The Knife and Gun Club

Station 7’s nickname to those stationed there was the knife and gun club. It was small of single story cinder block building that was showing it’s age. It served a predominately poor neighbor on the west side of town. It was not unusual for the convenience store next door to be robbed on a reasonably regular basis. On New Years Eve you could walk out on the apparatus floor and listen to the gunfire at midnight as everyone celebrated. Every once in a while the single shots were interrupted by automatic gunfire bursts. 

In an attempt to decorate the place in keeping with the neighborhood a large stuffed rattlesnake was kept in the kitchen. One of the guys had left it for the station years ago and it had become a fixture. It sat in a large glass enclosed case on top of the TV. The concertina wire that wound through the fence enhanced our view outside the kitchen window. So the station had it own ambiance about it.

Maybe the easiest way to describe Station 7 is with a story. One night I had just fallen asleep. It was close to three am and we had been busy for most of the day and night. It was the first time I had been able to lay down. I was in that strange place between sleep and consciousness when thought I heard the doorbell to the station ring. It was not unusual for people to walk up and ask for help anytime day or night. I sat up in bed and looked around. No one else was up or awake. Maybe I had just dreamed it. The bell did not ring again, but I thought I should check the front door.

I pulled on my pants and walked to the front door and looked out through the peephole. It was a good one, and gave me the 360 view of outside. There was no one there. I thought I had been dreaming and went back to the dorm and got a couple of hours sleep.

I was the first one up the next morning and opened the bay door to get the paper. I walked out on the apron and pictured paper. It was a beautiful Florida morning. When I turned around I saw on the front door of the station two bloody handprints and a long smear of blood. Oh shit. Another firefighter had come out front too. We both did a frantic search of the bushes for a body, we were afraid what we would find. Nothing. No sign of anyone. Why didn’t the person ring the doorbell again? We could not figure it out. So we washed the blood off the door and went inside to have our morning coffee, just another shift at the knife and gun club.

 

We were dispatched to an apartment fire. When we arrived we found light smoke coming from a second story apartment. The apartments were concrete block. All of the apartments doors opened to the outside.  The second floor apartments doors opened to small balcony that ran the length of the second floor. A metal handrail ran the length of the balcony. I followed the Engine crew up the stairs. We got a whiff of the smoke and knew immediately it was a pot on the stove. There is no other smell like the smell of burnt food mixed with hot metal.

The door was open so we did not have to use forcible entry. When we walked in to find moderate smoke in the apartment. I looked to my right and found a male somewhere in his twenties sound asleep on the couch. He continued to sleep even with all of the noise and commotion going around him. So my partner and I picked him up and carried him out of the smoke filled apartment. He did not move or wake up as we carried him outside.

We laid him carefully down outside the apartment on the balcony. I had turned around to see what needed to be done next when I felt someone grab me by the tank and my coat and try and throw me off the balcony. The victim without saying a word had turned on me. Now no one ever accused me of being skinny. Back then I was somewhere just over two hundred pounds. With my air tank, bunker gear, boots, helmet and other equipment I must have weight close to two seventy. So when he tried to throw me off the balcony I did not budge.

I turned around and wrestled him to the ground. My partner lay across his lower body but he continued to struggle. We were face-to-face rolling around on the balcony with the boot of the Lieutenant off the Engine suddenly appeared. He very carefully but with enough force to make his point bounced the victims head off the concrete.

“Stop it.” He said quietly.

The victim immediately stopped. My partner and I got off of him and let him up. He walked off with ever saying a word.

 

We received a call for an assault. It was that wonderful three in the morning time when such interesting things seem to happen. Since it was an assault only the rescue respond. We found the apartment complex and wound our way to the building we had been dispatched to. As we came to a stopped we saw a man and woman framed in the headlights. The woman had a knife and was swinging it wilding at the man. He was unusually calm for such a situation. Since we weren’t armed we thought it was not a good idea to get between people with weapons. So I got on the radio.

“Rescue 7 to Orlando. Expedite OPD we have a knife fight going on.”

“Orlando check.”

So we sat there watching this bizarre scene in our headlights. The woman would stop swinging and the man would seem to try and calm her down. But she was not having any of it. She would start swinging the knife again. She never really got near cutting him throughout this whole time. Instead she just swung wildly. Finally OPD arrived. We got out of the truck with the police. The cops seemed to know the two. The cops easily took the knife away from the woman.

“What is going on here?” I asked the male.

“She is trying cut me.”

“I can see that. Are you hurt?”

“Yeah. I am.”

He proceeds to take off his shirt and turn around. He had a long professionally applied bandage on his back.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Last night. She cut me last night and I got stitched up at the hospital.”

“But she did not cut you tonight?”
            “No. I am fine.”

One of the cops asked.

“Do you want to press charges?”

“No. No I don’t.”

The cops looked at us and we looked at the cops. The cops kept the knife. And we all turned and left them standing in the street. The street has a real sense of humor sometimes.

 

We received a call for man down in the street. It was the middle of the afternoon and it hardly a time you expect the type of call we would find. When we arrived on the scene we found a large man standing in the middle of the street waving his arms and acting strangely. He was covered in blood and grass stains. There was a crowd around him watching the show. Something was going on here and I did not like it. So I reached for the radio.

“Rescue 7 to Orlando respond OPD to our location.”

My partner Alba had gotten out of the truck and grabbed the trauma and airway kit. He approached the man and said. 

“Are you hurt? Can I help you?”

“You know I like your body. But your face has go to go.”

With that he swung and hit Alba in the face with his fist staggering him backwards. I dropped the radio and ran around the front of the truck. Trying to reach the guy before he hit Alba again. As I rounded the front of the truck I did my best imitation of professional football linebacker. I tackled him knocking him away from Alba. I tackled him so hard that when we finally landed we were in the dirt beside the road. We sailed one full lane in the air. We rolled around for a moment until Alba was able to recovery and get over to help me. Our attacker was stunned enough to allow me to reach for my radio. As I straddled the man, I very carefully changed the channel on the radio and said.

“Rescue 7 to Orlando we are in a fight and need help.”

That is all I got out before this guys started to struggle again. It was all Alba and I could do to hold him down. The crowd, thank goodness was enjoying the show instead of deciding to join in on the fun. I hoped that my message had gotten through. I knew they would be there as fast as they could to back us up.

Just then a sheriff deputy arrived. Without hesitation he dove into the melee. We were still struggling when I looked up to see the engine rounding the corner lights flashing and siren blaring. The crew bailed off the truck joined in. We were able to finally subdue the guy. We were all on the ground working to keep the guy calm until the ambulance arrived and we could load him up and get him to the hospital. That is when OPD arrived. Two officers got out of their car and strolled up. With a smirk one of them said.

