Category: EMT (Page 1 of 2)

Electrons in the Basement

July 18, 2025 / Nancy Gwillym

We were sitting on the corner of a busy intersection awaiting our next call. The day was threatening to be a busy one but not for us, at least not yet. Someone had left a magazine in the truck, and I was reading it during our downtime.

My partner, Jack, was in the driver’s seat, preferring to watch the rushed comings and goings of busy New Yorkers navigating their way through the crowded streets. To our right was a large McDonald’s restaurant that he quickly became fixated on.

“Check out this woman,” he said, laughing. “Someone really set her wig on fire.”

I turned to see an older woman adjusting a plastic rain bonnet despite the clear skies. “Maybe she’s just preparing for the worst,” I suggested.

Jack, who had been watching her for much longer, told me she had been going back and forth into the restaurant, each time yelling something to everyone inside as she was leaving. But this time she continued walking away and I went back to perusing my magazine. There was an article about The Universe and how it would send you what you needed. It seemed like too simplistic an answer for all of life’s difficulties. I continued to read it with the intention of balking at its ridiculous premise.

A short time later, I was startled to hear some knocking at my window. It was the woman with the rain bonnet. My partner grinned as I reluctantly rolled down my window.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Something needs to be done. Right now. There’s a lot of nefarious things going on in the basement of that McDonald’s. I know it. I can feel the electrons. I’m sensitive, you know. This isn’t my first rodeo. They’re being manipulated. The electrons are being manipulated. They must have a device in that basement. But they won’t let me see it. Every time I go in there, they threaten to call the police! Can you believe it? On me! Someone has obviously gotten to them. I don’t know what to do. They tell me they don’t even have a basement. Liars. I tried to show them. The electrons are being manipulated. I know it. It’s not the first time…”

My partner seemed to be enjoying himself as he watched the woman scream at me. The people who like to rant and rave always come to my side of the ambulance. I could see his mind working, however, and developed a little smile of my own.

“Ma’am,” he asked. “What would you like us to do?”

She looked at him as if the answer was obvious. “They’ve got to be stopped! If they keep doing these things to the electrons it’s going to be like last time, and nobody wants that to happen! I even think it will be worse. They have more electrons here. At least, I think they do. But I DON’T KNOW because they won’t let me into the basement!”

I didn’t know what to say but Jack took care of it all himself. Honestly, the way that man could think so quickly on his feet was a seriously underrated superpower.

“Ma’am,” he said. “I think I know exactly what you mean. We will be happy to help you out.”

“Oh thank you!” she said, with a look of great relief on her face. She had finally met someone who understood the gravity of the situation.

He confidently got out of the truck and went over to my side of the ambulance. The compartment that was right behind my door holds the equipment we take on calls with us. He took out our semi-automatic defibrillator and put it on the hood of our vehicle.

The semi-automatic defibrillator is a small machine that is designed to deliver an electric shock to a person’s heart in the hopes of resetting the rhythm of a person in cardiac arrest. These machines are designed to be user-friendly and easy to use. The machine that we were using at that time utilized voice prompts which, I was about to find out, was a lucky feature to have when there’s a crazy lady at your door complaining about electrons.

Jack lifted up a small panel on the top of the little machine to activate the set up instructions. “Check electrodes,” it said in it’s impersonal, electronic voice. It was directing us to attach the large adhesive pads to the patient’s chest in order for it to evaluate the heart rhythm. “Check electrodes,” it repeated. It would continue to nag us until the electrodes were finally connected to a patient.

“That’s very interesting,” remarked my partner, with some concern. The device continued to implore us to check the damn electrodes.

“What? What’s going on?” said the woman. She was starting to get nervous again.

“It’s detecting electRODES.” he said solemnly. “You heard it, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“I was hoping it was just electrONS, but it’s electRODES. They’ve got electrodes.”

“I KNEW IT!” she said, nodding excitedly. “I knew there was something going on. But I did hear it say ‘electrodes'” She seemed to be studying the machine.

“Well, you see…” began my partner with a most serious expression on his face. “If it were just electrons, I think we would have been able to do something. But electrodes, that’s kind of out of our scope. This is a much bigger problem. Electrodes.” He shook his head slowly.

She continued nodding and together they appeared to be brainstorming.

“You’re going to need more help than we can give you. I but I know someone who can do it.”

She looked determined to do whatever it took. My partner reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of quarters. He gave them to the woman. I could see where this was going, and it made me appreciate my partner’s genius once again.

He directed me to hand him a pen and paper. I watched him as he wrote down the phone number to our station.

“Ma,am,” he began, with utmost seriousness. “You need to speak with someone they call…The Lieutenant. This is his number. Only speak to him. You need to let him know what’s going on over here right away. This is serious. There are electrodes in that basement!”

She looked up at him with matched seriousness. She was up to the task at hand, that’s for sure.

“But I’m going to warn you,” he continued. “This man may pretend that he doesn’t know who you are. It’s very likely he’s going to say that he doesn’t know what you are talking about. He may even, and I hope he’s not this arrogant, he may even pretend not to know anything about electrons and electrodes!”

“That Bastard!” she gasped.

For a brief moment, I was conflicted. We had wanted some vengeance on Lt. Lloyd but this may have been too much. Lt. Lloyd’s adversarial managing style had caused us more than a few headaches but I didn’t think it would compare to what was coming from a determined woman complaining about electrodes manipulating a fast food restaurant. I dug into my bag to add some more quarters to devote to this project anyway.

“Now, you cannot let this man off the hook,” he said. “He’s the one. He may be the ONLY one. It’s his job to take care of this. You heard it yourself, right? Electrodes. Something needs to be done. Do you think you can handle it?”

She nodded vigorously. No ‘Lieutenant’ was going to put one over on this woman. No way.

She marched right over to the phone booth which was only a few feet behind her. She resolutely pushed in a quarter and punched in the numbers. We watched her as she yelled into the phone. Mid-rant she stopped and slowly looked at the handset. When she figured out she had been hung up on, she forcefully threw another quarter into the machine and dialed again. She looked over at us and we gave her the thumbs up sign. Encouraged, she went back to work demanding that the Lieutenant do something about the electrode problem in the basement. A few more hang-ups and re-dials ensued. The day was shaping up to be a pleasant one.

I had to admit that maybe I’d been wrong. Yes, woman’s magazine, sometimes the universe does send you exactly what you need.

Two Idiots Change a Tire

June 8, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

Not long after starting my new job on the ambulance, I was partnered with another graduate of the Bureau of Training’s Cadet 6 class. At best, we had only about five shifts between us, all with more experienced partners, at least. Although the ink had barely dried on our EMT certifications, we were handed the keys to a $250,000 vehicle and set loose on the residents of Manhattan. It was a glorious time to be in EMS.

When I first started, it was not uncommon for two people from the same class to work together immediately after graduation. There were some lieutenants who frowned upon it and tried to divide established partners for a shift so they could impart their knowledge on us novices, but more often than not, they’d cave to the objections of people who did not want to be split up to “babysit” the newbie.

It’s probably good that our service moved towards an internship type of system that would have prevented this, but back then the impetus was really more on filling vacant seats with anyone they could get. The patients would probably be OK, they reasoned. We were both EMTs, they reminded us, so we should know what we are doing. And as new EMTs, our knowledge was even better than our seasoned cohorts because it was still fresh in our minds.

At the start of our shift, we loaded our brand-new helmets and pristine, newly-stocked tech bags onto, possibly, the worst vehicle in the fleet.

It spewed black smoke out of the tailpipe. The then-standard carpeting on our center console was covered in long-expired foodstuffs. Since the cabinets in the patient compartment slid open as if they had been greased, our supplies were all over the floor. But we checked and cleaned up our ambulance and headed out for what ended up feeling like the longest shift in eternity.

We decided to take turns driving because none of our other partners had let us do it before and we had no idea when we ever would again. Our ambulance for the day had terrible handling and seemed to veer toward the left all the time. It was also incredibly loud and would randomly backfire. Now that our service has switched over to diesel vehicles, it’s one feature I look back on fondly.

Our first patient was a 19-year-old man who lived with his girlfriend on the top floor of a four-story walk-up. (This kind of building dynamic would become a standard theme for me for the next 30 years).

The man’s neck was hurting after sleeping in an uncomfortable position in a drafty room. For some reason, we ended up carrying this guy down those four flights of stairs on a backboard with a cervical collar. The board and collar was standard procedure for a neck injury but technically, some trauma should have been involved.

I remember him clutching his teddy bear the whole way down those grueling stairs. I don’t know what we were thinking. Days and months later, whenever we saw each other after this shift, my Cadet 6 partner and I would always bring up how stupid we were for doing this.

“Remember the teddy bear carry down?” one of us would say. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

We did all kinds of stupid things that day, things we would never think to do three months later when we would officially pass the delineation point where we could finally be called “seasoned” EMTs.

We took patients to the hospitals they insisted on, even if the hospital they wanted didn’t have the services they needed. (There were no computer terminals in our vehicle that gave us up-to-date information on hospital availability back then.) And we spent far too much time trying to park in ways that wouldn’t inconvenience other motorists.

As the day went on, it became more and more difficult to ignore the wheel issues that were plaguing our driving efforts. So we got out and did something much more idiotic than carrying a teddy-bear-clutching 19-year-old down four flights of stairs for no legitimate reason. We went out mechanical for a flat tire.

The tire, we figured out later, had probably been flat for weeks, having been conveniently overlooked by the more experienced (smarter) crews. But because we were stupid, we called for the tire truck.

The way the procedure was meant to go was that a tire truck would arrive at your location and hand you the tire and the tools. Then he’d lean against his truck and watch you change the tire while he smoked a cigarette and thumbed through pornography.

I remember the fat, bald “Tire Mechanic” snickering as he handed me the tire iron. He obviously didn’t think a woman could change a tire and part of me wanted to prove to him that I could.

I had changed tires on my own car a few times; I knew I was capable. But the other part of me was thinking about how the “mechanic” was making three times my salary and he was just going to stand around and watch. I seriously considered ways I could mess the whole operation up.

It wouldn’t be hard to screw up the tire procedure, I quickly learned. I was pretty sure I zoned out during the tire-changing demonstration during our Emergency Vehicle Driver Training class anyway. Hopefully, my partner had paid attention.

