i suck!

i really do... i've slacked for so long on these blogs but here's a treat. something gnarly.

it's about four in the afternoon on a completely normal and busy day in this city. picked up some drunks, treated some asthma, a small stroke, and then POW! dispatched to a very nice hotel downtown for the "self inflicted gunshot wound to the abdomen."

usually i don't go to the self inflicted gunshots with any hope for a save, figuring that the head is a pretty easy target and the bullets go pretty fast and well, you're dead. success. but to the abdomen? felt i might be able to save this person. so we lit it up and raced to the hotel. i won't say the name of this hotel but i've heard that the heiress to the fortune is a skank.

i grabbed all the gear that i thought i was going to need and rolled to the elevator to get to one of the highest floors. as i walked down the hallway i was passing the curious tourists who were craning their necks out their doors looking down the hall at all the commotion and i got to the patient's room. there were about six police officers and an engine crew who were already on scene. i asked the cop, "is the patient still alive?"

"no, man. no way. go in and check it out."

i entered the room where there were a few officers, an engine medic, and an engine emt. the patient was lying face down on the rug at the base of the bed. the pt was wearing a gray pinstriped suit, nice leather shoes, and a gold watch. to the patient's left was a large semi-automatic pistol. there was a small desk on his right with a hand-written suicide note on the hotel's stationary just above him.

the patient had curly brown hair with many gray strands. the patient's head was cocked slightly and his arms were down by his side. surrounding his head was a large pool of purple blood, and it was obvious that dispatch had it wrong, that this was a shot to the skull with a large caliber gun. his abdomen was perfectly fine. no save possible here.

so if that picture is bad enough, it gets much worse. what made the scene so strange was that all along the carpet, the bed, the ottoman, and the large upholstered chair, were about 20 or so variously-sized pieces of skull. they ranged from the size of dimes to quarters, and really looked as if someone took a couple of eggshells, crushed them in their hands, and just joyfully tossed them skyward in the hotel room like confetti while standing over the patient. while walking through the hotel room, everyone had to be really careful as to not to stand on a piece of skull. more than once i heard, "hey, you're standing on some skull, watch it!"

"sorry man. woops."

since the suicide note was out in the open i was very curious and so i took a look. basically it sounded like this gentleman was wrapped up in some sort of financial scheme gone sour. there were apologies, and statements of innocence but that noone would believe him and that he was being persecuted and that this was his only way out. pretty lame reason to die, but i guess he was too ashamed to face up to his responsibilities. maybe he ruined some lives, i really don't know. but with all suicides, the thing i can't figure out is why you wouldn't just reinvent yourself. maybe fake your death or something. go live the rest of your life in chile or china. anything but a bullet or poison. pussies.

so i cut the paperwork and called the coroner with the information that i had gathered. and then like some of these calls, i started tripping out.

this guy was dressed well. he had a reasonable amount of money, enough for a gold watch and snappy suit. enough to choose this hotel, enough to buy such a nice gun. so this normal person walks into the hotel and goes to the front desk. "good day to you sir, welcome to the hotel. what name is your room booked?" smiling at my patient, maybe making small talk. and unless things were really awkward, my patient was smiling too, "good afternoon. yes, it is really nice out today. what? no... here for business. maybe i'll have time to take in a show."

then my patient smiles and gives his credit card over for incidentals and takes his room key. "thank you." and walks to the elevator and shares it with a couple of guests. they give a quick smile, everyone is happy, they're on vacation in a very nice hotel in a very interesting city. so much hope. and then my patient gets to his floor and passes a maid who smiles at him and he smiles back. he enters his room and all the smiles are gone and he opens up a beer. he goes to the desk, sees the hotel stationary and spends a little time writing a note. it's not his fault. he's sorry. he turns on the television. he gets up from the desk and grabs his briefcase, putting in on the bed. he opens it and removes the pistol and sits back down on the desk chair. he takes the remote and puts the television volume up as loud as he can. takes a few more sips of beer, and then puts the gun in his mouth. thinks for a second but not too long and he pulls the trigger, head shoots back and he falls out of the chair, drops the gun and is face down on the carpet near the base of the bed with his arms at his sides and his head cocked slightly to the right in a gray, pin-striped suit with skull confetti slowly falling all around the room.

