Tears blurred my vision as I watched her life slip away. Her neck and shoulders fought to take in air. There was no rhythm in the fight for breath, and while I had been trained to react, I sat frozen entranced by the wailing siren above me. The monitors yelped, warning me her end was near. Their beeping begged for action, but I could not move. The woman before me, my friend, was going to die.
My entry into emergency medicine was not precipitated by passion or a sense of duty. It was the only door left open for a broke twenty something with a year of community college under his belt. More qualified applicants were waiting in line at the bakery to drive the bread trucks, and the post office needed only seasonal help.
To possible employers, the fact that I had made eight grand a month brokering mortgages for a year was suspicious considering my education, and I had as much luck explaining my financial fall in interviews as I did the business that had been so lucrative.
All I knew was that, at the time, interest rates were low. As a broker, I could save people thousands of dollars. My cousin had hired me and given me his small firm’s policy.
“Every mortgage guy in the country can get five percent. But they are using the phone or telling people to come to the bank. We’re different. To gain the edge, we go to them. It’s about trust and convenience.”
He was right. I took phone calls from people who saw our ad or the sign out front, and I visited them. If the prospect trusted me, I showed them I could lower their house payment. They would then sign forms that I couldn’t explain, and two weeks later I made a commission.
I leased a Lexus, bought a condo, and spent my evenings in bars where the women were more impressed by being bought twelve dollar martinis than by a good sense of humor. I even brokered a few loans for several divorcées who had first enjoyed my martinis.
My cousin encouraged me to network and suggested ways to find more business. I no more understood his suggestions than I did the forms my clients signed. While I spent my new fortune, interest rates jumped from five to six percent, and the incoming calls decreased.
I took a trip to Vegas and when I returned I collected my month’s pay. It was only $900. My condo payment alone was fifteen hundred. Sin City had drained my savings. My emergency money had been cashed in at the blackjack tables, stuffed into the g-strings of exotic dancers, or blown buying drinks for nightclubs full of strangers.
Two months after my Vegas trip my cousin cut me loose. I charged the tuition of EMT school to my last working credit card. A week after that, I filed for bankruptcy and attended my first day of class.
EMT’s are not paramedics. I heard this often. As an Emergency Medical Technician I would learn the basic skills of a life guard. Paramedics, with two years of serious education, would push the drugs, read the EKG’s, and guide tubes down trauma victims’ throats.
My EMT license allowed me to drive, take blood pressure from the homeless, or carry amputees to the doctor. During my clinicals, I was required to answer emergency calls with experienced paramedics. During these rides I kept my distance. I followed orders but made more jokes about the poor and crazy we encountered than made progress with my patient care. I didn’t want to respond to 911 calls, so when I received my license in the mail, I opted to fill a transport service position. The ambulance I worked on was required to have lights, but those lights were never used. The drugs on the shelves were dusted over. I spent my days taking patients to nursing homes, waiting at clinics, and catching cat naps on the stretcher.
I was broke, so I worked, a lot. I hit on my female partner hoping to turn my naps into some exercise but was informed she was gay. So I spent my days trying to figure out how to breathe through my nose without having to smell my patients.
It struck me one day that although I did not drink martinis anymore, or watch football on a big screen, my life felt similar to how it was before my bankruptcy, mundane and unremarkable.
Doris McLean changed all that.
She was a wealthy woman, but diabetes paid no attention to her money. The disease progressed quickly, and when I met her she could not walk or stand. Peripheral vascular disease would claim her legs, and until she met the knife, she would experience only pain and trips to the dialysis clinic where her blood was cleaned three times a week.
Ms. McLean was long and frail. Though her ivory skin hung loose with wrinkles around her arms and neck, there was a glimmer in her eyes that reflected poise and class. We lifted her gently onto the stretcher with a sheet while she winced in pain.
“And how are you?” she once asked me as we rode in the back of the ambulance.
“Fine, I guess.”
“You are a nice boy,” she said patting my hand. “You are always very careful when moving me around.”
“If you say so.”
“Talking to you is like sucking a milkshake through a tiny straw.”
I laughed. “So I make your head hurt?”
“No, I love milkshakes, but I eat them with a spoon.”
I opened up to Ms. McLean after that. I asked her a lot of questions. Always tired, she just smiled and recalled moments from her life and shared them. When she prodded me, I couldn’t say much.
“When was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe?”
I didn’t know.
“Do you paint?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Write?”
“Not since school.”
“Sing?” she asked.
“In the shower,” I said smiling.
“That’s a start.” She held my hand. “My late husband sang to me. Singing is magic.”
After my shifts, I began making regular visits to the nursing home to spend time with Ms. McLean. We listened to her music: Sinatra, Bobby Darrin, Perry Como. She hummed along and begged me to sing. I refused, but danced a little to the good songs.
One day Ms. McLean was chatty; the next she was in excruciating pain and could not muster a word. I talked, but she only managed an occasional grimace in response. She barely moved, and her skin bruised at the softest touch. Her condition was so dire that the clinic refused to treat her, all but signing her death certificate.
Carrying her back to the nursing home, I noticed the new paperwork in her file. The Do Not Resuscitate order blocked medical personnel from performing life saving measures. A wave of sorrow hit me and then turned to fear as the monitors beeped, indicating a dangerous drop in blood pressure.
I yelled at my partner, “ER now! Run emergency!”
“She’s DNR; we can’t touch her!”
“I know, but you can drive, damn it!”
My partner saw my resolve. A moment later we were lit and rolling.
I looked over Ms. McLean’s body and saw her struggle to live. I started to cry like a child. I wanted to take the pain away. Hers and mine. I grabbed her hand and sang softly the Bobby Darrin number I knew from the TV commercials.
“Somewhere beyond the sea.” Tears caught in my throat, but I continued, “She’s there waiting for me.”
Just then Ms. McLean smiled.
She whispered with her eyes closed, “Magic.”
My crying then mixed with a laughing that made it hard to breathe.
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