It was a hot June day and we were getting filthy and tired. But we muddled our way through it. It was arduous work just to get the lug nuts off. It had been ridiculous to equivocate my car tire-changing skills with this behemoth. It wasn’t like changing a regular tire because they were bigger and two of them were loaded onto one axle.

Then, when we started loading the new tire on, the fat, bald guy suddenly noticed that he’d given us the wrong kind. He had to put down his Hustler magazine and go through his stock again.

Since we had inconvenienced him, he made some snarky comments under his breath as he went through his supply. After he gave us the new, correctly sized tire, he resumed his leaning position on his truck and found the previous spot in his porn rag. He made sure that I could see what he was looking at and gave me a disgusting wink. His repulsiveness assured me that naked women in print was probably the most he could hope for, sexually.

One important thing I did learn, finally, was the art of time management. At one point, I reminded my partner what time it was and how much time was left in our shift. He instantly understood that we were going to make sure this activity would be the last thing we did on our shift together.

So, we took our time and worked to ensure that everything we did was done methodically, slowly, and re-examined. Our tire truck guy kept checking his watch with a sigh as if we were delaying an impending meal break. He stopped giving me snickering winks and started getting impatient, which gave me some inner satisfaction.

When we were finished, our white shirts, which had already gotten a little dirty earlier, were now covered in grease and soot. They would never be truly white ever again. My hair had a new shape and had expanded further outward (it was the 80s). My partner’s hands were cut up and his glasses were askew. Our new cavalier attitude towards our appearance did not go unnoticed by our coworkers.

“But you survived, didn’t you?” they said.

Exact Words (part one)

May 24, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

Every three years, EMTs and paramedics in New York state need to renew their certifications. This involves attending a refresher course and then taking a written and a practical exam. Refresher set up has changed several times over the years, but in it’s best incarnation it involved three weeks at the Bureau of Training. During that time we would review for the state exam, practice skills, and go over new policies that may have changed since the last refresher. It was also a great time to meet coworkers from other parts of the service and share stories.

One refresher year, I was reunited with a friend I had gone through paramedic school with. At that time he was working in the Office of Medical Affairs [OMA]. Among other things, the people who work in OMA review random pre-hospital care reports. They generate statistics and monitor the quality of care patients are getting.

The call report has also gone through many changes over the years. Although now they are completely digital, for my entire career in the streets they were paper. They changed tiny spaces for the narrative into larger spaces, sections were added for billing purposes, the refusal area has seen it’s language changed, and other sections have been moved and changed over time. Even the report itself has gone from being an ACR [Ambulance Call Report] to being a PCR [Pre-Hospital Care Report] to now having that little ‘e’ in front of PCR [ePCR] to emphasize our jump to digital.

At the time I was taking refresher with my colleague from OMA, call reports started being scanned into a computer, as opposed to being stuffed into an envelope and mailed to OMA. I was under the assumption that they spent less time reading them now and more time analyzing the statistics generated by the computer, which were based on the filled in boxes.

Despite thinking that I had no audience, I still took great pride in writing my call reports. I tended to go beyond the dull narratives and a one-size-fits-all approach to writing them by adding details that would help me remember a specific call if I were ever questioned about it, either in an OMA review or in court. My favorite, and the favorite part of everyone who worked on my unit, was the “Chief Complaint”, which in those days, was a long, wide box on the top of the paper. It’s purpose was to explain why the ambulance had been called. I regarded it as the title of everything else that followed.

From the very first day we learned how to fill out the form, it had been reiterated to us over and over again that we are instructed to use the patient’s exact words. Most people ignored this directive, given the prevalence of foul language and extraneous sentences people tended to use when telling the story behind their phone call to 911. The majority of EMTs and paramedics made an effort to summarize the words that patients actually used, to gear it more toward what was actually going on, but not us. While others were editing those exact words to something more concise (“I have diarrhea”), my partners and I would delight in waiting for the patient to utter just the right sentence that described things the way he felt them (“My ass is like a fountain.”)

You have to take your joy where you can find it. If our service wanted exact words, then damn it, that’s what we were going to give them.

As I was sitting next to my friend in refresher, his department-issued cell phone rang while we were on a short break. Not long into the call, I heard my friend say, “…Oh yeah, she’s sitting next to me right now. Sure I’ll put her on.”

I reluctantly took the phone thinking, of course, that I was in trouble. No one from OMA just wants to say hello.

“Hello, is Nancy on 37V?” I said yes. “Hello, this is Dr. Andrews, in charge of OMA.” I knew Dr. Andrews as one of our doctors who took our telemetry phone calls and did some of our CME [Continuing Medical Education] classes. I didn’t know he had become the MD in charge of OMA. Despite the friendly tone in his voice,I was leery. It couldn’t be good if they knew your unit.

“I just wanted to let you know how much we enjoy reading your pre-hospital care reports over here.”

“You do?” I asked cautiously. I still wasn’t sure if this was a trap of some kind.

His voice remained friendly, “Oh yes! Not just yours but everyone on your unit. Reading these forms gets pretty tedious because they’re usually boring which is why we look forward to the ones from your unit. “

“Really?” I answered. “We were kind of under the impression that no one really reads them. It’s nice to know someone appreciates them as much as we enjoy writing them.”

“Oh you have no idea!” gushed Dr. Andrews. “We love them. We have a board where we write down the latest chief complaints from your unit. We put a star next to the ones where we recommend reading the comments as well.”

“No way!” I was flattered.

“Oh yes,” he told me. “It’s the 37V board. No one uses the chief complaint section the way you guys do. My personal favorite is ‘They sent two hot ones straight to my juice, yo!’ ” He was talking about the chief complaint for a man who had been shot twice in the testicles. It was a personal favorite of mine, as well. That one probably had one of those stars next to it.

He ran through a list of a few others they had enjoyed and told me to let my partners know that their pre-hospital care reports were appreciated as well. He said to keep up the good work and I thanked him again. As I handed the phone back to my friend I still couldn’t shake the thought that I had been set up in some way. But our PCRs did make for a fun read. He hadn’t been the first person to tell us.

Over the years we had written many of our best chief complaints down, to share with our coworkers and friends, and also for ourselves, to make us smile when there seemed to be little to smile about. My list includes:

“God wants me to suffer.”

“People tell me I smell bad so I want to make sure it’s not a disease before I take a shower I don’t need.”

“They beat me like a pinata.”

“I didn’t think I needed to read the directions that came with my new saw.”

“My foot is a new shade of green.”

“Cheap vodka makes me drive like an asshole.”

“I broke my arm on this shampoo bottle.”

“I’m just a loser. Take me to the hospital.”

“I am the great Mephistopheles of legend and lore. I inhabit this body now. Take me to your governing elders.”

“The aliens gave me an implant and I want it removed.”

“I’m just in it for the lawsuit.”

“You can’t brainwash someone who doesn’t understand and yet here I am.”

“He planted it in my rear end so hard, now my neck is crooked.” (this call concerned a car accident where the the driver of the front car claimed whiplash.)

“I just found out about ass cancer and I don’t want it.”

“When you’re a playa, penicillin is just part of the regimen.”

“A demon told me to stab myself but all I had was a pen.”

“My girl tried to give me a salmon named Ella with her warm-ass soup”

“My brother is in the hospital having a heart attack so I must be having one too because we’re twins.”

“I used to love eggs but now I don’t anymore.”

“My new girlfriend’s mother told me she didn’t like the way I looked. Do you think I look sick too? I don’t really feel sick.”

“I’m pretty sure I have a sexually transmitted disease. I deserve to have a sexually transmitted disease.”

“My goldfish gave me gonorrhea.”

“My asthma boy had a seizure.”

“There ain’t no kind of juice that ain’t coming out of that man’s leg.”

“WebMD says I have cancer.”

“That bish put a curse on me and I need it removed.”

“I went on a bender I don’t remember and now it hurts when I pee.”

“The hairs growing out of my mole are turning gray, like my beard.”

“My love juice is looking kinda green these days.”

“I got mascara in my eye.”

“My ex is a demon and I’m scarred by her love.”

“I made my boyfriend break my nose so I could get free plastic surgery.”

“My scalp is peeling off! I got these white scalp flakes on my shoulders!”

“I’m running out of reasons to go. You just write down anything you want.”

“Prostate cancer runs in my family.” (this was from a young woman who was very concerned over information discovered at a family BBQ)

“I can’t reach my toenails to cut them and they keep getting caught up in my socks.”

“I made a pact with tequila and now it’s coming to collect.”

“The peoples in the commercials for eczema medications looks so happy and I want to be like them. Tell them I have eczema.”

“This might look like a mosquito bite but it was from the government.”

“No one can touch me, I’m made of fruit.”

“My skin is dry but when I drink a lot of water all I do is pee, it completely bypasses my skin.”

“I know now that I can’t trust my dealer’s idea of a ‘good time’. “

“The roaches have it in for me. I see them watching. And plotting.”

“My face looked very puffy in this picture my mom took.”

“Take me to any hospital with a microwave that I can use on this food someone gave me that was cold.”

“I spilled orange juice on this paper cut and it must be seriously infected because it hurt like hell.”

“The bread machine sliced off my finger and it got lost in the dough.”

“The evil voice in my head learned how to play the drums.”

“It all started with a bad banana.”

“I got beat with a Slim Jim. The snack not the car opener.”

“There’s a bug in my ear and he talks too much.”

“I think I’ve got a disease.” (this guy would not elaborate as to what disease or why he thought he had one).

“I broke my tooth eating pudding.”

“I’m really into that hot nurse at Bellevue. I’m just going to get her attention.”

“The drugs they prescribed make me pee a lot.” (he’d been prescribed a diuretic, which tends to do that).

“I think I’m smelling too many things. This needs to be stopped.”

“I want the doctors to stop me from sweating.”

“The things I do in the bathroom ain’t right.”

“On my planet, eating paper doesn’t make your stomach hurt.”

“He been falling since the sugar ate his toes.”

“I wanna vomit so bad I could cry.”

“Every time I take tequila I wake up and everything is spinning.”

“I got a itch that makes me less of a man.”

“My cred got busted.”

“My eyes need to switch places. It’s gotta be done by Monday.”

“I don’t think crack is good for my heart.”

“He can’t stop wheazaling.”

“The gremlin I met when I was on mushrooms said I was going to die if I didn’t go to Methodist hospital and see someone called Dr. Joseph.” (strangely enough a Dr. Joseph was on duty that night)

“I need a bed and a woman.”