you should have moved to chile.

i told you this might happen...

for those suckers that have read every one of my posts, you may recall that in my very first blog i warned you guys that i might rant about something that has little to do with this job. i'll try to connect it by stating that it's a good idea for people in my profession to stay strong and in shape... you're constantly loading gurneys topped with overweight patients into the ambulance, you're picking dead-weight drunks off the street and onto your gurney, you're taking people down stairs who insist on grabbing the handrail and throwing you off balance... you need your strength. you really have to go to the gym.

and i do. i don't go quite as much as i should, i guess, but i'm there fairly often. and when i'm done working out, i enjoy going into the sauna and reading a magazine. i like to go to the sauna and relax. i like it because it's quiet and peaceful. at least it fucking should be so here we go:

what's wrong with some of you sauna people? don't you see that i'm reading, drinking some water, chilling out in the heat? i came into the sauna so that i could find some respite from everything going on outside. i'm not here to talk. i'm not here to think about much. i want to read about the latest in motorcycle suspension, or maybe i want to read some fiction in the new yorker until i can't stand the heat anymore. why are you blowing it for me?

the sauna is not for your bikram yoga exercises. i don't want to see your sweaty, naked, hairy body contort into weird shapes that look like some kind of kama sutra masturbation poses. i don't want to hear how hard it is for you to touch your toes, while you grunt in pain, trying to make me think that you're really pushing it. i don't care if you're in here, but fucking cut it out. you're a dick, and i'm not impressed. this is not your personal yoga studio.

and you over there! why can't you just put that towel on your lap like everyone else and have some dignity? we're not in ancient greece here. yeah, your hung. that's great. your legs are spread out so that everyone has to notice. you're not awesome, dude. you totally suck and that towel that you got when you came into the gym came with your membership and it's free so now's the time to use it. cover up. i'm open minded, but i'm not aloof and i'm noticing how hard you're trying to make this all "normal." it's not. your mom should have taught you some manners.

oh, and you in the corner. what the fuck? we're all hot in here... it's over 110 degrees. why are you making so much noise? SIGH... big breath... OOOHHH... chug chug chug your water so damn loudly. oh... you're suffering. you're really pushing the envelope here with how much you can stand. man... your pain tolerance is simply amazing and i'm really impressed. how can you do it? are you a monk or something? NO. you're a pussy. now cut it out or get the hell out of here. you're bugging the shit out of me and i can't concentrate on this damn article because you're distracting me in your agony.

all i wanted to do is relax. read a little. drink a little water. detoxify. but you jerks wouldn't let me.

maybe i should go get a massage.

could you please stop breathing, please?

code 2 calls: no lights, no sirens, obeying all traffic laws. minor injury, minor illness, major drunkenness. not a big deal.

code 3 calls: lights, sirens, go through stops and reds and aging yellows. major injury, major illnesses, major drunkenness. probably not a big deal.

so one friday night around two a.m. or so, my partner and i were dispatched to a call for a code 2 police-requested evaluation for an assault. usually these are non-transports for someone who scuffled with another and now has a busted lip, a black eye, and a bruised ego. often these calls are a gift of an ice-pack, some sympathy, and having them sign a release so that they can go home and put a bag of frozen peas on their injury. this particular call was in a fairly rough area of the city, "the hood." we slowly drove to the call and saw about five police cars and some yellow tape... yellow police tape for the minor injury... weird.

it was my partner's turn to tech this call, so when i pulled up, he got out with nothing more than his patient care report. i saw him walk under the police tape and he took a look at the patient who was lying on the sidewalk about 25 feet from the ambulance. "dude... grab EVERYTHING," he yelled to me as I was walking toward them.

i gathered the jump bag, the monitor, the ecg, a backboard, and a collar. the patient was an asian male, about 25 years old, lying face-up on the sidewalk, with what looked to be about a quart of blood leaving his head. i called for more assistance. this job was bigger what the two of us could handle.

