Half-drugged and quite possibly insane, they’re down here for any number of reasons. Boredom and curiosity, for starters. There’s also a lunatic fringe convinced they can help, as well as a strange minority pushed to the edge of tears for a man they don’t know.
We don’t put down our gear because, as with our shoes, it’ll stick to the floor. Instead, we treat our patient holding the weight of everything we own, like Atlas. I grab a needle, clench it between my teeth like a pirate, reach into the drug bag, grab our anti-seizure meds, and plunge the needle into the vial. I push in one CC of air, then watch the bubbles ride to the top and draw out a CC of seizure-stopping benzodiazepine. Next I purge the air from the syringe, flick the excess off the needle, and jab it into the patient’s leg. I depress the plunger and wait. It’s not working. The patient keeps on seizing. The onlookers, with all their medical knowledge, get antsy. They want results, they want a cure. They haven’t started making demands and taking action, but they will if— Wait. His convulsions stop. A calm settles over the men in the filthy basement. Then, in reverent tones, a voice: “Damn. That right there is some heavy shit. Heavy fucking shit.”
Right about now is when people make assumptions. Like the assumption that this guy, gurgling and seizing in the basement of a homeless shelter, probably doesn’t take his medicine. Or that even if he does, he probably drinks heavily, which negates the effects of his meds. Either way, it’s safe to assume that he’s another bum letting his life slip through his fingers. But too often assumptions are wrong. While I’m checking vitals, Marty does a quick sweep for injuries. Is he bleeding or broken or injured in some way that suggests he didn’t come down here and seize but maybe fell or was thrown down the stairs? Marty is looking for something, anything, to prove that what’s going on perhaps isn’t as it appears. He runs his hand beneath the man’s head and comes up with a bloody glove. We roll him and Marty finds the laceration—a big fat set of pursed lips on the back of his head. Marty presses on them, and the hard skull beneath gives way. It’s been fractured, which means his brain is bleeding, and that’s probably why he was seizing and will probably start seizing again. Why he might still die. Time to hurry.
We need help carrying him out, but we’re in the basement of a large brick building. No radio reception. No one to call. We’re on our own. For five minutes we struggle to get the man immobilized, to suction out his mouth, to get him on oxygen, and painfully, to get him up the stairs. Halfway up, he starts seizing again and needs more medicine.
Upstairs we have light, but things don’t get any easier. The crowd closes in. They push and yell, some trying to clear a path, others intentionally stopping progress. They scream at each other, at us. Some ignore the man and ask what we can do for a stomachache. The preacher fights his way through the crowd, steps in front of us, and lays a hand on the man’s chest. The patient begins to convulse again. “This man needs prayer,” the preacher says.
I’ve had enough, and I ram the stretcher into the preacher’s gut. “I already prayed,” I tell him, “and God told me to get his ass to the hospital.”
With that, we’re gone.
28
Another Day in Paradise
People who know us, who’ve heard these stories and laughed with us and at us—people who’ve worried over us—wonder what our days look like. They try to imagine the two of us charging through Atlanta, seeking out the best of the worst. “It’s how we’ve always told it,” I say. “It’s exactly the way you think it is.”
• • •
Even when you work nights, every day is the same. An ambulance is a conveyor belt, emergency medicine a factory. Hearts, kidneys, lungs, legs—the raw materials of a functioning human—pass down the assembly line. Each is broken and will be fixed. Quickly, though. More are coming. The gears turn, the furnace glows. Smoke puffs into the air.
Salvation through repetition. This I can do because I have done it before—it’s half prayer, half truth, a whisper in a hurricane of self-doubt. If the possibility of saving a life comes down to routine, to muscle memory,