2330 hours, 9-11-08, roughly 26 hours before landfall.
The name engraved on the plaque outside her room reads Room 212. Evelyn Potter, Bed A. On the wall below it is a shadowbox with an old family photo; Evelyn, Mr. Potter, three smiling kids with early 70′s vintage braids and Afros. There are a few cards with variations of “I love you” written in a child’s hand, Crayola scrawled on folded construction paper – no doubt offerings from grandkids.
You see a lot of such displays in certain wings of the nursing homes. They look like cheery decorations, cozy touches of home, but the staff and EMTs know what they really are. They mark the rooms of every Alzheimer’s patient, and they mean, “This is who you were. This is your room.”
I kneel in front of her wheelchair and offer my hand. “Hello, Miss Evelyn, my name is Ambulance Driver. I’m here to take you to someplace safe.”
I call her Miss Evelyn because, well, I’m from the South. When you’re a Southern male and you address a lady of a certain age, particularly if that age is greater than your own, you always call them Miss or Mrs. If you don’t, all your female forebears will rise from their graves and git you.
She smiles at me, and says “Hello,” in a faint, tremulous voice. Her hands shake with Parkinson’s disease, and her fingers are gnarled, ravaged by arthritis. “Where are we going?” she whispers.
“Jefferson, Texas,” I answer with a gentle smile of my own. “About 200 miles due north of here.”
“But why?” she wants to know. “I’m not sick.”
“There’s a hurricane coming,” I explain gently. “We have to get out of its way.”
“A hurricane, you say?” she muses, cocking a playful grin at me. “Is that what everybody is panicking about?”
“Well you know how it is,” I wink. “Before the nurses and administrators can go about evacuating patients, they have to evacuate their bowels first.”
We chuckle together as I wheel her to my rig. I’m a good judge of people, and I take an instant liking to this lady. We’re very different people, Miss Evelyn and I, and we grew up in very different ways, in very different times. I’m a white redneck paramedic fast approaching forty, and Evelyn is a black lady for whom forty disappeared in the rear view mirror before I was even born.
I say lady because, despite that mischievous grin, she holds herself with a dignified reserve I see in many black people of her generation. Her admission record from the nursing home says her birthplace was some small town in Mississippi. I’m betting the dignity with which Evelyn carries herself stems from knowing what struggle truly is, and knowing that she overcame it.
I help her to the passenger seat of my rig, and help her climb aboard. She clutches her purse in her lap, and smooths out her skirt and sweater before I fasten her seat belt. She carries with her three suits of clothes, her nursing home chart, and a few framed photos, and a Ziploc bag with one day’s worth of medications in it, all bundled in a plain white laundry bag with her name and room number written on it in Sharpie. When this nursing home floods – and it surely will – these belongings are going to be the only possessions she has left.
I’m going to be careful with them.
I stash her belongings and corral one of the nurse’s aides standing outside who seem to have nothing better to do than stand around, smoke cigarettes and gossip. “Stay here with her while I get the other patients loaded,”I order. “Keep her company.”
She favors me with a surly look, flicks her cigarette into the grass, and saunters over. “How long you gonna be?” she demands. “I got shit to do.”
“Who knows?”I shrug with a nasty grin of my own. “Just do as I ask, or I can go see if the charge nurse knows of any asses that need wiping.”
My shift started at 1900, and nice took the bus about two hundred miles and a dozen surly staffers ago. I’ll reserve my good manners for people who are actually helping the situation.
An hour later, we’re headed north on Texas Highway 96, and the fatigue is starting to hit me hard. I planned ahead, though. I have a cooler full of Coke Zero, and a sack full of Granola bars and cashews. When I get drowsy, I drink a swig of Coke, and eat one cashew. It’s not so much sustenance as it is a break in the routine, a way to stave off the white line hypnosis.
I reach for my bag of cashews, stashed in the drink holder mounted under our mobile data terminal, only to find them gone.
Fell out onto the floor, I muse as I turn on the dome lights to search for my snacks. Miss Evelyn has the empty bag in her lap, and she is thoughtfully chewing the last of my precious cashews.
BP’s bag of Cracker Jacks has also mysteriously emptied itself and wound up on the floor. One glance at the crumbs on Miss Evelyn’s sweater tells me where they went.
