that is death by broccoli becomes a very real possibility in her mind. The shouting stops, but only for an instant. There’s confusion, recognition, shock, terror. Then more shouting. Dishes and chairs are knocked over in the panic. Grandma’s eyes go wide, mouth open. Her hands go to her throat, then, like a drowning swimmer, she flails, grabbing at anyone within reach.
Someone slaps her back. Fingers reach into Grandma’s mouth—a desperate attempt to yank out the broccoli, which only loosens the dentures, which become yet another obstacle. Grandma’s head bobs forward; her wig slips down over her face. She dies—loudly and ceremoniously—under the table during Thanksgiving dinner.
Someone dials 911.
No one tells us about the broccoli. All we hear is that someone’s dead under the table and could we please hurry. And so we do, accompanied by a four-man fire crew aboard their engine. An ambulance rushing through the streets is not particularly dramatic; the truck itself is not imposing or intimidating, and the sirens, while loud, are not earsplitting. But a fire truck at full throttle is something altogether different. It’s loud and terrible, ten thousand pounds of speeding menace with the lunatic wail of a screaming banshee. It’s red-painted steel and a thousand gallons of sloshing water, a street-bound locomotive that can’t stop, so get the hell out of its way, because it’s coming. It’s dangerous to the point of recklessness—a loaded gun in the hands of a felon—and seeing one in your rearview will make you move.
And so we drive. Sirens and blown intersections and me pushing pushing pushing to stay ahead of the engine, a gorilla breathing down our neck. Chris works the map book. In the days before GPS, this was as important and elusive a skill as any on the ambulance. A lot of people couldn’t do it and got flustered and fucked it up. But Chris can work a map.
And so we arrive.
On the way there’s conversation—about anything, about nothing—but once we’re on-scene, it’s deadly serious until we know what we have. A quick survey is all-important, and even when it’s worse than expected, at least we know. There’s solace in knowing. As soon as we pile out, I get hot. On the way here, driving, I’d gotten cold, almost to the point of a visible shiver. This is my tell, an invisible tic that surfaces every time I run a serious call. I get cold and remain cold until I arrive on-scene and then instantly warm up.
We hop out. Before I pull out the stretcher, Chris tells me to get a backboard. You can’t do CPR on a mattress. The patient just sinks down with each compression. We need something firm to work against. I slide a backboard out from its chute, drop it on the stretcher, and Chris throws on the cardiac monitor, the drug bag, and an oxygen bottle. I yank the jump bag off the bench seat, and it goes on, too.
By now the firefighters have gathered next to us, and they help pull the stretcher out and push it up the driveway and toward the door. All the while, the family’s yelling for us to hurry, screaming that she’s dead and getting deader, but we can’t run. Running is rushing and rushing is careless and the last thing anyone wants in this situation is carelessness.
Then it’s through the front door and into the worst moment in a family’s life. Death is seldom peaceful. It’s loud and frantic, with lots of gurgling and thrashing and bodily fluids, all laid bare by the blinding light of panic. Standing helplessly and watching someone die is a terrifying experience, but when that person is your mother, the whole world spins at a different speed. We move through the house and pass a family in varying stages of grief—some crying, some screaming, some muttering, arms crossed tightly over their chest, walking in nervous little circles. Somewhere a toilet flushes.
Grandma is still under the table. Chris and a firefighter grab her ankles and yank her out. Suddenly guilty, suddenly caring, one of the two warring parties who started this whole thing yells for us to be careful, that she’s his mother and how about we show some respect. This belated concern is the last bit of indignity his sister can handle. She flips out and begins slapping and clawing at him and has to be lifted up and carried outside. Chris grinds his knuckles into Grandma’s chest, looking for a reaction, a sign of life,