By EUGENIA KLOPSIS
The New York Sun
Copyright 2006 The New York Sun, One SL, LLC
All Rights Reserved
“So,” I say to Bronson, “it’s getting pretty close.” His pregnant wife, Rachel, is due in six weeks."Nervous?”
He doesn’t look up from the paramedic textbook he’s studying, meaning he is nervous. “Yikes,” I say, and return to the novel I’m reading. Before I can turn the page, we get a call to back up medics for a 19-year-old in cardiac arrest. “I don’t buy it,” I say. Genuine cardiac arrests are rare in the young. Hearts are strong muscles - the only things that weaken them are congenital defects or age. Still, we go lights and sirens to the address, a Sheepshead Bay housing project where all the red brick buildings look exactly the same. We rush into the lobby, ring the bell, and dash upstairs. An old lady opens the door, perplexed, saying she didn’t call for an ambulance."Wrong building,” I tell Bronson.
He gets on the radio and says, “10-5 that address.” The dispatcher clarifies the cross streets and we zip over to the correct building, where there’s a fire truck parked outside.
Entering the apartment, a firefighter tells us that they also went to the wrong building. I’m not sure it really matters: Four firemen are pulling the 19-year-old out of the bathroom, and he does not look good. He’s got a handkerchief tied around the skinny bicep of one arm, and a needle hanging out of his vein. His face is blue.
I check to see that there’s no drug left in the syringe, then tape the syringe down - I don’t want it falling out and accidentally sticking one of us. Then Bronson and I begin resuscitation efforts, ventilating and doing CPR. The boy’s parents are frantic, clutching each other and yelling in Russian.
Medics arrive, saying they went to the wrong building. They take one look at the patient and immediately join in the resuscitation - they intubate him, start a line, and push IV drugs to try to counter the effects of the heroin. They do an EKG, but he’s asystole, flatline, there’s no cardiac arrhythmia to shock with a defibrillator. We keep working him as we place him onto a longboard and then the stretcher, and bring him down to the ambulance. We keep working him while Bronson drives us to the ER.
“Overdose,” I tell the nurses as we roll in, CPR in progress. They take over, and run their own EKG to see if there’s any cardiac activity. There’s nothing.
The parents are distraught. We stand back while the staff works for about 20 minutes."It’s no use,” Bronson whispers to me. “The paramedics should have called the code on-scene.” It may sound harsh, but, speaking from a purely medical standpoint, in his opinion the 19-year-old was already dead and gone.
“Maybe because he’s young,” I say. “Sometimes the young rebound.”
Bronson shakes his head. The parents watch the resuscitation attempts on their son, which is brutal. Bronson tries to pull the father away, but the man grabs his arm and shouts in Russian. Bronson backs off. “You can’t tell him not to watch,” I say. “That’s his little boy.”
Bronson stares at me, uncomprehending, then goes outside to clean up the ambulance. The doctor calls the code, and everybody stops working. Everybody did everything they could, but the boy is dead. The tubes are removed, the curtain is pulled, and the parents are left with their dead son. Back in the ambulance, Bronson says nothing.
Soon afterward, we get a call to back up medics on a “diff breather.” I read the screen: “A 9-day-old baby having difficulty breathing, in the same projects.” Sick infants make everybody drive like maniacs, and this time the paramedics arrive just as we do. This time it’s the right building, and we all rush upstairs to the apartment to find a beautiful baby girl cooing in the arms of her mother. The mother, in broken English, tells us that she was feeding the baby when the baby spit up. She thought the baby was having trouble breathing, so she called 911.
The medics evaluate the baby. She’s fine. “New parent syndrome,” they say, packing up their gear.
Back in the ambulance, Bronson is even more quiet, buried in his paramedic textbook. I start telling him about the sad juxtaposition of that beautiful new baby, so full of promise and hope for the future, and the 19-year-old who overdosed. I say, “Boy, parenthood really is an armload -" but Bronson interrupts me, red with anger, and shouts at me to shut up, he’s trying to read already, can’t I just sit still and be quiet for once?