Probably didn’t feed any of the patients before they left. As disorganized as things were, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I surreptitiously move the rest of my snacks to my side of the cab out of Miss Evelyn’s reach, wishing now that I had stashed my Robertson’s beef jerky somewhere I could reach it easily, instead of behind the driver’s seat.
I sigh, take a swig of Coke, and scan through the stations on the radio, searching for something worth a listen. An oldies station, faint and peppered with static, teases me with the ghost of a signal, but I can’t hold it. I settle for a country station, and listen with half an ear to Rascall Flatts and Little Big Town as we drive northward through the night.
Fifteen minutes later, the country station is getting faint, and my scroll through the stations finds the oldies station loud and clear now. I take another swig of Coke, steal a glance at Miss Evelyn, and shift my sore ass to a more comfortable position. I crank up the volume a bit, and gamely try to sit through Leo Sayer and Johnnie Morton without dozing off. Maybe they’ll have some 70s rock on soon.
Twenty more miles creep agonizingly past, despite my speed and emergency lights, and I’m beginning to wonder if I can make this trip without punking out and begging BP to drive again. I blink back the fatigue for the hundredth time, and slowly become aware of a faint voice from the passenger seat…
“I said upside down you’re turnin‘ me, you’re givin‘ love instinctively…”
I turn on the dome lights and stare at her stupidly, and she just grins.
“Inside out, and round and round…”
I grin back at her, and wink. Miss Evelyn’s voice grows stronger, and soon we’re both singing along to Diana Ross. She bounces in her seat to the music, doing a hand jive and popping her head like a sistah. I
sing under my breath and pretend I have rhythm.
I turn the dome light back off and the radio up, and for the next two hours, we groove.
When Leaving On A Midnight Train to Georgia comes on, she belts it out like Gladys Knight, and I croon backup vocals like Bubba, the fourth Pip – the white one who left the group before they hit it big.
On My Girl, we’re the sixth and seventh Temptations.
She does Smokey Robinson better than Smokey Robinson does. On Tears of a Clown, you’d swear it was him.
After a while, the song rotation changes to a steady diet of 80′s pop, and Miss Evelyn doesn’t miss a beat. We sing Rich Girl, and I try to be John Oates to Miss Evelyn’s Daryl Hall, because we both know she’s the better singer.
We take turns on You’ve Lost That Lovin‘ Feelin‘, and I belt out my parts without the slightest hint of self-consciousness.
We sing along to Air Supply and REO Speedwagon, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. We croon Motown hits, and 70s stadium rock. She even likes Peter Frampton, and knows all the words to Baby I Love Your Way.
And the miles and hours fly by, and all too soon, the GPS unit is reminding me, “Turn left, and proceed two hundred feet. You have reached your destination.”
I sigh and put the rig in park. I go fetch an aide from the new nursing home – a pleasant one this time – and leave her with Miss Evelyn as BP and I unload the three patients from the back of the rig and get them settled in.
I hustle back outside with a wheelchair, only to find the aide wheeling Miss Evelyn inside. I stop and kneel once again in front of her chair, and offer my hand.
“Thank you for the ride, young man,” she smiles as we shakes my hand. “I enjoyed it.”
“So did I, Miss Evelyn,” I assure her. “So did I.”
1500 hours, 9-12-08, approximately twelve hours before landfall.
Outside Casa de Ambulance Driver, the sky is still fairly clear. There are clouds, but still no rain. The wind, however, is picking up. The trees are swaying, and the tin panels on the garage roof that were loosened by Gustav a week ago are already working themselves loose. They’re not going to stay on, not this time.
I mutter a curse under my breath and climb a ladder underneath the garage. I nail a few new two-by-fours to the older top chords of the roof, taking care to toenail them to the peak and the bottom chord. I climb gingerly onto the roof of the garage and use the better part of a bag of nails fastening those wayward roof panels to the newer wood.
I don’t hold out much hope. This sumbitch is a big-assed hurricane. Still, this house was standing in its present configuration before Hurricane Audrey and Hurricane Rita, and neither one battered it much. Maybe it’ll survive Ike, too.
Five minutes later, I sprint back inside, nursing a slice on my hand from a rusty edge of tin. A Telfa pad and a few wraps of roller gauze have everything under control easily enough. I whisper a silent thanks to tetanus boosters and a redneck childhood. Between the two of them, my immune system is robust enough to attack squirrels in the back yard.
