Bad Call Read online

  Everyone seems unusually calm. Nobody’s saying much. In the room to the right, a small parlor, I see some feet in striped socks. As I close in, I can see more. It is an elderly man lying on the floor, in blue boxers and a sleeveless Marlon Brando undershirt. He’s white as a sheet and no wonder: it looks like every ounce of the blood in his body has flowed out onto the carpeted floor around his head and shoulders.

  There is a pistol in his right hand.

  I’ve never seen blood like this. It’s not the quantity; it’s the color. The color of blood can tell you a lot. Very bright and frothy, it’s from the lungs. Dark blood is usually from the gut. Dark and foul smelling is the hallmark of a GI bleeder. Very bright, deep red often means carbon monoxide may have been present near the time of death, the same as with a ruddy postmortem complexion.

  This man’s blood is almost orange. It looks just like some kind of cream-based bottled pasta sauce and has about the same consistency, because it’s congealing. I’m trying to imagine what must have been wrong with him to color his blood this strange and vibrant hue when I realize that Jose, the cops, and I are all standing here just staring at the man. Somebody needs to do something. That would be me. I need to take the information.

  Who has the vitals, I ask the nearest cop. Almost before I finish this question, we’re joined by what appears to be the designated spokesman of the family. And so their story begins. They are all adult brothers and sisters, and this is their father. He is/was eighty-three and has been very depressed lately because of his diabetes and unspecified heart trouble.

  Sir, couldn’t you have toughed it out just a little longer and waited for nature to take its course. Nobody wants to wait anymore, I guess. It’s that all-American thirst for instant gratification. Or instant gratification’s inverse emotion, immediate relief. From the unbearable suspense of waiting for the inevitable to happen.

  He’s so afraid of suffering and dying from his illnesses that he kills himself. I’ve heard of soldiers doing this before going into combat. I don’t imagine the psychology of that is a whole lot different from this.

  The gun in his hand looks like a .38-caliber Detective Special, and I’m wondering if he is an ex-cop and this was his backup piece. I guess you could consider this a backup situation. His son continues to fill us in. Pop was depressed since the holidays. He doesn’t say which holidays. He got up from dinner and the next thing we know we hear this noise and there he is. He shot himself while we was eating.

  Up to now, we’ve all been keeping a respectful distance from the deceased. I want to appear a bit more useful and take a closer look, so I move in. No wonder he bled so much. It was an in-and-out wound, right through the temples. No messy exit wound, either. Just two perfectly round holes punched on either side of his head. Very neat.

  One of the officers comes over and stands by me. He bends down and picks something up. It’s a bullet. Clean as it can be, copper jacketed and slightly bent. Jesus, this guy’s ammo must be as old as he was, he says to no one in particular. It is so old, it couldn’t penetrate the floor or even the carpet after going through his skull. For a brief moment, I’m ashamed to say, I think this spent bullet would make an interesting keepsake. Maybe the cornerstone of a future traveling museo bizarro. This cannot be. The bullet is evidence. I can’t believe I am thinking the thoughts I’m thinking, sometimes. It’s not me. Has to be the job. Let me keep telling myself that.

  I’m half crouched, looking over the body. I haven’t even touched him to feel for a pulse or check out his pupils. He’s still as a stone, all his blood is on the floor, and he has a bullet hole on each side of his head. If that’s not dead, somebody tell me what is. I stand up again and move back with the others. Now I will get the rest of the info, and we can leave.

  As I write, one of the cops comes over to remove the weapon from the dead man’s hand. Then we all jump about a foot (except Jose, who blurts out something filthy in Spanish). The dead man moved. He moved and he grunted. He isn’t dead. He is not dead. This is not possible. That’s all of his blood, right there. He’s eighty-three. He shot himself in the head. He’s been lying there at least a half hour. He cannot not be dead.

  Holy crap.

  My ballpoint goes back in my pocket, and Jose and I wheel around and bolt for the stairs. Jose is clearly vexed. That’s not like him at all, but it’s to be expected in a situation like this. I’m vexed, too. So we’re both vexed—but for different reasons. When we reach the ambulance, Jose shares the cause of his vexation with me.

