Chapter 3 - Perspective
Evvy kept her sunglasses on when she strolled into the locker room to stow her stuff the next morning. She was, as usual, about a half hour early for her shift, but puttered around in the dorm to postpone the inevitable. Someone, and it didn't take a lot of imagination to figure out who, had placed a picture of Joe Louis (ripped out of a Sports Illustrated magazine) on her locker door. The guys were going to dine out on this story for the whole shift, she could tell, and the tale would undoubtedly get more exaggerated over time, until it included her going ten rounds with Mohammed Ali and Rocky Marciano. At five minutes to eight, she sighed and made her way into the kitchen for her morning cup of coffee, without her shades.
It started immediately. Chet pointed to her in the doorway and raised his voice, palming an imaginary hanging microphone. "In this corner! Weighing a hundred pounds! And I'm underestimating so I don't get decked! Evvy 'The Brick Wall' Wayfair!" He and Marco made crowd cheering noises. It was enough to make Stoker raise his eyes from his newspaper – and stare.
Evvy smiled wanly and headed to the coffee pot, passing an astonished Roy. Her left eye was a little less puffy than it had been the previous evening, but there was deep purple bruising visible against her chocolate skin from just under her cheekbone all the way up to her eyebrow. She had attempted to use makeup that morning to cover it up, but hadn't had the skill to make it look natural, so she'd just washed it off again. Instead of pulling her crinkly hair back into its usual work-appropriate curly puff at the base of her neck, she'd left it loose so it could at least partially cover her swollen face. If they let John get away with looking like a shaggy sheepdog on a regular basis, they could just deal with her wild hair for one shift.
Captain Stanley called roll, and they all assembled in the bay for announcements and chore assignments, Evvy at the end of the line in the junior position.
"Some news out of HQ, gentlemen," Cap said, scanning the bulletin he held in his hand. "That school gas leak the other day has officially been deemed arson – of the booby-trap variety. All of the Bunsen burners were fully turned on in that lab, and the master control valve was sheared off. There were incidents out of 10s and 99s involving a restaurant and an unoccupied house for sale that were similar. MO seems to be secondary explosions once the company is engaged on the initial reported gas leak. And you were right, Marco, they did find traces of a matchbook striker strip on the doorjamb." The crew shifted tensely. The "booby-trap" element meant that the arsonist was deliberately targeting firemen, and the variety in targets meant that any given run could be a trap. Cap went on, "All three incidents involved ethyl alcohol – that's what lit up the second floor hallway – but we should be on the lookout for other VOCs moving forward."
He let that sink in before assigning the day's tasks down the line. Cap glanced up briefly when he got to Evvy—she had hose hanging duties with Roy—and froze. His face went blank as he took in her black eye, imperfectly hidden behind a fall of curly hair. Very quietly, he asked, "What the h–, what on God's green earth happened to your face, Wayfair?"
There was silence, broken only by a soft, anonymous snicker.
"Bar fight, sir," Evvy answered with a straight face.
"Ba–" Cap started to repeat faintly, then snapped his mouth shut. He pinned her with an I-seriously-expected-better-from-you glare, then tightly said, "Dismissed."
Loud guffaws followed her out the back door and all the way to the hose tower.
Station Fifty-one, possible heart attack, Church of the Redeemer, 11147 Fulton Street, 1-1-1-4-7 Fulton Street, cross street Crescent. Time out, eleven-ten.
The traffic was light, it being just after eleven on a Sunday morning, and it took mere minutes to arrive at the address. The Squad and the Engine pulled into the church's small parking lot, waved in by a tall black man in a dark suit and a clerical collar. Roy grabbed the O2 and drug box, while John carried the defibrillator and Biophone.
"I'm Reverend Robert Darwin," said the man. "I'm the one who called you. It's one of our seniors, Dorothea Grant. When she got here, she seemed a little weak, and then she said she couldn't really catch her breath. I don't know if it's her heart or not, but we wanted to be on the safe side." He opened the door to the Sanctuary. Captain Stanley sent Stoker and Marco back to the Engine, and gestured for Chet and Evvy to follow the paramedics with him, in case the patient went south and extra hands were needed. A few dozen people sat in the pews already. Curious and concerned gazes followed the firefighters as they trudged up the side aisle of the Sanctuary and through a door to the left of the wooden pulpit. Evvy sneaked a glance around the Sanctuary, dim from the stained glass windows and filled with quiet organ music.