this patient, this victim... he was in a BAD way. he was lying face-up with his head cocked slightly right. his mouth was half open, his eyes... wide open. his forehead... man. his forehead had a hole in it above the left eye, and just to the right of that hole, and i'm not lying here, was brain matter about the size of a soggy crouton. if this wasn't bad enough, the guy was breathing. i couldn't believe this. brain matter outside of its house with signs of life is rare. and not only was he breathing, but he was making a good amount of noise with his groans. we were going to have to transport this guy who was gonna die at any moment. i wanted to just stand there for about twenty seconds or so and let that happen, but we really don't have that option.

the extra resources arrived on the scene and then everything got a little crazy. some people are pretty calm when shit goes down, and others simply are not. there was an engine emt who arrived... a short female about 30 years old or so who just started flipping out. my partner and i were being methodical. it's all an algorithm what we do out here, and it's best to follow that model calmly. you'll get more accomplished faster and more efficiently. but this emt didn't believe this philosophy, or perhaps never heard of it, and she began to flail around like like someone being startled on america's funniest home videos. "oh my god, we've got to get the fuck out of here! he's shot in the head!" yeah... no shit.

we loaded the patient in the ambulance and the engine paramedic, my partner, and this emt all went in the back. we told the emt that she didn't need to go, but she either didn't hear this or didn't care. it's hard to read a crazy person. i think she thought she could save this guy. because of this, i was able to get into the front seat and drive. i was pretty relieved as i really didn't want to deal with patient who i was sure was going to die on the way to the hospital.

and he did. about one minute into the transport i saw the emt starting chest compressions and my partner was attempting an intubation. the other paramedic was busy trying to get an iv, and it just looked frantic. i could hear them getting frustrated with eachother, "don't stop your compressions!," "did you get a tube yet? what's the problem!?," "CLEAR!" i felt lucky to be in the front.

we pulled up to the hospital and i opened the back door. all three of them were sweating, were irritated, and were doing their best to resuscitate someone who had no chance. as we were rolling the patient into the emergency room, we left a trail of blood that was leaking through the many layers of gauze that was on the back of the patient's head. this guy was shot through and through.

because this was my partner's call, he had to do all the charting for this patient, and because i drove, i had to do the clean-up. i definitely got the short end of stick on this round.

the back of the ambulance was the worst i have ever seen, and i've seen a lot of really bad ones. first of all, the equipment was all over the place, and they used a lot of it. the airway kit, suction, the ekg, a bag valve mask, gauze wrappers, it was like we crashed the ambulance and everything flew off the shelves. and not only were they all over the place, but they were bloody and some of the equipment was reusable. and speaking of blood, it was everywhere, on the floor, the bench seat, and worst of all, in the gurney tray. the gurney is loaded up into the ambulance in a metal cradle which is about seven feet long and a couple of feet wide which locks it so it doesn't roll around during transport. the tray has edging around it which is about an inch high. that gurney tray had a small lake of blood from the front to about two feet back, filling it about 1/2 inch high. i've never seen anything like it, and it was fucking gross. blood congeals extremely fast so this was like a crimson half-set jell-o.

like i said, the back of the ambulance was really bad, but the gurney itself was worse.

not only did we leave a trail of blood while we entered the hospital, but even as i rolled the empty gurney back outside to the ambulance, it was still leaving it's mark. i took the bloody sheet off, tossed it in the biohazard can, and then took off the pads so that i could hose them and the gurney down. the gurney was a wreck, from the bed to the wheels. i took a rag and began to wipe down all the obvious bits. i started at the head of the gurney which was the worst. i was wiping the blood off the head of the gurney and saw a small piece of flesh. as i wiped over it there was a scraping sound like fingernails on a chalkboard and it raised the hair on my forearms. the scraping came from a small skull fragment. i threw the rag into the biohazard can and shaking my head i wondered how i ever got into this profession.

i realized that feeling lucky for not having to tech this call was premature... the clean-up of this mess was far worse. on a regular call you can get an ambulance ready to go in about five to ten minutes, 20 if it's pretty messy. this took me a little over an hour to clean and a couple days to clear out of my head.

