Bad Call Page 8

  He’s a slightly built man. It’s hard to tell from where I stand, but I’d guess he’s no more than five foot one, and I doubt he weighs much more than a hundred pounds. He looks like he could have been a jockey. A very nice-looking human being, as most jockeys seem to be. Clean-cut; symmetrical features. Almost pretty. Not an ounce of fat. What a waste of a fine body.

  Since this is my first hanging, I have no standard of comparison against which to judge what I’m looking at, but I have to think it’s a little out of the ordinary. For one thing, our victim has used white electrical wire instead of rope. He has somehow managed to hang a loop of wire from a joist, creating a U shape with just enough room to squeeze in his head. It looks like he had thought this out; maybe even measured it off. This man’s whole environment—probably his entire life—seems to have been thought out and measured off. There was just enough space for him to squeeze his head into the loop and not enough for it to easily come back out—the rear of his head being blocked by the joist, once his head was through.

  It looks like he must have stood on the stool that’s lying all the way across the room. If I had to guess, I’d say this is why the patrolmen called in the detectives. That stool is pretty far from the victim. Was it actually kicked by the hanged man or planted there by someone else. Common sense tells me no killer would have planted it way across the room. But maybe this was a very subtle killer who wanted us to think that. Hard to keep my mind from wandering.

  It strikes me again how orderly the whole scene is. This man is hanging there so neatly, absolutely plumb, precisely symmetrical. The wire has cut deeply into his throat below his jaw, outlining his jaw perfectly. It must have crushed his trachea almost immediately. Even so, he would have had an agonizing death as he choked. But he looks very peaceful. His eyes and mouth are closed. No bulges in evidence. No visible signs of stress. He could almost be asleep, except that he has hanged himself to death in his basement in his underwear.

  On the floor below where his feet hang suspended, merely eighteen inches or so above the painted concrete, there is a perfectly pristine puddle of urine. Even it looks neat and orderly. No muss, no fuss. Except for that one spot, the floor looks clean enough to eat off of. I wonder if he kicked his legs. Could be, but that would have had no effect on the perfection of the puddle. The urine would have been released gently, perimortem.

  There seems to be some question as to whether or not we should take him down, now that the detectives are finished having their look. They’re calling this a suicide, as I thought they would. So what do we do now.

  I have to turn to Fred on this one. Cut him down, he says. It sounds so dramatic, like we’re acting in some Saturday-morning western and he’s a rustler, lynched by an out-of-control posse.

  All the while we’ve been here, I’ve been scanning the basement for a pair of wire cutters, just in case. Not only do I find a pair, there are six pairs, mounted on pegboard, in size order.

  With painted outlines no less, so there would be no mistake about where to put them back.

  I’m a Daddy

  I’m lying in 433 trying to sleep, but it’s very hot in here even at one in the morning. How do I feel about things in general. Not so good but not that bad, either. This job affects people in what seems to be a set number of predictable ways, none of them particularly good. Some of them get hardened (which is not good for them or the patients). Some of them go numb. Some get angry at what the world—what life—does to us all. Some get depressed. Some freak out. Some end up with a combination of all of these effects.

  Right now, put me in the numb column.

  Some of them, the freak-outs, just can’t take it. I’m thinking about a guy named Jerry, in particular. He worked with us a few weeks. Maybe a month. He was a very religious Catholic.

  I had heard that Jerry had a thing where he’d hold patients’ hands and pray with them while they were in the moving ambulance and even on into the ER. Didn’t matter if they were Catholic. Or even Christian. Or even able to understand what was going on. There were complaints. Praying with people who are afraid they’re going to die can terrify them if they’re not expecting it. And besides, there are priests at the hospital who can do that with them when we get there.

  Don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for reverence. I’ll never forget the time we had a woman down, struck by a car, lying on her back on a sidewalk on Astoria Boulevard. As we walked up, I heard a voice I hadn’t heard since I was about seven years old. There was a priest crouched over the woman, giving her the final sacrament. I heard this voice, deep and resonant, almost hypnotic. I knew immediately it was one of the priests who had been at Sacred Heart in Bayside when I was a kid, who had long ago moved on, as the best ones usually do. Father Sherman, I asked. It was. He was focused on the woman down and didn’t look up. That voice. That beautiful, deep, soft, comforting voice. If I were on my way out, that’s what I’d want to hear.