  We have a problem. Oh shit. Yes, right. We can’t get the aluminum stretcher up there. How are we going to remove him. Jose knows, but he obviously doesn’t like it. Penny for your thoughts, Jose.

  Apparently, and until now unknown to me, there is an old-fashioned canvas stretcher and poles—a canvas stretcher and poles—at the very bottom of our bench seat in the ambulance. This actually sounds kind of cool to me at first, and images of Hemingway and World War I immediately come to mind. Hey, Ernest and I, doing our thing on an ambulance, two teenagers toting a canvas stretcher together.

  Here’s why Jose is vexed. Not only do we have to remove every last bit of stuff from the bench—bandages, splints, padded ties, maternity bag, sheets, blankets, backboard, straitjackets, et cetera—we then have to dig out the stretcher and poles and assemble them and find the wide nylon straps we’re going to need to fasten the former-corpse-now-patient in place, so we can carry him down safely. Safely. He’s 99.99 percent dead. It’s our own safety we’re thinking about, to be cold about it.

  We start our excavation of the bench. Here’s the stretcher at last. Only one pole. No, there’s the other pole. We assemble the stretcher fast. Do we have everything. We do: stretcher, straps, and a blanket. Up we go. Not too bad so far. We have to hold the stretcher vertically to negotiate the twisty parts as we ascend. Which, of course, means we’ll have to hold it vertically when we descend as well. Except that, going down, it will have a person on it. We have three straps. I wish I had grabbed one more.

  All this time, we’ve been working faster and faster. Is it possible to save this man. I don’t think so, given the amount of blood he has lost. I’m trying to figure out how he can be alive. Blood loss or no blood loss, he still shot himself in the head, and that’s usually pretty fatal.

  All I can think of is that the bullet must’ve passed under his brain rather than through it. The wounds are through the temples, but they’re pretty low. That could be it. So his brain is largely unaffected. And given the obviously low velocity of the old ammo, maybe there isn’t even that much damage from the shock wave. Much damage other than the blood loss, of course, which is catastrophic. Checking for a pulse. I certainly can’t get one. Maybe Jose can. But there really isn’t time for that now.

  We have him strapped down, under the blanket, very tight. One across the chest and shoulders, one across the waist and hands, and one across the lower legs.

  Stretcher in hand, Jose and I and start down the hall. I always like to go down backward, so I go first. We have to stand the stretcher on end and literally walk it on the ends of the handles around the first newel post. Once it’s around, I squeeze by and grab the lower handles while Jose holds the top and feeds it into position so we can carry it normally. We repeat this process until we’re outside. We get him on board. Jose puts on the siren and lights, I think primarily for the family’s benefit.

  We’ve radioed Central to tell them we’re 10-20 to EGH with a gunshot wound to the head. We’re expecting a bit of attention when we roll in. A bit of attention is exactly what we get. One teeny bit. I think they’re more surprised to see the canvas stretcher than anything else.

  A doctor who looks like a twelve-year-old choirboy comes over to see what we’ve brought him, accompanied by a nurse who could pass for his mother. He has a slice of pepperoni pizza in one hand and a bottle of cream soda in the other. It’s suppertime at Elmhurst General Hospital, too.

  I tell them the story between breaths
. I’m still winded from the exertion.

  Young Dr. Malone is looking at me intently as I debrief him. Chewing deliberately. Waiting for me to compose myself. His impassive gaze tells me he has seen a lot and he’s not as green as he looks. Right, he says. Okay. Got it. Put him over there.

  He’s pointing with the pointless pizza slice. Pointing at nothing. A blank space, against a dark wall.

  What. What. Is that it. After all we’ve been through with this call. Have a little appreciation, Dr. Boy. Put on a little show. Play the game a little. You cannot possibly be that jaded already. You’re still just a pup. Don’t tell me you see this every day, even here. It’s a gunshot wound clear through the head. And it didn’t kill the patient. Doesn’t that pique your interest just a little. This is an emergency room. Act like it’s a damn emergency. Go through the motions, for God’s sake.

  For your own sake.