turns out this was some sort gang-related execution. someone took a pistol, put it right up to this guy's head, and blasted him. how he was breathing and making noise with a piece of brain matter on his forehead and falling skull fragments i'll never know... but i hope i never see that again. it's just too messy.

observations

a lot of what i've written so far deals with the gritty aspects of this profession. guy kills himself, guy get's his arm ripped off, kitten eats a face. but there's a bit more to this work that probably isn't all that obvious to those curious about paramedicine. here are a few things...

one of the weirdest aspects of this job isn't seeing crazy shit or dealing with a lunatic partner. i think some of the most bizarre experiences i have is intimately viewing the various ways in which people live. i can go to one call in a beautiful 10 million dollar mansion with 100,000 dollar paintings with someone asking me to take off my boots before entering. everyone so polite, thankful, and gentle. everything so clean and in its place. and i have to speak to these people in their language so as to put them at the greatest ease and so to get my best diagnosis of the problem. i speak softly, i smile. i posit information this way. i take them to their favorite hospital and then i clear this call and immediately go to the most desperate part of the city inside of a residential hotel room literally full of shit and piss and creepy videos.

and that's what's weird. i have to immediately change gears from a clean and pure and nice environment. now i'm watching where i step and there's no amount of money you can pay me to take off these boots because i'm avoiding needles and human excrement. my language has to change, and my demeanor has to change, because i need this same information so as to get my best diagnosis of the problem. these residential hotels all have one thing in common: they're putrid... cigarette smoke and urine and unshowered 1/2 dead, drug-filled bodies. it's the mangy cat and the negelected litter box. it's the piles of newspapers from '87 and onwards. it's bizarre, it's real. but you have to adapt. adaptation with a good dose of common sense are the keys to doing this job well. the person living in the mansion and the person living in the hotel room... they're both people, but their lives are so different that you'd think they'd be living in two different continents speaking very different languages. thing is, they are literally 1.5 miles away from eachother, but they've never seen eachother. the neighborhoods are named differently, but you wouldn't know it by distance. the romantics would say that we are all the same, that we have so much in common just by being people, living the human experience. but i disagree. these two people are worlds apart.

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i've heard that when you are in a romantic relationship you can test its longevity by taking a long road trip. if you can sit next to eachother for hours on end in this tiny car and still love eachother, well, then you've got a good thing. on the ambulance, you are on the longest road trip of your life.

you probably get a glimpse of working partnerships from tv shows glorifying police work. ponch and john... great partners. you spend ten hours a day, four days a week with one person. that's way more time than anyone spends with their family. and this person, you have to depend on them, sometimes with your life. and sometimes you fight. and sometimes you can't stop laughing. and the stories you tell while you're posting up waiting for a call... they can get deep. you learn things about this person you never wanted to know... and you never asked. and after a while, you get pretty damn close to this person. or, after a while, you may want to murder this person. but there's always compromise, there's always love, there's always dispute... you're in a full-blown relationship with your partner. you can get to be pretty tight.

in personal relationships what can bond people is going through tough times together and coming out okay, you can be bonded by commonalities, you can be bonded with your sense of humor, or perhaps you're bonded by knowing that when you need it, you can depend on this person. in ambulance work, this happens all the time every day... these bonding moments. when you are both on scene on some crazy bat-shit call where people are shot and the scene is out of control but you both manage to get things back in order, well, you did it together and maybe one of you did an impressive job and you admire that and, well, you bond. you're both interested in the same shit, you have the same career, you bond. you're waiting for a call, you're shooting the shit, you are both being particularily funny, and you bond. your partner may be the most important facet of the job. it can make the job great, and it can make you want to quit. many people have over this... a good friend of mine changed departments because of his asshole partner.

