Bad Call Read online

  This was an unremarkable-looking guy. Nothing out of the ordinary. The guy next door. He was conscious and alert. It wasn’t the greatest apartment in the world, but it wasn’t the worst. He wasn’t at all communicative, but I assumed he was diabetic, which is usually the first thing we suspect when we see any tissue death in the feet or legs. So that leaves the big question. How the hell can somebody sit on his ass for what must have been a pretty long period of time and let this happen to his body, without getting help. How could his roommate stand the smell and not call for help before this.

  The problem has to have started at his feet and worked its way up. Okay, maybe his foot hygiene wasn’t the best. But if he was diabetic and taking insulin, he must have been counseled on proper foot care to prevent exactly what we were seeing.

  Didn’t he smell something. What happened when the first maggots appeared. You see a lot of denial on this job. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much. Does he even suspect he’s going to lose those legs or maybe—very likely—more. Like his life.

  And then we had to touch him. Eddie and I held a brief executive session. We decided to go into the bedroom and take some sheets and the spread off the bed and wrap his legs in them so we could carry him. We didn’t want to use our own sheets and blankets on this if at all possible, for obvious reasons.

  We laid him back on the couch where he was sitting. He started to moan a little but not much. I was thinking he was in a lot of pain, but it was not possible to know how bad. Eddie took a corner of the bedspread and used it to cover his hand while lifting the patient’s legs up under the heels. I grabbed the rest of the spread and wrapped it around his legs. I imagined the little maggots getting crushed and smothered underneath the heavy spread. Good, you disgusting little fuckers. I hoped their moms and dads were seeing this.

  I wrapped the spread completely around his legs and, without wasting any time at all, wrapped the two bedsheets around as well. Eddie and I took a step back to assess our handiwork. It looked good. Just as we got into position to carry him out, we saw the pus again, running the entire length of his legs. It had soaked through all the wrappings right before our eyes.

  Eddie went hunting in the apartment, but all he came up with was a dirty checkered tablecloth from the kitchen. We quickly wrapped that around the guy’s legs, but even before we finished, the seepage reappeared.

  Now this was serious. Neither Eddie nor I wanted to get our hands in this. Actually, Eddie wouldn’t have to, since he was the senior man. It was going to be me. He’d take the shoulders, and I’d get to grab the legs. I headed out to the ambulance for backup supplies.

  I picked up two medium-weight wool blankets and four sheets, our entire complement of spares, from under the bench. Eddie and I started wrapping with one of the blankets. Surely this would stem the pus tide. No, it didn’t. We used the other blanket. No success. We did one sheet. No luck.

  Three sheets later, we had used all the wrappings we could find, and I had to face the fact that I was going to have to touch the pus. Not just touch it. Grasp it. Grasp it firmly enough to lift this guy off the couch onto the stretcher.

  When I did this, more pus oozed out, as if I were squeezing a sponge. A sponge full of pus. I knew this image would stay with me every time I washed my car or did the dishes.

  We finally got him on the stretcher and into the ambulance, and now here we are, every window open, driving faster than necessary to keep as much air moving through the ambulance as possible so we don’t hurl. I don’t know if I will ever get this smell off my hands. I know for sure I won’t get it off today.

  All because somebody just sat there and watched himself decay. Most of the time, erosion happens so gradually that it’s hard to notice.

  Not this time.

  Sure Fooled Me

  You don’t get much time to figure things out when you go on a call. I can see why cops are so cautious and edgy when they respond to any kind of call, not just the obviously dangerous ones. It’s the ones that aren’t obviously dangerous that often end up going bad. People can fool you.

  I was working a twenty-four-hour shift with Fred a few weeks ago when we had a rush call, a rape in the projects in Long Island City. It was a hot night, and it looked like everyone who lived there was out in the street when we arrived. Hundreds of people. There could easily have been a thousand or more.

