The woman who jumped into the back of our ambulance was gripping her crotch uncomfortably. She sat down on the bench and slid over to the middle, all the while her left hand maintained a vice-like grip on her privates. She looked at us with desperate pleading eyes.
“IT BURNS SO BAD WHEN I PEE!”
Even from a relative distance, I could smell the distinct, pungent odor of stale alcohol on her breath as she spoke. It was mixed with a faint odor of urine coming from her clothes.
“I’m DYING, you just don’t understand!” she continued. “I gotta pee all the time but then I don’t!”
Only a few minutes earlier, my partner and I had been following a police car going lights and sirens. There was information coming over the PD frequency that a shooting had occurred nearby and when the police car raced past us, we joined them. We notified our dispatcher that we were on the way to a potential GSW [Gun Shot Wound] and gave the location we were headed towards. We arrived before we were even finished telling the dispatcher about it.
There was a block party going on and aside from the street being cordoned off, numerous cars and scooters were double-parked along the roads leading towards it. Unable to make it down the street due to barriers, we stopped at the intersection and parked haphazardly behind the police car which was also somewhat askew.
Ah, trauma…
Most EMS personnel love a good trauma call. Its adrenaline-inducing fast pace can provide a sensation similar to a runner’s high. It’s just enough euphoria to keep you interested, not too much to cloud your judgment. As a sporadic weekend athlete, I can attest that the endorphin reaction from trauma has a marked edge over the experience that happens after a satisfying run.
It was a hot summer night and we pulled up to mayhem. Shots had been fired into a block party crowd and people were running and screaming all around. Although several police cars were already at the location, we were the only ambulance and people immediately shouted directions at us.
“He’s over there!”
“That way!”
“He’s lying in the street!”
Everyone was indicating the same particular location in the disorganized chaos down the road. It was obvious that we definitely had one patient, perhaps there were more. We requested additional units from dispatch.
After collecting our trauma bag and a backboard we opened the large doors at the rear of our truck in order to take out the stretcher. That’s when the crotch-clutching woman clad in fuchsia hopped in.
“IT BURNSSSSS!” she cried.
“Lady,” my partner began. “You gotta get out! Someone’s been shot here!”
“I don’t care!” she said. Her look of desperate pleading took on a more angry expression. “My pee is on FIRE! I need a hospital!” She wasn’t asking.
My partner and I looked at each other in disbelief.
“Ma’am, please,” I tried. “More ambulances are coming, but for now, you’ve got to get out. Someone is in critical condition over there.”
“This ain’t critical? It’s been going on now for, like, TEN DAYS!”
Was this supposed to make us more sympathetic? Because to us, it sounded as if she could endure the fire in her pants a little bit longer if she’d already been dealing with it for ten days.
People were still yelling at us and pointing down the block. They wanted us to hurry, he’d been shot in the chest, the consensus seemed to be saying.
A GSW to the chest?
That was EMS gold. It was a priority trauma job, something we could actually do something for. There was a real chance to make a critical difference for a victim of terrible violence. It was everything we had raced over here for.
But first, we had to send the pink tracksuit woman on her way.
One of the police officers on the scene wondered why we weren’t already running down the block with our stretcher and came over. He noted our dilemma and told us, “Go. I’ll take care of this situation.”
We grabbed our gear and rolled the stretcher past groups of frightened and panicked party-goers. We quickly found a young man, he couldn’t have been more than 20, lying in the street near a table covered with spilled-over food items. He was using his fingers to plug up a hole on the left side of his chest.
“They got me,” he told us, gasping and out of breath.
The wound was fairly large, indicating a large caliber bullet. There didn’t appear to be an exit wound but we could tell there were some other bullet holes located on limbs which, at the time, didn’t concern us as much. We would have to work quickly to mitigate the anticipated blood loss.
“I GOT SOMETHING TOO!”
We turned around to see that the woman holding onto her genitals for dear life had followed us to the patient, the critical patient.
Good job, there, officer.
Well, at least he’d gotten her out of our truck.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said my partner.
“This ain’t no joke!” she replied angrily. “I saw you first. Plus, like, MY issue been going on longer. Ten days at least. TEN DAYS! You know what it’s like to pee FIRE for TEN DAYS? Let him get the next one.”
“That’s not how this works,” I answered. “If this has been going on for ten days, ten more minutes aren’t going to make much of a difference but for this man, ten minutes is a really big deal!”
It’s called the Golden Hour of Trauma. Studies have shown that the faster a trauma victim gets to an operating room, the better his chances of survival. There were things we could do on scene and/or en route, important things, but getting to an OR within an hour’s time was the critical factor.
The woman ignored me and laid herself down on our stretcher. The growing crowd came to our assistance as we worked to stabilize the man.
“EXCUSE ME!” screamed a bystander. “That bed is NOT for you!”
“Can’t you see that boy is bleeding from a HOLE in his CHEST? What is WRONG with you?”
“I’m the one who called 911!” said another. “And I sure as hell didn’t call for no ‘ho with gonorrhea.”
The woman quickly jumped up off our bed and got in the face of the bystander who had accused her of sexual improprieties. Her hand had finally released its grip on her genitalia and was now clenched into a fist directed at him.
“This is no STD! You don’t know what my problem is. Mind your own business.”
Another police officer quickly intervened. As he separated them, the pink-clad woman screamed up at the sky, “I’m a victim too, you know!”
The crowd responded with insulting remarks about the woman’s sexual history.
“No, the real victim is anyone who pays you $6 for a blow job.”