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the last aspect of this job that might not be so apparrent to those outside of this work is that everyone seems to assume that this career must give you instant satisfaction because everyone must be so happy to see you, as you are there to help them. while this does happen from time to time, it is actually rare. the job itself is actually a bit thankless. and this isn't any sort of criticism on the manners or kindness of our patients, but the reality is that pretty much everytime we deal with someone, they are having a really bad day. it's not going to be in their nature to be incredibly miserable, and then be gracious about the help rendered. and i don't blame them. it's hard to imagine being shot in the arm and then saying, "hey, thanks guys, you really helped me out!" or someone with really bad asthma who had thoughts of dying for the last ten minutes... it's not going to run through their head that they should shake our hand and say, "hey, thanks for the albuterol, buddy!" so what you do is take the thankful people, the one's who probably weren't that bad off to begin with and blow up their appreciation and remember it for a day or two, because the next thank you might not be for another couple of weeks.

the job... it's pretty rad. but it's not packed full of gratification like you may think. you can get people swinging at you from drugs, alcohol, or low blood sugar, you can get people coughing in your face after you've told them to cover their mouth five times, you can be cleaning vomit out of your ambulance because someone didn't ask for a basin. i just figure that if i work hard, i'll get my own satisfaction out of that.

anyway, the next post will involve brain matter if this one bored you.

so gross

"what's the grossest thing you ever saw?"

i think that's every paramedic's most popular question. it does get annoying, but i've asked that same question before i got into this field. i get it. whenever people ask me that a rolodex of images start snapping through my head like a thumb on the corner of a book. i don't even know what the answer is to that.

back when i was an emt i had to transfer patients from one facility to another. they didn't need anything medically advanced, but they also couldn't go by personal vehicle as they may have had an iv hanging, or perhaps they had to lay flat... maybe they just needed monitoring. so i get a call to pick up a 10 year old boy, transfer him from one children's hospital to another. that's all the info i had.

i went up to to the pediatric floor at this hospital, grabbed the patient's paperwork from the nurse, and entered the room. inside was a 13 year-old boy lying in bed watching cartoons. he was laughing. he was happy. he was infantile. he was wearing a diaper.

i spoke to the mom, she only spoke spanish. my spanish is good enough for simple conversation so we started to small talk. she was young, positive. we transferred the patient onto the gurney and rolled him downstairs and into the ambulance. it was my partner's turn to tech this call, so i drove the 25 miles to the other hospital and had the mom sit up in the passenger seat next to me.

along the way we were chatting, me in my almost capable spanish. i asked her what happened to her son. she told me that on cinco de mayo her son and his friend went out roller blading. her son came back around 7pm telling his mom that he had fallen and struck his head on the street. she felt a large bump and gave her son some ice to put on his head. pretty much a good choice of treatment, i'd say. he felt tired and went to bed. during his sleep he started making some odd noises.

his mom went into his room to find him convulsing. she called 911 and the child was rushed to the hospital. while in the hospital the medical staff had found after a ct scan that the child had a bleed in his brain which stopped the flow of oxygen to critical areas, causing him to seize, and causing permanent brain damage.

the patient's mom's spirits were good. she was telling me how she felt that her son was going to get better and that this would all be in the past. i nodded, smiled, and wished her good luck. thing is, that patient was never going to be the same. one night he's out with his buddy, doing kid stuff, roller blading, falling, getting hurt. the next day, he's in diapers, cooing at cartoons, and acting like a two year old.

acting like a two year old for life is pretty gross.

going back to my emt days... we spent a lot of time in convalescent homes transferring patients from there to dialysis, or from the er to there. very basic life support, just a bus with a gurney on it taking patients to appointments or wherever else they needed to go.

these places, for the most part, are atrocious. there's often the smell of shit from dirty linens or diapers, the nurses are often cold with thick accents, and the patients are invariably depressed and hoping to die. it's an incredibly unhealthy place to spend any time in as you begin to fear your last days. every emt in this capacity always talks about how they're going to off themselves with a pistol before they spend any days in a place like this.

the food... it comes on plastic trays with plastic bowls and plastic cups. plastic plates, plastic food. and some of these people have soft food requirements so that their beef is now pureed beef, and their carrots are carrot mush surpise. and food could be the only pleasure that these people might have and these fucking places do nothing to insure that for them. that is, if you are fortunate to be able to eat with your mouth. many of these patients are tube fed with this sweet white viscous liquid. very satisfying, i'm sure.

family? no... family is somewhere else tending to their healthy children at their soccer games in another city. maybe they stop by on holidays, maybe they don't. who would know? it's sincerely the most depressing situation one could spend their last days in.

convalescent homes are pretty gross.

okay okay... now you want a gross story... one with blood and shit and piss and vomit. i'll give you the first three fluids.

i ride a motorcycle. a lot of people ask if i'm insane because i'm a paramedic and i must be crazy to ride one after seeing so many accidents. well, to answer that one, i've seen a lot of respiratory therapists smoke, so what's worse?

so i get a call for a motorcycle vs. auto in a tunnel that we have here in our city. i enter the tunnel and have to turn around to get to the westbound section to get to my patient. when we arrive on scene the leutenant from the engine comes up to me and says, "this guy's arm is torn off."