“You guys need any help.”

They literally had their hands in their pockets. I was afraid to say what I was thinking. I had over the years pulled more than one their officer’s ass out of the fire by helping one of them when they were in a fight and this is how I got repaid. It wasn’t first or last time I ran into this attitude. I will never understand them. Or the way they view the world where even a firefighter is on another side. From then on I called the Slow PD. They never failed to disappoint.

We loaded our friend into the ambulance and sent him to the hospital. I never learned if it was an overdose or he was just crazy that caused him to attack us. Alba went to the hospital he had a black eye and this glasses broken. Me I just got dirty.  We were lucky that day it could have been much worse.

 

We got a call for a man down. It was almost in the same spot where we were attacked. This time we found a male standing and waiting for us. He was holding his exposed penis in a death grip. He faced showed real fear.

“Something crawled up my dick.”

“What?”

“Something crawled up my dick. If I let it go it will crawl higher.”

This was not covered in any training I ever had. We looked at him. Then looked at each other. I could think of nothing that we could do to help him. I had a man once who said something had crawled in his ear. He was in terrible pain. We sent him to the hospital. The ambulance crew told me later that it had been a roach. They had to drown it with alcohol then pull it out piece by piece. No thank you.

“Are you sure?

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” I asked trying not to think of what might have crawled up him penis. All sorts of small insects were coming to mind. None of which made me feel any better.

“Yeah man please.”

That is how we sent him to the hospital. Penis in hand. I never found if there was anything really up there. I am not sure I want to know.

 

We got a call for a shooting one night. We responded with engine to find a small concrete block home. The police were not on the scene but we decided to go on in.  The door to the carport was open and a light was on. We walked up to the door and stood on either side.

“Fire Department.” I yelled.

I stepped through the door first to find a man standing there in his shorts.

“Somebody been shot?” I asked.

“Yeah me.”

“Where?” I did no see any blood and he did not appear to be in shock.

“Here.” He pointed to his penis. Before I could move everyone else had taken a step back. I looked back and could see a couple of them smirking. I knew I was stuck. So I knelt down in front of him and lowered his underwear. A twenty-two caliber bullet fell into my hand.

“Here give this to the cops.” I said and handed it back to the guys.

The victim had a through and through bullet hole through his penis. It was remarkable given how vascular the penis is but there was almost no bleeding, just this bullet hole. So I carefully wrapped the man penis and we sent him to the hospital. The jokes did not stop for quite a while.

Things Could Get Festive

The Street was filled with many kinds of violence. Most of the time it was not directed at us. But every now and then the street decided to reach out and try and take a bite out of you. It might be a bullet or a knife or just a big crazy, but she would try. It was not enough that she ground at you everyday; she wanted a bigger piece if she could get it, maybe the whole thing if she got lucky. These were the kind of runs that gave you an adrenaline rush on the scene, but made you sit in the corner stare off into space when you got back to the station, and realized just how close it had been. You could almost hear her laughing, maybe next there cowboy. Sometimes we were the intended targets, other times we were simply too close to the real target. I used to say that things got festive, when we had these types of calls. I could not put enough adjectives together to properly describe the intensity, so I went with understatement.

 The Street was filled with many kinds of violence. Most of the time it was not directed at us. But every now and then the street decided to reach out and try and take a bite out of you. It might be a bullet or a knife or just a big crazy, but she would try. It was not enough that she ground at you everyday; she wanted a bigger piece if she could get it, maybe the whole thing if she got lucky. These were the kind of runs that gave you an adrenaline rush on the scene, but made you sit in the corner stare off into space when you got back to the station, and realized just how close it had been. You could almost hear her laughing, maybe next time there cowboy. Sometimes we were the intended targets, other times we were simply too close to the real target. I used to say that things got festive, when we had these types of calls. I could not put enough adjectives together to properly describe the intensity, so I went with understatement.   It was the middle of the day, a normal assault call with the police on the scene. My guard was down. We were not being careful. Everything is under control. I was examining the back of the patient’s head and did not see the pistol drawn. Jeff the medic off the ambulance did and yelled.             “Gun!” We had been dispatched to the ABC Liquor at Gore and Paramore for an assault. We were advised that OPD was on the scene and the scene was secure. We arrived to find the victim sitting in a chair while two police officers standing nearby writing their reports.             As we began to exam the man we realized that he had been badly beaten. His face and head were grotesquely swollen. This indicated that he probably had multiple fractures in his face and skull. He could not answer our questions coherently. He was in serious condition. He was beaten about as badly as I had ever seen. He obviously did not know what was happening to him. We needed get him packaged and to the hospital.             I stood behind him examining his head. My partner Larry knelt in front of him examining him for additional wounds. Jeff, the paramedic off the ambulance, stood to my left and the patient’s left. The two cops stood to our right busily writing  their reports. That is when Jeff had yelled.             “Gun.”             Larry’s head snapped up in time to stare down the barrel of the pistol the patient was holding. All I saw was Jeff pulling the patients arm out and away bending his wrist backward. As he did he peeled the gun out of the patients hand. It was a police technique. Jeff was in the middle of police standards training. He wanted to be a cop. He disarmed the patient just the way they had taught in the weeks before. The two cops who had been standing there writing their report were now standing there with their mouths open. They had never searched the patient. They knew how close we had all come. The patient obviously thought he was still being attacked. Jeff broke open the pistol and dumped six rounds into his hand. He just looked at the cops, they did not say a word, they just looked sheepish. If Jeff had not grabbed the gun, I am convinced the patient would have shot Larry before anyone could have reacted. Then things would have gotten messy, with us in the line of fire of the cops and the patient. So Jeff saved Larry’s and my life in my opinion that day.             When we got back to the station just how close we had come that day really hit me. Being in the middle of a gunfight was not in any training manual I had read. We were finding ourselves on more and more scenes of violence. The department at point was still sending rescues by themselves to scenes of violance. Just two unarmed paramedics. I had been trying to convince them to send an Engine with us if for nothing else protection, and for the extra hands. So I went to my Captain and told him what happened to us. He looked at me and said.  “That is what you get paid for.”             

Most of the officers considered us more of pain than an asset. There were not that many of us in those days and they were always having to scramble to keep the rescues manned each shift. None of them were paramedics; in fact few if any were EMT’s at that point. So they did not understand what we did or faced and did not care to learn.  We were inventing this profession with little or no official help and that included the street survival skills.  It was the middle of the day, a normal assault call with the police on the scene. My guard is down. We were not being careful. Everything is under control. I was examining the back of the patient’s head and did not see the pistol drawn. Jeff the medic off the ambulance did and yelled.

            “Gun!”

