Pride and prejudice

Posted by nycmedic059 on 21 July, 2007, 2:21 PM

I'm awakened at 5.50 a. m. by the dulcet tones of Timbaland on my radio alarm, which usually is one of my get-out-of-bed-right-now moments, but last night was late, so I just hit the snooze button before I have a chance to think this decision through.

I'm awakened again ten minutes later by the equally dulcet tones of the newscaster. Another hot day… memorial events in London two years after the Underground bombings… 23 South Korean church workers kidnapped by Taliban.

Great.

I hate the Taliban as much as the next person. I probably hate them more. One reason (probably not the main reason, but a very personal one) I hate them for is that people keep expecting me to apologize for actions committed by people operating from a trifling six hundred miles from where I was born. Do people in Death Valley keep having to apologize for Charles Manson?

Come to think of it, I guess they do.

My ten minutes of Timbaland-induced snoozing mean that I reach the ambulance bay at seven a. m. sharp, and I consider myself lucky that Peter, as always, is already there and has done the checkup.

"You OK?" he asks me as he notices my bad mood.

"Yeah. All stocked up?"

"All ready to clear," he says.

So here we are. He doesn't knock me about being chronically late for work, and I don't badger him about his long absence. I haven't decided yet if this is really that smart, but at least it's convenient. He's got my back, and I've got his – that's how it works.

We get a call for a seizure about ten minutes later, and dispatch tells us to take it at an easy two – lights but no sirens. When we're almost there, we get an update – step it up to a one, they say; paediatric, patient not breathing.

Peter hits the sirens, and although it's just a few blocks, we soon realize that we're not making much ground. The streets are already clogged up in the morning rush hour.

"Listen," Peter says after a minute. "It's just two blocks. I'll jump out and see what I can do. It's a kid. If we need to get out quickly, I'll just grab 'em and get back to you. Way better than have them wait another fifteen minutes. OK?"

I agree, and Peter grabs his bag, along with the paediatric airway kit, and swings out of the door. I see him skip over a few car hoods, and then he's out of sight.

Paediatric calls are bullshit 90% of the time. There's nothing like a distraught parent to give dramatically exaggerated reports to dispatch. Usually, a seizing child looks more frightening than it actually is, and by the time we arrive, they're usually postictal (meaning the seizure is over).

The remaining 10 % tend to be the really bad ones.

I now find myself questioning my decision to let Peter run ahead. His IV skills keep making me forget he's not a full paramedic yet. I just hope he's got everything under control up there.

I pull up in the middle of the street eight minutes later, leave the lights on, ignore the air horns starting up from behind me, and jump out with the bag and monitor. I've been pretty quick, and I doubt that Peter has that much of a head start on me.

The apartment number we've been given is on the sixth floor. I half expect to run into Peter as I step out of the elevator, probably very much out of breath, but all I see is a billowing curtain on a wide-open window in the hall. The apartment door stands ajar, and a fat woman ushers me in.

Peter is kneeling on the kitchen floor next to a positively huge kid. It's hard to guess his age. He's probably around twelve, but has to weigh more than 200 pounds.

I don't know what to stare at more: the size of the kid, or the fact that Peter has already gotten an IV, injected him with valium, and did it long enough ago that the drug has taken effect. Or the fact that he's neither out of breath nor seems to have broken a sweat.

What the hell did he do? Fly?

Peter looks at me like he's glad to see me, though I can see that the family gathered around the kid eyes me less than favourably. It's a kind of "And you are…?" stare.

"Hesam, can you put him on the monitor?" Peter asks as he tries for a pulse. The kid seems to be completely out of it.

I shake myself, and attach the monitor electrodes to the boy's chest. His heart rate and pulses are normal for his postictal state, but his lungs sound junky. He probably aspirated some of the vomit I can see on the floor. Seems that Peter managed to stay mostly clear of it this time, apart from kneeling in it.

The boy's blood oxygen (SAT) is below 90%, which is definitely something to worry about.

"Should we try Lasix?" Peter asks.