"do i need a biohazard bag?," i asked. he told me to take a look. i approached the patient... he was sitting against the wall of the tunnel, dazed look, sweaty. i looked at his right arm and it was completely ripped off at the shoulder, save for about five inches of skin at his back which was keeping it barely attached. there's really no protocol on how to deal with this so you just have to make do with what you have. i cut his shirt and leather jacket off and grabbed a few rolls of kerlix. i essentially wrapped this kerlix around his shoulder and arm, securing it to his torso, wrapping it around his entire upper body like a tight, white sleeping bag with reddish designs at the shoulder. he kept asking me if he was okay, and i said, "oh yeah, you're fine buddy." he said, "my hand really hurts."

"yeah, man, you did a little damage to your hand, but you'll be fine." his hand was perfectly okay.

after securing his arm to his torso, we loaded him up and went code three to the trauma center. this guy was getting really shocky... sweaty, nervous, cool and clammy, and his blood pressure was fairly low... he needed fluids. so my partner and i were looking for some veins, and there weren't any. i think that his body was beginning to shunt blood to keep as much as it could for his heart and brain. his extremities were a not a concern for his survival, and his veins were collapsing.

no iv access on his left arm, so i go to his feet and legs to see if i could find anything there. i pull off his boots, and as i'm fishing for a foot vein, the patient shits and pisses his pants. so if you can imagine, im basically right there, at his feet, and he takes a crap. it was such an awful smell. i was pretty sure that the guy wasn't all that health conscious.

so we arrive at the hospital, i tell the guy that he's going to be okay and not to worry. i never did follow up on this patient... i don't follow up on most of them. i assume that with today's technology that his arm was reattached just fine and that maybe he's back on a motorcycle.

having your arm ripped off is only kind of gross. having your arm ripped off and shitting your pants... now THAT'S gross.

this little kitty needs a home

like i said in a previous post, when people pass away it is a paramedic's job to place the ecg on the patient to ensure that there are no signs of life and pronounce death. even if it is so painfully obvious, i show up, print a strip, look at my watch, and officially give a time of departure... which leads me to this little tale.

so a while back the tones go off, the computer screen lights up, and i'm called to a shitty little residential hotel for "the obvious doa." there are two cop cars outside of the hotel, and as i walk in i see a police officer fanning his hand across his nose giving me the heads up that this call is incredibly foul. great... my favorite smell: human decomposition.

this fragrance is like no other and a bit difficult to describe, but every policeman, paramedic, and firefighter is very familiar with this scent. it's not like rotting meat, and it's not like ignored garbage. it's very pungent and putrid, but there's a little sweetness behind it. human decomposition is so specific to humans... it's not the mouse behind the stove or the dog in the ditch. it's truly awful, and yet as natural as life. the odor escapes rooms, crawls under doors, and races down hallways and stairs searching for nostrils. it is this odor that gets us out the call in the first place, when neighbors know that things just aren't right and decide to finally pick up the phone.

that odor raced toward me the moment that i entered the hotel. the call was on the second floor, and as i was walking up the gummy, carpeted stairs the odor just snowballed to a powerfully repugnant level. being prepared, i took out my vicks, gave a wipe to my mask, donned it, and headed toward the patient. there were three officers outside of the room having a terrible time with this call. they were so uncomfortable and sick to their stomachs. we run these calls a bit with varying amounts of odor, but this one was pretty much as bad as it gets. it was summertime, the room was hot, and obviously this speeds up the process quite a bit. i handed them my vicks and a few masks.