We had been dispatched to the ABC Liquor at Gore and Paramore for an assault. We were advised that OPD was on the scene and the scene was secure. We arrived to find the victim sitting in a chair while two police officers standing nearby writing their reports.

            As we began to exam the man we realized that he had been badly beaten. His face and head were grotesquely swollen. This indicated that he probably had multiple fractures in his face and skull. He could not answer our questions coherently. He was in serious condition. He was beaten about as badly as I had ever seen. He obviously did not know what was happening to him. We needed get him packaged and to the hospital.

            I stood behind him examining his head. My partner Larry knelt in front of him examining him for additional wounds. Jeff, the paramedic off the ambulance, stood to my left and the patient’s right. The two cops stood to our right busily writing out their reports. That is when Jeff had yelled.

            “Gun.”

            Larry’s head snapped up to stare down the barrel of the pistol the patient was holding. All I saw was Jeff pulling the patients arm out and away bending his wrist backward. As he did he peeled the gun out of the patients hand. It was a police technique. Jeff was in the middle of police standards training. He wanted to be a cop. He disarmed the patient just the way they had taught in the weeks before.

The two cops who had been standing there writing their report were now standing there with their mouths open. They had never searched the patient. They knew how close we had all come. The patient obviously thought he was still being attacked.

Jeff broke open the pistol and dumped six rounds into his hand. He just looked at the cops, they did not say a word, they just looked sheepish. If Jeff had not grabbed the gun, I am convinced the patient would have shot Larry before anyone could have reacted. Then things would have gotten messy, with us in the line of fire of the cops and the patient. So Jeff saved Larry’s and my life in my opinion that day.

            When we got back to the station just how close we had come that day really hit me. Being in the middle of a gunfight was not in any training manual I had read. We were finding ourselves on more and more scenes of violence. The department at point was still sending rescues by themselves to scenes of violance. Just two unarmed paramedics. I had been trying to convince them to send an Engine with us if for nothing else protection, and for the extra hands. So I went to my Captain and told him what happened to us. He looked at me and said.

            “That is what you get paid for.”

            Most of the officers considered us more of pain than an asset. There were not that many of us in those days and they were always having to scramble to keep the rescues manned each shift. None of them were paramedics; in fact few if any were EMT’s at that point. So they did not understand what we did or faced and did not care to learn.  We were inventing this profession with little or no official help and that included the street survival skills.

 

            It was a Friday night and the Saturday Night Specials would always come out. It came in as a shooting at Concord and Paramore, just a few blocks north of the incident at the ABC. Paramore also had a liquor store on the corner a block or so north of this address called Liquor World. Our nickname for it was Murder World. Paramore was the center of the rough side of things where desperate people mixed with violent predators in a vicious dance. We were asked to the dance anytime the two connected.

 As we neared the scene the we were stopped by the police. They said shots were still being fired at the scene and near the scene. They were wide eyed and wired. We fed off their adrenaline as we sat there waiting. Cop cars would race by lights flashing as other officers responded. It was enough to crank up the volume. To get things really humming before we went in.

Finally after what seemed an eternity we got the all clear and we were told the scene was safe and to go on in. We drove the short few blocks and bailed out of the truck. We arrived to find to find a huge victim illuminated in the flashlights of several cops. In the hard light of the cops flashlights and our headlights the whole scene looked like a black and white picture. The patient looked like a professional football lineman he was so large, it was the first time I had seen someone so large felled by a single .22 caliber gunshot to the chest. I would later learn, as I saw more shootings, just how lethal small caliber weapons were. Small caliber rounds bounce around once they enter the body, lacerating and penetrating all sorts of vital structures and doing much more damage that the big round. With bigger caliber weapons the round generally plows through the body in a straight line. It does not have the velocity to ricochet off bone. Many times it does less damage. So the Dirty Harry’s of the world should be carrying 22 instead of their big 44’s.

            The scene was chaotic. Police were running around with their guns drawn shouting at someone down the street. The ambulance had arrived with us and the four of us got right to work. He had no perceptible pulse but his heart still show a rhythm.

            More loud shouting by the cops. Then we heard gunshots nearby. Still more shouting by the police as they tried to figure out was going on and who was shooting at whom. They were not doing the firing. Things were getting very festive at this point. We were frantically trying to get this guy ready for transport.

            There was a black and white picture of us the next day in the paper. We were all black silhouettes framed in the headlights of one of the trucks. We are on our knees bent over the patient trying to start IV’s. The lead to the story was help arriving in the midst of shooting. It is exactly how I remember that scene in black and white silhouettes frame in the headlights.

            We finally got everything done we need to do so we loaded the patient on the stretcher. It was time to load and go.  So loaded the patient and got him to the hospital. He died in the emergency room.   

 

            Not far from both of those scenes again on Paramore we had a shooting at the Dixie Doodle. It was a innocent, almost silly sounding name for one of the most dangerous bars in Orlando. Countless assaults, shooting, stabbing, cuttings and robberies had occurred at this one small single story concrete block building.  It was one of the places that the predators and the desperate did their dance. We were invited to the dance there more than anywhere else.

I had been there more times  that I could count on all matter of mayhem over the years. I had been traveled into Station 2 to ride Rescue 2 that night. We received a call for a shooting. The station is only a few blocks away and the dispatcher told us to stage in the station until OPD could secure the scene. I should have known securing the scene at the Dixie Doodle was going to be a challenge to say the least. The building could never hold all of the patrons on any given night and they always spilled out into the parking lot. I had seen as many as two hundred people outside the building, milling around drinking and partying.

            We went to the trucks to wait for the dispatch. It was not long before we told the scene was secure and to go on in. We arrived to find the usual chaotic scene the Dixie Doodle. There were hundreds of people milling around excitedly in the parking lot of the little structure. I was on the passenger side of the truck. I went to the compartment on my side of the truck to grab the drug box and airway kit. Just as turned around to find the victim. Four shots rang out.

            I have never seen so many people disappear so quickly in my life. Including the other members of the Engine and Rescue. They had ducked behind the trucks. But I was on the wrong side of the truck to do that. The only other people in sight was the victim, an ambulance attendant who had just arrived and police officer with his gun drawn standing next to them. I  figured I would head for the only friendly face with a gun I could find. So I hustle over there in a crouch, holding the boxes up so I felt as if I had a little protection. The Lieutenant off the Engine said I looked really funning running and trying hide behind the boxes. I told him it did feel that funny at the time.