  The complainant was a young black woman, maybe in her twenties. She was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, leaning against one of the chains strung up to keep people off the nonexistent grass. She was a mess. Somebody had beaten her up badly, and she wanted to go to the hospital. The problem was no cops were at the scene. We needed police, because an apparent crime had been committed. Where were they. I’ll tell you where they were. They were g-o-n-e gone. A bystander filled us in.

  Supposedly the police had been there, and the woman had changed her story and said she was not raped after all and did not want an ambulance, either, and the cops had taken off like bats out of hell. For whatever reason, nobody ever called Central to tell us not to respond.

  There is a lot of racial unrest (there’s a gutless euphemism for you) going around these days, a lot of fury directed especially at the police, and these guys didn’t want to be there in a crowd of a thousand angry black bystanders who might have gotten the wrong idea, like maybe they had talked her out of going so they could ditch. It happens.

  So there we were. People were starting to yell at us for not picking her up, and I tried to explain why we needed the cops to be on the scene and we had to call in to get a car to respond. To make matters worse, Fred, Fred of the very Heart of Dixie, got on the radio and in his biggest, twangiest, outside voice called Central and asked where the hell the cops were because, in his very words, We got a bunch here in a pretty ugly mood and we can’t take her without the cops so get them back here now, goddamnit. Jesus Christ, Fred.

  Everyone in earshot heard only one thing Fred said. A bunch. A BUNCH. A BUNCH OF WHAT. Only an idiot couldn’t fill in the word Fred was thinking.

  What the fuck does he mean, a BUNCH, I heard several voices say in unison. I should have been scared, but for some insane reason, I wasn’t.

  Instead, I tried on my regular-Joe, street-diplomat persona and told all who could hear me that they should ignore this guy—I do that every day. He’s just an old fart and that’s the way he talks and he doesn’t mean it and We’re taking her to EGH right now, so Please give me a hand with the stretcher. (Fred was still waiting for Central to tell him where the cops were and if any were responding.) It worked. I actually believe they thought I was the good guy and Fred was the bad guy, both of which happened to be true, and we were going to do the right thing in spite of good ole Fred, the good ole racist. I swear to God I didn’t think we were going to get out of there without at least a beating. Maybe worse. But people can fool you. One of the angry guys in the crowd smiled when I asked him to help me with the stretcher. My friend, if we ever meet again, it would please me no end to purchase you a beer.

  All this is still very fresh in my head tonight. I’m back on with Fred after not having worked a shift with him since that hot night in the projects. We never speak much, and tonight we’re speaking even less. I’m not sure if he heard me bad-mouth him to the crowd but, really, so what. What I think is I saved his ass and maybe my own as well. He’s no fool, and he should know this. Beyond that, let him think what he wants.

  Tonight we’ve got a psycho in Elmhurst, Van Horn Street, literally right up the hill from my father’s gas station. It’s about eight in the evening, and it’s a wonderful night. Much cooler than it has been. It’s delicious out. One of the cops is in the house, and the other is escorting us in. Everything seems pretty low key. I believe we’ve all been seduced by the beautiful evening.

  Inside, a mom and dad are standing in the living room, and their son is sitting on the couch. I’d say the son is about thirty. The parents look very old, like they could be his grandparents. Wha
t’s the problem, dear, I ask Mom. He don’t eat. He don’t talk. He’s been in Creedmoor and a outpatient at Elmhurst and we want him taken in for observation and to see if maybe they can get him to eat somethin’. They both look very worried. God, I wonder if they have been dealing with this their whole lives, in one way or another. I feel so sorry for them. And I feel even worse when I take a closer look at the son.

  The son is at least six foot six or even taller, and I don’t think he weighs much more than one hundred thirty pounds, if that. He looks like the pictures of the guys who were on the Bataan Death March. His nails. Those nails. I saw a photo once in a book about carnies, and they had some shots of performers who had let their hair and nails grow grotesquely long. That’s what his are like. His hair isn’t any longer than your average flower child’s. But the nails. Wow. They’re all curly and have alternating light and dark growth bands. I wonder if you could tell his age by counting them. No, surely not. He’s not a tree. How long would they be if they were straight. Maybe a foot. Maybe longer.