this day i was working with a great paramedic who happens to be a female, a little girly. tough, but still feminine. she was not having this at all, gagging and turning away, so i volunteered to take care of it. i opened the door to the hotel room and walked inside.

this hotel room was like so many others. cluttered, dirty, dishes in the sink, generic brand canned food and top ramen, ashtrays overflowing with butts, empty beer cans, television on. the patient was lying on her back on the bed. nightgown, uncovered, bloated, blue and black all over. the cause of death looked natural enough. i placed the ecg on the bed and started placing stickers on the patient's hands and feet to run this strip.

a skinny white cat darted out from under the bed. "hey there, kitty." i went over to pet it, it was a little skittish, but thankful for the attention. after 30 seconds of that i went back to the patient. i gave her another scan and noticed that a good amount of her left cheek was missing. "could her cheek have decomposed?" i thought to myself. no... there were bite marks and a bit of meat missing. i looked back at the cat suspiciously. i scanned the kitchen again and noted that there were two empty cat bowls. hmmm...

i felt sympathetic for this cat. i don't know what happens to pets when their owner dies and there's no family, but i can only guess that they're placed in a shelter and go up for a potential adoption. this cat was pretty cute and probably stood a good chance at finding a new home. i played this scenario out a few times and was a little amused to think that there was a little boy or a little girl in the near future playing with mr. binkles with some yarn with absoutely no clue that if this cat ever got hungry enough, he wouldn't hesitate to eat their faces.

i suppose after the first time it's not that weird.

nothing in '08

if you read the first post i warned you that i may slack, and boy... did i EVER. nothing written in '08 as if nothing happened. but rest assured, some shit went down. and if it weren't for a friend pointing out fuck you penguin i might have never written here again. what an inspirational site! so, thanks, my fellow penguin hating friend (i can't stand those little assholes either, by the way).

man... this job... how weird. how weird is it to laugh at that which is terrifying just because you're afraid to appear scared? how weird is it to pretend like none of this affects you... it only affects the weak? how weird is it to tell a granddaughter that you did everything you could, but tonight was his time and he's in a better place, assuming that she buys into that illusion? it's pretty fucking weird. believe me.

like the time that i got a call for a shooting in the worst set of projects in the city. these projects are not nestled into the rest of the town like some of the more updated and visually appealing loft-type, condo-looking projects. nope, these projects are well out of the eyesight of any tourist or taxpayer.

sometime in '08 i was just about to log off the system when the tones went off and my unit was summoned to respond to the shooting on the street that these infamous projects got their name. i start the rig and turn on the lights and sirens. didn't know what to expect, but i've had this call so many times that i'm not tripping. might be nothing. we pull up to the projects that look like aging cell blocks and take a deep breath. i see about six cops trying to quell at least forty people that are in the process of losing their minds. my partner and i grab our equipment and get into the center of this mess.

let me first explain the layout of these projects because they're a little unique. these projects lie on the edge of the city where no regular residences reside. they are up on a hill, away from the sight of anyone who may be driving on the street below. up on this hill there are about eight penitentiary-type buildings, each two stories, with about six or so units each. they are in an uneven circle around eachother so that there is open space in the middle with cement pathways connecting each one. in this open space are old clotheslines, broken toys, distressed bicycles, and various garbage. not pretty. there are some lights, but many of them are out, so while you can see, you have to work at it. there are no grocery stores around here and i'm guessing that most the food that these families buy comes from convenience stores. there are no schools around here. there is no hope around here... there's no way out.

we grab our equipment and walk down a steep hill to the scene. people are screaming at us to hurry. there are about six officers, all have their guns drawn and are yelling at people to "back the fuck up!" there are four firefighters, one chief, two paramedics, and six officers vs. forty extremely upset people, all of which probably aren't really big fans of "the man." i get to the patient. bullethole to the forehead. brain matter. bullet hole to the neck. a LOT of blood loss. over eight bulletholes to the legs. again, a LOT of blood loss. check a pulse. no pulse. place leads on patient. asystole. this guy is not coming back. there are no interventions that can save him.

