, tapping her feet nervously as she sat in the waiting room.
“Tori, is Mami okay?” She stood and threw herself into my arms again.
“She’s okay right now, Elena,” I comforted. “I’m going back inside in a few minutes to find out more.” I held her tightly, because I was as scared as she was, but she was counting on me to do something.
“Did you talk with the desk clerk?” I asked her softly.
“No,” she sniffed against my shoulder. “I didn’t know what to do. I brought Mami’s pocketbook, though, and left a note for Aunt Carolina.”
“Good girl, you did a lot. Come on,” I said and rubbed her arm, “come with me.” I took her hand and took her into the ER to see our mother.
By the time she was admitted and a bed fou
nd in CCU, I’d found a moment to call Samantha and left a message to have her tell Nina what was going on. My mother was Nina’s godmother and they’d always had a special bond, but I didn’t want to leave that sort of a message for her, all things considered. So when I stepped out into the corridor from CCU with Elena, the entire family—aunt, uncle, cousins, including Nina and Samantha—was there and waiting anxiously.
“Victoria, what do they say?” my aunt asked as she approached. Her eyes were wide and worried.
I hugged her and explained to everyone what Elena and I knew, which wasn’t much except that she was stable at the moment and she’d be evaluated further. I strongly suspected that my mother had had her first cardiac incident and that it was due to CHF, congestive heart failure.
It was a long night. Aunt Carolina refused to leave the room, which was absolutely her prerogative, so I alternated with everyone else visiting my mom or waiting outside.
Everyone finally left very late, and for a long while, my mom and I were alone, surrounded by the hisses and beeps of the machinery that measured and monitored her body.
“How’s she doing?” Jean asked quietly behind me as I watched my mother sleep.
“She’s stably unstable.” I sighed softly as I held my mother’s hand. The skin felt so fragile, the bones so thin.
Jean put a warm hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be okay, Tori, she’s a fighter. She didn’t lose consciousness, she didn’t want the oxygen, and she didn’t want to come here. A real fighter.”
I covered her hand with mine briefly and raised my eyes to hers. “Thanks. I’m glad you think so.”
“I’ve got a gut feeling,” she said, a light curve gracing her lips, “and,” she glanced down at her watch, “I’ve got to go.”
I gave my mom’s hand a kiss, then stood. “I’m glad you stopped by.”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe I’ll see you in Fort Totten?” she asked from the doorway.
“Maybe. Be safe.”
“You know it,” she said and cockily grinned, a bright flash in the darkened room, then left.
*
They kept my mom a week, a week I spent back in my old room so Elena wouldn’t be too scared or lonely, a week with my mother, as soon as she could speak, mad at me for not telling her that her beloved goddaughter was pregnant, which I tried to deny, but my mom kept insisting she could see. Honestly, I was relieved and grateful for both her discovery and her annoyance with me, because they meant she was feeling much better.
Besides, when she stopped smacking my arm, she was very excited about being a great-aunt, and happy that she knew something my aunt didn’t. Ah, sibling rivalry, I thought, mentally rolling my eyes. I was so glad Elena and I weren’t like that.
Roy and Bennie were great. They did all the driving during that time because I’d left Elena my car in case she needed it, and luckily the lectures, both the didactic and the practical, were rather easy; but then again, we’d been trained by Bob, and his class was considered one of, if not the best in the country.
The next week, we had EVOC, emergency vehicle operation course, which would begin very early during the day and then, the following week, our finals.
I spent five days, from six in the morning until three in the afternoon, out in Floyd Bennett Field, standing on the beat-up tarmac of the old military airfield, freezing my ass off, picking up traffic cones, and waiting for my opportunity to drive a rig, rev it up, weave between cones to create a dangerous sway (because the way these vehicles are weighted with oxygen, they tip much more easily than one would think), correct the sway, then floor it and push that mother as fast as it could go to the feather wall, a super-abrupt breaking stop that had to be corrected into a left turn. If you did it dead-on right, the vehicle hopped, and man, I loved making that thing hop! Of course, if you did it wrong, you’d roll the vehicle; we’d been told more than one instructor had ended up on disability that way.
“See that?” Roy asked me during a break, pointing to the adjacent runway field where cop cars and ESU—emergency services unit—trucks were put through their paces at high speed. “That’s what I want to do.”
Bennie and I both nodded. Rescue…now that was elite. The thought intrigued me: jumping into the water, rappelling down ravines and buildings to extricate…and if I got my diving certification…definitely interesting. The three of us discussed it as we rubbed our hands and huddled against the wind, then ate our sandwiches in the warmth of Roy’s car.
It didn’t make up for the cold, though ever since then, I’ve never felt the cold nearly as bad as I did those days, and I have yet to see a line of cones without either wanting to weave between them or joyously knock them over.