  I’m staring at him as he walks away, and he must know it, because he turns around and comes back to say something. His face is hard, and he looks different. Much older. This time he’s not the shiny boy wonder but a razor-edged street-smart New York City punk. He’s right up in my face. His breath is perfumed with pepperoni.

  What the fuck do you think we can do for this guy, my friend, he whispers, for me alone to hear. As if I should know better than even to pretend it’s not a hopeless case.

  Well, of course I know better. I also know better than to bring in something like this at suppertime.

  But sometimes, you forget.

  All It Takes

  Nobody’s getting out of this world alive. We all live with a death sentence, so why not do whatever we want. Because sometimes doing whatever you want goes south but doesn’t kill you. That’s the problem. Do you really want to live in a coma with a tube down your gullet. Or without the use of your arms or legs. Or your privates. Risk-taking isn’t as simple as yes or no. Not as romantic as do or die.

  Sometimes you do, and you don’t die.

  I’m not talking about skydiving or alligator wrestling. Those kinds of pastimes are off the charts in terms of risk, obviously.

  But how about motorcycle riding. Motorcycles and scooters are the primary means of transportation for millions of people all over the world. People who don’t consider themselves risk-takers at all. They just have to get around. Even so, they get hurt. Even when they’re not riding for sport or tearing up the pavement.

  My father and his brother Ralph were big bikers in their day, right here in Elmhurst. They always shared one monster bike or another. They ultimately worked themselves up to an Indian Chief. Ralph was the real road burner, according to Pop. He could be seen at all hours and in all weather, abusing the asphalt up and down Queens Boulevard. Probably right in front of St. John’s, before there was a St. John’s. Dad was a little cooler—a little less passionate, I mean—but I know he loved it. Uncle Willy was a big biker, too. Motored up from a Honda 250 to a gorgeous ivory-with-black-pinstriping BMW R69S. Hit a puddle of oil the size of a baseball card, fifty feet in front of a toll booth. Riding low and slow but still badly injured. That was the end of his biker days.

  You see a lot of bike accidents working on an ambulance. Lots of DOAs. It is not possible for me to ride along certain stretches of the LIE, just to name one road, without remembering exactly where some of these deaths were. Mostly a stretch from the Maspeth gas tanks to the fairgrounds. Lots of them in that stretch. Most of them just ordinary collisions that turned fatal.

  Imagine what it would be like to enter the LIE with your bike at full throttle and slam your head into the tip of a steel I beam on the back of a flatbed semi, so hard it pops off your helmet and your skullcap and scoops out your brain all in one smooth stroke.

  Try to picture what one of those cool Euro-style café-racer helmets, the cute little demis, can do to your skull. I don’t have to try to picture it because I’ve seen it: a guy and his girlfriend, both DOA. She was wearing the demi, and it bashed her skull in all the way around the border of the helmet. Three-hundred-sixty-degree fracture. That was on the LIE, just at the Maspeth gas tanks, in the left lane going east.

  I actually love riding bikes, the few times I’ve done it. But I’ll never be a biker. It’s not just that I’m chicken, which I am, thanks to this job and the brains I was born with. It’s that nature has blessed or cursed me with a normal torso and rather short legs. It’s very difficult for me to come to a stop gracefully and keep a medium-to-large bike upright.

  No possibility of me being a repeat passenger, either, after a heart-stopping ride down the Clearview Expressway on the back of a friend’s Norton Atlas. Yes, Bill, that damp warmth on your pants came from me. You should have bought a bike with a longer seat.

  Tonight is a perfect night for bikers of all persuasions. Hellions and poseurs alike. Every biker in Queens must be out, riding everything from Vespas to Harleys. And quite a few British bikes out as well, going by the faint but pungent smell of burning oil in the air.

  I’m working with Jose. It’s getting dark, and we’re en route from a lovely dinner at White Castle when we get a radio call, man down. Motorcycle.

  The call is literally three minutes from where we are, on a side street perpendicular to Queens Boulevard, just where it passes under the LIE. At a stop sign. Everyone is very calm and collected. There are two policemen and two big guys with Harleys. Both Harleys are parked neatly parallel and upright, kickstands down. One of the guys is sitting in the street. Did something actually happen here. Something that requires an ambulance. At dinnertime, no less. I know we were finished, but there had been some discussion of dessert.

