One day my partner and I were called to a wrist injury in the projects on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The way the buildings were situated to the street made parking close to the address very difficult. Many housing projects have roadways that can get you closer but this one either didn’t or it was blocked in some way (not uncommon) so we had to walk a bit of a distance to get to the actual address.
The call was something of a low priority that we assumed didn’t even warrant the stair chair but we brought it with us. We always bring a specific set of equipment with us regardless of call type because things can often be much different on the scene as opposed to the way it was described to the 911 dispatcher. As EMTs, that set meant a tech bag, an oxygen bag, a semi-automatic defibrillator, and a carrying device, which 99% of the time is a stair chair.
Once at the apartment, we found that the 911 dispatcher had been 100% correct-it was a wrist injury. An approximately 35-year-old woman had fallen two weeks prior and her wrist was wrapped in an ace bandage. She had gone to the hospital twice during that two-week period where each time x-rays had been taken and exams conducted and her injury had been determined to be a sprain. She had been prescribed pain killers and given instructions on limiting motion to her wrist along with a date to return for a follow-up.
The woman believed that both determinations were wrong, that her wrist must be fractured because she still could not move her wrist without pain. We pointed out that her instruction sheet indicated her wrist would be painful for possibly a month, even with a sprain but she was positive her wrist was far more badly damaged than they had made it out to be and was requesting a third hospital evaluation at a different facility. This would also be her third ambulance trip for the same injury.
Despite the fact that she ambulated around her apartment very easily while getting her papers together, changing her clothes, and searching for her ID, when it came to getting to the ambulance she said she would be unable to do so without assistance. She was too weak to even walk down the hall, she said, and she required the stair chair which we thought we wouldn’t need. Thankfully, the elevator was working (not always guaranteed) so there was no actual lifting but she was rather heavy and pushing the chair was a slow endeavor as we had parked so far and most of the roadways were not smoothly paved.
As we were slowly making our arduous journey to the ambulance, shots suddenly rang out, many of them.
It was a sound we were familiar with and immediately understood the danger. My partner was able to maneuver the chair behind a large playground object. The bullets were coming from multiple directions, but it seemed the whimsical animal we decided to hide behind was a good shield. It was a large purple hippo.
In happier circumstances, I’m sure children enjoyed climbing the concrete hippopotamus. The patient, also familiar with what was going on, hastily unstrapped herself from our chair and took off running.
My partner cheerfully announced “10-96!” to me, which is our radio code for ‘left the scene’. This made me laugh, despite the circumstances.
When the gunfire died down, we quickly made our way to our ambulance and while we were putting away our equipment I was tapped on the shoulder by a young man about 16 or 17 years old.
“I’m hit,” he said casually and lifted up his shirt to show me a small wound to his abdomen. The side door to the ambulance was open and he got in.
My partner had been on the radio asking for PD and additional ambulances in case there were injuries. He hadn’t seen the man who approached me. As he made his way around the vehicle he saw the teenager sitting in our truck and asked him what he was doing. I had gone around to the other side of the vehicle to obtain a backboard, which was our protocol at the time. Another slightly comical moment ensued of my partner and I completely missing each other walking around the vehicle to get to different compartments to get various equipment.
Once reunited, we worked very quickly to treat the patient and prepare for our trip to the trauma center. There is a ‘golden hour’ that we use as a rule, getting the trauma patient to a surgeon in as little time as possible. We closed up our doors with an officer and the patient’s friend accompanying us.
It would turn out during the ride that the accompanying friend had actually shot the patient in the confusion. Apparently, there were multiple targets involved in the incident and shots were fired from many people aimed (poorly) at multiple others.
It was a surreal time where none of these circumstances were treated as unusual and my partner didn’t blink an eye when we arrived at the hospital with one patient and one, now-prisoner who was completely cooperative and contrite. There was no animosity between the two with the shooter letting his friend know “if you need blood, man, I got you. I’m O, the universal donor. Good luck.”
Everything went very smoothly and our man survived.
In the confusion, there had been no second call number given to shooting since it occurred at the same address. I had prepared two ambulance call reports for this call number- one for the wrist injury and one for the gunshot victim. There was also another gunshot victim who had been taken by another crew who was also under the same call number.
Later on, when our ambulance call reports were looked at by the police or the DA there was some confusion regarding which victim went to which hospital since it turned out that both shooting victims had the same first name. They had contacted us for statements about the incident and to clear up which patient was ours.
“And what’s up with this lady with the wrist fracture?” We were asked. “Will she be pressing charges?”
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