Rev. Darwin led them through another door and into a small study filled with books, where an elderly black lady with snow white hair was fully reclined on a tufted green sofa, and a much younger woman was holding her hand. He introduced the younger woman as his wife, and she rose and stepped nervously out of the way. The patient had been covered with a light blanket, and her stockinged feet were slightly elevated on pillows. She was clad in a shiny blue dress, and a matching hat decorated with silk flowers was placed on the floor next to the sofa. As Evvy loitered in the doorway, John knelt down next to the patient, who eyed him without speaking. Roy set up the biophone; there was no question that John was better with the elderly. "Good morning, ma'am, I'm John Gage, and this is my partner, Roy. You're not feeling well today?" As he spoke, he reached gently for her wrist to begin taking vital signs. The lady snatched it away. "It's alright," John said, recalibrating, "I just wanna take your pulse if that's okay . . ."
The patient ignored him and glared at Reverend Darwin as if betrayed. "Now, Mother Grant," Mrs. Darwin said soothingly, "these firemen are just trying to help you." That earned her a glare of her own, and a creaky, annoyed voice said, "I didn't call no firemen."
Rev. Darwin gestured Cap aside. "She's a little upset, she didn't want us to call you."
"Don't worry about it," Cap replied, "my paramedics have a lot of experience. They'll make her comfortable. They'll most likely be taking her to Rampart Hospital. Does she have any family?"
"We're it," Rev. Darwin said, making a motion toward the Sanctuary. "If you don't mind, I need to go back in there and start the service. Everyone's pretty worried." At Cap's nod, he asked his wife in a low murmur to stay, then ducked out the door to do his work and let the Fire Department do theirs.
"Now, ma'am," John said, deploying his firm but respectful tone, "We just want to help you feel better. Are you in any pain?" She pressed her lips together tightly and didn't answer.
"Rampart," Roy said, "this is Squad 51, how do you read?"
John discreetly moved the fingers of one hand down the the bony, papery-skinned wrist and lightly rested the other on the lady's abdomen. She was trembling, in contrast to the stiff, stubborn expression on her face.
"Go ahead, 51," Dr. Brackett's baritone rumbled through the tinny speaker, startling the patient.
"Rampart, we have a female, age approximately seventy-five . . ." Roy was interrupted by a huff of pure displeasure, and Mrs. Darwin supplied in a forced cheerful tone, "Mother Grant just celebrated her hundred and second birthday a few weeks ago." All eyes turned to the old lady's smooth, almost unwrinkled face in shocked silence. "Correction, Rampart, age is a hundred and two. Patient was complaining earlier of shortness of breath and was observed to be a little weaker than normal . . ."
"I wasn't complaining," the old lady muttered.
"Stand by for vital signs." Roy said.
John reported a pulse rate of one-ten, and respirations thirty and shallow. He unwrapped the sphygmomanometer and showed it to her. "Now, I'm just going to measure your blood pressure, Mrs. Grant," he explained gently. It was apparent that her elevated numbers had as much to do with her stress and discomfort as any cardiac event. "And then we'll give you some oxygen to help you breathe better."
The old woman's eyes scanned the faces crowded into the room, and latched on to one in particular. "You," she pointed with a skinny, fragile finger, "you come here."
Evvy waited for an affirming nod from Cap—it was never her place to interfere with the paramedics' work—then stepped forward. "Yes, ma'am?" How easily she fell back into the familiar childhood pattern of deference to a church mother.
"You a fireman?" Mother Grant demanded faintly, taking in her turnout gear.
"Yes, ma'am," Evvy answered, and removed her helmet so that the old lady could get a better look at her face.
"You a girl." Mother Grant declared, ignoring Evvy's bruise, then in a quieter voice said, "I don't need no fireman. I need a doctor." She didn't resist as John placed the nasal cannula on her face, but neither did she cooperate. There was wariness and a little fear in her eyes.
"Fifty-one, can you send me a strip?" Dr. Brackett inquired, and Roy asked him again to stand by.
Evvy took one look at Mother Grant's face and immediately saw how this was going to go. The zipper of the elderly lady's Sunday church dress was in the back, and the EKG patches needed to be placed precisely on the skin of her chest and abdomen, beneath her full slip undergarment. As Roy pulled the leads from the biophone's compartment, Mother Grant's bottom lip began to tremble, and she drew a shaky breath.
"Well, ma'am, these are paramedics," Evvy said, gesturing to Roy and John.
"Para-what?"
"Paramedics," Evvy repeated patiently, as if she were speaking to her own great-grandmother. "They are, um," John is going to kill me dead for this, she thought, "they are firemen-nurses. They want to check you out so they can talk to the doctor on the phone right there, and then the doctor will be ready for you when you get to the hospital." She swallowed. "They've got to put those stickers on you under your dress, here, here, and here," she added, indicating on her own torso where the leads would go, "so they can show the doctor what your heart's doing right now."