“There’s a smelly, yellow glue coming out of a hole in his head.”

“I was shot in the leg six years ago and today its thumping like a drum.”

“Someone needs to change my diaper.” (60 year old man)

“My hand smells. The left one.”

“I can’t reach this itch in the middle of my back.”

“I need a shrink to tell me why I attract crazy women.”

“I went to heaven in my dream but I know I’m going to the other place.”

“I gassed my face with roach spray trying to kill a mosquito.”

“The man on TV says I might have carbon monoxide in my home.”

“Women just don’t find me attractive.”

“My husband smells like pee, he must have sugar.”

“My big toenail is the same shade of yellow as my teeth.”

“I need a clean bathroom.”

“None of the doctors believe me when I tell them I’m pregnant.”

“My heart used to go ‘rum tum tum’, now it goes ‘boom boom boom'”

“I thought I could fly.”

“This tumor has it’s own zip code.” (this was for a large pimple, not an actual tumor)

“I want a doctor to prescribe me those new blue pills that will make me a hit with the ladies again.”

“I think I ate my tooth.”

“I beat the s**t out of someone, now my hand hurts.”

“Ny Quil made me have some scary dreams.”

“He beat me with my own [prosthetic] leg.”

“The old lady I tried to rob sprayed oven cleaner in my eyes.”

“God told me to cut off my hand because I didn’t need it anymore. But now I think it was probably the devil.”

“The pencil got stuck when I used it to stab the bug that lives in my ear.”

“This mole needs to come off. It’s the reason I can’t have babies.”

“God is the landlord who shut off the spigot.” (he had problems urinating)

“When they say not to put a fork in an electric outlet, they’re right.”

“That whiskey didn’t smell right but I drank it anyway.”

“My psychiatric drugs are making me crazy.”

“There’s a party going on in my ass.”

“My boy baby daddy stabbed my girl baby daddy in the ear with a skewer.”

“I don’t know man, I’ve been tired for like 30 years.”

“My stomach hurts when I eat a lot.”

“My driving instructor was right. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I took the Tylenol like they said but nothing happened and it’s been almost a half an hour.”

My First Baby Delivery

April 4, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting area perusing through piles of long-expired magazines. It was 40 minutes past my appointment time and there were others who had waited longer. The staff told us that the doctor was running late, she had an emergency delivery at the hospital. We were offered to reschedule but I preferred to get my visit over with, as did most of the others, apparently.

Eventually, the door opened and my doctor hurried in. As she took the scarf off her head, she apologized to the staff and everyone sitting.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said. “It was a difficult delivery but there’s another beautiful baby boy out there today!” Everyone clapped and the extended appointment times were quickly forgiven.

Not long after, my name was called. I put down the April 1999 edition of Mother and Baby and headed into one of the exam rooms. When she came in and saw it was me she exclaimed, “Oh! Now here is someone who will appreciate my hectic morning!” (and I did). “It was a problematic pregnancy, the numbers were off, there were issues at the hospital but it came off OK and now mother and baby are doing well.” She seemed so relieved.

“That must be the greatest experience,” I told her. “Presenting a happy mom with her healthy baby…”

She knew I was a paramedic and we had often shared interesting medical conversations interspersed with the usual chit-chat as she scraped my cervix. She was my favorite doctor by far. I had met her own kids at the office and she frequently gave me what she called “Standard Jewish Grandmother Advice” about love, baking, and getting older, even though she was not much older than I was.

“You’ve never delivered a baby?” she asked me, surprised. “You need to intercept all of those cab drivers who are doing it. They’re all over the news.”

“I’ve delivered babies,” I told her. “But I’ve never had a happy, normal delivery.”

She looked concerned, as is everyone I tell this to, especially my new coworkers who have yet to have a baby delivery under their belt. Her look turned to horror when I elaborated on the handful of delivery experiences I had. I am grateful there aren’t that many.

Often, it’s not so much the delivery but the circumstances around it. I am incredibly happy that I have not encountered any serious issues during the process itself. The mothers really do all the work, usually. You just guide the little one out, suction, flick the feet, place 2 clamps on the umbilical cord, and cut in between. Easy, right?

Not exactly, it is a bit nerve-wracking for me, for some reason. It would probably be good to do all this in a controlled environment but that has never been my experience. It’s always occurred in inconvenient and less-than-ideal areas where you’re groping about for all the little things that get scattered when you rip open an OB kit nervously.

None have ever been delivered in the back of my ambulance, which would have been a more controlled setting. But I’ve seen ambulances where a baby had been born and the aftermath made it appear as if a serial killer had brutally tortured several people with a knife so it probably isn’t as controlled as I would like to imagine it is.

The circumstances that made my delivery experiences PTSD invoking had more to do with speculation about the series of events that would happen after. All of my baby births have involved underweight, drug-addicted little infants who were quickly handed off to the social service agencies of our city. It’s difficult to process the feelings of hopelessness you experience when you assist in the arrival of someone who immediately needs help from our overburdened bureaucracies, in addition to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

The first baby I assisted in delivering was to a homeless woman in a small park flanked by tall office buildings. The park was not very big and she was right in the middle, sitting on some newspapers on the floor next to a bench.

She was naked from the waist down with her legs spread wide. She had not gotten prenatal care and wasn’t sure how far along she was. When we got there, the baby was just about to rear his tiny head. She couldn’t be moved.

As the baby was coming out, I looked up to see hundreds of people looking down at us from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the buildings surrounding us. We used a sheet to create something of a tent but they probably knew by now what was going on. It was a harrowing experience for a first-time OB call and I was far more nervous than the mom.

When the baby was born, he was really tiny. The mother smiled when we gave him to her and she rubbed his small face with her finger. She seemed a bit distant and not at all happily overwhelmed as I expected her to be.

I look back and wonder if she were trying not to get too attached to a baby that would probably be taken away and put into foster care. I had assumed she was exhausted from giving birth without an epidural.

She had told us she had given birth once before. “Another boy,” she had said, somewhat wistfully.

She told us he was in foster care, explaining that in NYC babies weren’t allowed to live on the street with homeless mothers. She expected to be given a placement in a family shelter now that she had this child. She hoped that when that happened, she could try to get her first child back. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that she probably could have gotten into a family shelter with the first child, with that policy, and yet her child was still presently in foster care.

Not long after arriving at the hospital, the baby was quickly whisked away into an incubator. We found out that he was only 5 pounds and would probably be going through some alcohol withdrawals.

People at the hospital berated us for not keeping the baby warm enough, despite using our last sheet and blasting the heat in the ambulance in the summer. This was the same hospital that was stingy with their one-for-one policy with bedsheets. We now have swaddle blankets for infants that do a better job of conserving body heat, but at the time we were at the mercy of the hospitals for sheets and blankets which were used for so many things, including blocking the view of unwanted onlookers and keeping newborns warm.

When we returned again a few days later with a different patient we were told that the mother had snuck out of the hospital, leaving her baby. She had given us all a fake name.

Once again we were treated harshly for “not checking her ID” as if we had technology that can detect fake Medicaid cards. They had fallen for the same ID but it was easier to lash out at us, I suppose.

I asked (someone else) about the baby and they said he was still in the pediatric ICU and would be placed in foster care. We were able to see him for a brief time. Surrounded by other tiny babies he looked rather healthy and very cute and also very vulnerable. I couldn’t imagine someone running out on this little one. His first experiences in this cold, harsh world had already been cold and harsh.

I was initially filled with anger towards the mother. But I understand that she was an addict and addiction-thinking is governed by instincts that become redirected toward everything substance-related. Perhaps, I reasoned, she had left him for unselfish reasons, knowing that she couldn’t give him what he needed.

It filled me with tremendous sadness, thinking about that poor little baby starting out so alone. What would life be like for him? Would he ever see his mother again? Would he meet his brother? Would he get adopted by a nice family?

Whenever I think about this call it becomes a long list of negative thoughts: of the lonely baby, the mother so substance-addicted that she chose a life on the street with her drug of choice over this little boy, the hospital with their petty need to take things out on us that we had no control over, and those office workers with their horrified faces. I imagined the story the gawkers would tell their friends later and how the story would be told.

I also wondered about all the blood that had been left in the park. We didn’t have any kind of resources to clean it up and I remembered the police officers, who had been on the scene with us, leaving at the same time. An average person walking their dog through the little area would probably assume someone had been murdered.

I never saw the mother again. It’s a little strange for EMS people to not run into the same homeless people in the area. They become our regulars and we develop a rapport with them. We even get to know the ones we don’t transport on a regular basis, waving to them as we drive around the neighborhood. Maybe she had found some other place to go or had gone into treatment, prompted by the birth of a baby she had left at the hospital.

When my story, and my exam, was finished my MD said little. I felt terrible for taking away the high of her successful morning and tried to steer the conversation toward other things. Afterward, I went over to the office staff to give them my copayment and take the usual card they hand out, which reminds you to make another appointment at a specific date. This time, I was also handed a prescription. No medications had been discussed and I was a little surprised. But it wasn’t for medication. It had the address of a bakery nearby. She had written on it, with a smiley face, “Get yourself some cheesecake. (a small one). Doctors orders”

MAST On the East River

February 9, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

My partner, Jack, and I were cruising down the FDR Drive towards another EMS station in lower Manhattan. Our lieutenant had sent us on an errand as soon as our shift started. We were to retrieve and deliver a large box of Very Important, Desperately Needed, Get Them Here ASAP supplies and equipment.

The FDR highway circles the outer edge of the borough on the east side. It was a cold January day and we could see some chunks of ice being tossed about in the choppy waves flowing next to us.

We got off at our exit but continued along the underpass near the water’s edge. Not far after getting off, we noticed some commotion up ahead. Two sanitation trucks were parked askew, along with a few random cars. A small group of people had gathered at the low wall at the side of the river. They were all fixated on something in the water.

My partner gave me a big grin, and I knew that our box of Super Important ASAP Supplies was going to wait a little while.

Jack parked our vehicle properly and we got out to see what the fuss was all about. We joined the group and looked in the direction where they were all focused. We were horrified to see a medium sized terrier struggling to stay afloat in the cold water below.

“What happened?” my partner asked.