  I’m finished getting all the information. Fred has the papers from the psych department, so we’re ready to leave. Poor Jimmy—that’s our patient’s name—he can’t get up, he’s that weak.

  Jimmy, can you walk if we help you, or do you want us to get the stretcher.

  Call him Little Jimmy, his mom says.

  Really. Can you walk, Little Jimmy.

  He nods yes.

  One of the cops, a guy I’ve worked with before and am pretty friendly with, takes Little Jimmy by his right arm, and I take the left. We help him get up, very slowly and gently. He feels brittle, like something could break off if we don’t handle him right. I don’t know if my policeman friend feels as sorry for Jimmy as I do, but I think he probably does. It’s easy to forget cops come with all the same feelings as the rest of us.

  We’ve gotten Jimmy up, and we’re moving, very slowly, to the living-room door. From there, we’ll pass through the kitchen and down some stairs to the street and our ambulance. Then it’s not more than a ten-minute drive to EGH, if that.

  The doorway into the kitchen is narrow, so my policeman friend lets go of Jimmy’s arm so he and I can squeeze through. When he does, Jimmy, in one fluid motion, reaches on top of the fridge to my left and grabs a pair of editor’s shears—the kind with the really long blades that people use to cut out newspaper articles—and raises them over his head. Holy shit. Little Jimmy’s going to kill me, right here in his mom’s kitchen. Holy shit.

  They say things like this tend to happen in slow motion, and I can tell you, they’re right. I see Jimmy’s hand go up high and then start down, headed right for where my neck meets my chest. I feel the doorframe against my back. There is no room to back up. I see my cop friend’s face, mouth in a perfect circle and eyes to match. I see Jimmy’s face. He’s grinning. He’s looking at me like a kid about to open a present. What could be inside. My aorta, I guess. Lungs.

  Somehow I have managed to compress myself against the doorframe, and when the blades come down, he just takes out my left shirt pocket, pen included. He has so little strength that it is an easy job for my now best friend ever in blue to immobilize Jimmy’s right arm and wrestle the scissors out of his hand. Then he slams Little Jimmy against the fridge and cuffs him but good.

  Little Jimmy. Weak, sad, malnourished Little Jimmy who could barely stand up has almost done me in. In hindsight I probably should have been more careful. But it’s like I said.

  People can fool you.

  Omaha Beach

  There’s a stretch of road in Queens that’s famous for miles around as a center of illegal street racing: it’s a section of the Brooklyn–Queens Connecting Highway, part of I-278. Known simply by us locals as the Connecting Highway.

  Drag racers love it because it’s sunken down low, and spectators can watch from the walls lining the road above. As a bonus, it’s easy for accomplices to block off lanes, and the entrance ramps are long enough for the race to proceed without traffic interfering and before the police can get on the highway and break it up.

  The section the street racers use is a relatively straight quarter-mile-plus run. Other sections aren’t so straight.

  I hate this road, even in the daytime. Even when it’s clear and there isn’t much traffic, which admittedly is seldom. Now that I have my own car, I’m driving around more, and sometimes, when there’s no other way, I find myself on the Connecting Highway, going home to Bayside from the city.

  Right after you get off the Triborough Bridge heading east toward La Guardia, there is a series of really nasty curves. Everybody drives too fast and tailgates through there, and the lanes are extremely narrow, and it always gives me the sweats when I’m driving on it. Today I can see my sweats are not unfounded.

  We’re here on a rush call. There are multiple automobiles involved in a series of collisions, and there are multiple injuries and DOAs. We’re up on the service road because the highway is blocked off by emergency vehicles—mostly fire trucks and police cars. I thought we were an emergency vehicle. How are we supposed to get down there to pick up the survivors, assuming there are any. The answer is we can’t, at least not with the ambulance. We’re going to have to attack on foot.

  First things first—have to find a parking place on the service road. Then we have to figure out how to get down there.