I hang three uniforms in my truck, toss an overnight bag and my Thomas ALS pack in the back seat, and back out of the driveway. My station sits a half hour closer to the coast from here, and my shift starts at 1900, but I’m afraid that if I wait until the last minute, I won’t be able to get to work. The weather reports show hurricane-force winds 150 miles from the storm’s eye, and tropical force winds another fifty miles beyond that, and we’ll be in the northeast quadrant. We’re gonna get pounded for hours before the eye makes landfall.
A few miles from the station, a state trooper sits parked on the Interstate 10 on-ramp. He blinks his roof lights at me as I approach, and I slow down as I draw abreast of him. I hold my Borg ID out the driver’s window, and he cranks his down and waves me past.
“Good luck!” he hollers as I drive past.
Don’t need it, I think to myself. I’m in for a weekend of hard work, not danger.
Then again, maybe that’s what he meant.
At the station, the trees that border the lot are swaying ominously in the wind. Casting a gimlet eye at them, I pull my truck waaaaay over to the other side of the parking lot, far away from my customary parking spot in their shade. I briefly consider parking as close to the back door of the station as possible, hoping that the building will shield my truck from debris, but decide against it. It’ll make it harder to get ambulances in and out.
Inside, Stupe is on the phone with headquarters. He looks at me with relief, and rolls his eyes at whatever the headquarters weenie is saying. “…me, the day crew, Temporary Partner, Rookie EMT, and AD just walked in three hours early,” he is saying. He nods his head, rolls his eyes again, and hangs up the phone.
“You’re early,” he observes unnecessarily.
“Figured I’d get here while I could,” I answer. “Will this cancel out my writeup from that time when I was three minutes late?”
“Nope,” he shakes his head, “and no good deed goes unpunished at The Borg. You ready to get on a truck? We have emergency calls holding.”
“What, no kiss, no cuddling, no reacharound?” I sigh in resignation. “Point me to my rig, Stupe.”
“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
1900 hours, 9-12-08, approximately eight hours before landfall.
“Kee riced all my tea,” I mutter. “Ain’t there anywhere to get diesel in this town?”
“There’s a big diesel tank parked behind headquarters,” Temporary Partner offers. “That’s where all the other rigs have been filling up.”
“You mean to tell me that we’ve been driving all over town for the past thirty minutes looking for fuel, and you knew where we could get some all along?” I sputter incredulously.
“I figured you were looking for some place to get food, too,” he explains lamely.
“Go
d, this is going to be a long shift.”
2000 hours, 9-12-08, roughly seven hours before landfall.
*ring, ring*
“Borg Hive Southwest, Drone AD speaking,” I answer automatically.
“We have an emergency call for you,” Satan informs me gleefully.
“Uh, they just told us that operations were suspended five minutes ago,” I protest. “The winds are too high.”
“They’re borderline,” the dispatcher concedes. “Your supervisor says you’re free to refuse the call if you think it’s not safe. It’s your decision,” he continues in a tone that communicates quite clearly that if my decision is no, they will hang it in me and break it off as soon as we resume ambulance operations.
I motion TP to open the door, and I stare balefully out at the swaying trees. There are a few brief spatters of rain, but nothing of any consequence yet. “I’ll go,” I reluctantly agree. “But after this we’re out of service.”
Five minutes later, we’re north of town, creeping down a two lane road that skirts the river. Much to his chagrin, I have made TP turn off the lights and siren. There is no traffic to move, after all. As we round a bend, the elevation drops lower, and TP hits the brakes.
“Shit,” he mutters, gesturing at the water covering the road. “What now?”
When we passed the lake an hour ago, the water was lapping at the top of the seawall, a good four feet higher than it was this time yesterday. And Ike is still seven hours away.
I knew we’d have flooding along the lake and at the south end of town. Didn’t count on this, though I probably should have. The river has nowhere to drain.
“It’ll be all right,” I say without much conviction. “Just ease along. Turn on the floodlights, and look for mailbox numbers. We’ll stop if it gets deep enough we can’t see the stripes on the road.”
Thankfully, the water is only up to our rims when we find the address in question. It’s a mailbox sitting directly across the street from a floating dock with a motley collection of ratty-looking houseboats moored alongside.
“What’s the call type again?” I ask TP as I ponder how to get to the dock without wading in shin-deep water.
“Assault/rape,” he answers, squinting at his pager.
“Fuck that,” I decide. “We’ll practice the ABCs: Ambulate Before Carry. Bloop the siren and see if anyone steps out onto the dock.”