  But there are some kinds of prayers nobody wants to hear. Maybe even God. These are the kind Jerry would blurt out when he brought in a bad one. Loud and fast, in the middle of the emergency room, in front of all the staff and the waiting patients. Some of them are here for sprained thumbs, Jerry. Leave them out of this. It’s bad enough you just trundled a gore-encrusted incipient corpse past them at eye level. Give us all a break, man.

  We got our break, and I was there to see it.

  Jerry and Lenny came in with an overdose. The man was blue. He was technically dead, but these cases can surprise you. Sometimes with a shot of adrenaline they spring back to life. It’s impressive and, in its own way, a miracle. But it’s one of those so-called miracles of modern medicine. Not the spiritual kind that has no explanation.

  I guess Jerry didn’t know yet about these miraculous reanimations. As far as he was concerned, this was a DOA. The minute he delivered his patient to the ER, he dropped to his knees in front of everyone and started praying at the top of his lungs. Shortly after he started, a large and imposing figure loomed in the corridor at the other end of the ER. A nun. This immediately caught Jerry’s attention, and he stopped spluttering and looked up at her. She gave him the dreaded sign that anyone who has ever gone to parochial school knows all too well: the beckoning index finger, come with me, young man sign. Jerry got up. All eyes were on him as he and Sister Mary Doom walked down the corridor and out of sight. In the case of Jerry, out of sight permanently.

  Or so I thought, because that was the last time I saw him myself.

  It turned out they kept Jerry and placed him on some kind of probation. I heard the terms were that he couldn’t touch (hold hands) or pray with the patients in transit (or otherwise) and he had to remove himself from the ER immediately after dropping off a patient. Any praying was to be done out of earshot of anybody except God. He had to work with Pete, the boss, while he was being evaluated. I think things worked out for a week or so. Then something happened to poor pious Jerry that I have always prayed (figuratively—silently) would never happen to me.

  Pete and Jerry were on a call. It was a middle-aged male DOA in a home in Forest Hills. The family went hysterical when Pete turned and told them the man was gone. Pete was consoling them with the usual patter when Jerry apparently decided to check things out for himself. He felt a pulse. I got a pulse, he shouted, right out loud. No filter whatsoever. The family’s hysteria turned to outright mania. All directed at Pete. How could you be so stupid. Get him to the hospital. You dumb son of a bitch. The word lawsuit was heard—multiple times.

  All this happened because Jerry had pressed too hard on the dead man’s wrist and felt his own pulse.

  This is so easy to do—and it’s one of the things I fear above all others—proclaiming someone dead when they’re not. Or vice versa. Maybe you wouldn’t think so, but it’s hard to determine if someone is dead on the spot, on the scene, with everyone standing around in their agony. All eyes are on you. You have to be sure. You also have to be right.

  Pete and Jerry were forced
to transport the corpse to St. John’s with the family posse trailing behind. The second they got in the door, Pete turned to Jerry and fired him on the spot. Frankly, I’m surprised Pete didn’t beat Jerry senseless. I have no doubt that was on his mind.

  No one has seen or heard from Jerry since.

  So, with Jerry’s story as a memorable object lesson: I’d rather be numb than freak out. Right now, only food makes me happy—until I step on a scale. We eat so much on this job you’d think I’d be a lot happier. Somebody tell a joke.

  Here comes Jose with a call. It’s a maternity, in Woodside. My first. A rush maternity. Is there any other kind.

  Are you awake.

  I am now, Jose.

  We’re off. On the way, between wholly unnecessary bursts of the siren, Jose leans over to tell me something. You gonna be a daddy, baby.

  I’m going to be a daddy. I’ve been waiting for this.

