Bad Call Read online

  Pete is short and squat and has the personality of a perpetually agitated crab, always waving his claws menacingly. It doesn’t matter at whom. Pete has a reason to be angry. He once fell into a vat of acid, and he never lets anyone forget it. I guess it scarred him for life. Oddly enough, there are no visible scars.

  Pete had a job at an ice cream factory as a young man, and he must have been careless and slipped and fell into the acid on the job. According to Pete, there was a big settlement, and even though he doesn’t have to do this, he works on the ambulance anyway. I certainly think he enjoys being the boss. How he got to be boss is shrouded in myth.

  At this point in my rapidly vectoring-downhill premed career, I have taken a fair number of chemistry courses. (They do add up when you take them twice.) I have racked my brain trying to figure out what kinds of vats of acid they’d have in an ice cream factory. I mean, people eat this for pleasure, for God’s sake. My family and I enjoy Pete’s former employer’s brand of ice cream all the time. The only possible acids I can think of that they might use are citric or benzoic acid, and even they shouldn’t be in any concentration powerful enough to burn anybody that fell into them. Especially a tough guy like Pete.

  Even though I’ve been on the job a couple of years now and have plenty of calls notched on my metaphorical gunstock, Pete continues to treat me as the new kid on the block. Of course he would. He’s a bully.

  Looking at him, in all his radiant sourness, I imagine he was probably bullied as a kid (not to mention abused by that vat of acid), and I think he considers it one of his personal life goals to pass it along, as those who are bullied often do. It’s irritating to be spoken to like I’m a rookie idiot, but I can live with it. Nobody really takes him seriously.

  Pete has a little game he likes to play because he’s a coward, which of course is the flip side of the bully coin. Some of the other guys play this game too, but rarely, and none with more relish than Pete.

  The game goes like this. A call will come in that terrifies Pete, who then puts on the grimmest face he can muster. Next, he goes all hard-ass. Come on, kid, let’s go. This is probably gonna be the worst thing you’ve ever seen. He’s saying this to me right now, in fact.

  That’s the game. Pete is trying to bolster his own nerve by making me lose mine. I’m trying to look suitably worried, but it’s hard, especially since Leroy and Caruso are standing right behind Pete, grinning moronically and making faces.

  This is a rush call. We’re off to the loading docks of a major national trucking company in Long Island City. Apparently, someone has gone and gotten himself squished. This is a lot of information to get from Central, compared with the usual man down. I have to say that Pete may be right in that this could be the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but I’m not all that apprehensive. I’ve learned you have to let things unfold in their own way. I’m thinking of the line from Macbeth, Present fears are less than horrible imaginings, and how it doesn’t pay to have too vivid an imagination in this line of work.

  So. Is this guy really splattered all over the place. Did he burst, like jumpers sometimes do. Is his face crushed beyond recognition. Are his guts all hanging out and his splintered bones sticking through his skin. Seen that. How many variations on a theme can there be.

  There are countless variations. But only the one theme.

  How can there ever be a worst thing you’ve ever seen when you know there will always be something worse than that. I say this to my friends when they ask me that very question, What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen. Everybody has a different Worst Hall of Fame. As far as I’m concerned, every call we get (except most maternities) is a bad call by definition. Who calls an ambulance unless something bad has happened in the first place. From that point on, it’s simply a matter of degree.

  We’re riding to the scene in dramatically grim silence, if you don’t count the siren screaming ten inches above our heads, courtesy of Pete. (If you think passing sirens are annoying, try sitting under one for a few minutes, or all day long; I’m surprised I can still hear at all.) By dramatically grim silence, I mean it’s kind of stagy. Not really real. Not for me at least. Right now I’m thinking of a half-dozen White Castles, to tell the truth.

  Oh good, we’re not the first on the scene. The NYFD is here in force. Large and in charge. Their ambulance is much nicer than ours. For one thing, it’s huge and intimidating. And so red. They have every light going, even though the vehicle is parked, on private property. We always turn our lights off unless we’re in traffic. They have style. I have Pete.