The group explained that, minutes ago, they had witnessed the dog jump onto the wall and lose his balance, sliding over to the other side, which had a 20-foot drop towards the icy river. They were trying to find a way to get him out. Someone had obtained a rope, but it was thin, lightweight, and blowing around in the wind. As each wave crashed against the wall near the dog, the group, including my partner and me, gasped and grew more panicked.

Suddenly, one of the men jumped into the water to get him.

My partner rushed over to our ambulance. He opened one of the outer compartments which held the equipment we rarely accessed. He dug out the bag containing our MAST pants, short for Military Anti-Shock Trousers, and went to work pumping them up.

MAST pants- medical equipment and flotation device

MAST pants are a medical device once thought to assist trauma patients by shunting blood from the lower extremities to the vital core organs in the torso. They were actual pants made with rubber bladders which were inflated via a foot pump. They have since fallen out of favor, but at the time they were considered a vital piece of equipment, required on all ambulances.

Without a human or a mannequin in them, the MAST pants required a lot more air than we had ever needed in our practice drills. The two of us alternated, stomping on the pump attached to hoses that attached to the pants. It only took a few minutes to get them puffed up completely, but it felt like an eternity.

Once filled, we brought our life-saving medical device to the wall where the rope was attached, and they were thrown into the East River to be used as a flotation device for our brave swimmer and the unfortunate dog. As the man draped himself and the dog over our makeshift life preserver, he seemed relieved that some kind of plan had been enacted to get them out of the water. (Perhaps his look of relief was in response to the siren heard in the distance.)

FDNY had been called and arrived on the scene quickly. The firemen were able to reach down to grab the dog who was quickly handed to me. I began trying to warm the small animal with some sheets and blankets I had ready.

Their plan to rescue the man involved sending a ladder over the wall for him to grab. This plan would be quickly modified because the man wasn’t able to hold on to the ladder due to his hypothermia.

As the firemen lowered their ladder down the other side of the wall, my partner and I noticed something purple drift away towards the middle of the river. While the others were distracted by what was admittedly a spectacular water rescue, Jack and I watched with trepidation as our state-required medical device bobbed along the chop of the current.

We were going to have some elaborate explaining to do.

Without being able to do anything about it at the moment, I rushed to the dog to the ambulance where I tried to warm him up near the heat vents.

Shortly thereafter, he was joined by his rescuer, who was brought into our vehicle by the firemen in a large Stokes basket, which ironically resembles a small boat.

One of the firemen took the dog and I got to work cutting off the man’s wet clothing. Even my hands were becoming red and losing grip strength from handling the cold pieces of cloth, I couldn’t imagine what that man was feeling. He was so hypothermic he had stopped shivering. The man’s lungs were clear, though, and I was grateful he hadn’t aspirated any of the river water.

The heat coming out of our vents seemed pathetically lukewarm. The fireman and I tried desperately to warm our patients en route to the ER. We used every available sheet and blanket and also utilized bandages and anything else dry. Thankfully, the hospital was nearby, and we rushed our man into the ER, where quite a few of the people working there expressed disbelief that someone would risk their life to rescue an animal.

“I know if the situation were reversed he would have tried to help me,” he told the naysayers through chattering teeth.

Sadly, the little dog did not survive.

My partner gave me a few minutes to cry in the back of the ambulance before he brought up the important issue at hand: “We need to acquire another set of MAST pants.”

It was quite a dilemma. Even before their capabilities were debunked, MAST were rarely used. They weren’t something that we were going to easily find laying around in the discarded EMS equipment areas of the ER. At the stations, they were kept locked up because, we were told, they were very expensive.

Given that we could be held financially liable for the improvised flotation device making its way down the East River, this was going to be our top priority, even though we still had to pick up that Super Important Box of Very Necessary Things at the other EMS station.

We returned to the station that had been our original destination and tried various, unscrupulous, ways to gain access to their well-fortified, spare equipment locker where gilded medical treasures were kept. Our covert acquisition op was a disastrous failure. We tried a similar distraction technique back at our own station which also crashed and burned. It appeared we were ill-suited for a life of thievery and deception.

We spent the rest of the day brainstorming ways we might redistribute the city’s MAST pant supply in our direction. Many creative ideas were explored but none ended up being feasible. Eventually we resorted to volunteering ourselves for every trauma job in our vicinity so we might pretend we used them in a situation where they were warranted. As long as we had paperwork that reflected a MAST application we would be in the clear.

Unfortunately, there was no trauma to be had that day. Anything that came over as remotely shock-inducing ended up being unfounded or severely downgraded. The day was getting shorter and we needed to resolve this by the end of our tour.

We decided to pick up an auto accident in the hope that this could be our golden ticket toward a set of MAST pants. Manhattan is well known for its gridlock traffic, so collisions in the borough weren’t likely to produce the kind of injuries our anti-shock device was designed for, but we were getting desperate. It looked like we were going to have to fudge some paperwork.

It made me feel very guilty to do so, I had never lied on my call reports before, but I felt much worse about the idea of forking over a majority of my paycheck for a piece of equipment that was well on its way towards obsolescence.

I produced two call reports for the same, barely injured, patient. The correct one would be handed into the hospital, and the well-elaborated one would end up in our lieutenant’s “Review” box. It was tough keeping a straight face when we told our boss what we needed from the Fort Knox of EMS supplies, but he gave us what we needed.

As we made our way back to our truck, with a great sigh of relief and a new set of MAST pants, we were assigned another call. A multi-service operation was underway and we were going to be a part of it. Another man was in the East River and all the emergency services were converging on him.

We were assigned to a pier in the area where PD and FD harbor boats were patrolling the water. Numerous sightings had been called in for a man drowning. According to the chatter on our radio, some of the units thought they knew where he was. They were looking for someone struggling near the base of one of the bridges. Then, soon after, we heard they had gotten closer but the man appeared to be long gone, as in dead and decomposing. This was not an uncommon call type for us, actually. It was sounding like our last job of the day was destined to send us on a trip to the morgue.

One of the boats finally did reach the ‘man’ and declared it unfounded over the radio. They did, however, tell us to standby. When the FDNY fireboat pulled up near us, one of the firemen held up their long hook. Attached to its end was an inflated pair of MAST pants that had been mistaken for the bloated body of a drowned man.

“Those look like the MAST pants we use!” my partner cheerfully yelled over to them with an incredulous inflection. “How do you think that happened?”

The Cryptkeeper and the Mole People (Part One)

January 12, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

The dispatcher told us that our call involved a specific set of railway tracks and we were struggling to find them. Despite being very familiar with our area, we were going in circles and constantly referring to our paper map. Computer terminals had yet to be mounted into ambulances at that time and there was no way for us to access all of the call information the way we can now. The dispatcher, who was also juggling a screen full of dozens of other jobs to be handed out, did what he could to contact the agencies involved in requesting us, in order to provide us with some better details.

With it’s grid-like design Manhattan is considered by most people, to be the easiest of the five boroughs to navigate. The numbered streets and world known landmarks make it a far cry from my native Queens, for example, which is notorious for successive streets that are all numbered 60 (60th Place, 60th Lane…). But we weren’t exactly looking for a particular street. We needed to find a part of the infrastructure below the city and that was our problem.

Beyond the miles of roads and streets, an almost parallel world exists underneath, of tunnels and various other structures that make up a subterranean landscape set up to assist the city above it. There are miles of tunnels and pathways at many different subway stops and there are also numerous miles of track for the various railways that service the city. Several levels of infrastructure, some abandoned, are utilized by different agencies. Once we found the area where our purported man-hit-by-a-train would be, it would be another endeavor to find our way in.

We were eventually assisted by a few officials from the railway service who directed us 20 blocks south towards an entrance that was well-hidden from the general public. It led to more of an underworld city than a tunnel, almost looking like the framework for an underground building. They assured us no other trains were running and had us follow a small group of train representatives along one of the tracks. It was pitch black in some areas and then suddenly we would make our way to an area flooded with natural light. Then we’d be back in the tunnel and then, soon enough, in an open field-like area. It was in this field area that we had reached our destination. Here the train had come to a stop. It was surrounded by people in various official uniforms mulling around and consulting each other. We were directed to the front, where the train had slowly been moved backwards a few feet.

“Man under a train” tends to imply that a man will be found, perhaps underneath or thrown to the side, of a train. But when a human being is struck by a high speed locomotive he is, more often than not, disintegrated into hundreds of meaty pieces of flesh and blood. Part of a man was under this train, other parts were spread out across the gravel nearby. We had been sent to basically do paperwork on someone who, just an hour ago was a regular person like the rest of us, but had now completely transformed into a disorganized array of unidentifiable biological material.

The long trail of what had once been a human being was spread across a length of metal and machinery. Some was attached to the undercarriage of the train that had ripped him apart. A lone dirty sneaker, badly ripped, had been torn away and lay in the grass, surviving in better physical shape than the person who had worn it.

The train was carrying a high number of passengers but none had seen the impact. What they had seen was the man kneeling on the tracks, facing the oncoming train. They were visibly shaken, some were very upset and traumatized. They would forever have the image ingrained in their memory of a human being at once annihilated by the force of something they were inside of.

We found the train conductor surrounded by people from his agency. He was listening and nodding to things they were saying and seemed less shaken up than the passengers. We were going to see if he would come with us to, perhaps, speak to someone at the hospital. He initially told us no but we let him know we would be there for some time doing paperwork and should he change his mind in the interim, we would be happy to take him. He thanked us and continued to speak with his supervisors.

We interviewed some of the passengers as well. None of them wanted to go to the hospital either but they spoke to us about how eerie it was to see the young man sitting on the tracks awaiting the impact of the train. He knew the train was coming?

Oh yes, he definitely did.

We had no information on the victim. There was no ID, not even a description really. I was ready to do a call report that would basically have the word ‘unknown’ scrawled in every box. One of the railway officials, however, suggested I try asking among a small group of people huddled underneath the next section of tunnel. As I turned towards the three or four people looking at all of us in the darkness of the structure ahead, I asked who they were. The man smiled. “They live there. I think our victim might have been one of them.”

One of them?

I made my way over to the next overpass area where the little group was. They seemed surprised to see me coming towards them. One person backed up and walked away. They looked like they were in their early 20’s and had messy, long hair. One of them wore thick glasses with a deep, clear scratch across both lenses. Their skin was covered in a thick coating of dirt but underneath you could see that they were white, very pasty white.