            The patient had single gunshot wound to the chest. He was coded. The ambulance attendant and I began to work on him immediately. The Engine crew and my partner and we tried to get this guy packaged and out of there as soon as possible. But there were not enough officers on the scene because we were soon surrounded by the crowd that disappeared earlier. Since the shooting had stopped they had returned and were now jostling and threatening us and the police. As we worked they broke out a window on the ambulance. We got the victim on the backboard and got him into the back of the ambulance. In spite of the broken window and the crowd the ambulance driver got us out of there and to the hospital. The engine and rescue left soon after we did clearing the scene so the cops could concentrate on controlling the crowd. The guys at the station gave me a hard time about trying to hide behind the drug box. I must have really looked funny trying to get my two hundred pounds behind a tackle box. I came real close though.

            It turned out that another victim had been shot inside the building and was pronounced there at the scene by another paramedic off the ambulance. My patient died. So it turned out to be a double homicide. As I remember the two had gotten into a gunfight and killed each other. The city closed the Dixie Doodle after this incident in an effort to begin to clear up the neighborhood. 

My First Code

The first time I had to deal with death on the job was Christmas Eve morning 1974. I was only weeks out of training. Death would become my adversary on the street in an almost a daily battle. We fought in the homes of cardiacs, on shooting and stabbing scenes, in car accidents and even baby cribs. He was my enemy. He won a lot more than he lost in our battles. But I won some. It is what the whole thing was about. 

I had been assigned to Engine 3 out of training. It was a company in a quite residential neighborhood. The station was filled with old timers putting in their last years on the job before retirement. They were uniformly big, loud World War II veterans who had worked 24 hours on and 24 hours off for most of their careers. They all smoked like chimneys and drank like fish. Good men who knew their jobs and had seen it all after twenty five years, men who were happy if we never left the station on a run during a shift. But I was eager for action. I would learn that I did not have to be eager for action, it would find me soon enough.

We were into our usual end-of-a-shift morning ritual of sitting around groggily sipping coffee waiting for our relief so we could go home. You cannot leave until your relief is in the station and has his gear on the truck. So you sit there in the kitchen sipping enough coffee to keep awake, just long enough so you could go home and crawl back to bed. I was just trying to balance the caffeine level.

The tones came in and the bell went off. The Dispatcher’s voice came over the loud speaker. I ran to the truck as the older guys walked.

            “Engine 3 woman down.”

It was cool beautiful Florida December morning. The Engine was an open cab so the run there was almost pleasant. I grabbed the oxygen kit off the Engine and one of the other firefighters grabbed the first aid kit.

            The address was the old American Legion Hall a crumbling landmark at the edge of our territory. It was seedy rundown place with small apartments. We moved through a maze of dark halls and dirty apartments until we found our victims apartment. The room was small and dirty. A middle-aged woman lay in the middle of the floor. I knelt beside her while Charlie checked for a pulse and breathing. He shook his head.

            I tore open her nightgown and put two fingers on zypoid process, then placed the heel of my hand. It stuck me how cold her skin was. The complete limpness was so different than anything I had ever felt in another human being before. Her half closed eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling. She seemed smaller somehow, as if the something that had made her who she was, was gone. The essence of whatever made her had left her body and left it smaller and deflated. It was as if it took up space, and made that person larger, vibrant and whole was gone. That fact in some unconscious way effects you the first time you see it.

I thought about what I was supposed to do. Fingers up off the chest so you don’t break ribs. Heel of the hand on the sternum. I was worrying about all of the things I was supposed to worry about. Because that is what I have to worry about. I can’t take in all of these other impressions until later. The later is what is more difficult to deal with, than actual physical action required to perform CPR. I worked very hard to remember all of the things I was supposed to do.

One one-thousand. Fingers up off the chest so I don’t break ribs. Two one-thousand. I feel the ribs break anyway. She is very frail. It feels like little pops in her chest with each compression. Three one-thousand. Keep the heels of my hand on her sternum. Four one-thousand. Five one-thousand. I pause for a fraction of second to let Charlie give a breath. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. Four one-thousand. I counted to out loud so Charlie can time the breaths. Five one-thousand. And so it goes as you work. You settle into a rhythm. After a while your back will start to ache. It is a very awkward position. You are leaning over someone without any support. One one-thousand. I can hear the ambulance approaching.

“Huder. Check out the other one in the bed.” The Lieutenant said.

Other one! What is he talking about? I give up my place to another firefighter and turn to the small bed. There buried beneath the covers is a small woman somewhere in her seventies. Her eyes have the same half open stare as the woman on the floor. I gingerly reach down and place two finger where her carotid pulse should be. She is much colder than the woman on the floor. She is stiff.

“She is cold and stiff Lieutenant.”

I am stunned. Not one code but two. What in the world happened here? Two women dead. One code was enough, but a code and a dead body together on Christmas Eve morning. We continued the code on the woman on the floor. Since the woman was cold and stiff we did not try and work her. The other firefighter was counting out loud.

“One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. Four one thousand. Five one thousand.”

Charlie gave another breath. And so it went as we waited for the ambulance.

 I helped around the edges for the rest of the call. I kept glancing over at the women in the bed. Still trying to take it all in. The ambulance arrived and we loaded the patient onto the stretcher. The EMT off the ambulance took over compressions. Charlie rides in to help with the code.

A man suddenly shows up looking confused and stunned, apparently one woman was his wife and the other his sister, and both had just died on Christmas Eve.  What can you say to someone like that? I wanted to say something but could not begin to think of what. So I moved around and helped carry out equipment back to the truck. We left the scene with the police to take care of the other body and went back to the station.

             We head back to the station. I ride in the jump seat. So I sit in the sunshine on a beautiful Florida morning with the images of two dead women rolling around in my head. It was introduction to the juxtaposition of death and normality. Of living and dying so close together. I had lived in a protected bubble my whole life until then. I had lost my father and grandparents but not like this. That bubble had burst and now I was aware of how close death was to all of us.

I kept thinking about the family. Such a loss on Christmas Eve morning would be staggering. I had seen codes in during my EMT training in the emergency room. I had observed them. I had never participated.

What struck me was we did not have the cool sterile environment of the hospital emergency room as protection against the tragedy of it all. We worked in the code in the their bedroom. I saw the second woman in the bed she had gone to sleep in the night before. Their personal belongs surrounded us. The dinginess of their lives had rubbed on me and made me feel their poverty. It was the little realities that were making the experience so personal. The feel of their skin. The feel of her ribs breaking as I did CPR. They said it would happen in training, even when you did it right. But the reality. The little pop you felt is was all very close up.

Our relief was waiting and pulled our gear off the truck. I had a cup of coffee and sat at the table in the kitchen. A ritual I would repeat thousands of times over the next years but this was the first time after something that was so changing. We talked about what we were going to do for Christmas, nothing profound, just men getting off work talking to one another before they went home to their families. We told the on coming shift about the call and got a couple of “you have got to be shitty me’s”. They understood. They would just shake their heads; the street always had something up her sleeve to throw you.