  I can see the victim now. He’s flat on his back. No gore to speak of, but he’s looking very…thin, not to get too technical about it. Like about three inches thin. His entire torso has been compacted by the impact of a multi-ton semi backing up to the loading dock. He must have turned to face the approaching rear of the trailer at the last second, which accounts for his being smushed from front to back, rather than side to side—which is what you’d expect, since he was walking by.

  Apparently, the procedure is to back up the truck until a loud bang is heard, which tells the driver audibly that good contact has been made between the trailer and the platform. That’s what the foreman from the trucking company is telling the cops. I wonder if the driver heard the bang this time. I doubt it. I wonder what he did hear.

  The victim’s face is slate blue from anoxia. The truck annihilated his lungs and heart in one shot. Death must have been quick, if not instantaneous, and very, very painful.

  There are huge signs posted all over the place that warn—expressly forbid—workers from taking shortcuts by walking behind the trucks. Because they might get squished, of course. And even with all these warnings in plain sight day after day, this poor schmuck rolled the dice and came up short.

  This is the kind of death that really pisses me off, because it’s so damned unnecessary. We see a lot of this on the ambulance. People either omitting the things they should do to preserve life and limb—or committing the things they shouldn’t. How catechismal—sins of omission, sins of commission. People who have seat belts but don’t use them. Old people who shovel snow. People who don’t take their meds or don’t disconnect the main power supply when doing electrical work. People who have a flat on the expressway and stand behind their cars to wave traffic around. The list goes on and on.

  The point is that life itself is a fatal condition. And real accidents, over which we have no control, happen every day. So why invite the end of life through simple arrogance, laziness, or denial. People fight like hell to live when they’re diagnosed with a lethal disease. Why don’t they take simple precautions to stay alive when it takes only the slightest bit of effort to do so—much less a fight. I hate that.

  I’m standing by, watching the proceedings. I don’t know where Pete has gotten off to. Maybe he has realized that this is not the worst thing I’ve ever seen and has slunk off to bullshit with the cops. Fine with me. I’m watching a massive guy do CPR on the man with the three-inch-thick chest, trying not to visualize all the bone fragments being shoved through the victim’s heart and lungs, again and again. It occurs to me that if this poor guy wasn’t dead to begin with, considering all the broken bones inside, this kind of vigorous CPR would do the job nicely.

  Excuse me, but this man is dead. You can stop doing that. This is what I want to say, but the CPR giver is in a trance, so I keep my mouth shut. Here comes Pete. Let’s go, kid. We can’t hang around here all day, you know, as if that’s something I really would like to do. They’re going to wait for the scene to be investigated before they release the body, so we’re free to leave anyway.

  I can’t help feeling bad. I feel bad for the victim, who couldn’t take a few seconds to save his own miserable life by following the rules and walking around the trucks to get where he was going in such a damn hurry.

  I know. Who can say how much longer he would have lived.

  Maybe he would have died tomorrow, brained by a meteorite. All
I know is he didn’t have to die today, here, like this. It’s not about total avoidance, which is not possible; it’s about deferral: always put off until tomorrow what you can possibly avoid today. Especially your own death.

  I also feel bad for the dead guy’s family. And the fireman who couldn’t revive the victim, even using every bit of his considerable strength and heart.

  Most of all, I feel bad for Pete. Sorry, Pete, it’s not the worst. But cheer up. There’s always next time.

  Spare Change

  I feel terrific today, thanks to the wonders of modern pharmacology. Last night I discovered I had about a half-dozen pills remaining in a bottle of Dexamyl left over from senior year in high school. This morning I took one, and I feel wonderful. Energetic. Upbeat. Ready to roll. I wish I could feel this way all the time, especially working on the ambulance.