Lasix can help clear a person's lungs, but mostly in pulmonary oedema, and can go very wrong if contraindicated. I usually avoid giving any Lasix at all. I shake my head emphatically. "Not for patients under twelve, although at his size-" I stop myself, but too late; the parent's scowls have definitely deepened. I'm unflustered. Don't be mad at me for pointing out your unhealthy lifestyle, I think to myself.

We end up bagging the boy via non-rebreather, which boosts his SATs to 95%, but his state still means we would have taken him in – even if the family didn't insist on it. Which they do.

"Are you just going to stand there?" the father, a red-faced, heavy-set man around fifty, asks. Peter is bagging, and as a matter of fact, I am standing there. While I'm waiting for the guy's wife to dig up the sheet with their son's medication. "Shouldn't you be getting a stretcher or something?"

"The stretcher wouldn't fit in the elevator," I reply levelly. "Unless you'd prefer us to lean your son against the wall." I don't say I might be getting the stair chair, but this guy has me seriously pissed by now. And in that instant, his wife comes waddling from the bedroom with the medication list.

I sit down at the table – which is apparently seen as the next major transgression on my part – and quickly scribble down the patient's personal data as well as the medications he's on. It's rather a lot for a boy his age. I only note down the most important things – I can do the rest later, such as actions taken on scene and the narrative – and am just about to get up and get the chair when the father says, "Are you going to take my son to the hospital now, or are you going to – I don't know, pray to Mecca first, or shoot down a couple of church workers?"

I can only stare at the man, completely speechless. Which is probably his good luck as well as mine. I deal with a lot of things like these, though rarely of this scale. Most of the time, I find that the uniform helps.

Peter, in his unobtrusively deescalating way, steps in. "Hesam, why don't you get the stair chair. He's satting at 98%; I'll just carry him and you meet me halfway."

I know he's right, though right now, an outright confrontation would have been so much more satisfying.

I give him an abrupt nod and leave, without a word to the family, stuffing the run report into my bag as I go. It's all I can take my anger out on right now.

I get the chair, and meet Peter on the third floor. He's carrying that killer whale of a kid as of it was the nimble preschool kid our inner eye showed us at hearing "paediatric". I know he's fit, but this is weird.

"He must have very light bones," Peter remarks as he sits the boy in the chair. We take the elevator down, and when we lift the kid onto our stretcher, I am under the impression that he doesn't have very light bones at all. 200 pounds is nothing I haven't hauled around before, even alone for a brief period of time, but Peter makes it look very easy. I know it's unfair, but that makes me even more resentful, although he hasn't done anything wrong today. Except maybe suggesting Lasix.

The boy's father now appears at the ambulance, to go to the hospital with us. Peter lets me drive and stays in back, so I don't have to deal with him, but knowing he's there is bad enough.

We leave the boy in the paediatric ward at Mercy Heights, and as we go back, Peter casts me a sidelong glance. "Hey. I'm really sorry. I guess some people's minds are just too narrow to realise not all Muslims are terrorists. Don't let it get to you. He was just worried about the kid, I guess."

"And what makes you think I'm a Muslim?" I snap at Peter. I realise I'm being unfair, but I'm pissed, and he's there, the only available target for my righteous wrath, and he's being pretty narrow-minded himself right now.

Peter looks dumbstruck at realising his mistake. Damn, that felt good.

He doesn't say anything else, and neither do I as we get our run times, restock, and remake the stretcher. The silence drags on as we sit back in the truck and clear.

I realise he's not going to restart a conversation, either for fear of putting his foot in it again or because he thinks I was being unfair to him, so after a while, I sigh.

"It's OK," I tell him. "I didn't mean to imply you were as bad as that guy back there. Although especially you Catholics can be pretty pig-headed about that kind of stuff."

He gives me a strange look.

"And what makes you think I'm a Catholic?" he asks.

I stare at him, just as dumbstruck as he was before. I'm not used to being out-prejudiced.

Then I realise what the strange look is. He can barely keep his face from splitting in two. After a few moments, he bursts out laughing.

I fight it for a moment before I join in.

"You know," he says when we've calmed down somewhat, still grinning, "you were right about me though. I am a Catholic."

Boy, am I glad that at least I was jumping to the right conclusions.