The ambulance dropped Charlie off. The woman we worked did not make it. The drive home is lost somewhere as I tried to sort through all of the emotions and memories. I felt a huge sense of pride that I had performed well in the face of someone needing my help so desperately. I felt inadequate that I had to struggle mightily with my emotions. I kept remembering the half open eyes. I struggled with the death of two people I had never known but were now such a large part of me. All of these emotions, memories, and impressions swirled around changing my mood as fast as they ran through my head.

I had done it. I had gone to a call where lives were on the line and I had performed. There is always the question until you do it. No big call just the first of the thousands of small personal tragedies that I would be a part of over the next years, a small very personal sadness that becomes some small part of you. You were part of someone’s death. You were the last to try and save them.  

Firefighter/Paramedic

I hear the sirens and air horns now, especially the air horns. Not every time I hear them, but sometimes. Suddenly I am back on the trucks. Pulling on my bunker gear. Looking up a street on the map. Shouldering the straps to my air tank. Pulling up my three quarter boots. Putting on my gloves. I am back in it. I am back on the street. I can almost hear the radio traffic.

“Engine 1, Engine 51, Tower 1, Rescue 1, District 1 house fire….”

“Engine 7, Rescue 7 shooting. OPD is not on the scene….”

“Rescue 1, Rescue Boat 1 respond to assist Engine 7 and Rescue 7 with a drowning….”

“Engine 6, Engine 4,Crash 6, Rescue 6, Tower 1, District 1 plane down…”

“Engine 3, Rescue 3 person not breathing…”

“Engine 10, Tower 10, Rescue 7 District 2 accident with injuries involving entrapment…”

I can almost feel the adrenaline rush. See the red lights of the trucks. Hear the roar of the diesel. Then dispatch would give the report that always meant you had something serious.

“We are receiving multiple calls.”

“We have reports of people trapped.”

“CPR is being performed.”

Then I find myself listening for the reports from the first units to arrive.

“Engine 1 to dispatch we have heavy fire showing from a single story wood frame structure. We are pulling an inch and three quarter line.”

“Engine 6 to Orlando we have a single engine plane down in a tree. No fire. But we do have a fuel leak. Be advised the passenger and the pilot are trapped.”

I am back on the street. That place I named so long ago, the other reality that exists just outside most people’s everyday work a day lives. It is a place that seems to exist in parallel to daily existence. Yet it is only a car accident or cardiac away for everyone.

The street was more than a physical place. It was a place where all of the safe guards end, and our job begin. It is a place filled with excitement, fear, tragedy, horror, sadness, despair, joy, and laughter. It was a place where everyday decisions had terrible consequences. I am going to the grocery store. Or I will the wiring fixed next month. Where people died or were horribly injured. It was terrible place. Or maybe it is reality. It was where I worked. 

The street existed in the poorest homes in Orlando, and in the richest. It existed in back alleys and the main streets. It existed in brush fires, house fires, shooting, stabbings, hangings, cardiac’s, codes, drowning’s, and a thousand other emergencies. It was everywhere around. I have houses or intersections that had been scenes and now were signposts in my life. That house is where I pulled the woman out of the fire that afternoon. I pass the intersection where all those people died on that Thanksgiving night when I go to the YMCA. I can see where I had the double shooting from the East/West Expressway. I can see where we tried to save a mother and three children that night in that fire, each time I get on the interstate. Across the street from those apartments is where we found that body that had been undiscovered for three days in the Florida heat. The reminders of the street and the years I spent on it are everywhere around me, like some kind of map of my life. A map that marks life-changing event for me and those I tried to help. 

When I remember the street I always remember it at night, as if that were the only time when bad things would happen to people, and I would have to pick up the pieces. Not just night, but the middle of the night on old Rescue 1. Those early adrenaline filled nights.  Where you were wired to every bad thing happening in the city through the radio. That three in morning time when only the cops, the drunks and us are left to prowl around in some kind of three way dance. The kind of dance that leaves people lying in the gutter bleeding from a head wound, with the stunned how did this happen look on their face.

My partner and I are heading back to the station after the 20th call since we had came on duty at eight am the previous morning. It had been one of those shifts where none of the calls were serious enough to need our help. A long line of people who fall through the social net and end up using us to solve their small or imagined problems.

Just another long shift filled with sick, lame, and lazy who made me question why I became a paramedic. Where are all the people that needed saving? The world seemed to be made up drunks and squirrels that think that calling the fire department will solve almost any problem. The drunk we just ran on was lying in the street with one shoe off, waving his foot at us. “I hurt my foot” he said. The woman who after careful questioning and a through physical exam chief medical complaint was she “felt foolish”. The drunk being arrested by the cops who cursed us out as we tried to bandage his head.

            Just another night on Rescue 1 where my life seemed to shift into fast-forward the moment I stepped on the truck in the morning. The fires, shooting, stabbling, assaults, man downs came at me so fast, that I thought I could put my hand out the window let it surf through them as they rushed past. Like I did when I was a kid and stuck my hand out of the window of the car as my parents drove me home from a day out.

With each of the runs I got the same adrenaline shot that I did when it turned out to be life threatening. Then someone presses the button on my life and the fast forward drops into standard play. The twenty adrenaline rushes have left me exhausted and used up. Suddenly in the Florida heat my uniform is damp and sticks to me, from constantly sweating as we drive the streets of Central Florida with no air conditioning. I lean against the door feeling as if I did not lean against something; I would fall over and go to sleep.

My head is fuzzy with fatigue and aches with a dull throbbing. My stomach is trying to eat its way out. All the adrenaline rushes have emptied my tank of anything I ate today or yesterday. My eyes feel as if someone has put sand under them each time I blink. All I want to do in the world is to lie down and go to sleep for just one uninterrupted hour, just one silent quite hour.  All of this rolled together became what I used to call the Rescue 1 Blues. A physical and mental state that was truly unique and miserable.

The only lights are the bronze halogen streetlights that cast an eerie light that is somehow depressing. Then through all of the fatigue, physical discomfort and just plain, I don’t want to do this, the radio in the truck blares.

            “Rescue 1 can you take another call.”

            I want to run screaming away from that radio, but I pick up the mike and say,

 “Check”.

            “Unknown illness to a child. 1492 Paramore.”

            “Rescue 1 responding.”

            I flip on the lights and turn on the siren and we head for the address. The red box lights reflect off the windows of the stores and buildings of downtown as we head for the wrong side of things. Where we are the doctors to those that do not have the money or insurance for real doctors. Tonight it seems too melodramatic, red lights flashing as the truck rushes through the empty streets. We know by the dispatch is going to be some minor.

