Medic Interrupted

Props and credit goes to Emergency Emily for this one…. It’s what’s inside that counts, right?

This pretty much captures what my life has been like this week.

A client came into my law firm yesterday. He was scared. Genuinely scared. And he was a firefighter/EMT. He sat in the chair across from me in my office, and the first thing he said to me was, “I’m here because I trust you.” He suspected he was going to be sued for discrimination. Even if he prevailed on such a case, he still would be scarred and marked for life. Think “The Rocket” Roger Clemens walking around with a halligan and a trauma bag. As I listened to his story, I felt it was more important to look into his eyes as he spoke rather than taking notes as I usually do. “I don’t know what to do, Rich. Is this the end for me and my family?”. I told him in no uncertain terms that there was no danger and that he did nothing wrong. He was thankful- both to God and to me. “I know I can believe you, Rich. Thanks.” We finished up, and he gave me a Svengali-like bear hug. Royce Gracie, eat your heart out. He left my office a new man, ready to fight fires and rescue the injured.

I responded to a car accident that night. Three cars, and a lot of damage. A young girl, who was anunrestrained backseat passenger was walking around at the scene. No outside signs of DCAP-BTLS, but my suspicions ran high for internal bleeding. She must have called her parents before my bus arrived on scene, becase they came to the accident site. “Why aren’t you taking her to the same hospital as the others? It’s closer.” Not much time to sit with them in consultation to explain the difference between a trauma center and the other hospital. I told them that I have two children of my own, and I would do the same thing for my kids as I would their daughter. “OK. We trust you are doing the right thing.”

My kids are both sick today. They sound like seals when they cough, and elephants when they blow their noses. My house is, literally, a zoo. They take the medicine I give them so readily. I tell them that they will be better soon. “When, daddy?” “very very soon.” They smile at me, and then they go downstairs to play.

I went to the gas station to fill my tank up before I hit up Dunkin’ Donuts for some coffee and a bagel. I had to pay the attendant before he would turn the pump on. Guess he didn’t trust me.

Ok…. someone just found my blog site using the search term “lady face mold”. Houston, we have a problem.

Wonder if the character would work with other nationalities too.

It gets all too overwhelming for me sometimes. Rarely, but sometimes. And that’s too often. One thought turns into two, then five, then five million. When it snowballs like that, I can’t catch my breath. So usually I take a long drag from a Marlboro Light. Go figure.

It was noisier at first in the Trial Assignment Part courtroom today. An annoying cacophony. Kinda like a bunch of lawyers all saying the words “peas and squash, peas and squash” to one another, really not talking about anything at all. Then Judge Sweeney took the bench, the bailiff called for order, and it got real quiet, real fast. I swear, someone farted. It was gross. No one flinched. No one moved. No one made a face. All for fear of being removed from the courtroom and missing the calendar call. All anyone could do was breathe in the stale, thick air. Amidst the quiet, the EMT in me couldn’t help but take such opportunity to fine tune my caregiver skills, so I listened to the bodies around me for crackles, rales, and I think i even detected a heart murmur, all without a stethoscope, without getting out of my chair, and without flinching from the old smelly lawyer man ass gas. Did I mention my ear is bionic? Lindsay Wagner, eat your heart out.

I got home relatively early. I promptly changed my clothes. That’s when the pager went off. Signal 9. Female with chest pains over at the cablevision offices. I started to breathe heavier. I always do that though when I get a Signal 9 across the pager. It’s exciting. A good exciting. So, no Marlboro Light. Go figure. We found the lady just hanging out in her boss’ office. She’s had this pain since the morning, or so she says. She was fine really. No shortness of breath.  But we packed her up in the bus and took her to the hospital. There were two other EMTs riding with me. One started to give the lady some aspirin. He was relatively new, so, we had this 5 second debate as to whether our protocol allowed us to administer the aspirin without asking Med Comm. I backed down, and listened to the lady’s breath sounds instead. Her lungs sounded just like the breath sounds of the smelly lawyer man from this morning. So I put some blankets over her in case she farted.