  I started taking Dexamyl to lose weight. Dad grew up best pals with a pharmacist in Elmhurst who gets him basically anything he wants. I remember Mom massaging our gums when we had toothaches, with paregoric from an unmarked brown quart bottle, obtained courtesy of Barry the druggist. Pure tincture of opium, just sitting in a kitchen cabinet alongside the baking soda.

  Dad asked Barry for some diet pills for me, and Barry responded with a huge bottle of time-release Dexamyl capsules. It wasn’t considered a big deal, just a normal good-buddy quid pro quo. Dad kept Barry’s Caddy running like a top. Barry kept me running like Jesse Owens.

  The effects were astonishing. I got the best grades of my life with little apparent (at least to me) effort. I was performing feats of gymnastics I would never have dreamed possible. I was sprinting on the track like an Olympic hopeful. My weight was holding at one hundred forty. Now, it’s well over two hundred. Maybe I should think about getting a refill.

  Eddie and I have a call, a woman down, on the sidewalk on Roosevelt Avenue. Okay, let’s go. Happy to take the call. Happy about everything today. Happy, happy, happy. I wonder if Eddie is thinking something’s wrong with me. Maybe he thinks I’ve had a little too much coffee. No point telling him I’ve downed a Barry’s Little Helper.

  At the scene, there are two policemen and a woman about sixty-five or seventy. She’s sitting on the curb, with her legs and feet in the street. Her head is bowed down, and her hands are resting at her sides, palms up, on the sidewalk.

  She looks utterly exhausted. Vanquished.

  As usual, pedestrians are passing us by as if this were perfectly normal. It’s about noon, bright and sunny and not too hot. Nothing seems at all out of the ordinary except for this defeated woman, sitting half in the street.

  There doesn’t seem to be a thing physically wrong with her. She’s a little confused and obviously very sad. Her face is wet with tears, and she has a hurt and startled expression in her eyes. I’m beginning to feel like the Dexamyl I took may have gone stale, sitting in my drawer at home. I’m starting to feel awful. This isn’t supposed to happen. Neither was whatever happened to this poor woman.

  It’s difficult to get her to talk. When she does, she tells us a story that is probably pretty common; you just normally don’t see the effects firsthand.

  She says she’s been put out of the house, out on the street, by her daughter and son-in-law. Just forced from the home she shared with them. It’s not clear who owns the home, but it’s very clear she cannot return there. She has no luggage. No purse. Nothing but the clothes on her back. How the fuck can a thing like this happen. There has to be a law against it or something. The cops say not. Can’t they at least make them give her stuff back. Maybe so, but she won’t say who they are or where they live. She’s afraid.

  I ask the cops what’s going to happen to her. They say simply that they don’t know.

  We can’t take her to the hospital because she’s not injured or ill. The cops would never take her in for vagrancy. So where the hell does she go. What the hell do we do. What does she do. She says she doesn’t want to go anywhere, and we can’t make her. We can’t unilaterally decide she’s insane and take her to EGH against her will. What cosmic sidewalk crack has she fallen into. And if someone like her can end up lost in a crack like this—tell me who can’t.

  Most of the time when we see homeless people, they’ve been homeless for a while. They’ve adapted in one way or another to that life. They can survive, for better or worse. Maybe they’re outside because they choose that life. Many seem to want to live completely unfettered. Lots of them are substance abusers. Some are castaways, like our woman on the sidewalk. But we never see them at the exact moment they’ve become homeless. Will this woman have the presence of mind to tap the skills she will need to adapt to her isolation in a city of millions. Like some sort of urban Robinson Crusoe but on an overcrowded island. She’ll have to adapt fast. Right now, I don’t think she has any idea how to get her next meal.

  Eddie takes me aside and asks me how much money I have on me. In an instant, I am so deeply shamed that I can hardly speak. Why didn’t I think of this myself. I like to think compassion is my number one goal on this job, even when I can’t help in any other way.

  Yes, of course. We need to give her money. We need to give her all of our money, everything we’ve got, as if it will do any good in the long run, or even in the midterm.