  I’m on today with a guy we all call Tony. Tony doesn’t have a nickname. You have to like somebody to give him a nickname, and nobody really likes Tony. The guy drives anyone who works with him crazy. It only takes about an hour or so before you want to open the ambulance door and jump out at high speed. Which is the speed you’re usually going when Tony is at the wheel.

  It’s not just that he drives too fast, but he drives jerky. All his moves are abrupt. He smashes the bus into gear. He pops the clutch. He darts from lane to lane. He flings the ambulance around corners. He waits until the last minute to hit the brakes, and then he slams them on—it feels like he’s using both feet on the brake pedal.

  This is bad enough when the ambulance is empty, but he does it when we have patients on board.

  You can’t treat somebody or write down their information when you’re being slammed around by Evel Knievel. Patients, the ones who can speak, complain about this, and I’ve had to yell at Tony and curse him out to slow down. And he will slow down, for about half a minute. Then he’s right back on the hot pedal.

  Even outside the ambulance, he moves like he’s on speed. On top of it all, he’s totally oblivious to our criticism. It just rolls right off his back. I’d say he’s cheerful, but he’s just…busy. Busy, busy, busy. Like a mongoose in pants and a shirt who can drive a stick.

  Speaking of pants and a shirt, he’s no poster boy for personal hygiene, either. To be blunt, he’s a pig. Which is a definite minus when you’re working for a hospital. He’s a pig with the metabolism of a mongoose. Try to picture that. It’s disturbing, right. The reality is worse.

  So Tony is just Tony, and the only time we call him something else is when it’s an expletive.

  There’s a wall about four feet high and then a steep grassy slope all the way down to the road. Before we start over the wall, we have a good look at the scene. It looks like pictures of the beach on D-day. There are bodies all over the place. Some are alive; more appear to be dead.

  It’s hard to tell how many cars are actually smashed up, it’s such a mess. It looks like several Checker cabs are involved. Checkers can hold a lot of passengers, and they don’t have seat belts. My guess is that when all these cars started smashing into one another, and the Checkers got hit by more cars as they spun around, they probably spit out their fares all over the road and in front of oncoming cars. It’s almost certain many of the victims got hit two times. Or more.

  This road is in a canyon. There’s no place for cars to go but into the walls or the divider and then carom back onto the road, into yet more cars and over more victims. What a road. What a massacre.

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nbsp; Tony lets me go over the wall first. Oh hell, I can hardly stand up. Not only is it quite a slope, but the grass is damp and slippery. It feels like someone sprayed it with oil. But I’m over. Tony wrestles the stretcher over and immediately slips and slides down the wet grass on his butt until he’s almost on the road. Going down via butt seems like a good plan, if it can be done slowly, and I sit down carefully and work my way down with one hand on the grass for braking and the other holding the stretcher.

  It looks worse from down here than it did from up there. I don’t see anyone who appears alive. We’ll have to search for survivors. The injuries are horrible. One in particular has stopped me in my tracks.

  I’m standing over a dead man in a business suit. I should say part of a business suit. He has no pants on. They’re nowhere in sight. One of his legs is curled around like a pretzel. A very tight pretzel. With the foot at an unnatural angle, resting on his upper thigh.

  Every couple of inches, on opposite sides of the leg, from the ankle to above the knee, there are large, sharp edged, V-shaped hunks of leg missing. It’s as if an insane surgeon had methodically and precisely made the cuts. I once bought a rubber snake from a novelty store, and it was molded just like this man’s leg is cut, in opposing Vs, so it would wiggle in a realistically snaky manner. You poor businessman. I’m sorry you’re gone, but I hope you were dead before you could see what became of your leg.

  I’ve lost Tony. Where the hell has he scurried off to now. It’s chaos down here. Firemen and cops and ambulance crews are all over the place. Everybody’s tripping over fire hoses and trying not to slip on water mixed with oil and foam and glass and gasoline. Lots of gasoline. Something bad—over and above what we’re here to deal with—could happen if we’re all not very careful. God, all we need is for this scene to light up. It’s a mystery why it hasn’t already.