My wife and daughter were home when I got back from the call. We started watching Americas Funniest Videos in bed. My wife took a phone call and went downstairs. I shut the lights off, and cooed my little princess to sleep. She rested her beautiful head on my chest. I think she was listening to my lungs.

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It’s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy? It’s the free market. And you’re a part of it. ”

“The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don’t want to do.”

Blue Horse Shoe Loves Anacot Steel.You stop sending me information, and you start getting me some.

Carl Fox: He’s using you, kid. He’s got your prick in his back pocket, but you’re too blind to see it.
Bud Fox: No. What I see is a jealous old machinist who can’t stand the fact that his son has become more successful than he has!
Carl Fox: What you see is a guy who never measured a man’s success by the size of his WALLET!
Bud Fox: That’s because you never had the GUTS to go out into the world and stake your own claim!
[Long Pause]Carl Fox: Boy, if that’s the way you feel, I must have done a really lousy job as a father.

Carl Fox: “I came into Egypt a Pharoah who did not know.”
Gordon Gekko: I beg your pardon, is that a proverb.
Carl Fox: No, a prophecy. The rich been doing it to the poor since the beginning of time. The only difference between the Pyramids and the Empire State Building is the Egyptians didn’t allow unions. I know what this guy is all about, greed. He don’t give a damn about Bluestar or the unions. He’s in and out for the buck and he don’t take prisoners.

Here’s an excerpt from one of my wife’s recent phone conversations….

My dad was on a business trip in Boston. My mom was working late. I was 10 years old, and I had just moved to Pleasantville, New York the month prior. There were no cell phones back then, so, I watched TV along side my dog, Ralph, until my mom got home. The digital clock read 900PM. I was turning away from the TV show quite frequently to look at it. And then the doorbell rang. There was a man who I had never met before standing in the doorway with Craig Bilotti, a kid from my 5th grade class. The man was from the Pleasantville Volunteer Ambulance Corps. It was his job to explain to me that my mom had been in a horrible car accident, and she wasnt expected to live through the night. Pain. Severe pain. The kind that doesn’t go away. The type that is incomparable to what my mom went through, and the likes of which I don’t talk about, for fear of doing just that- comparing it to, and thereby belittling, my mother’s pain- her physical pain that is. But that man… he made a difference. He was an EMT. But I am SURE that no EMS instructor taught him about how well he handled himself, and me, that night.

As soon as things settled down, my dad joined the Pleasantville Ambulance Corps and became an EMT himself. I’m not sure exactly why he did. Certainly, though, he did it either to pay back a debt, or to help others, or to incorporate within himself the values of the man in my doorway that night, or perhaps all of these reasons. I dont’ really think it’s important to know which anyway. It’s also not the crux of this blog entry to know whether my mom survived, which she did. I have always maintained, nonetheless, that my parents, neither of whom graduated college, are the two of the most intelligent people who walk the earth.

I think somehow they passed that quality on to my children. My son loves hockey, and we all went to a New York Islanders hockey game last night. Here is a dialogue excerpt from my son, 4 (my power ranger), and my daughter, 3 (my princess) as we left after the game:

Me to my son: So do you still want to be a hockey player when you grow up?
Son to me: Yeah. And a lawyer and a firefighter and a paramedic too.
My daughter to all: I wanna be a doctor for princesses and the princesses will save all the world.
Son to daughter: You can’t save everyone in the world.
Daughter to Son: Yes you can.
Son: No you can’t. Only daddy can. He’s a paramedic and a firefighter. (ed.: funny how he left out lawyer!)
(shouting match ensues between them)
(then, finally…..)

Daughter to Me: Daddy, can you save everyone?
Me: No, sweetheart, I can’t. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. I just try it one person at a time.
Son: Yeah. I’m gonna do that too.
Daughter: Yeah. Me too.

And so, to those who are amongst us, coming to our aid ever so subtly, without flashing lights and sirens, without trauma bags and neck collars, I salute you.

Long Island is 118 miles long and 18-20 miles wide at its widest point.