A Thousand Naked Strangers - Kevin Hazzard Page 0,70
patient like that requires hands, which is exactly why the fire department is sent out with us. We did our best to raise hell, but the fire department is much more powerful, more politically connected, than EMS, and the chiefs browbeat our supervisors into submission. So we began a low-grade war of retribution. If a call went out in a shopping mall, we’d go over the radio and tell the responding fire crew to enter from the north entrance—even though we were already kneeling over the patient at the south entrance. When they arrived, we’d shrug with surprise as they stomped up, out of breath, having gone half a mile out of their way. Then there was the sauerkraut. We bought a few pounds of it, and every day for a week, we brought it to the same fire station and overcooked it in the same microwave. After two or three days, when we walked in the door, someone saw us and asked what we were cooking. “Some Grady crew’s been coming in here, burning sauerkraut,” the captain said. “You guys don’t have anything like that, do you?” We shook our heads and darted into the kitchen, where Marty threw in the sauerkraut and set the timer to thirty minutes.
But things have changed. We’ve ascended to a new level. We’re above pranking firemen. We’re taking our contempt all the way up to the top. One afternoon we’re sent to Atlanta Fire headquarters for a dispatcher with difficulty breathing. When we arrive, firefighters are already gathered around her. They have her on oxygen and albuterol and are preparing to give her an IV steroid—all common practices for someone having an asthma attack. Which isn’t what is happening. As soon as we walk through the door, we realize the patient is hyperventilating and that the oxygen and the albuterol, not to mention the abrupt introduction of steroids, are only going to make things worse. We push our way in. We cut off the oxygen, yank off the mask. We pull the tourniquet off her arm before anyone can start an IV.
The firefighters are beyond shocked, beyond pissed. We just plow ahead. Hyperventilation is pretty common, and generally, its cause is psychological. Sometimes a patient gets so pissed—at her husband, her boyfriend, her boss—that she loses her shit. Her breathing picks up until she’s dizzy and her vision is starting to dim and her hands are cramping up. Now she can’t stop hyperventilating if she wants to, and the situation gets worse and worse until she passes out. Unless someone can calm her. Which is what we do. We talk slowly, so softly that no one else can hear. Marty pushes the crowd of angry firefighters away as I get our patient to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. “That’s it. Just slow down. You’re doing good.”
Eventually, she calms down and tells us she just had a fight with her daughter—another eighteen-year-old who’s got nothing to learn from the world—and she lost it. She’s better now, calm and quiet. We’re ready to leave when the fire chief shows up. He’s a big man, a full head of hair and a mustache, and he wants us to transport her. This man runs an entire fire department, has thirty years behind him and a couple thousand people below him. He’s used to being obeyed. And here are two Grady medics. In his headquarters. Treating one of his employees. And they’re looking him in the eye and saying no.
The guy goes through the roof. He’s furious, yelling and pointing, making threats, making phone calls. And we couldn’t give a damn. We’re not firefighters. We’re not city employees. We work for Grady; our responsibility is to the patient. Our patient is fine and doesn’t want to be transported. We can hear him yelling as we walk out the door. Even as we hop in our ambulance and drive away, it doesn’t feel like a coup or a victory. It’s simply another call, another job well done. Another patient. We assume it’s behind us. Except it isn’t. But we don’t learn that until later.
• • •
In the meantime, we take our fight to the police. Cops are a nation-state unto themselves, answerable to no one except the mayor, though sometimes they ignore her, too. Many cops operate under the assumption that we’re there to whisk their troubles away. They believe that any time they have a person who’s a nuisance but not a criminal,