  The Harley guys are normal guys, not greasers. They look like they could be plumbers or cops or firemen, any number of legitimate blue-collar types. In other words, not skells. Just responsible, normal, upright citizens. Upright except for one. At any rate, it’s obvious everyone feels quite comfortable and even downright chummy. I feel like any minute somebody is going to whip out a six-pack and offer beers all around.

  I hate to break this up, you guys, but can you tell us what’s the matter. Of course, but not without a proper preamble.

  The guy on the ground is Hank, and Hank has dibs on the story, since he’s the injured party. Apparently they were riding along minding their own business, really taking it slow and drinking in the night air. It’s such a nice night, Hank offers.

  No argument from me on that point. And while you’re at it, please get to the point, Hank.

  We came up to this stop and I bumped Frank’s bike from behind. I think I may have busted my ankle. Looks as though he came up behind and to the side and possibly struck his ankle on Frank’s exhaust pipe.

  I couldn’t have been going more than two or three miles an hour, max, says Hank. It was just a tap. It don’t even hurt that much. But I don’t think I oughta walk on it, do you.

  No, better not.

  I think I oughta get it looked at.

  Yes, you should.

  In keeping with the casual tempo of the call, I begin to fill out my pink slip from top to bottom. Hank, of Hank and Frank, is alert and quite voluble. I’ve checked his pulse, and it’s slightly elevated but not too bad. His pupils look okay. But obviously, he shouldn’t walk.

  While I’ve been writing, Jose has gotten the stretcher out of the bus and is wheeling it over. Just to see what’s what, in case we need to splint this up before moving Hank, I want to take a peek at his ankle.

  When I lift up his pants cuff to look, his foot falls off.

  Not completely off. It is held on by the thinnest pedicle. Even so, it is essentially amputated.

  There’s almost no blood. He’s in almost no pain. He has no idea what has happened. Jesus, he wants to know how it looks. What am I supposed to tell him. Who could’ve thought in a million years that a little bump into another bike would take off his foot. I certainly would have upped the tempo of the proceedings if I’d had the slightest inkling how serious this is.

  We’re going t
o have to put a splint on this, Hank. It will take a few minutes.

  Is it broken, he asks.

  Yes, Hank, it’s broken.

  Half a truth is better than none, I guess. I admit I am a coward, and I will leave it up to Dr. Patel in the ER to give him the bad news. I hope Hank won’t be mad at me for not telling him. In my defense, there’s a time and a place for everything, and this is not the time nor the place to tell Hank that his foot is history. You never know what the shock can do.

  Hank is a great big, hefty guy. I’ll bet he eats his share of steak. I’ll bet he smokes. I’ll bet he can hold his liquor with the best of them. He’s a heart attack waiting for an excuse to happen. I don’t need to provide the excuse. He needs to hear the bad news in a place where he can get cardiac treatment if it’s needed. Not here at the juncture of the Long Island Expressway and Queens Boulevard.

  What a damn shame. Hank hit Frank’s bike at walking speed, maybe even slower. A goddamn tap was all it took. And now he’s footless for the rest of his life. Well, down to one foot. Just like that.

  But that’s the nature of the risk beast. Sometimes you eat it; sometimes it eats you. I guess it’s like Pop always says.

  You pay your money and you take your chances.

  What Friends Are For

  I cannot freaking believe it’s Labor Day weekend. I’m headed back to start junior year next week, thank God.

  Ever since I started working on the ambulance, college for me has become like vacation.

  My grades have been going to hell since the first semester back at school after starting on St. John’s. I am so happy to get away from this job that I just kind of plotz when I get to Nashville. I drink a lot. I study little. I can’t sleep normal hours. I take almost nothing seriously.

  On the other hand, I have Barbara. Beautiful in every sense of the word. And a few really great Nashville friends, and so yes, it is like a real vacation being back at Vanderbilt. An incredible relief. The downside is standing on the precipice of flunking out just about every semester—and since I do not fancy a trip to the Mekong Delta, I do the best I can, considering my depressed, exhausted, perpetually hungover state.