  Eddie pulls fourteen bucks out of his pocket, plus a small handful of change. I have a twenty, being unusually flush today. It’s not a lot of money, but it will certainly get her through a day or two, at least as far as food is concerned. She has no place to put the money, so we lay it in her palm and then curl her fingers around it, so it stays put. I hope nobody gets smart and grabs it. It would be so easy.

  She has nothing else. Not even a couple of matches, some firewood, and some pemmican to chew on before the wolves eat her up. Right in the middle of Queens, NY, USA. And I thought life in the wild was cruel.

  I don’t know of any flophouses in this section of Queens, so where she will sleep is anybody’s guess. Maybe she won’t sleep tonight at all.

  I know I won’t.

  Candy

  Standing here looking down at this boy, I feel like he could be my kid brother, if I had one. If I did have one, I wouldn’t want to see him like this. He doesn’t look like he could be more than twelve, and I know he has to be older than that. But not by much.

  He looks so peaceful here, lying in the grass behind this garage on such a rare June day. His eyes are closed like he just lay down and went to sleep. He doesn’t look dead at all. I can’t remember the last time we had a DOA whose eyes were closed. I wonder if a cop closed them. Maybe he reminded one of them of his kid brother.

  The grass must be at least two feet high. I’m amazed somebody saw him here and called 911. He could have been here a long time. In this heat, it wouldn’t take long for him to decompose. He’s such a good-looking, clean-cut kid. Blond hair. A junior Beach Boy. He should be hanging out on Gilgo Beach instead of lying here dead in Maspeth. A good-looking kid, for sure. He deserves an open coffin. Screw that. What he deserves is to be alive.

  Lately when I see something like this, I keep getting the strangest sensation. You know how they say that when you have a near miss your whole life flashes before your eyes. When I see some dead people—and I can’t tell who it will be—I see their lives flash by. There must be a name for this. I’m seeing them as babies being held by their parents. Playing with toys. Starting school. Going to church. Meeting someone. Having a life and growing old. Well, not in this case. I can’t help seeing the wholeness of the life that was. The life had substance. It was real. And then it comes to this, and it’s so hard to understand why and what’s the point. Even harder to figure out is the point of the question What’s the point. I know by now that there is no point. I wish I could believe there was. You don’t know how much I wish that.

  Look at the size of that plastic bag full of what. Looks like Seconal. There must be hundreds of them. Maybe well over a thousand. If he had sold them all on the street, he would have made quite a haul.<
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  He has vomit around his mouth and in his nose. He almost certainly aspirated it and suffocated. I have to assume the obvious, that he took some of his own pills. But having this many, he had to have known how far to go. Even as young as he was, with that many pills, he must’ve known what he was doing. There’s no question he was dealing.

  I refuse to believe he OD’d on purpose. Such a good-looking kid. So much ahead of him. Not counting a stay at Spofford. At the very least, I’d have thought he’d be looking forward to scoring some big bucks with all those reds. It had to have been accidental. That’s what the cops are saying.

  How are they going to explain this to his parents. Your son is dead. By the way, did you know he was a drug dealer. He was dealing barbiturates and it looks like he took some himself and OD’d. Sorry for your loss. Jesus.

  They’ve asked us to remove him to the morgue. We can do that. The detectives have been here awhile and have seen all they came to see, and we don’t have any other calls on deck right now. One of the cops gently pries the bag of pills out of the dead boy’s hand. I wonder where that will end up. Probably in an evidence locker. Too many eyes on it for it to disappear, although I know it must be tempting.

  Eddie and I are taking our positions at the feet and head and getting ready to lift him onto the stretcher. I’m up at the head. Eddie has him by the pants legs, I have him by the sleeves—I don’t need to get any vomit on myself today. On three. Lift.

  There is a dramatic, very loud gurgling gasp from our patient. Holy shit.

  This kid is alive and we’ve been standing around talking. That must be why his eyes were closed so nicely—he really was sleeping. Holy shit.