“Did any of you see what happened? Did you know the victim?” I asked.

They looked at each other like they weren’t sure what to do. Eventually one of them, tall and very skinny, said “Yeah.” And nothing else.

“Which one? You saw what happened or you knew the victim?”

Nothing. Perhaps they were traumatized and in shock.

“I know this was a terrible accident…” I started.

“Oh it was no accident,” said the tallest in the group. “He waited on those tracks a long time.” The others nodded in agreement.

“So you saw him waiting on the tracks?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you know him?” I asked. They all nodded.”What’s his name?”

“I think it’s Joseph,” said one of them.

“No, it’s Allen,” said the tall one.

“I called him Bo,” said the man with the glasses.

This didn’t seem like it was going to be helpful. “Can any of you tell me anything about him? Like his birthday? Where he lived?”

“He lived here,” said the man with the glasses.

“Here?” I asked, somewhat surprised. What was over here? How did these guys even find this place?

“Yes,” they said, “Back there. With the others.” They pointed into the darkness of the tunnel.

“People live in here?” I asked.

They looked at each other as if to say “of course.” They seemed surprised that I didn’t know.

“A lot of people live here.” said the man with the glasses.

At that point my partner had made his way over. He seemed very interested in the little group and curious about what was behind them in the darkness. “I’ve heard about these people,” he said.

“What people?” I asked.

“The community,” he answered. “It’s like a whole other city under here.” Then he turned to the other men and asked “Am I right?”

“Yes you are, sir,” said the tall man.

“Would you mind showing us around?” my partner asked.

The three men nodded cautiously. “There’s not that much to see,” said the man with the glasses. One of the train employees had also come over and asked if he could join in on the tour. Everyone seemed to know about this odd little group of people living here when just a half hour ago we couldn’t even find this place. I was curious about what the big deal was about this particular group of homeless people, when we had plenty of other homeless people in the city above this one.

Like tourists seeing the sights of a foreign culture we were directed by our reluctant guides. Two of the three men flicked on flashlights that I hadn’t noticed they had and they started walking slowly into the darkness of the wide tunnel. They were joined by another man along the way who also had glasses and dirty blondish hair. He was wearing pants with greasy stripes on them and appeared to be a little older than the other men. This man was far more amiable, as well. He seemed to welcome the chance to show visitors around.

“Hello!” he said. “My name is Mike. I suppose you’re all here because of the train hitting our friend, Eddie. I’ll show you where he stayed.” We thanked him and asked if he could give us some information about our patient. He told us no, no one here could. He explained that they all kept to themselves and there was no pressure to interact.

“How long have you been living here?” my partner asked Mike.

Mike stopped and looked like he was trying to figure out the question. “That’s very hard to say. We don’t really keep track of time down here. I couldn’t tell you what year it is, or even whether it’s spring or fall.” He went on. ” It’s very dark down here and difficult to know when one day ends and the next begins. It could be, I’ve been here three years. It could be 15.”

The more we made our way into the tunnel the stronger the smells became. There was a faint petroleum scent throughout but it was being overwhelmed by the odors of things rotting. It hung in the air like a physical presence.

We came to a little sitting area. As the light from the torch moved around, a few rats scampered away. There were some chairs and stools arranged into a crooked oval around what was probably a fire pit. Two people, a man and a woman, were sitting in two of the chairs but not near each other and not talking to each other. Without the flashlight there was not much anyone would be able to see, unless their eyes had adapted to a superhuman degree, so they were just sitting quietly in darkness together.

A few feet away were several milk crates that were filled with canned goods and some boxes. Others contained pots and pans and various other kitchen items. If they never went outside where did they get supplies? There were some larger boxes stacked up and what looked like a sink, though I didn’t see where a water source was hooked up. A few TV tray type tables were scattered around with chairs or upturned milk crates set up next to them. As we continued to follow the light of the flashlight I turned my head and looked back at the two people we had just passed by. There was some slight residual light from the flashlight and the end of the tunnel in the distance but it was mostly just darkness. And the two people were just sitting there, awake and not doing anything at all.

It was eerily quiet here, except for some occasional sounds, like water dripping or a sudden frightful yell that no one but us ‘outsiders’ took notice of. The air seemed stifling and there were pockets we passed through where the smell of decay and rot was more powerful.

Behind the kitchen area, we came to a row of makeshift apartments. They were all different sizes and made of different materials. Most of them had no roof with the gap between the walls and the ceiling of the tunnel being at least 5 feet. Some had doors that were closed and others had locks on them. As the flashlight passed by the open doors you could see that some were sparsely furnished while others had dividers with decided living and sleeping areas. Some had artwork or photographs tacked up on the walls. It was interesting to see how many random household items had been acquired by the residents. Many apartments had small television sets, one with a VCR and some movies lined up next to it. They had gotten sofas, wall units, and dressers down here. Perhaps there were other entrances that had facilitated this?

As we walked by one open door, we could see two rats curled up on the bed. They looked up as we walked by. “That’s Moe and Curley,” said the tall, skinny man. “Larry must be out hunting.” This was his residence.

Most of them seemed unorganized and dirty, though I suppose if you lived in almost complete darkness there was no need to do any dusting or cleaning. We came to one apartment, however, that was immaculate. That one, said Mike, had belonged to our patient.

With the door open, we asked to look for ID and Mike led the way. The apartment had a queen size bed set-up, made on top of a low set of drawers. The short dresser was topped with a box spring and mattress, and covered in a decorative duvet with matching pillows. He had built up one wall to be a shelving unit. His clothes were folded with precision, all were exactly the same width, and were arranged by color. There were a few books, some framed photos of NYC scenery, several cameras and some small decorative items. One shelf contained food items and two plates and two cups. Near the entrance stood a little desk with a small writing lamp. We switched it on to find a small pile of envelopes. On top of the envelopes was a drivers license. Our patient’s name was Arthur Lundgren. He was 28 years old and the license was from Wisconsin. There were six stamped and sealed envelopes with a note to “Please Mail”. They were addressed to people with Wisconsin addresses, presumably family and friends. There was also one addressed to Mike, which he opened. He said it was a list of who he wanted to give his belongings to, like a will.

Before leaving and turning off the light, I looked around at the many pictures Arthur had covered his wall with. Most of them were random places in the city, street corners, crowds of people, all of them bathed in bright sunlight. It might be incorrect, but you could assume the photos were taken by Arthur and his many cameras. It would make him an anomaly in this community that shunned daylight and the world above them.

For weeks to come, I would wonder about Arthur and the life he lived. The suicidal cases often had me asking myself what had caused them to lose all hope. I could almost understand why someone living here would feel despairing and depressed. It seemed like an awful place to live. The others seemed content and well- adjusted in some strange way. But in Arthur’s case, I thought that maybe he had come all the way to NYC for the vibrance and culture illustrated in his photos and yet, he found himself living in the darkness with people who knew nothing about him, not even his name.

(end of part one)

The Cryptkeeper and the Mole People (Part Two)

January 12, 2021 / Nancy Gwillym

A whole community had been created in a dark, abandoned section of train tunnel where they could live away from the world they either disliked or feared. They had created their own living quarters and their own little society, all while quietly living underneath the regular one. The two worlds were oblivious to each other.

My partner and I had gotten a tour of this alternate world after pronouncing a man from this underground community. With us was a man who worked for the train system that used these tunnels.

Mike, our guide to this underground city, told us that they occasionally made sojourns “upstairs”, as he called it, to get supplies. They searched for cans and cashed in their food stamps and then hurried back down. When enough cans were collected one person would get the deposits. They tried to complete these tasks necessary for survival in as few trips and as little time as possible. They no longer felt any connection to anything they found “up there” and took comfort in the darkness of the world below. He admitted there were conflicts that took place and personalities that clashed but for the most part, they felt that the ‘real’ world was too dangerous and required too many compromises and sacrifice. Down here, he said, they lived simply and helped one another. “Wasn’t it dangerous down here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “It was.” His sudden seriousness implied that it was worse.

As we toured their little complex of living quarters in search of information about our patient, who had killed himself, we noticed that most of the rooms were unoccupied at the moment and there were at least 30-40 separate ‘apartments’. Where was everyone?

“They all scattered when Eddie offed himself,” said Mike, speaking of our patient, who we had established was named Arthur Lundgren. “They knew a lot of people would be around. All of us down here tend to be anti-social. They’re probably further down the tunnel with the others.”

Who were the others? There were more?

Yes, apparently. There were several sets of “mole people”, a term Mike and his friends used to describe themselves. Some of them were transient and some of them didn’t like the rules at this encampment so they went about setting up separate groups. The alternative groups spent more time upstairs because they did their errands independently. Mike said there was no animosity between them but his face indicated he didn’t approve of them.

I was fascinated by all of it. They left regular society because they were ‘anti-social’ only to set up similar societies underground. I had no idea there were so many people who had turned their backs on the way of living most of us had been taught was the only way. They seemed to make it work for them. To me it was an incredibly undesirable life, surrounded by darkness, dirt and soot, rats running around, isolation, and apparently, danger. Mike admitted there were physical altercations and for women it was particularly dangerous. It didn’t say much for our world that so many people found this to be a viable alternative.

As we started to walk back to the train where our ambulance was parked, one of the less senior members of our representative tour group went over to Mike and whispered something to him. It led to a serious back and forth that I strained to hear, unsuccessfully. After a few minutes Mike just nodded and without saying anything, continued to lead us back out of that section of tunnel. The section we were in was long and dark and led to the small area where the train incident had taken place. That section was open to the sky and sun streamed in. You could look up and see buildings and faintly listen to the sounds of the big city the mole people shunned. But a few more yards further another, smaller, section of dark tunnel began and went on for about two or three miles.

When we reached the end of the dark section we were about to say good-bye when Mike stopped us and hesitatingly suggested we check out something in that other section of tunnel.

“There’s probably another body in the other tunnel that you might want to investigate for your records,” he said. “We know of a guy who lived there but we ain’t seen him in a while. We have a rumor that he’s still in his hole.”

What did that even mean?

“Are you saying there’s another DOA?” asked my partner. Mike lowered his head and nodded.