When we turn on Amelia and go under the Interstate, it was as if we had entered another reality. One where you could almost taste the hopelessness, the anger and the frustration of the people who were so close to the money yet so far away.           

We find the address in front of a small two-story apartment building. No lights are on and everything seems locked up tight.  We cross the grey sand front yard, strewn with beer bottles and trash. Larry and I walk up to the second story of the apartment on the bare concrete stairs. When we reach the apartment we stand on either side of the door. You never stand in front of a door, you don’t know who is on the other side or what they might have in mind.

            “Fire Department. Did someone call?” I yell as I knock on the door.

A young girl opens the door immediately. She is in her late teens, a crying baby is in her arms. She has a look of real concern on her face.

            “What seems to be the problem?” I asked.

            “He’s running fever and coughing. I..”

            She handed me the baby. I looked down at him as I cradled him my arms, just like I did with my own son at home. The baby was hot to the touch, but not anymore than my son had been the last time he ran a fever. We examined him and questioned the mother. It looked as if the worst thing he had was a cold.

            “He’s fine. Looks like he has a cold. Do you have any Tylenol? It would lower his temperature and make him sleep better tonight. You could take him to the doctor tomorrow?”

            “I don’t have any Tylenol?” her voice and the look on her face showed real fear.

            The concern and fear in her face let me know that what was happening as much as anything. Here was a young girl all alone with her first child and no one to go the drug store to get the Tylenol. She was out on a limb doing the best she could to take care of the baby by herself. She had run out of energy dealing with the child and herself. She needed some help. The apartment was clean and well furnished. It was obvious she was doing a good job no matter what her support system was day to day.

            “Look he is going to be fine he just needs some Tylenol and some antibiotics. Do you want to go to the hospital with him?”

            “What do you think?”

            “Yes, I think that would be a good idea. We have an ambulance on the way. Do you want to go by ambulance?”

            “Yes. Yes I do.” the relief on her face was enormous. She just needed someone to help her. Nothing fancy, nothing dramatic, just someone to share the load of being a parent. Not something I thought I would be doing when I went to paramedic school. 

            As I stood there with the crying baby, I could feel the relief in her as she gathered things for her diaper bag she would take to the hospital. She had the support she needed, it did not matter it came in a red rescue truck. She had someone to ask what to do, and then they had the means to solve her problem. Not a big problem in scheme of things, but it was everything to her.

When the ambulance arrived we walked her out to the rig, and helped her into the back. It was not the type of problem the system was designed to handle, but it was the type of problem we faced daily. No sophisticated medical skill needed here. No special training. It just took a willingness to help. These types of calls would sometimes fill a shift. Back then they were forgotten as soon as I finished the paper work. But now they are the ones that come to mind first when I think of the street twenty-six years later. Not the Smoking Babies, those only came up through some unrecognized trigger that throws me back on the scene.

The little ones come to mind now, the ones I thought I would forget as soon as they were over and the big ones piled on top of them Only through years on the street did I realize that maybe these would leave as much of a lasting impression as the big ones. There were a lot more of these than the big ones, maybe that is why this one, and others like it stuck in my memory. The genuine appreciation for the help given that was so apparent.

With the Smoking Babies the multiplier emphasized the absolute horror way beyond any understanding of your role in what happened. Or with so many of the others, the scenes were filled violence or hopelessness, with anger at the system, resentment the of authority you represented, or frightening abdication of personal responsibility for even the most basic human survival skills, that it was hard to glean out the fact that they did need your help.

So when these pure crystal clear moments happened they now stand out through it all. The street does give back to you, but it buries it under the violence, the stupid deaths, the drowning, the senseless deaths, the shootings, the hangings, the stabbings, the cuttings, the accident with injuries, the fires, the plane crashes, the drunks, and crazies. So if you are not paying close attention you loose them. You loose them to the big calls where no matter what you did everyone was going to die anyway. You loose them to the mental and physical fatigue that comes with seeing so much. So I now try to hold onto those good simple ones because the big ones are too big to understand so much of the time.

I spent twenty-six years in the fire service. That is over half my life. Not half my adult life but half my as a whole. What you do in this world shapes you, changes you. On the street what you see and do changes you in a way few other professions do. Adrenaline rushes, fear, elation, sadness all can happen on a single call that is part of a twenty run marathon of life, death and a lot of in between. It is all rolled up into single twenty-four hour shift that can cram more profound experiences than someone does in years of regular eight to five living. Combine the years and decades of those shifts and it changes you, and shapes you into something and someone else.  Someone you weren’t when you started. It is ground into your skin, like a good mechanic, who no matter how much he washes his hands still has dirt under his fingernails. I still have the street under my fingernails. It will not wash off.  If you scratch me I will bleed a story. I am a firefighter/paramedic. Even after years of retirement, it is who I am. How do you come to a job that shapes you into something you were not before?

We all come to the job for a variety of reasons. Some came because their father was a firefighter. Some came because of the excitement. Some came because it is a steady and reliable paycheck. And why did I make the decision to be become a firefighter? Me, I spent twenty-six years in the fire service because of a couple of television shows and a book.

It seems aimless of me to let popular culture drive my professional choice, but I am a product of the first television generation. Popular culture is the creator of myths in our society. And like the storytellers of old those myths are meant to provide guidance.

I loved the television show M*A*S*H. I never missed an episode. One night as I watched the opening scenes of the nurses and doctors running up the hill to the landing pad, their faces filled with intensity and purpose, it struck me that while they were actors that had really happened. There had been people whose job provided that challenge and purpose. I wanted a profession that provided that kind of intensity. That provided that kind of challenge, but I had no idea of what that looked like.

I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor, but I had no idea where I could find that combination of danger, intensity and service. I knew the military was not what I wanted. I did not want a profession whose object was to kill people. I had seen what that did to men close up during my own years in the service.

Then I read a book, Report from Engine Company 82 by Dennis Smith a New York City firefighter. Still the single best book about firefighting and the fire service ever written. It was a gritty account of his firefighting experiences on one of the busiest engine companies in the world. It had all of the everyday heroics and dedication I was looking for in a profession.

This was also about the time that a new television show aired. It was Emergency. It was based on the first fire department paramedics on the Los Angeles fire department. It was cheesy and hokey but I loved it. They fought fires and provided emergency medical services in the field. They saved everybody. It was great. I guess I needed the visuals to convince me. I joined the Department when I graduated from college. 

The Smoking Baby

I still think about her. Even though it has been close to thirty years, I still think about her. When I am off guard, the question tries to slip past the walls I’ve built, a question that has no answer. A question that I struggled with over the course of my twenty-six year career through hundreds of runs like hers.