now people are screaming at us, "what took you so long?" honestly, from dispatch to scene time... less than five minutes (i checked later, just in case). the scene was getting so nuts, and we were so outnumbered, that i honestly felt that this might me the night that i really get hurt, or worse. because we were in an open courtyard, there wasn't a wall for me to back up to, but there was a tree. i slowly walked backwards until my back was resting on this large barrier. at least now i would see it coming. the chief made the decision that we transport a dead body. sounded okay to me... a bit unusual, but at least i'd be getting out of there. we loaded him onto a backboard, went back up that steep hill, and got the hell out of there.

but this isn't the weird part.

like i said, this 19 year-old had injuries to the head, neck, and legs. but his torso was in perfect shape. the reason? he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

this really threw me off. here was this kid who was waiting to die. he KNEW it was going to happen this night. i kept trying to imagine what it would be like to be at my house knowing that i was gonna get it... that it was inevitable that my time was up. i imagined picking up a borrowed bulletproof vest and putting it on. i look in the mirror, turn around, look at my back, check myself out. fix my hair. take a deep breath. "yeah... this might do it. this might give me a little more time," and then continue on to what it was that i needed to do, maybe talk to my girlfriend, maybe my mom. one last time.

what the hell, dude?

i run a lot of calls. the city i work for can be so busy that many of these runs, even the more bizarre or tragic, seem to just leave me right after i turn in the paperwork. i suppose that this is a good thing as many of them really should be forgotten. but then there are the calls that just keep popping back into my head. which leads me to this little story...

when a police officer arrives on scene and someone is obviously dead, they need us to come out to their location and do what is called a 'field pronouncement.' we have the ecg monitor which will print out a strip showing that there is no longer any electrical activity in the heart.

one day a call gets dispatched: such and such address for the obvious doa. self-inflicted gunshot wound.

the call is in a very affluent neighborhood on a very famous street, kinda weird, but whatever. my partner and i walk up to the extremely nice and tidy apartment and see a distraught man sitting on the stoop crying with his head in his hands next to an officer who tells me, "he's over there in his bedroom." i cannot find the light switch in this dark bedroom, so the officer shines his mag-light over to the bed. in bed is a white, thirty year-old male, in good shape, with a glock semi-auto in his left hand and a gunshot wound to the left temple. his hollow eyes are open and are staring at his feet. in the wall, there's a bullet hole, which clearly outlines exactly how he held this gun to his head. out of his nostrils is dried blood. the sheets were once white.

i carefully place the monitor on his chest making sure not to jostle his left hand and get a strip to give to the medical examiner. i exit the bedroom and enter the livingroom. the television is on espn and there's a basketball game playing. normal. i go to the bathroom to see if this guy was taking any meds. no anti-depressants, no anti-anxiety pills... nothing. i enter the kitchen. it's spotless. there's a wine rack full of decent bottles, there's nice dry dishes in the rack. the fridge is full of food. i go to the kitchen table. there i find an easter card from his parents. i pick it up. it's sweet, "hope your day is wonderful. we miss you a ton. love, mom and dad." there's a brand-new glock pistol case with the instruction manual out and open. i mean, brand-new. not a scratch. on the table, a sealed envelope from the man in bed. "mom and dad," written with a blue ball-point pen. nope... not opening that... but i want to. i ask the crying guy on the stoop if anything had been going on, anything notable recently, any history of depression. teary, he says, "nothing. nothing that i knew about. i didn't hear from him for five days and i started tripping out because that's not like him. i called the cops and we found him like that." he was a mess.

"hey man... i had a friend who did this in high school," i said, "don't beat yourself up over this. there's nothing you could have done to change this. believe me... i know." i was there, once... almost twice.

what a weird call. i go on many suicide attempts, and have been on several successes. but this one... this one just didn't add up. not for a moment did i think that there was foul play, but i also was unable to really intuit a motivation. seemed like he had it pretty good. theories? did a girl break up with him? kinda doubt it... the letter would have been written to her... one last dig. financial ruin? on this street? in this apartment? nah... don't think so. was he gay? would his parents never accept him? nope. he was too old to care enough about that to off himself. he wasn't 17. who the hell knows? maybe i should have steamed open that letter.

suicide... c'mon people. give us all a fucking break.