The active train route was set up on tracks on the east side of the tunnel area. The little city Mike had introduced us to was far west in the same structure. Several inactive tracks stood between the shanty town and the train that had stuck our patient. All of the people who lived down here were set up there, according to our guide. But now Mike pointed towards the east side, where the trains passed by semi-regularly. He said if we went down the tunnel we would find a “crypt” built into the wall and that it would probably be a good idea to check that out. He said he wasn’t going to take us there, we would have to find it ourselves. “But it’s there,” he said assuredly. “And, oh yeah, my name isn’t really Mike. Thought you should know.”

My partner updated the dispatcher, telling him that we were investigating another potential patient. We found a police officer and told him about the possibility of another body. He gave us a strange look but agreed to come with us. The man from the train company said he would “sit this one out”.

The three of us made our way down the tunnel. This side of the area seemed cleaner, almost. There was no debris and no mud, just gravel on the floor. It also seemed to get more light, not much more, but it was definitely better than the perpetual darkness of the other side.

The walls seemed to just be solid grey cement with nothing unusual noted. After walking what seemed like miles, we came across a square hole that had been built into the wall. It was high up, about 20 feet, so the passing windows of a moving train wouldn’t be able to see into it. There was a small ladder built into the wall as well, and my partner was eager to climb it. I went up after him and the cop followed me. Our flashlights lit up the small space and what we saw was both shocking and curiously interesting.

The space was small, about 15 feet by 15 feet by 10 feet. There was a small cot, a little table and a chair. In the chair, sat a man who had been dead for quite some time.

I have seen many dead bodies in various states of decay thanks to this line of work. I had brought many bodies to the morgue and witnessed even more states of decomposition there. I’ve seen skeletons, mangled bodies of trauma, the bloated slowly decomposing bodies, whose distinctive smell could make one retch and everything in between. But I have never witnessed someone partially decayed and in the process of petrification. I’ll admit, it was a little horrifying, especially because of the way the skin had decomposed around his mouth, which made his face to appear to be smiling, laughing almost. Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. All of us just quietly stared, mesmerized by this unusual man before us.

He was fully dressed and looked very much like the zombies you see in the movies. Sitting upright at the table as if he had just eaten a meal he seemed almost posed, and fake. There were areas of his body where all that was left was bone but in many other places, including his face, skin and some muscle remained and where it remained it had become hardened. His eyes and nose were long gone. You could tell he had some gray facial hair and a missing front tooth. His socks, if he had worn any, had disintegrated, and his skeletal feet rested in his shoes. His hands were mostly bones but some grey-brown scaly skin also remained there, along with some long nails. He wore a blue jacket and a brown button down shirt with brown pants and he had on a vest with a pocket that looked as if there should have been the long chain of a pocket watch looped below it. He also had a blue train conductor type of hat on his head. He seemed very small but it was difficult to tell in his sitting position.

“There’s something you don’t see every day!” my partner said in awe.

The police officer had the look of regret that he had come with us. “I don’t even know where to start with all this,” he said. He rubbed his forehead as if he felt a headache coming on.

The man seemed to have scored some prime tunnel real estate. A penthouse, almost. The little room seemed very neat and tidy although there weren’t too many articles to displace. The cot was made up with a decorative pillow and didn’t look like it had been slept in. There was a plate on the little table but anything that might have been on it would have been eaten by the many rodents in the tunnel. How had he managed to get the table and cot up here? There was an initial intention to search for some ID but everything seemed to be delicate and the officer suggested that we not disturb the surroundings. A bigger investigation of the man’s living space would be carried out later, no doubt. I guess I was doing my “unknown” ambulance call report after all.

The isolation here must have been maddening. His fellow tunnel-dwellers lived far away. Perhaps he had joined them sometimes? I hoped so. It seemed like an incredibly lonely existence. But on the other hand, maybe he preferred it that way. It was hard to imagine that skeletal smiling face hadn’t wanted at least some, minimal social interaction.

We heard some noise and shined our flashlights down below to find two of the three men we had met when we first ventured into the other side of the tunnel. The two taller men had come to make sure we found “the crypt”. They seemed happy that we had.

When we came down the ladder the police officer asked them how long it had been since they had seen the man. They shrugged. “We don’t know what day it is.” There it was again, a blissful dismissal of something that seems so integral to the rest of us. They were never woken by the shriek of an alarm clock and were never late to any events. But there also were no events to speak of, or holidays and seasons.

They told us that they knew nothing about the man, except that they saw him come and go sometimes. They rarely went to this area of the tunnel but sometimes the man went past theirs. It seemed cryptkeeper led an incredibly solitary existence. I wondered if he really wanted it or if it was forced on him in some way, maybe by his own fears. I was curious if the two young men that were here were happy with this place or if they had just gotten used to it. “How did you know about this guy, that he was here?” I asked.

They said their neighbor kept very consistent habits, almost like a schedule, which was curious for people who don’t keep track of time, I thought. When they didn’t see him for a while they went over to look for him. One of their friends had climbed the ladder and saw that he was dead.

“So you didn’t report it to anyone?” The officer asked.

Once again they shrugged. “You mean other than to each other? How would we do that?” the tallest one asked. And then he said something both true and heartbreaking. “And why? No one was looking for him. No one even knew he was alive. Why would anyone need to know he was dead?”

The man had died as he had lived, anonymously, and perhaps that was all he had wanted.

Manhattan Real Estate

December 29, 2020 / Nancy Gwillym

On the long and diverse list of calls that make it to my “worst” list, one that vividly comes to mind involves the eviction of an elderly couple in Manhattan in the early 1990s. It still causes me immense sadness to remember this older couple haphazardly rummaging around their large two-bedroom apartment in midtown. This was probably the first time I had been called for someone who was being thrown out of their home, but definitely not the last. In the late 80’s and early ’90s, there were several eviction-related jobs I ended up responding to. A city marshal was involved and they often brought along a representative from social services, either Adult Protective Services or another agency. It was this representative who would call EMS.

When we arrived at this home, the door was wide open and we walked in. No one said anything to us except the building super and honestly, it was always the building super on the scene at any of these things, that had any humanity. He was a short, bald man with a Spanish accent who shook his head sadly and directed us to the couple. When we introduced ourselves to the woman she stopped what she was doing and looked up at us in a confused manner. She slowly looked towards the marshal who was busy marking off things on a clipboard. He never looked up but pointed to another man in the apartment. That man wore a lanyard with some sort of official ID and he had a clipboard of his own.

“Oh yeah,” he said when he saw us, as if calling for us had been a quickly forgotten detail. “You’re here for the gentleman. Ah, he has high blood pressure.” In his mind, that was sufficient explanation and he resumed whatever he was doing with his clipboard and walked away. We had been dismissed.

The woman had short brown hair and sad-looking eyes that predated the events of that day, as noted in several of the photos she took off of end tables and dressers to toss into bags they had quickly grabbed and started filling. The man was slim, balding, and wore thick-framed glasses. He seemed a little absent-minded, distracted, and more than a little embarrassed. Neither of them said much to each other as they moved around their apartment for the last time, trying to figure out what, out of 30+ years worth of living in that place, warranted immediate removal.

The couple seemed busy although they moved very slowly. It must have been difficult to prioritize all of their possessions. This had been their apartment since they had gotten married. They raised a daughter here, participated in activities, interacted with neighbors, and held family celebrations in these rooms. Everything they owned was inextricably tied to a lifetime of memories. They had a souvenir from the 1964 Worlds Fair that made it into the suitcase, along with several religious articles of their Jewish faith. A few changes of clothes went in as well.

The man was going through some papers in his desk, trying to figure out which were important and which were receipts he probably could have gotten rid of years before. “Sir,” I asked tentatively. “Are you not feeling well?”

He looked at me like I was out of my mind and I deserved it. Of course he wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t say anything to me for a long time, just continued shuffling through his papers. “Can I take your blood pressure?” I asked. He looked at me with the face of someone who was placating a child but he held out his arm.

His blood pressure was only slightly elevated, nothing unusual, and nothing that required an ER. I asked him if he had any medical problems. He told me only the hypertension. Then he remembered his prescription bottle and went to the kitchen to put it in one of the bags.

The couple continued doing their unorganized pack as if we weren’t there. A fat tabby cat was coerced into a carrier where she howled, fearfully looking at the strangers who had taken over her territory through the mesh of her small container. The woman carried the cat around with her as she looked for things to pack, holding up random items as she considered their importance.

Every once in a while a question was asked by either the husband or the wife and directed toward the marshal. The answer was always some version of ‘no’, with increasing levels of impatience. A defeated look would come over them and they would continue. The marshal seemed very annoyed, almost angry, with the couple. He rarely looked up from whatever important notes he was writing on his clipboard. It appeared that he had a long list of other families to throw out into the street that day and this couple was delaying his schedule.

I do not know the circumstances of that brought about that sad day. Probably, I assume, it was not one big thing but more likely hundreds of little disasters that lined up like inconvenient dominoes leading to that unwelcome knock on their door.

I’m sure the couple had received notices and warnings. Perhaps they were in denial or perhaps they thought they had more time to either fight the eviction or make other plans. Either way, when the marshal had shown up they were unprepared. I understand that evictions happen, that responsibilities need to be met, and that there are consequences for failing to meet them. But to be oblivious to the obvious distress this couple was experiencing was so callous. And the man sent there specifically to assist them couldn’t be bothered to do anything but call 911.

Both the marshal and the social services representative spent the time appearing busy, shuffling papers, and talking on the phone. I have no idea what services were available to the couple or what had been done prior to the eviction. But if there was nothing the social service man had to offer why was he there? I got the impression that he was not working for the couple but for the marshal, to make things easier for the eviction to proceed. The two men seemed to know each other although they did not interact with each other all that much. But when the marshal made a demand of the couple, either to hurry up or deny a request, the social service representative would reiterate what he said in some way, which came off as a supportive measure as if they were united and sometimes it appeared as if they were ganging up on the unfortunate pair, and us when we offered any assistance to the couple that didn’t involve rushing them out the door to our ambulance.

At first, my partner and I just stood around wondering what to do. The last thing we wanted was to interfere with the couple on one of the worst days of their lives. It was obvious the man wanted nothing to do with going to the hospital. We were standing near the man from social services when we started discussing how we were going to RMA [Refuse Medical Assistance]. It was enough to get him off the family’s phone he was using and stop writing on his clipboard.

“He needs to go. They both do. Take them to the hospital.” He tried to dismiss us again, expecting us to just follow his directions. It killed me to do his bidding but at the time we had an age discriminatory rule that he seemed to be exploiting.