            It happened in the early years. When I had not learned the harsh math of the street, the math that sometimes multiplies the outcome. When I thought I was going to save them all, and did not know how many shades of misery could be crammed into a single call. As I said it was in the early years, and I did not know the realities of the profession. It was a late afternoon in February. We were in the station when the call came in.

            “Engine 1, Engine 51, Tower 1, Rescue 1, District 1 house fire 2212 E. Livingston. Engine 1, Engine 51, Tower 1, Rescue 1, District 1 house fire 2212 E. Livingston.”

            Everyone in the station headed for their trucks. The apparatus bay was filled with noise as the flaps on the fire poles slammed open when men slid from the second story, truck doors slammed as each driver climbed into the cab of his truck, and diesel engines were started with a roar. It was the fire station din of a house fire. Red lights for each truck snapped on. Then to the sound of five sets of sirens the trucks pulled out of the station and into the street. Engine 1 lead out followed by Engine 51, then Tower 1, I was in Rescue 1 and we pulled in behind the Tower with the District behind us. The trucks formed a conga line of fire apparatus as we weaved our way through rush hour traffic. Close to fifty red lights flashings and multiple sirens blaring, a full alarm assignment out of one station bursting with building fire adrenaline. No sooner had we left the station than the radio blared.

            “Engine 2, Engine 7, Rescue 7, Snorkel 2, District 2 house fire 2212 W. Livingston. Engine 2, Engine 7, Rescue 7, Snorkel 2, District 2 house fire 2212 W. Livingston.”

            The Dispatchers were sending another full assignment to the same address on the west end of the street. There must be some mix up with the address. We worked our way through traffic to the address. When we arrived we found nothing, just a row of houses with no sign of a fire.  The District got on the radio and said.

            “District 1 to Orlando. Nothing showing. Investigating.”

            “Orlando check. Be advised we are receiving multiple calls on this. It is apparently at the west address you can cancel.”

            “District 1 check.”

            “Orlando to Rescue 1 respond with units to the west address. Rescue 7 you are cancelled.”

            We were still closer than Rescue 7, who would have to come from the west side of town. We flipped the lights and sirens back on and headed west on Livingston. As we worked our way through traffic the radio blared over the sirens.

            “Engine 2 to Orlando we have heavy smoke in the area.”

We had something and the adrenaline goes up another notch. Then Engine 2 arrived on the scene.

            “Engine 2 to Orlando. We have heavy fire showing from a single story wood frame structure. Taking in one pre-connect.”

            “District 2 on the scene. Engine 7 bring in a line.”

            Engine 2 would be attacking the fire off the five hundred gallon water tank on their engine and would need a supply line from a hydrant as soon as possible. Using a pre-connect they would only have a few minutes of water to fight the fire.

            “Engine 7 check.”

            We still had blocks to go. We worked our way through the dense afternoon traffic. As we neared the scene, both sides of the street were lined with parked cars and the center of the street was filled with fire equipment. We parked at the end of the line of fire apparatus. My partner and I jumped out and scrabbled into the back to the truck to put on our bunker gear and tanks. As we were donning our tanks another report blared over our radios.

            “Dispatcher to all units we have reports of children trapped inside.”

             It was my first fire with victims trapped. It was the first time that I felt the real responsibility of being a firefighter. Because I rode the rescue, it would be my responsibility to find anyone trapped. If I did not do it then it would not get done. The responsibility was mine. This type of responsibility was why I had joined the department. I had wanted this. Now it was here. I had felt it on medical calls, but now I felt it for the first time on a fire call. This responsibility meant I would push myself to the limit someone else’s life would depend on it. If I did not then I would not live up to the oath I had taken when I came on the department. It would be up to me now. It would include risking my own life if necessary. It was my duty. I wore the badge. It was what this job was about, the risking of your own life for others. It is why I signed up. It was the time to do the deed. To see if I was up to the real thing.

Not waiting to completely dress out, we both grabbed our tanks and ran for the house, frantically donning our tanks on the run. The house was small white wood frame structure, the entire front of the house blowing smoke and flame out all of the doors and windows. The only part of the house that wasn’t blowing smoke and fire was a single window in back of the house. Suddenly out of that window two bunker coated arms appeared. They cradled a baby who could not have been much more that six months old. The baby was smoking. Smoke rose from the baby’s skin and clothes.

            A firefighter off the Tower grabbed the baby from those bunker-coated arms and started running toward us. He handed the very still body to my partner. Donny immediately began CPR. I turned and ran for the truck and the medical gear we would need.

            I remember what a long run it was in boots, bunker gear and an air tank. The image of that smoking baby kept fighting it’s way through the adrenaline, and the thousand and one things I had to organize in my mind. I kept seeing the dirty smoke smudged skin. The babies half open eyes.

I reached the truck and threw off my gear. I started pulling the various medical boxes and equipment we would need. The airway box. The oxygen box. The drug box. The trauma box to bandage her burns.  Before I left the truck I called and received a medical channel so we could communicate with the doctor as soon as possible. I also had them notify the hospital we would be bringing them a pediatric code even before we contacted them on the medical radio.

            As I ran back carrying the equipment I could see Donny sitting with the baby cradled in his arms calmly doing picture perfect CPR. A small group of people surrounded him. When I reached Donny he gently laid her on the ground as I threw open the boxes so we could begin to work on her. When Donny laid her down she started to breath on her own.

            “That’s it girl breathe.” I said as I attached the EKG dots to her chest.

            Donny attached her to the O2. I put the stethoscope to her chest and listened to her lungs. Surprisingly they were clear. I put the dots on her chest. Her EKG was normal. She was continuing to breathe on her own.

She was sloughing skin badly around her face and upper chest. It was coming off in sheets as we worked on her. That meant those areas were in probability third degree burns. Those third degree burns on her face and chest meant we had to suspect she had breathed super heated air from the fire. That super heated air would damage her trachea and lungs. We still had to suspect the damage even though her lungs sounded clear. The ambulance arrived. We covered her burns put her on the stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance.

            Donny and I climbed into the back of the ambulance. She looked so tiny on the adult sized stretcher. Her dirty smoke smudged body was so very still.  But she continued to breathe on her own. Her heart beat was regular and strong.

The smell of her burnt skin and house fire filled the back of the ambulance. We could do little more than had already done. We monitored the oxygen and listened to her chest. Bandaged her burns. It was a short ride to the hospital, with sirens blaring, and the ambulance swaying.

We pulled under the portico and unloaded the stretcher. They were waiting and had the doors open for us. We pushed the stretcher into the trauma room. I gently lifted her limp body and placed her on the hospital stretcher and backed away.  Again she appeared even smaller on the hospital gurney. She was so helpless and dependent. She disappeared behind a wall of doctors, nurses and technicians as they began their examination and treatment. I turned and walked out of the trauma room.