TP obediently hits the siren, and presently a door pops open on the closest houseboat. A slatternly looking woman ambles to the edge of the dock and salutes me with her beer can.
I crank down the window and yell across to her, “Y’all call for an ambulance?”
“They done gone,” she yells back. “They was both drunk and got to fightin‘, and one of ‘em got hit in the head with a board. Bobby brung him to the hospital in his truck. Other one wandered off thataway,” she points, swaying as she holds onto the dock railing with the other hand. From the looks of things, the sway has more to do with the beer in her hand than the rising wind.
“Clear us from the scene, no patient found,” I shrug. As TP picks up the radio mike, I think better of it and lay a hand on his arm. “It’s gonna get bad here,” I yell to the woman. “Y’all want us to give you a ride out? We’ll take as many as we can fit in the back.”
“Nah, we got a full water tank and a generator,” she grins, the wind whipping her hair into her face. “We’re gonna ride it out. Hurricane party, baby! Woo hoo!”
“Lady, in another few hours, the water is gonna be over the tops of these street signs, and that boat is gonna be a big bathtub toy. You need to get the hell out of here!”
“Paaarrrrrtaaaaayyyy, baby!” she crows. “Woo hoo!”
“Back this heap out of here, TP,” I mutter in disgust. “You can’t cure Stupid.”
“Okay, you gonna spot for me?” he asks as he shifts the rig into reverse. I look at him for a moment to make sure he’s serious.
He is.
“There’s six inches of water on the road, and the wind is blowing forty miles an hour,” I explain patiently. “If you think I’m gonna climb out in this and press that little button on the back of the box for you, I respectfully suggest that you have lost your fucking mind. If you can’t back down this road without putting us in the river, then swap places and let me drive.”
Nervously, TP backs the rig up the road at snail’s pace toward higher ground. I can’t tell what makes him more nervous; the prospect of running into the swollen river, or me ordering him to flaunt company policy. Once we’re on dry land again, I take pity on the kid.
“Stop it right here, TP,” I order. “If you’ll try backing it into one of these driveways so we can get turned around, I’ll spot for you.”
TP nods and grins in relief, and I bail out of the rig, pausing to press the tattletale button on the driver’s rear corner of the rig before stationing myself where I can be seen in his driver’s side mirror.
I’m slowly walking backward, directing TP with hand signals when I bump into someone.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelp, startled. I turn to find a man in his late forties standing behind me, dressed in the River Rat Casual Uniform: ragged cutoff jeans with no shirt, and canvas sneakers. He’s soaking wet, including the cigarette dangling limply from his lips.
“Needa amluntz,” he slurs, and I don’t need to smell the alcohol-laden breath to know I’ve found our missing assault victim. “I’m hurt bad, man,” he repeats. “Needa amluntz.”
He has a long scratch along his chest that has scabbed over, and it looks like he took several good shots to the face. His left eye is swollen and back, and his lower lip is puffy.
“What happened to you?” I ask as I look him over.
“Slipped and fell off my dock,” he lies. “Hit a tree stump under the water.”
“Uh huh,” I grunt, cocking one eyebrow skeptically. “A submerged tree stump, that close to your dock? And you hit it hard enough – underwater – to bust up your face, and it didn’t break your neck? Looks to me like you’ve been in a fight.”
“You fuckin’ deaf, motherfucker?” he snarls, clenching his fists menacingly. “I told you I fell on a stump!”
“Actually, my hearing is just fine,” I tell him coldly. “For instance, I heard ‘motherfucker’ loud and clear. And if I hear it from your mouth one more time, I’l
l leave your drunk ass here to drown. You read me?”
The back up alarm on the rig stops beeping, and I hear the driver’s door open. Keeping my eyes locked on River Rat’s, I call over my shoulder, “Looks like we found our patient, TP. Apparently he got his ass whipped by a stump.”
“You want the spine board and collar?” TP wants to know.
“Let’s see what our patient wants to do,” I answer, still not taking my eyes off of River Rat. I give him a cruel, thin smile. “What’s it gonna be, sport? Behave yourself and get a ride to the hospital, or show your ass some more and get left here to fend for yourself?”
And likely tote a second ass-whipping if you swing one of those fists, I don’t bother to say. I am in no mood, River Rat.
And just like that, his bravado fades and his drunken swagger blows away in the howling wind. “I’m sorry, dude. I’m just hurtin’ and I wanna get someplace safe, outta this weather. I won’t give you no trouble.”