Unfortunately, the man was 65, which in those days required us to call our telemetry doctor if he wanted to refuse. It was a terrible, ageist protocol that has thankfully gone the way of leeches and skull boreholes. But at the time we were bound to this archaic rule and the whole service revolved around it. We had been through this routine before with other patients who had reached an arbitrary milestone that rendered them incapable of making decisions that didn’t need to be second-guessed by a doctor. When we called telemetry, we would be asked why the man didn’t want to go. We could say that he didn’t need to, that he never called, that he was just being directed to go to the ER so that they could get him out of the apartment. And the doctor would tell us that it wasn’t our decision to make. When the man presumably got on the phone to speak to the telemetry doctor they would try and convince him to go, because everyone over 65 should have to go. There was a liability issue. The man could argue and they might let him refuse but before that happened there was a likely possibility he could be threatened with a visit from social services if he did so. The same social services agency that was assisting the marshal in kicking him out.

The man from social services started to rush the couple, lest we found the loophole we wanted that would have allowed them to skip the trip to the ER. “Come on, we need to get you to the hospital.” The couple looked at him with bewilderment.

The super stepped in and took the cat carrier from the wife. “I’ll look after Ophelia,” he told her. “And don’t worry, when you’re done at the hospital I’ll let you get the rest of your things.”

The marshal interjected, “Your things will be packed and put into storage. Have your lawyer give us a call and we’ll let you know where you can pick them up.”

The super then offered to put their items in the basement. The marshal told him he was not allowed to do that. The super offered to take some things into his apartment. The marshal now became impatient with the super as well. He spoke slowly, as if trying to reprimand a belligerent child, “You can only take what they give you right now.”

The man from social services stepped in and told the super that wasn’t going to happen because the couple had to go to the hospital right away.

“We can wait,” I yelled out, glad to throw another delay in the way of these two unfeeling individuals. My partner and I offered to help and immediately started putting random items into boxes. We found a crate and filled it with kitchen items. The super put them all in the hallway and called up his wife to take the cat.

Then, after a very short interval, the alarm clock on the marshal’s internal timetable went off and he put a stop to any more last minute packing. “This should have been done weeks ago. Time’s up. Just go to the hospital.”

The couple gave the super some of the bags and a box they had quickly packed. The woman looked around and started to cry.

The husband tried to comfort the wife. All the previous emotions in his face of determination, embarrassment, and confusion gave way to adoration towards this woman. He put his arm around her and looked at the two men who both looked away.

The couple moved slowly to the door, looking around the whole way. It was the last time they would see the home where they had spent their adult life. All the memories they made there would be tainted with this attached experience of being forced out.

The social service man suddenly became very friendly. He handed them his business card and told them to call with any questions or assistance they might need. It was incredibly disingenuous. During the entire time we had been there he had not offered any kind of assistance or made any arrangements on behalf of the couple, except to call EMS to rush them out of their apartment. They were only going to the hospital because he had no other place to offer them. He told the couple to contact the social worker at the hospital who, he assured them, would provide them with a place to stay. He had just passed this couple off for someone else to deal with. His presence on the scene had been as useless as ours was.

I attempted some small talk on the way to the ER but the couple remained silent. I’ll never forget how they just sat together without saying a word to each other.

At the hospital my partner and I asked the registration people about the social workers. They put us in touch with the one on duty and we talked to her about the situation. She became angry, complaining to us that all she could do was refer the couple back to the very same department the man on scene was from. “They pull this crap all the time!” she told us.

I gave her the phone number that I had written down from the business card. She called it up immediately and had a heated discussion with someone from his agency. Then she called the man’s supervisor. In the end she just shook her head and told us the couple was screwed. There was not much she could do for them except refer them to a shelter.

We went with her when she talked to the couple who had been sent to the waiting room. She asked if they had anyone they could call to stay with, she suggested their daughter. The wife started to cry and the husband told the social worker that their daughter had died almost a year earlier.

I have no idea what happened to them after that and I wonder all the time about them. How does someone pick themselves up from that situation? Where do you go from the lowest depths of tragedy to move forward? You would hope that there would be a safety net out there to help people that this happened to.

On many of our calls, we have patients or families in need of far more than we can provide them with, people living in squalor, people in need of counseling, people in need of basic necessities, and it’s often a catchall response for us that they just ‘speak to someone in social services. It’s what we were taught to do as a way to convince someone who doesn’t want to go, to take the ride to the ER (it’s all about getting them to go, I concluded) But now I knew that the advice and recommendation I had been giving had been far more limited than I would have ever thought.

Help Me Fulfill My Fantasy

October 15, 2020 / Nancy Gwillym

It was the first warm day of spring and my partner was driving. I knew she would make her way over to the water so we could enjoy the beautiful weather people watching, as we sat by the walking path along the East River. Despite not having a small screen to stare at, here there was much for two young EMTs to see during their downtime between calls, including helicopter flyovers and ships passing along the river. The sun had brought out many of its worshipers, grateful to experience a spring thaw after a long, harsh winter.

My partner was a vivacious, happy woman who exuded friendliness. She waved and smiled at passersby, occasionally cheering on runners with an encouraging “you can do it!’ and blowing kisses at babies being wheeled by in carriages. A man walked by, taking his shirt off, and she called out an appreciative “looking good!” She spent much of the morning being an excited cheerleader for midtown Manhattan’s river walking public. I didn’t have my partner’s endless energy but I joined in for the occasional wave and clapped on the runners struggling during their first foray outside after what I assumed was a long sedentary winter. I would look up from my novel or magazine or whatever it was we entertained ourselves with, back before the internet took over everything, and added to a double thumbs up or an encouraging cheer. When the’ looking-good’ guy came back on his return trip I joined her in a wave of encouragement. He acknowledged us with a big toothy smile.

We were lucky to have a slow morning. Our only assignment had been cancelled even before we had put the vehicle in drive. It was a lovely, lazy day and I was happy that humanity was finding ways to enjoy it that didn’t cause them to need an emergency room. But then, we finally did get called for a job nearby. It came in as an ‘unknown’. The caller had hung up before contacting the dispatcher who would have asked some questions to better prepare us for what was on the scene. We pulled up to a building that we later found out was staff and student housing for a local university. After taking out our minimal equipment requirement at the time, we headed inside for one of the most bizarre events of my career.

We knocked on the door and at first I didn’t recognize him, but my partner did. “Oh wow! We just saw you by the water!” she told our still shirtless ‘looking-good’ guy. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

We walked into the apartment and noted that a small table had been set up with two place settings. “Hi,” he told us. “I’m Dave, by the way. Nothing’s wrong, actually. I hope you don’t mind that I called 911 under false pretenses. I thought you pretty ladies deserved a nice homemade lunch. I just wanted to surprise you, and do something nice for two of our hardworking civil servants.”

Well, that is a surprise,” said my partner. She was much more outgoing than I was. I didn’t really know what to make of this. Quite honestly my internal creep detector alert was starting to ping. By the look on her face I felt my partner’s was pinging as well. But she was very cool about it, as always. I learned everything about remaining calm under pressure from her. She looked at the neatly set up table with its sparse offerings. “So you really made us lunch?” she said cautiously, looking around and studying the surroundings, as I was.

“Yes!” said our excited friend, giving us his biggest, toothy smile. “Sit down. I hope you like tuna fish. Who doesn’t like tuna fish sandwiches? I’ve got a secret recipe for the mayo. Don’t tell anyone, but my special ingredient is chili powder. Tell me if you like it.”

My partner and I traded suspicious expressions. There was no way I was eating that sandwich.

Thankfully she took the lead because I was seriously paralyzed by indecision and the thousand different thoughts that were racing in my head. “How did you know you would get the two of us?” she asked. “I mean, they could have sent any unit here, not just ours.”

“Well, I thought of that,” he said, proudly. “If a different ambulance showed up I would have told them that the person I called for had left already. Then I’d wait a little while and call back for you guys. Come on, sit down. I’m dying to hear your opinion on the chili powder.”

My partner cautiously sat down for some reason, as did I. I felt that we were employing the same technique we use with violent psychotics, making them think we are comfortable and pretending to go along with everything. The man had positioned himself between us and the door and I felt that it was probably the smart thing to do for the time being, given the circumstances.

“The dispatcher is paying attention to our unit. We can’t really just go and have lunch at someone’s apartment,” I told him. “And we have to fill out paperwork for all our assignments. So I have to ask, are you going to want to go to the hospital?” Look at me, being ever the true medical professional.

“Nah,” he said. “Give me your A. C. R. [ambulance call report] I’ll sign the R. M. A. [refusal of medical assistance] See, I’ve done a little research.” Now that was a bit stalker-ish and disturbing, especially given the inability to instantaneously Google things in those days. He came over and took my paper that I had held out for reference. He flipped over the pages, folded it down, and signed his name with a flourish at the exactly correct area on the form. Then he sat down on a recliner and folded his hands on his stomach. He smiled at us proudly. He had covered so many of the bases. What else had he thought of?

“You don’t think this is all a little strange?” said my partner. She seemed to be losing her patience.

“Well,” said the man, slowing down his speech pattern now that he was comfortably seated. “I don’t think it’s all that unusual. There’s a long list of fantasies that start out this way. Haven’t you ladies ever thought about something like this? A good-looking guy calls 911 but he’s not really sick or injured, he’s just interested in the hot chicks driving the ambulance…”

His research wasn’t as thorough as he made it seem. The nerve, giving us that insulting “ambulance driver” title. How many times do we have to explain it? Look here, asshole, we are medical professionals. We do more than just ‘drive’ the ambulance.

“So you’re just looking to fulfill some kind of twisted EMT fantasy?” my partner spoke to him the way I imagined she spoke to her children when they misbehaved or did something stupid.

“Yeah! Now you’re getting it! Come on. You can’t tell me you’ve never thought about it. Here’s your chance. I set it all up for us. I’ll go any way you want it.” He started undoing his belt. I started thinking about the emergency button on our radio. I also considered how our chair would make a formidable weapon. Maybe this was how porn videos started but it was also the way slasher/killer/horror scenarios played themselves out as well.

We both stood up and I started inching my way to the door. My partner, however, moved closer to him so she could berate him while looking down at him. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but it was an excellent psychological technique.

