A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,38
helicopter arrives, procreates with the first, and together they give birth to a dozen more. And then there’s the recurring ghost story, yelled every few seconds, that the shooters, whoever they are, have come back. Each time it sends waves of panic through the crowd. The scene is loud, hot, messy, and stinks of gasoline and blood. Bystanders are screaming, our patients are screaming, the fire captain—“Where is my damn medevac!”—is screaming.
“Fuck it,” Chris says. “Let’s take ’em all.”
“All three? You wanna take all three?”
“You’re right,” he says. “Let’s take two. Which one you wanna leave?”
Thirty seconds later, we have everyone loaded into the ambulance. The tall one can’t shut his mouth, and the kid shot in the face can’t be still. The Buddha sits quietly on the end of the bench. Chris nods to me, and I jump up front and roar off. All told, we’re on-scene fewer than seven minutes. Chris bounces off the walls as he struggles to cut off clothes, bandage, start IVs, call the hospital, and reassess. When we arrive, I jump out and grab a passing medic, who helps us wagon-train the three of them through the triage area and straight back to the trauma rooms. The whole world is waiting for us back there, and it’s nothing but blinding lights and questions, nurses, doctors, phlebotomists, x-ray techs, registration clerks, surgeons. Cops trail in behind us, asking their own questions. Clear bags with twine drawstrings are filled with clothes, wallets, watches, rings, necklaces, phones, belts, shoes, and—
“What’s this?”
Even in the midst of the chaos, the noise, the rising panic from the kid shot twice in the face, there’s something in the tone—the suggestion of a problem—that catches my attention. I turn to see a doctor looking at the Buddha’s lower back, a gloved hand pressing him forward. Chris is looking, too, the color drained from his face. The doctor looks up, calls out a single entrance wound four inches right of the spine, lower back—right in the kidney. No exit.
Usually, in the immediate aftermath of a shit-kicker, the sudden quiet only amplifies all the leftover adrenaline. It hits like a head full of meth, and I’m high, almost bouncing, as the details sort themselves out and, for the first time since arriving on-scene, I have a chance to think about what I’ve just done. This moment and the memory of it, the promise that others like it are out there somewhere, waiting, are what keep me going through the dry spells when we run nothing but headaches and angry, piss-covered drunks. But tonight we can’t enjoy it. We’re frustrated and rattled. Out on the ramp, our ambulance is nothing but blood, bandages, and discarded packaging. The two-way radio dangles by its cord, smudged with bloody fingerprints. I lean in, look to where the Buddha was seated, and there on the wall, at kidney height, is a splotch of blood.
That we’d missed it isn’t totally shocking. We had three patients fall into our lap, and our scene time was seven minutes; major trauma allows for ten minutes. It was hectic, we were outgunned. A lacerated kidney—if that’s what the wound ends up being—is a problem for the surgeons; there’s nothing we would’ve done differently had we noticed it. But we didn’t notice it, and that’s the point. It isn’t that we could have saved him or bettered his care or had the hospital more prepared. This is a matter of pride. We got our wish. We got our call—or something as close to it as possible—and we were less than perfect.
We drive back in a funk. We drop the camera off at CVS, which is open twenty-four hours and manned by a dirty little creature who clearly won’t be scandalized by the photo of the teeth. After the film spins through the machine, the pictures are printed and slipped into an envelope. Outside, Chris riffles through, finds the shot of the teeth, tears it up, and throws it away. We ordered doubles, so I get my own set of what was on the roll. By the next morning, we’ve shaken it off. We both agree the call was fun, that it went well, that certain allowances can be made for the fog of war. As for the picture, we don’t talk about it.
When I get home, I shower. Afterward, hair wet, half-dressed, I pull out the photos and thumb through. And there, staring up at me from the top of the stack, is the picture.