“Get in the rig, then,” I order curtly, opening the rear doors and climbing in behind him. “Take us to Big City Memorial,” I holler up front to TP as I buckle the gurney straps across River Rat’s chest and legs. He sits meekly, holding out his left arm for me to wrap a BP cuff around, and answering all my questions.
That is, except the ones pertaining to how he got his injuries. He fell on a stump. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. No, his neck doesn’t hurt and all his limbs move and feel okay, and no he’d rather not be strapped to a board, and yes he’ll sign a refusal attesting to that. He’s a model patient.
At the ER, the charge nurse greets me with a baleful glare. “I thought you guys had suspended operations,” he growls. “So why are you bringing us this guy?”
“Because the zoo is closed for the hurricane, and there’s nothing good playing at the movies?” I answer innocently.
“Can he go to triage?” Charge Nurse sighs in defeat.
“Not only that,” I assure him, “but he can safely sit there long enough to take root.”
In the waiting room, we lower the stretcher and help River Rat to his feet. “Have a seat,” I gesture to a half-dozen empty chairs. “The nurse will be with you in a minute.”
“How long I gotta wait?’ he asks, half-indignantly.
“As long as it takes,” I answer, the warning clear in my tone. “Look at it this way; you’re safe, and you’re out of the weather. And you have a whole room full of people to make new friends.”
“Except that guy,” TP nods toward a man sitting on the far side of the room. “You might wanna stay away from him.”
I look to where he is gesturing, and see River Rat’s virtual twin sitting there, holding a bloody towel to his head. Same leathery tanned bare chest, same ratty cutoff Levis, same canvas boat shoes. He even has a comparable tooth:tattoo ratio. And he is not happy to see us.
“Friend of yours?” I call out mirthfully to the guy across the waiting room. “Your name wouldn’t be Stump, by any chance?”
“Never seen that guy in my life,” River Rat mumbles, slumping in his chair and glancing around as if he’s looking for a place to hide.
“Suuuuure you haven’t,” I roll my eyes. “Well, good luck to you, River Rat. And be careful around those stumps. You never know when both of you might wind up in the same ER.”
“There’s a couple of rednecks out here who are gonna start Round Two of their steel cage death match pretty soon,” I tell the charge nurse as we pass the desk on our way back outside. “You might want to get security to babysit them.”
“You’re just full of cheerful news,” he retorts glumly. “Try not to bring us anything else tonight, please.”
“Hey, I’m a giver,” I grin. “I’m just trying to spread the love around.”
0000 hours, 9-13-08, roughly two hours prior to landfall.
“Holy Christ, did you hear that?”
“Yeah, it’s weird to hear that much wind and rain, without a lick of lighting and thunder, isn’t it?” I yawn. “I can’t believe the power’s still on.”
“No, it sounded like one of the trees out back came down!”
“Oh, that. Hell, I figured that would happen. Hell they’ve been shedding limbs with every pissant thunderstorm we had this summer.”
“I’m gonna go check on my truck!”
“Have fun,” I tell him, shifting to a more comfortable position on the couch. “Be sure to hold onto the door. Weather says we’ve got hurricane force winds out there now.”
Temporary Partner trudges to the back bedroom, opens the rear door to the station, and…
“BOOM!”
“Dude, I told you to hang onto the door,” I call out from my position on the couch. The wind’ll jerk it right out of your-”
“Uuhhhh, AD?” TP is standing there in the bedroom hallway, looking like a drowned rat. His shirt is plastered to his skin, leaves are in his hair…
…and he’s carrying the body of a young child. Behind him stands a black man of perhaps twenty, soaked to the skin and eyes wide as saucers.
Any smart-assed comment I may have had dies in my throat.
“They…they just…they just walked up in the back yard,” TP stammers. “He said the baby’s-”
“Seizing,” I answer as I hoist myself off the couch. “Yeah, I can see that.” I take the baby from TP and cradle him in my arms as I question the other man. “Sir, what happened?”
The guy just stares at me, mouth working nervously. I can tell he’s at the end of his rope. Hell, he just carried his baby to our ambulance station, in the middle of a freaking hurricane. He’d have to be.
Ignoring the irrelevant – like the fact that I can see what’s happening – I switch gears. “How long has he been seizing?”
“Dunno,” the guy mumbles. “Maybe fifteen minutes? All we got is cell phones, and I tried to call 911…”
Shit.