"Fifty-one, where's that EKG?" Dr. Brackett asked impatiently.
"Stand by, Rampart," Roy said, and everybody held their breath.
Mother Grant did not so much give permission as give up, and she kept her eyes on Evvy's as John gently reached behind her and lowered her zipper, murmuring encouragement and telling her exactly what he was going to do before he did it. Cap gestured for Chet to follow him out of the room to give the woman some privacy, but Mother Grant reached out blindly for Evvy's hand, so she stayed. John slid her thin arms out of the long sleeves and placed the patches by feel, keeping his head bowed and his face turned slightly to the side to preserve the last of the old woman's dignity. The EKG showed some mild abnormalities in the rhythm, but Roy turned his back and quietly requested permission not to start an IV TKO unless necessary, as the patient was experiencing some distress, but no acute pain. Brackett paused for a moment to consider this, then, trusting his paramedics' judgment in the field, acquiesced.
When the ambulance attendants arrived to transfer Mother Grant to the gurney, John tucked the warm blanket up around the centenarian's chin, careful to cover any skin exposed by her unfastened dress and pulled-down slip. "You're gonna be okay," he said in that soothing, empathetic tone he had, "I'll ride in the ambulance with you to the hospital."
Mother Grant looked at Evvy. "They gonna let me in that hospital?" she asked dubiously.
Evvy's encouraging smile wobbled. "They let everyone in that hospital, ma'am," she answered. "They treat everybody." She gave the old lady's hand a reassuring pat and stepped aside as the gurney rolled down the short hall and into the Sanctuary. Service had started, and Rev. Darwin's voice could be heard, rising and falling in the cadence of prayer, punctuated with echoes of agreement from the congregation.
Evvy fell in line behind Cap and made her way out of the church, the strains of a hymn she knew in her bones drifting out into the street. She watched as the old lady's gurney was lifted and locked into position in the back of the ambulance, then John climbed in, took his seat on the bench and, smiling sweetly, reached for the patient's fragile, spindly hand with both of his. The doors closed, and the ambulance pulled away, its siren sounding shrill in the quiet Sunday morning.
John wasn't as ticked at her when he got back to the Station as she'd feared, despite the awkwardly folded white dishtowel—shaped and double-striped with a black marker to resemble Nursing Supervisor Dixie McCall's cap—that was prominently placed on the kitchen table at Gage's accustomed spot. He wasn't even angry when Chet and Marco started referring to him as "Nurse John," and asking in high quavering voices for a bedpan. Evvy ducked guiltily into the dorm to escape the teasing she had inadvertently caused, although it did seem she would get a little relief from the boxing jokes. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt John, one of her few allies in the Department and, increasingly, a close friend and confidant.
He found her hiding, and sat on the foot of his bed, facing hers, waiting for her to stop pretending to read her novel.
Finally, she looked up. "Sorry for butting in there," she said diffidently. "I didn't mean to give the guys ammunition like that."
"Your translation skills need a little work, that's for sure," John chuckled with an unconcerned shrug. "For a moment there, I didn't think she was going to let us treat her. Thanks for your help."
"She reminded me of some of the folks I knew back home. Elders of the church. People who grew up during Reconstruction and Jim Crow."
"Yeah," John replied thoughtfully. "Sometimes I wonder how the tribal elders would react to all the medical gear and procedures. I guess to them, it must feel pretty invasive, even if it's totally necessary. History is pretty powerful."
Evvy looked down and remarked as matter-of-factly as she could manage. "She's a hundred year old church lady surrounded by a bunch of white men in uniforms who are trying to take her clothes off. Not hard to figure out what she's thinking." They sat in silence for a moment. "She gonna be okay, you think?" Evvy asked.
John huffed a laugh. "Yeah. When I left, she was already giving Dr. Morton the business."
Evvy could picture that. "You were really amazing with her, Pretty," she said finally.
"So were you," John said, and Evvy knew what was coming next. "I'm telling you, you'd make a really good para–"
"Nope, nope, nope," Evvy interrupted. She was fine holding a hundred year old lady's hand on a run, but she had absolutely no desire to deal with the blood and broken bones and ick that were John's day-to-day reality.
"-Or a firefighter-nurse," John continued, smirking. "Just sayin', Gumby."
Her glare only held for a second before it softened into a rueful grin. "Shut up, Pretty," she said.