  Everyone I ride with busts my chops about the fact that I’ve never been on a maternity call. They’re constantly pulling the old Which hand do you cut the cord with, kid, on me.

  I fell for it once. The right hand.

  Oh really, they’d say. We always use scissors.

  Ha-ha. Not funny the first time or any of the two- or three-dozen times after that.

  I’ve been told by everyone that maternities are pretty simple unless something happens that isn’t simple, like a breech. You stand by and wait for the baby to come out while spouting encouraging phrases to the mother and whoever else is there. When the baby comes, you cradle it with both hands and lay it on the bed or stretcher or floor—wherever Mom has decided to get the job done. Of course, wherever it is, you put clean linens down first. This is New York City, not a beet field in Omsk. Then you lay it gently on Mom.

  You’re supposed to wait a bit for the umbilical cord to achieve detumescence. I love that word, but I almost never get to use it in a sentence, and I’ve yet to see it in a crossword. It means get limp. At first, the cord is full of blood and so stiff I’m told it could snap like a fresh green bean, although I’m pretty sure no one has tried this. After a bit, when it’s limp, you’re supposed to milk the blood down toward the baby and measure off a length about the width of your hand with fingers held loosely apart and then clamp it down above your hand and cut it off at least an inch above the clamp.

  The clamps are nasty little things. They look like they’re made out of nylon or some other kind of plastic. They’re springy and have teeth and a little lock at the end, so when they’re on, they stay put. After clamping, you give junior or sis to Mom and wait for the afterbirth to come out.

  All of it, every bit, has to be brought back to the hospital to be examined—to make sure it’s all there. If it isn’t, they have to remove it. This material is almost always mixed with excretions that come as a result of all the pushing and strain. It’s natural. It’s okay.

  As far as I am concerned, the umbilical clamp (along with the sterile scissors) is the only useful thing that’s packed in the huge maternity bags we carry. There’s also a bulb syringe to help aspirate the baby’s nose and/or mouth. I guess this would be useful as well.

  The bag itself is a Gladstone-type satchel, sterilized and sealed. There’s an open one for training back at St. John’s. The worst thing about the bag is that the sterile gloves are packed halfway down inside it. This means you have to contaminate everything to get at the gloves.

  I have mentioned this a few times at the hospital, hoping to get this packing system changed so the gloves are at the top. It never does any good. But you put the gloves on anyway.

  We’re zooming down Queens Boulevard, and I have to admit: I’m wide awake and very excited. A maternity is one of the things I’ve wanted to be able to say to my friends and family that I’ve experienced working on the ambulance, and now it’s about to happen.

  Here we are. The cops are upstairs. There must be eight or nine people crammed into this tiny apartment. Is there more than one room. It doesn’t seem like it.

  Everyone is speaking in Spanish, all at the same time, and much too fast for me but not for Jose. He says they want to know if we’re going to take them to St. John’s or Elmhurst General. St. John’s. Good, they like that. If they’re happy, we’re happy.

  But for the moment, nobody’s going anywhere. This baby is ready to be born. The contractions are less than a minute apart, Mom is dilated more than ten centimeters, and now we cannot move her from the small sofa she’s on until it’s all over.

  On go the gloves. With the gloves on, we do look the part, and they seem to have an effect on those present. I feel like they’re saying to themselves, Okay, these guys are the guys and not some other guys who just wandered in here, so…proceed.

  It is suffocating in this apartment with everyone crowded around sweating and using up the air. But nobody wants to leave. It’s also really dark. There’s no light other than a single bulb in the center of the room. Who cares. This is an event. A blessed event, as they say. And who has the right to complain about anything anyway, when it’s the mother who’s doing all the work—and feeling every minute of it.

  Jose is asking Mom how many other niños she has, and it turns out there are cuatro. He looks at me and winks. What does that mean. Does it mean he thinks this one should be easy. If he does, why not tell that to Mom. Somehow, I don’t think he will.

  We’re basically just standing by, with Jose occasionally coaching the mother with a few well-timed empujes and buenos. The baby is crowning. And here it comes.