“Ever had a seizure before?” I press. “What kind of medical problems does he have?”
“Ain’t got none, far as I know,” the guy answers. “I ain’t his daddy. He my little cousin.”
“So where the hell are his parents?” I snap.
“Aw man, don’t go bitchin’ at me,” the dude pleads, lower lip quivering. “I tried my best, and I ain’t knowed what to do…”
I don’t answer directly. The baby looks to be around two, still in diapers. He looks well-nourished and healthy. Other than the fact that he’s soaking wet and cold, and in the throes of a grand mal seizure, he looks okay. He’s still breathing adequately, although I suppose his color could be better. He even has pedal pulses.
“It’s okay, man,” I relent as I carry the baby to our supply closet. “You did the right thing. What’s the baby’s name, and while we’re at it, what do I call you?”
“Name’s Dedrick, Cuz,” he offers, sticking out a hand. “The baby name Tyrese, but we call him Tee-Boy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Dedrick,” I say absently. I stick a mucosal atomizer and a syringe into his outstretched hand. “Here, hold these for a second.”
“TP, I need oxygen, and the ALS bag,” I order as I lay little Tyrese on the couch and measure him with our spare Brosel
ow tape. “You up to going out there again?”
By way of reply, TP plucks a damp leaf from his hair and grins. He’s a sparky little bastard, God love him.
By the time he rushes back in, soaked yet again and lugging a portable oxygen cylinder and our ALS bag, I’ve drawn up a dose of Versed and fogged it up the baby’s right nostril.
While we wait for the anticonvulsant to kick in, TP applies an oxygen mask and I fetch a bath towel from my overnight bag. I quickly strip off the baby’s sodden diaper and dry him vigorously, intending to swaddle him in the warm towel when finished, but the violent shivering and chattering teeth of his older cousin make me change my mind. I hand him the towel and carry the baby back to the supply closet, rummaging around for a receiving blanket or something suitable to wrap a naked toddler in.
By the time I get back, the baby has stopped seizing, the cousin has stopped shivering, and TP is starting to get tired of following me around with the oxygen tank. We share a look.
“You think you can drive through this?” I ask doubtfully.
“I wouldn’t want to be out on the open Interstate in these winds,” he shrugs. “I don’t think I could keep it on the road. But Big City Memorial is only a couple miles away, and on the surface streets. The trees oughta break the wind a little.”
“When the wind isn’t breaking the trees, that is,” I reply darkly. “There’s apt to be a few down between here and there.”
“So we creep along. I turn on the lights, and we go real slow. At least there’s no other traffic to deal with. That is, unless you’d rather sit here and take care of the kid for the next few hours until the wind dies down.”
“Uuhhh, that’d be a big no,” I chuckle. “Okay, let’s do it. You open the door, and we all sprint for the truck. I’ll carry the baby. Dedrick, you carry the ALS bag and oxygen and climb in behind me. Everybody ready? Okay, now.”
The wind lashes at us as we sprint the thirty feet to the rig, and the horizontal rain feels like needles against bare skin. By the time we make it into the rig, the only one not dripping is little Tyrese, wrapped as he is in a receiving blanket and the leftover plastic wrapper from an OB kit.
The ride to the hospital, normally only three minutes or so, takes almost fifteen. TP creeps along, and the rig rocks ominously, buffeted by 70+ mph winds, but we make steady progress. He detours around a couple of low-hanging power lines and one big tree limb just north of the hospital, but otherwise the roads are suprisingly clear.
I try getting a full set of vital signs, but I can’t hear a BP over the wind and road noise. A cellular phone report to the hospital, as well as an attempt to reach Tyrese’s mother at work, are answered only by the recorded message from the local cellular provider, “We’re sorry, but all circuits are busy. Please try your call again later.”
Surprise, surprise, I smile thinly to myself as we stroll through the ER doors. Bet y’all didn’t expect us.
Proving my theory, the charge nurse rounds the desk, staring at us incredulously. “What the hell is this, AD?” he splutters. “Y’all are supposed to be shut down!”
“This one was a walk-up, Jason,” I explain. “Guy walked through hurricane winds to bring his seizing cousin to our station. I couldn’t very well shut the door in his face, or dose the kid up with Versed and send him home, could I?”
The look on Jason’s face face says quite clearly that that’s exactly what he thinks I should have done. I merely stare at him steadily until he sighs, “Room Eight, I suppose. What’s the baby’s name?”