Since we both had ridden in the ambulance with her we were going to need a ride back to the scene to pick up our truck. The departments Chaplin gave us a ride back. It was hard to remember when I felt so much pride in my newfound profession. The system had worked. We had lost so many, but this time the system worked. I can’t remember feeling as good about my job, or the young system that we were all trying to so hard to develop. The exhaustion and how badly she was hurt would hit me later, right now all I could think of was the simple fact that she was alive. It was a great ride back. We had saved her. She would have been given up for dead just a few years before but we saved her with our new skills. It felt great.

            I waited for a week before I checked on her at the hospital. I wanted to find out she was doing. On TV it was always all smiles and congratulations on a great job by the hospital staff. I needed a little of that kind of reinforcement at that point. Successes were rare.

            “Yeah, I wanted to check on the little girl we brought in about a week ago with burns.” I told the burn unit nurse.

            “Sure we sent her to the Shiners Burn Hospital.”

            “Great then she is going to make it.”

            “Yes, but she going to be badly disfigured…blind and deaf.”

            “What!”

            “Yes. Her brain was without oxygen just too long when she coded.”

            I thought I was having a nightmare. What was the point of it all? James English risking his life to rescue her in that tinderbox of a house. The EMS system that worked so hard to save her and for what. What kind of life did we give her? I wasn’t sure we had not done her more harm than good.

It was as if someone had reached in and pulled out my professional life. I felt as if someone had literally kicked me in the stomach. What was the point of all the training and technology if we could not only save this girl; but give her a life worth living. I had saved drunks with their throats cut, but when it counted I couldn’t give a little girl a life. Every shift we helped the people who did not take care of themselves, who had given up and were drinking themselves or drugging themselves to death, but we could not give this little girl a decent life.

            I remember walking back out to the truck in a daze. Neither Donny nor I said anything. In fact I don’t we ever talked about her again and we worked together on and off for twenty more years. What was there to say? We had twenty-two more hours on duty. If we thought about it, if we thought that might be another one like her waiting for us today, I think I might have just gotten out of the truck and gone home. There were no good answers to this one. There were only bad feelings and confusion. Confusion over what my job really was about. Why were we out here? What was the point?

How could her fate so affect me? Where did this come from? It is not like I had not seen death and dismemberment before. I had. It is what I had become a paramedic to do. I wanted to go to the bad ones. I wanted the responsibility. So where was this coming from and why? Why did I care so much about her? Was it my own naiveté being crushed, with the thought that I was not going to save them all? That I was not going to be some kind of hero. Was it more about my own loss than of hers? I do know I was never the same after her. Something began to break that day and would eventually break completely, some part of me that cared too much for my own survival.  The part of me that made me want to become a paramedic. It had to die in order to continue to do the job. At least it did for me. It would be the only way I could survive.             

I thought a lot about quitting for a while. I didn’t and I not sure I can give a specific reason why I did not or how I held on, but things were never the same after her.  I would realize eventually how to manage these types of tragedies that seem to make up the street. The twists and turns of the street left few outcomes clean and neat. They always seemed to have this little nasty twist at the end, especially on the ones where you wanted so badly to make a difference. It was as if there is just no way you can get a clean win. The street always had to win either through blunt force or trickery. The math just never did add up. There was always some sort of subtraction going on, or if you were unlucky like this one, some real multiplication.  But she was my first. She was my first multiplier. There would be many others but she was the first and therefore the biggest. Her math had too many zeros behind it to count. The street had played her first trick on me.

            I could not think about her for a long time, without feeling as if I were walking along the edge of a very deep drop off and if I was not careful I would loose my balance slip and fall. I was not sure where I would land. I had to find an answer to or I would end up slipping and falling.

            So what is a success on the street? How could I measure when I made a difference? If I were going to last on the street I would have to have an answer, maybe not the answer, but my own answer.  An answer that would allow me to go to work and climb on a truck everyday. Without an answer the job would become impossible, shifts were filled with the kind of calls that left no clear-cut outcomes, the math was always off somehow. It would break me if I didn’t have a way to understand them. I saw others who were not able to come up with their own answers and they did not last.

The answer did not come in a day or a week but in years. Years, in which I saw other paramedic’s burnout, quit the program, quit the department, abuse alcohol and drugs to forget. The answer came when I finally lifted my head up and looked at the passage of time and the long string of patients, some of whom I helped and many who I had not. Only by looking back did the perspective of distance begin to give me an answer. And the answer was not one that gave me immediate peace of mind. Instead it only gave me understanding. The answer was a simple one; there is only the doing, the satisfaction that comes with doing the job, not with the outcomes. Do the best you can, and you stop caring about the outcome.

It was the only way I could continue. Others may have been stronger but for me it was the only way. Some may call it professionalism; maybe it is I don’t know. But I do know when you work with people who desperately need your help, it takes some real work not to judge your success or failures by through their living or dying. There is a price to pay for this distance. To loose the distance is to loose the caring piece of you. You loose a piece of yourself. It was the piece that got me into the profession in the first place. This distance you keep can creep like a cancer into other parts of your life to affect the people you love. You become hard in a way that is not always good for you or your family.

The only satisfaction I could find was knowledge that I did try and I had enough of what it takes to climb back on the truck, week after week, month after month and year after year. Trying each shift and every shift to keep getting it done. Knowing full well that there were going to be other smoking babies out there waiting for me. Who no matter how hard I tried, would close the professional distance I worked so had to keep, but who will crawl up close and make me feel the impact again. That old kicked in the stomach, hollowed out feeling. If there is courage in this job, it is the knowing what you will face more smoking babies and still keep showing up and doing the job. She taught me the biggest and most difficult lesson there was to learn out there, one that you can only understand if you can hold on long enough to learn it.

The price you pay for continuing is a large one, because you end up with a long string of smoking baby’s waking you up at and night. Slamming intrusive images into your off duty life. Is it worth it? That is real question each of us must answer, and the answer can change from shift to shift. That would be my struggle through out my career. Was the price worth the service? It was a steep price that at times that did not seem worth it. Each of us had to choose where to draw our lines, when would the price become too much. When was there nothing left to pay the bill the street demands.

The street and those that occupy it, continues no matter how many you times you leave the station, it is a war without end or truce talks, without an armistice or peace. It will always be there. My direct participation has ended, but the profession I helped create continues after I had worn out. Others have stepped forward to take on the fight in that profession. It will extract a high price from each of them. Some will last and some will not. Some will be pensioned out through injuries Others will die in the line of duty.. Yet they continue to step forward to do the job me and those like me helped invent back in those fast hot, exciting, frightening days and nights on the street.

 

In all the years I spent on the department I never called to find out the out come of another patient.