“I can’t believe you think all you have to do is call 911 and we’d just jump on top of your junk. Has this ever worked for you before? Have you experimented with other porn genres? Cleaning ladies? Pizza delivery?”

I didn’t think she was really looking for an answer but he interrupted her with a big, resounding “YES!” He told her that he had called for a maid, through a cleaning service, and specifically requested that she wear that silly outfit which makes actual scrubbing and dusting cumbersome and difficult. The cleaning service had the last laugh though, because they sent over a 65 year old balding woman with a thick Slavic accent, who was 6 foot 10 inches and weighed 280 pounds. She came wearing the specified silly outfit. And even so, he had considered it. He though she was into him and probably would have gone for it.

“Well, I’m sorry Mr. Fantasy Man. I’m sorry that you don’t have anyone special that you can act these things out with, someone who you can trust and share a real life with. We are going to have to turn you down. This isn’t something you should have expected to happen. We are going to go now. Please don’t try to bother another crew with this same idea. This was really kind of sick on your part. Maybe there’s something wrong with you. You could probably set up this kind of scenario with someone if you went about it the right way. There are professional prostitutes that specialize in this.”

“Are you kidding?” he told her. “There’s a virus going on. Prostitutes are a really irresponsible choice.” It was the height of the AIDS epidemic. I’m glad he had given it some consideration in his thought processes.

“Or you could get a girlfriend,” my girl continued. “But maybe your obsession with fantasy creeps women out and keeps you from finding a real partner. I hope you get the help you need.”

She followed me out the door and when the door closed we ran down the hall and all the way down the stairs. Once in the lobby we laughed. All day long we talked about what had happened hysterically.

“Wanna get lunch?”

“Anything but tuna fish.”

We laughed as I wrote up the paperwork. I remember filling out the ACR with a semi-accurate representation of what had actually happened. I even think the ‘chief complaint,’ which was a big bold box at the top of the form, stated something like “Help me fulfill my sexual fantasy.” It just proved to me that nobody really reads those things.

Even now, when I see her occasionally, we bring up the “tuna fish man” and it causes us to laugh automatically. What had made him decide on tuna fish? It seemed like an unusual option. It hadn’t been all that appealing, despite his secret ingredient. Just a thin layer of that smelly fish on white bread and no accompanying chips. I don’t even think he offered us a beverage.

We were very grateful that it had been a pretty benign experience and could have ended much worse. I wonder how many other female crews have had to deal with this as well.

About two or three weeks later we were parked somewhere, not by the water, and Dave, our fantasy porn guy, tapped on our window.

“Hi ladies,” he said. “Any change of heart?”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” my partner told him, shaking her head. “What made you knock on this window? Why wouldn’t you just keep on walking?”

He just smiled slyly. When he didn’t say anything she continued telling him how hopeless his idea was, what a pervert he was, how inappropriate that ‘lunch’ had been, how she felt sorry for him. She went on for a few minutes, waited for a response and got none. Finally she said, “Well? Are you just going to stand there and be humiliated? Don’t you have anything to say?”

“What if I told you I enjoyed being humiliated? I especially liked having you do it, the way you did it… What if I said that I had never been so turned on when someone humiliated me? And don’t get me wrong, being humiliated by a woman I’m sexually interested in, that’s high on my list of turn ons, but you’re better than anyone at telling a man off. You really are. Your tone, your face, you didn’t even have to mention my penis and I was already hard. Seriously, you’re even better than my mom and I’ve got some weird ideas about her too…”

“Good Lord,” she said, as she rolled up her window.

“YOU SHOULD BE FLATTERED!!” he yelled as we drove away.

Over My Dead Body

October 13, 2020 / Nancy Gwillym

My partner and I had just pronounced a man dead. The cause of death wasn’t obvious, as he had been found in bed, but there were some signs it could have been a suicide. The building manager had let us into the apartment after calling 911 because mail and newspapers had been accumulating for the apartment. He knew the person as a “good man, kind man” and was sad to find that he had died. We had some paperwork to fill out while we waited for the police to come.

As I wandered around the home looking for ID, I tried to learn more about the enigmatic man who had died by studying his tastes and possessions. It was a difficult endeavor as his house looked as if it had been cleaned out of many items. There were outlines on the bare walls where framed pictures or art had been. There were empty areas that appeared as if furniture had been removed. A cabinet with a display case was empty. His refrigerator contained half a container of orange juice and an egg. There was exactly one plate, one fork, and one knife in the kitchen.

We found a box of papers full of medical bills and, hoping to get some information on our Mr. Peterson, we flipped through it. The papers though were all his wife’s. They were from various medical institutions across the country.

The Petersons, it appeared, had traveled far and wide to find a cure for the rare cancer that Mrs. Peterson had been diagnosed with. It also appeared to have been unsuccessful.

There were some scattered photographs showing the couple in happier times, and some photos showed what the apartment had looked like with art on the walls and more furniture. There were photos of the attractive couple at several parties and fundraisers. They had hosted several parties themselves where people were dressed in formal wear and holding up champagne glasses to the cameraman.

Mr. Peterson had received an award from a place called H. L. Financial and he appeared in one photo dressed as Santa for the H. L. Financial Christmas party. As sad as it was to see these brief glimpses into his life it made him more human and substituted for the personality that we would never meet.

The building manager came back, bringing the police with him. The officers seemed somewhat unfriendly at the time. We didn’t take it personally, as we knew that sitting with a body until the medical examiner arrived was a task no officer wanted.

The manager knew a lot about our patient and told us the story of a man who had everything and then lost it. “When his wife died, so did he, he was never the same.” He told us that the Petersons were a nice couple who tipped well and gave good bonuses at holidays.

When Mrs. Peterson was diagnosed with cancer they tried everything to save her. The building manager told us that Mr. Peterson missed a few weeks of work and even though he had been a top earner, they fired him the first chance they got and replaced him with a relative of his manager. He continued that Mr. Peterson believed they were looking for the first excuse to get rid of someone in his position so they could install the nephew.

“Just evil, those people are,” he told us, shaking his head. “When he lost his job, he lost his health insurance. As the bills piled up, he sold everything he could. Then his wife died, and he became depressed. He had a hard time getting a job. All his friends left him alone. That made him more depressed. And now this.”

In an effort to make a notification, the police decided to play Mr. Peterson’s answering machine messages. There were 47 of them.

“Mr. Peterson, your payment is two months past due. Please call us about making a payment.” Several messages were from random companies requesting payments. But interspersed with those requests for money were requests from H. L. Financial, who apparently financed his mortgage.

“Mr. Peterson, Joe, this is Tony, look I used the money I owed you to pay down some of the payment. Please, just send something, anything and I can hold off Mr. Thomas.”

“Hey, Joe..this is Tony again. Mr. Thomas isn’t having it. Please call me at home.”

“Mr. Peterson, your application to refinance was rejected. Please make a payment as soon as possible.”

“Joe? It’s Tony again. Please call me, I tried to talk to Mr. Thomas again but he’s submitting the papers. I know it’s messed up. I’m sorry. I tried.”

All the calls were demands for money. No friends called to check in. No family members asked how he was doing. It was just bill collectors and most of them were from the company he had worked for.

He had won awards earning money on their behalf and they couldn’t cut any slack to the guy they fired when his wife got sick. My partner and I, along with the two cops, just silently listened to the messages, passing looks of disgust between us. Things got worse when we heard the messages from Mr. Thomas himself.

“Joe. Come on. At least call. Ignoring this isn’t going to make it go away.”

“We just did what we had to. How long are we supposed to keep this going?”

“Joe, my hands are tied. We have to move forward.”

Then, the worst message of all:

“Look, Joe, I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’ but eight months of chasing these specialists, what were you thinking? You should have listened to me. I at least told you the truth. These doctors told you differently and now what? All they did was cost you millions of dollars. For nothing. Pathetic.”

Wow. Who were these people? Were people really this cruel?

“Joe? It’s Lee again. Look, I’ll delay the paperwork for two weeks. Two weeks, it’s the best I can do. I’m only doing it because everyone here is giving me a hard time. And my nephew had no part of this, OK? But you’ll need to call me now. Well, you’re welcome.”

“Come one, Joe. Not one dime! Call me up. I need to tell you what’s going on.”

There were only a few more messages left on the machine when the phone suddenly rang. We all looked at each other. My partner smiled and without hesitation, picked up the phone. He put it on speaker.

“Joe? Joe? Is that you?” It was Mr. Thomas.

“Yeah, it’s me,” said my partner pretending to be our DOA. “You’ve got a lot of nerve calling me, with all I did for you. And now your ‘hands are tied’. You’re just an evil little man.”

“What? Joe? Come on, you were great, I told you as much. I promised to give you a decent reference. But you took all that time off and we were falling behind our numbers. If only you had just stuck it out. I get that you think your wife needed you, but we needed you too, probably more.”

He sounded almost apologetic.

My partner continued the offensive, on behalf of Mr. Peterson. “And how’s it working out now, Lee? That nephew of yours, he’s doing just great isn’t he? Everyone knows he’s going to run your division down to the ground. You know it too, you admitted as much. All because you couldn’t give me time with my DYING wife. You know how that makes you look?”

“We sent flowers! Didn’t you get them?”

“Yeah, Lee. We got them. That’s so much better than a refinance offer. Or a job. My dead wife says thanks a lot. Look here, Lee. You’re not taking my house. Just back off”

“I can’t stop the foreclosure. It’s too late. You should have listened to me,” he quickly sounded smug.

“Well, there, Lee. Good luck. The only way you’re gonna get this place over my dead body.”

Lee Thomas seemed to hesitate a moment.

“Do you hear me, Lee?” yelled my partner. “Over my dead body.”

Satisfied, my partner hung up the phone. One of the cops immediately shook his hand. We all laughed and applauded. It felt like a tiny bit of justice in a situation that had no good parts to it.

I liked to imagine the scenarios in my head when Mr. Thomas found out about Mr. Peterson and the circumstances of the foreclosure. I hoped he was filled with guilt and remorse at last.

Category: EMT (Page 1 of 2)

Electrons in the Basement

Two Idiots Change a Tire

Exact Words (part one)

My First Baby Delivery

MAST On the East River

The Cryptkeeper and the Mole People (Part One)

The Cryptkeeper and the Mole People (Part Two)

Manhattan Real Estate

Help Me Fulfill My Fantasy

Over My Dead Body

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