“Tyrese Freijou,” Dedrick furnishes helpfully. “Can I go back there with him?”
“Might as well, if you can tell us anything about him,” Jason grunts, waving us down the hall.
“Two years old, witnessed grand mal seizure,” I report as I lay Tyrese on the stretcher, “call it maybe fifteen minutes duration, knocked out with one dose of intranasal Versed. Respirations 18, couldn’t get a BP, but he has strong pedal pulses at 116. Family denies history of seizures, no fever, no recent trauma.”
“What, no line?” Jason snaps. “Don’t y’all have those IO drills, too?”
“The seizures stopped with intranasal Versed, Jason,” I say quietly, the warning clear in my tone, “and he’s hemodynamically stable. You want me to poke a few holes in the kid just because I can?”
“Sorry, AD,” he apologizes, sighing explosively and running a hand tiredly through his hair. “It’s been kinda crazy here. Nobody evacuated, and now everyone decides they need routine medical care right now.”
“Can’t sure stupid,” I sympathize. “I know how it is.”
Jason takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and gets back to business. “Any allergies or medications?” he asks, pen poised over his clipboard. Both Dedrick and I shrug helplessly. Rolling his eyes, he shoos me from the room. “And don’t bring us anything else!” he yells as I close the door behind me.
“Dispatch says we can either wait it out here at the hospital, or see if we can make it to Hive One,” TP reports as I walk back outside. There’s no power there, but they’ve got enough room for another couple of crews, and the hospital’s still got power if you’d rather hang out here until shift change.”
“I’d rather go back to my bed at North Hive, where I have my CPAP and we still have electricity and cable television,” I reply, taking the portable radio from him. I key the mike, and proceed to ask permission to do just that. Predictably, the dispatcher has to relay my request to the local supervisor. We wait a long sixty seconds for the radio to crackle an affirmative reply to my request.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the seat as TP creeps us back to the station. The winds are impressive, no doubt, but not hard enough to tip the ambulance over. I’d imagine that if we were at highway speeds, out in the open, it would be nigh impossible to hold it on the road, though.
By the time we reach the station, I’m already dozing, only to be awakened by a muffled curse from TP. “Fuuuuuck me,” he groans. “Now I know what that loud noise was.”
I open my eyes to see a large sycamore tree, totally uprooted by the winds, lying across the hood of TP’s truck. We sit there and stare balefully at it in the headlights, leaves and upper limbs obscuring most of the cab and hood of his Silverado.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” I venture. “It’s mainly just the top limbs. If you’re lucky, it only put in a few dents and scratched the paint.”
“I just bought that truck,” he moaned. “Now look at it!”
“I am looking at it,” I grin, “and I’ll say again that it doesn’t look too bad. I’ve got a limb saw in my toolbox, and we can see about getting it out from under there once we have some daylight. Cheer up, dude. That’s what you have insurance for.”
“Easy for you to say,” he grouses. “It’s not your truck buried under a tree.”
“You’ve got a point there,” I admit. “Your truck did an admirable job of keeping the tree off of mine. Thanks, dude.”
0600 hours, 9-13-08, four hours post-landfall.
*Ring, ring*
“Borg Southwest Hive Two, Drone AD speaking,” I mumble sleepily into the phone.
“AD, it’s Stupe. Y’all still got power there?”
“That’s affirmative, Stupe,” I yawn. “What’s up?”
“We had you scheduled for a 24-hour hurricane relief truck today,” he reminds me.
“Yeah, I remembe
r. I’ve got an overnight bag and extra uniforms here with me.”
“Well, since they’re predicting high winds for another six hours or so, we’re putting those trucks on standby for now. If you want, you can go home and try to get some rest. Just wait by the phone for our call.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Stupe, I’ll just stay here,” I demur. “Knowing Podunk Parish, the power’s probably out at the house anyway.”
“Whichever way you want it, AD,” he says agreeably. “Just get some rest. Once we start operations again, they’ll probably be running the hell out of you guys.”
“Nighty night, Stupe,” I yawn again. “I’ll be sacked out right here. Call when you need me to get on a truck.” I hang up the phone, roll over and try to go back to sleep. Five minutes later, the power goes out.
Awwww shit.
Cursing, I roll out of bed and dial a number on my cell phone, praying that the network is up. After three rings, I am rewarded by a friendly voice on the other end.
