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.

don't assume anything...

all in a day's work

i work the graveyard shift, weekends. most people look at me horrified and empathetic when i tell them my hours, but i actually like them. it's a different world out there at night. there's no traffic, all the clinics are closed, and while there's still tons of bullshit calls ("i have a headache," "i twisted my ankle,") at least at night people are drunk and weird and high and entertaining. their bullshit is better. plus, most the chiefs are sleeping, the captains only show up on major calls... there's much more autonomy. the nurses are way cooler... basically, you're all in the shit together at night. i like that.

so the other night i get a call for the 'long fall > six feet.' you never know what you're going to find before you get there, and i never assume the worst. so i arrive on scene and i see two well dressed women giving cpr to someone on the street, below a 20 foot tall bridge. i exit the ambulance, walk closer, and see a black male on the ground, with an enormous amount of blood quickly exiting the back of his head. this usually means, 'i'm dead.' this guy is on the street, face up, all kinds of nappy dreadlocks... oh... and he's NAKED. okay... i hope i painted this for you, here's this guy, totally screwed, and these two nicely dressed ladies are giving mouth to mouth and i'm like, "STOP! (please, for the love of god... stop...)" i check for a pulse, there isn't one, place the leads on the patient, print a strip, call base... time of death, 0130.

so now i have this scene, where there's this naked black guy with dreads layed out on the street, blood coming from his head, congealing, two completely freaked out, well heeled women crying and screaming at their boyfriends on their cell phones to, "COME THE FUCK OVER HERE AND DRIVE ME HOME YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND FUCK YOU JUST COME OVER HERE YOU DON'T GET IT OH MY GOD!!!" when they get off the phone, i try to calm them down. then i try to convince them to go to a hospital and let them know that they might have been exposed to something nasty because they were giving cpr to a DEAD, BLOODY, NAKED HOMELESS GUY... no good deed goes unpunished.

i grab a yellow blanket, cover the body, and start paperwork. this day i have a ride-along, a young girl who is in paramedic school and who needs to be exposed to this nonsense as part of her training. i look over to her, and she is wide-eyed, stunned. i realize that she has never seen anything like this before, and i ask her, "this must have been pretty weird for you, huh?" she looks to me, and she quietly answers, "yeah..." i tell her, "you know what's even weirder than you seeing this and reacting this way?"

"what?"

"the fact that i'm not."

and so it goes... the stereotypical detached paramedic... the dichotomy of doing something for the public because you want to help and because you care. but not too much.