The woman wearing neon pink was prepared to fight each and every one of them but the police officer was able to steer her away before more violence ensued on Vernon Avenue.
It was obvious to even our lesser-trained bystanders that our 20-year-old GSW had serious, life-threatening injuries. He had been shot three times and it seemed that one bullet had pierced the air space around his lungs, causing pressure in his chest and increased pain while breathing. We were able to rapidly insert a needle into his chest cavity to release some of the air. Our patient expressed some momentary relief. He needed an operating room and a surgeon as quickly as possible.
As we started to rush our patient to the ambulance we were eventually joined by the intoxicated woman in pink again. I have no idea how she kept escaping the watchful eye of anyone who volunteered to keep her away from us. She seemed to have lightning-fast abilities in catching up with us.
My partner got on the radio and requested an ETA [Estimated Time of Arrival] for any incoming units. Simultaneous trauma jobs in our vicinity had all available units tied up on other jobs. There would be a wait.
The voice over the radio was loud enough for the woman to hear.
“Well?” said the woman, who had now resumed her impenetrable grip on her privates. She was hunched over now and limping. This woman who had evaded every law enforcement officer and bolted down the block to find us had suddenly deteriorated into a frail person who could hardly walk.
“I GOTTA GO! You can’t leave me here!”
When we reached our ambulance and loaded our actual patient into the vehicle, the usual discussion among the NYPD began as to who was going to escort the patient to the trauma hospital. With the added impediment of the complaining woman dressed in pink, a potential delay was gearing up to become even longer. Our patient needed to go right away.
There is some dispute over the issue of patient abandonment which factored into our last-minute decision to take the woman along with us. Aside from the fact that our adrenaline stores were starting to wane, breaking down our wall of resistance, a very real question about whether or not we were violating our certification came into play.
Several legal terms were quickly considered, including “duty to act”, “abandonment”, and “nonfeasance”. There continues to be a debate as to how these issues are applied when more than one patient presents and one of those is critical. At that moment, it was easier to just take the woman with us than deal with unwanted consequences later or be delayed in any way by her removal.
The woman sat on the bench again, along with an officer. A notification was given to the nearest trauma center, which in our case, was in another borough. The woman was displeased with our hospital choice.
“Queens?” she made a face indicative of the ingestion of a sour foodstuff. “Queens? Really? We ain’t got no hospitals in Brooklyn you approve of?”
“We’re going to a trauma center,” I patiently explained as I adjusted the IV and prepared for another.
“I know my infection is hurting but I wouldn’t say it’s traumatic. I’m sorry if I was being a bit over-dramatic.”
Was that an apology?
“We need a surgeon for this guy!” I said, no doubt my exasperation audible to this woman oblivious to the bleeding guy on the stretcher. The cop just shook his head. It was useless trying to explain, his telepathy told me.
I shook my head in agreement and took another blood pressure on the guy with all the bullet holes.
The woman resumed her tale of woe regarding the ongoing urinary tract infection [UTI]. She was familiar with them, had experienced them before, and wondered why she was cursed with them repeatedly.
Our gunshot patient interrupted his facial expressions of pain and suffering to say to me, “Is she being serious?”
I had no answer to give him.
We made it to the hospital in the vast reaches of Queens County very quickly. The staff was there, ready and waiting outside, to receive our GSW. As soon as the door opened, however, they met our UTI first.
“Ain’t this a nice surprise? I can’t believe you’re all here!” she remarked with a big smile. “The hospitals in Brooklyn don’t do this! I’m going to Queens from now on!”
There was some momentary confusion but everyone mostly ignored her as they focused on our young man on the stretcher. They circled around him, asking questions and shouting instructions to each other. They grabbed onto the stretcher and we all raced him down the corridor to the entrance.
The woman watched as the staff left her alone and she wasn’t happy about it.
She walked slowly, hand on crotch, and with a significantly more pronounced limp, behind us. My partner stayed back with her but she felt abandoned, yelling out “What about me!” at least once.
No one listened. Our guy was wheeled into the trauma room and they got to work on him right away.
“Was that the family?” one of the registration people asked. When I told her that she was another patient she gave me a sour expression, similar to the one the UTI lady had given me before. Apparently, these situations never occurred in Queens.
My partner escorted our UTI patient to the triage area and asked her a few questions for the paperwork we would have to do for our additional patient. She was indignant the entire time, wondering why not one of the many people who had greeted us as the doors of our ambulance opened, couldn’t have devoted their attention to her.
Since the triage nurse was in with our GSW, no one was around to listen to her complaints at the main triage desk. After waiting less than five minutes, she got up and started walking around the ER demanding a bed.
A hospital police officer quickly came over to mitigate the disruption to the busy ER.
“I need a bed! I gotta pee but I can’t!” she pleaded with him.
He looked around and directed her to the restroom.
“NO!” she yelled. “I gotta pee but I need a bed!”
“You want to urinate on a stretcher instead of a toilet?” he said, dumbfounded. “That’s the first time someone admitted it outright.”
At that point, our GSW was wheeled out of the trauma room for his trip to the operating room. He was surrounded by a large team of doctors and nurses as they quickly walked to the elevator. This enraged the woman even further. The critical trauma victim had gotten a team of specialized medical personnel and she, suffering from an infection in need of an antibiotic, was still waiting for a stretcher. It was outrageous, apparently.
The woman became very angry, shouting some derogatory words at the hospital police office and threatening to inflict violence on anyone who disrespected her ‘again’. The officer called for assistance at this perceived threat and the woman was handcuffed and restrained onto a stretcher.
She had gotten her bed at last.
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