  In the blink of an eye, out she pops. A little girl. Nobody has to tickle her feet to get her breathing. She’s yowling like a lion cub.

  It’s a girl and it’s a freaking fiesta. And why shouldn’t it be. This is one of life’s legitimate occasions for unrestrained joy. So guess what. I’m joyful, too. I’m loving it, sharing it along with everybody else. They’re all cheering at the top of their lungs. Everyone is slapping one another, including me, on the back. I hear the clink of glass. Wine is being offered all around. Well, okay, one glass can’t hurt. Muchas gracias.

  Jose and I are waiting to clamp the cord. He says as soon as that’s done, we’ll put baby and Mom on the stretcher and zip them both down to St. John’s.

  Well, that’s that.

  Everything that is happening now is an anticlimax. Don’t misunderstand—it’s all good. Actually, terrific. But it has gone off without a bit of trouble, and that’s just the way you want it. The way everybody wants it, especially Mom. And Jose, of course. And me, too. I feel so good that it went so well. Hell, I feel great.

  After all the miserable, heartbreaking, stomach-turning calls I’ve been on, finally a happy one.

  I’m riding in the back with Mom and her new little one and little one’s actual papa. Has she picked out a name for her girl. She has. Her name will be Luz. One of my favorite names but one that doesn’t literally translate into English. It means light, of course, and you can’t give a kid a name like Light, unless you’re a hippie. Maybe Lucy, but it’s not the same. Luz is Luz.

  So here we are. Luz, born in the dark. Mom, exhausted but happy. Dad, proud as he can be. And Jose, beaming at me like he was my father. You want a cure for feeling numb. I think I’ve just discovered it.

  Suppertime

  People in New York tend to eat supper pretty late compared with the rest of the country. My father gets home from the gas station after 8:00 p.m., and that’s when we eat. Most of the people we know eat no earlier than 7:00 p.m. When we lived in Nashville, we found most people eat supper around 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. They also call lunch dinner, which I don’t understand. What’s wrong with lunch for lunch.

  It’s a little after 7:00 p.m., and Jose and I have just acquired a whole large pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms, and anchovies. We actually like anchovies, and we can’t be alone in that—they still offer them in every pizzeria in New York. All that stuff about hold the anchovies is just an unfair joke, as far as I can tell. The reality is any true pizz
a aficionado loves and respects those humble, incredibly salty, nasty, greasy little fish. I think they’re fish.

  Can we eat a whole large pizza between the two of us. Watch and learn. No wolves at a fresh wapiti kill eat with more vigor than Jose and I at mealtime. Mealtimes are a race against Central, and we’re determined to win. I’ve heard that some animals have expandable sections in their gut so they can ingest huge volumes of prey, because feedings can be few and far between in the wild. Yeah. We’re like that. The pizza is disappearing slice after slice as Jose’s and my auxiliary stomachs expand accordingly. Wow, that was good. Maybe we should get a couple more slices. Maybe another pie. Not just now, though. We have a call.

  It’s a possible DOA in Corona, in a private house. Jose and I collect the remains of our pizza kill, dispose of it in the ambulance-yard Dumpster, and head to the address.

  Now this is a rare bird for this neck of the woods. It’s a three-story private home that looks like it’s still a residence for just one family instead of having been carved up into apartments. The door is wide open, but no one’s here to meet us. The cops are already upstairs. Of course it’s a walk-up. Look what we just ate. It’s not only a walk-up, but the stairs are some of the narrowest I’ve seen and the turns are incredibly tight. How would we get our stretcher up here, I wonder. It’s academic tonight, because we don’t remove DOAs from private homes. Oh my God, we’re finally upstairs.

  What a climb. Both my standard and auxiliary carnivore stomachs are ready to do something. Rupture. Violently egest their contents. That would be bad. I have heard anchovy stains are almost impossible to get out.

  It’s suppertime here, too. There are two adjacent rooms at the end of this top-floor hallway. To the left it looks like a combination kitchen/dining room. There are four or five people there, all adults, apparently in the middle of their meal. Why this room is on the third floor is anybody’s guess.