*
We were on our way home from EVOC in Roy’s car when we saw it: a van passed a motorcycle and clipped it, sending the rider ass over head into the guardrail. The van never stopped, but we did.
We stepped out with our tech bags, and Roy pulled a short board out of the trunk. The victim had tumbled so that he sat nearly upright against the freezing metal, his bike about twenty feet away.
He raised a hand to his helmet. “Don’t move, just stay still!” we all cautioned him as we approached. I dialed 911 as Bennie and Roy introduced themselves.
His helmet was cracked and blood poured from his nose and lip, but he was conscious. The ugly swelling of his thigh and the subsequent scream that erupted from him when he tried to move his leg made me think, yup, broken.
We didn’t have a lot of equipment, but we knew how to improvise, adapt. We knew how to overcome. Among the three of us, we had him evaluated, immobilized, and ready for transport when the responding crew got there.
They were a little surprised, maybe, that some academy rats had stopped, and they asked for our names, but hey, that was the job, that was what we were supposed to do—stop and give aid.
*
I admit to being nearly unbearable in the days leading up to finals, and I hid in my apartment, studying. Even at the academy, we were done with our lectures and had to spend hours in a classroom doing nothing—I studied with Roy and Bennie or slept at my desk while other classmates read the paper.
I was so bored that when Lieutenant Griggs came in to announce a break, I almost knocked my chair over in my haste to run out of there, anywhere that wasn’t too hot and stifling.
Though I wasn’t the first one out the door, I certainly wasn’t the last, and my next destinations were the female-designated facilities, the grease truck for some coffee, and a cigarette. I hoped that the combination of the caffeine jolt, the nicotine buzz, and the ass-freezing cold would wake me up enough to get through the next few hours before I drove all of us home. I couldn’t believe we were getting paid to sit there and do absolutely nothing! How many crossword puzzles could a person do in one day, I wondered as I skidded around the corner.
I smacked right into her.
“Whoa, there!”
“Oh, geez, I’m sorry,” I said as we overbalanced. She hit the wall with me on top.
Jean’s eyes sparkled down at me. “I always knew you’d fall for me.” Her lips formed a delicious curve.
“Did you now?” I asked dryly as I righted myself.
Her smile widened for maybe a heartbeat, then her expression became serious. “How’s your mom?”
I sighed. “She’s better, thanks. Home now, actually. Looks like right-sided CHF.”
Jean nodded. “Yeah, thought so. But she’s watching her meds and all that, she’s doing okay at home?”
“Yeah, she’s doing okay for now.”
An awkward silence grew between us because those few moments of having her body so solidly against mine forcibly reminded me of her lips, of the sweet taste of her mouth, that dead-on perfect kiss. “So…I thought you were done last week?”
“This week’s my last week. We do exams tomorrow, find out where we’ll be Friday.”
I nodded like an idiot as my face and neck grew hot and something akin to hunger thrummed throu
gh my body, threatening to erupt through my skin.
Suddenly I recovered. I had to go to the bathroom, have a cig, and get some coffee. “You on break?”
“About another fifteen minutes.”
“Me too. Meet at the grease truck in five?”
She smiled. “Cool. Yeah.”
I managed not to damage myself or another human being as I stepped out of the building and down the steps that led to the open space where the grease truck sat and a bunch of classmates, both from my class and Jean’s, huddled around the open flap by the coffee urn.
I was careful on the slate flagstones that had lined the walkways of this fort since the Revolutionary War, because it was so cold and dark already; night had fully set, and a touch of ice dotted the ground. I recognized Jean’s back as I walked over, then watched her detach herself from the milling crowd. She carried two large Styrofoam cups.
“This is for you, light and sweet, right?” She smiled.
“Thanks—you remembered.” I was surprised as I took the cup from her. The heat felt good against my bare hands, and I ripped the plastic lid and took a sip.
“Well, yeah,” she laughed softly, “we only spent like, what, every day, for eight or more hours together for a few months? Some marriages don’t last that long.”
I laughed a bit self-consciously. She had a point, and I was pretty sure I was living proof of it. We found a clear spot along the low-lying wall that surrounded part of the building and started to chat, about anything, everything.
Bennie and Roy strolled over, then a few of Jean’s classmates, and we were having a great time, discussing instructors and dumb classroom mistakes, and right before our break ended, we somehow all agreed that we’d meet that coming Friday at Peggy O’Neills in Brooklyn to celebrate the end of our classes.
“Wait up a sec.” Jean caught the back of my jacket right before I reentered the building.
I let the door close again.
Jean glanced down at her hands and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly and it steamed in the winter air.