She Done Fell Out

The call came in as a woman down. There was no more information. We arrived on the scene to find a small house set well back from the street. The only light came from the open door framing a man standing in the doorway.

            “Hurry, hurry.” He shouted. “She done fell out.”

            We had an extra guy riding with us on the rescue that night. So I was able to head to the house as the other two got the equipment. I felt nervous walking into the darkness alone, but it had come in as a woman down and not as a scene of violence. When I walked in the front door and past the frantic man, I found a woman in her twenties sprawled across a couch. Frank blood was pouring from her nose and mouth. She was not breathing and she had not pulse.

            “I don’t know what happened to her. She just done fell out.” The man said. He kept repeating the phrase as if he were practicing it, as he moved around the room very agitated.

            The other two guys off the rescue arrived as I pulled the woman onto the floor so we could work on her. I could not figure out what was causing this kind of bleeding. But she was coded and we knew what we had to do. I got on the radio and requested an Engine to assist with manpower. My partner started to tube her as the third guy off the truck started compressions.

            Her face was covered with blood, but I thought I saw something on her cheek. I stopped looking for an IV site long enough to wipe her cheek off with a 4x4. There was a bullet hole that had been covered with coagulated blood.

            The guy was walking a couple of feet behind us muttering. “I don’t know what happened she just fell out.”

            That is when I got real nervous. I made the wild guess that this was probably the guy who had given her this bullet hole that made her “fall out”.

            I got on the radio and said.

            “Rescue 1 to dispatch we need code 8 (police) on the scene.”

            “Check can you advise the nature of the request?”

            Now here was this guy who was more than likely shot this woman, pacing the floor three feet in back of us, and the dispatchers wants to know why we need the police. I try and whisper so he won’t hear me.

            “Possible homicide.”

            “Check.” Her replay blares over all our radios. “Possible homicide.”

            I wanted to crawl under the coach. I waited for this guy to go nuts. But he just keeps pacing and muttering. The Engine company arrives, followed closely by the cops. I am feeling safer now with all the company. Soon the ambulance arrives and still more cops. The small house is filled with first responders. The guy keeps muttering.

            “I don’t know what happened she just feel out.”

            The guys off the engine knew the neighborhood and took one look at the patient and began to look for a weapon without saying a word. The guys off Engine 2 were experienced hands who went to scenes of violence with us regularly. They no more wanted to get caught in the middle of a gunfight between the suspect and the cops than we did.

            Finally one of the cops asked the Engine guys.

            “You find a weapon?”

            “We looked for a weapon but could not find one.”

            Our guy suddenly stopped pacing and looks up and says.

            “Gun what gun.”

            Well since no one had even so much as mentioned a shooting or a gun or even what we suspected had happened to the victim, this statement came as something of a revelation to say the least. The room got kind of quite for minute as everyone looked at the guy. The firefighters got busy again working on the patient, while the cops suddenly showed a lot of interest in our little guy.

We loaded our patient and transported her to the hospital. It turned out that the bullet had splintered as soon as it had entered her cheek and severed both her carotid arteries and jugular veins. She was dead the minute he shot her.

            I read about his trial months later in the paper. He was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison. It turned out that he had shot her once before, and spent time in prison for the crime. When he was released and she had let him back into her life.

I took the gun away

            We had a shooting one afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny, spring day. I could never understand violence on days like that. We arrived with Engine 2. A man was sitting quietly on the front porch of a rundown shanty. We almost walked past they guy, until I saw the blood on his shirt. As usual the police are nowhere insight.

            I began to exam him. He had been shot three times in the shoulder and chest. He was conscious, alert and showing no real signs of distress. The engine company and my partner begin to bandage his wounds. I set up an IV. I was looking for a vein when I heard the patient say.

            “I shot him do you want the gun?”

            I almost put the catheter through the patients arm. I looked back to see my patient handing a pistol to the Lieutenant off the Engine. The Lieutenant smiles and says.

            “Sure. I think that would be a good idea.”

            We finish patching they guy up and load him into the ambulance. His vitals remain stable. I ride in to assist the ambulance paramedic. As we head for the hospital the patient is still sitting up talking in stable condition showing no signs or symptoms of being shot three times except for the three holes in his body. He looks at me and says.

            “You know I didn’t think that little motherfucker was serious after the first shot. Shit when he shot me two more fucking times I thought “this little motherfucker is tryin to kill me.”

            I almost fell of the bench seat in the ambulance.

            “So I took the motherfuckin’ gun away from him.”

            “But…” I sputtered. Somehow I did not ask how the other guy got the gun back. 

            What was there to say. This was one tough guy. I treated him with great respect the rest he way to the hospital. The more you see, the more you don’t know.              

I am going to die aren't I?

It was just after noon on one of those scorching hot Florida summer days. I was on Rescue 1 with Mike Mahoney. He had been traveled in to ride with me. My normal partner was on vacation. We got a call for a shooting. A child was involved.

I worked Rescue 1 through traffic to a small ramshackle wood frame house. All the doors and windows were wide open. It had no air conditioning. We found a young boy about twelve lying on the couch. He had a hole the size of my fist just below his clavicle. He was staring up at us with frightened eyes. Silent. He did not cry or ask for help he just laid there.

It seems he and his brother or cousin, I never got he story straight, were playing with a 30-06 rifle. Somehow it went off. The rounded entered his back just below the shoulder. When it exited, it blew a hole large enough to put your fist in just below the clavicle. A huge artery runs just under your clavicle, if the bullet had lacerated that artery there would not be much we could do for him, but there was almost no blood from the wound. He was pale, cool and diaphoretic.

He was conscious and alert as Mike and I began to work on him. We bandaged his wound as best we could. With a wound as large as his was it was difficult. The best way to bandage a wound is to wrap it and get some pressure on it as you tighten the wrapping. We could not wrap it. It was too big, and in the wrong place to get a good purchase with the Kling.

By now the house was filling up with responders. Engine 2’s crew was there to help us. The normal noise of the organized chaos found at a shooting scene soon filled the house, as firefighters and police officers work side by side on completely different planes. Fire and police radios were blaring. The Engine Company and the ambulance crew were working around everybody and getting things organized enough for transport. The cops asking questions and looking for weapons while firefighters moved equipment and furniture around as we worked on the boy.

We started two IV’s to try and replace the blood he had lost until they could get some whole blood in him at the hospital. He remained conscious through out the treatment, watching us with big frightened eyes that seemed to realize just how badly he was hurt. So I started to talk to him as we worked on him.

“Look partner we are going to get you bandaged up and ready to go to the hospital.”

“ I am going to start an IV now. There is going to be a pinch, so get ready.”

“You need another IV in the other arm get ready again.”

He just watched everything with those big frightened eyes.

With no air conditioning in the small house and the dead of a Florida summer, we were all soon dripping sweat. I called the hospital on the telemetry and gave a report.

“He’s missing a finger.” Mike said.

“What?”

“Yeah, the bullet must have taken it off as it exited.”

Mike doing a good secondary examination of the boy found something that had been missed in the initial exam. It was something I was not really worried about given; he was not going to die because of that finger. But if we could find the finger, it could be re-attached.

“If somebody can find it. That would be great.” I said loud enough for the firefighters and cops to hear. There was suddenly change in the clamor and they began to look for the missing finger. Mike and I continued to package the boy up so we could transport him to the hospital. We had him on oxygen, his wound had been bandaged as best we could, we had two IV’s and he was stabilized on a backboard. We needed to get moving.

“Anybody find the finger?” I said.

A number of no’s and negatives came back from the firefighter and cops.

“We got to go. If you find it send it to ORMC.”

Mike and I loaded the boy into the back of the ambulance with the ambulance crew. I jumped into the back of the ambulance to ride in case any other treatment was necessary. I remember it as an initially a silent ride. He just watched the ambulance paramedic and I as we double checked his blood pressure and monitored his IV’s.

“How ya doing?” I asked

He just looked up at me. I made the sure the IV’s were still in place and the fluids were running wide open into his veins.

“We’re going to be at the hospital in just a minute. So hold on.”

He looked up at me with those big frightened eyes, IV’s running into each arm and a huge bandage on his shoulder and said.

“I’m going to die aren’t I?”

What the hell was I supposed to say to a 12-year-old kid with a bloody great hole big enough to put your fist into his shoulder? I did not know if he was going to die. But I said.

“Look your badly hurt, but your not going to die.”

He had caught my moment of hesitation. He knew I was either lying or I did not know.

“I am going to die aren’t I. Damn it.” He said. He was mad I was trying to lie to him.

Suddenly I was mad too. I was mad at whoever it was that left a 30-06 with some kid who did not know what he was doing, so he could blow a bloody great hole in his shoulder. I was mad at the kid for asking me if he was going to die. How in the world did I know? I was just a new paramedic trying to do my best to keep him alive. I’m not god. I’m not a doctor. I was mad because he caught me in my hesitation. He had seen through me. By catching me he had opened me up. He knew I was as scared for him as he was for himself.

“Listen goddamn it. You are not going to die.” I said. “You stay mad. Do you understand? If you stay mad and fight you won’t die.”

I believed it. I had seen it work enough to believe it. I only hoped the kid would believe me. We rolled him into the Trauma room. He was soon lost in a crowd of doctors, nurses and technicians. I pulled the doctor aside after he had examined the boy and ordered the procedures and tests necessary.

“Doc is he going to live?”

“Probably but that shoulder. That round made a mess of that shoulder. Most of the muscle has been destroyed, I don’t know what kind of use he will have of it.”

I said thanks and left him to the doctors and nurses. Mike and I restocked the truck and replaced the IV’s and administration sets we had used. We got back on the truck and went off to finish our shift. But that boy has stayed with me all of these years.

I never found out what happened to him. They shipped him up to surgery and he disappeared. I called a week or so later but the hospital was unwilling to give out information out patient information to paramedics. So he disappeared like the vast majority of my patients. The only one’s whose outcomes we knew for sure were the one’s who died when we were there.

But he had taught me something. Something that I would use for the rest of my career, that was to never to exaggerate or lie to a patient, if they were going to survive they would going to have join the fight. Tell them as much of the truth as you know it. I had seen enough to know that patients died who I had thought would live, and patients lived who I thought would die. So I decided it was not my call to tell them but if asked I would tell them the same thing I had told the boy. We were there trying to help, we were going to deliver them to the hospital who will continue that fight so join us in that fight.

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.