“Podunk General Hospital, Nail Salon, Tire Repair and Crawfish Hut,” the ER clerk answers cheerily. “How may we alleviate your pain and suffering today?”
“Howdy Yolande,” I grin into the receiver. “How’d y’all survive the storm?”
“Pretty good,” she allows. “The winds are still pretty fierce, but nowhere near as bad as they were. “Power hiccupped around 2:00 am, but it’s been on ever since.”
“How about the rest of town?” I ask.
“One of the Pee Dee officers came by about an hour ago. he said a few tree limbs were down, but most everybody still had power.”
“That’s all I needed to know. Thanks, Yolande.”
I gather up my CPAP and overnight bag, toss them into my truck and head for home. The winds are still high, but nothing unmanageable, and the trip home is relatively uneventful. Perhaps five miles from the house, I see evidence of a tornado spun off from the hurricane. One mobile home’s roof lies blocking the road, and a couple more look severely damaged. The owners are standing in their front yards, hands on hips, shaking their heads as they survey the damage.
I lock my truck into 4WD and creep through the ditch around the wrecked aluminum and clumps of wet insulation littering the road, and forge on the rest of the way to my house. Podunk looks none the worse for wear, and my house looks agreeably intact as I pull into the garage. Even the roof panels stayed on.
The air conditioner is still running, and my bedroom is a comfortable 72 degrees as I slip tiredly between the sheets. My eyes have closed for no more than fifteen minutes before the damned power goes out. Thirty seconds after that, my cell phone rings. Resistance is futile scrolls across the display.
“On my way, Stupe,” I growl into the phone. “Apparently I’m not meant to fucking sleep anyway.”
1230 hours, 9-13-08, ten hours post landfall.
“H532, Priority One call at 1238 Highway 174, backing up CCT Seven on a Signal Nine.”
“H532 en route,” I acknowledge, then hang up the mike. “Damn, that’s what, three cardiac arrests in the last hour?” I wonder aloud. “People are dropping like flies out there.”
“You’d think that people would figure out that generators are supposed to be set up outside the house,” grunts Bitchy Partner.
“Yeah, and away from the air-conditioning intake,” I point out. “That’s what happened to -”
“Don’t remind me,” she sighs. “If I go to another law enforcement funeral, it’ll be one too many. He was friends with my ex, you know.”
“I’ve met him, but didn’t know him all that well,” I confess. “Damned shame, though.” I point to my left. “Highway 287 coming up in about a mile, on the left. Map says Highway 174 runs off of that, about six miles down. Third road on your right.”
“Might as well call it now,” she grouses. “They’ll have been down twenty minutes by the time we get there.”
“Probably so,” I agree, clutching the Jesus handle on the windshield pillar and sucking naugahyde upholstery up my ass.
When BP is pissed, it shows in her driving. She’s only slept perhaps 10 hours out of the last 56, and it shows in her mood. Today, all four wheels are touching the pavement only about half of the time, and I’ve given up counting the 30% and 50% force counts she’s piling up on the tattletale box. At this rate, we’ll either have to have an uneventful trip to Canada, with her driving the entire way to balance them out, or she’ll be doing a remedial driving course next month at Headquarters Hive.
We’re a few hundred feet away from the scene when I announce, “Natural death. No need for us here.”
“How do you figure?” BP asks curiously as she pulls the rig to a stop behind the first-in ambulance.
“Grizzled Medic ain’t running,” I point out, “and he’s only carrying a clipboard.” Not even bothering to get out of the truck, I key the PA mike and call out, “Hey, Grizz!”
Grizzled Medic’s head snaps around, and he smiles ruefully and moseys over to our rig. He props his arms on my window frame and greets us glumly. “Y’all can clear if you want to,” he offers. “she’s ART.”
“What was it?” I ask curiously.
“Twenty-eight year old girl from Creole,” he sighs. “Staying with relatives until the hurricane passes. She lost her first house in Hurricane Rita, and only just rebuilt it. Looks like she just lost it again. Took an overdose some time last night, it looks like to me.”
“Damn,” BP and I mutter quietly.
“I grew up in Cameron,” Grizz says softly. “I was a baby when Hurricane Audrey hit. Don’t remember much about it, but Daddy says we floated on part of the roof and a chifferobe for a whole day before somebody pulled us out. Never thought about living anywhere else, either. We rebuilt. You can always rebuild.”
“Not everyone is that resilient, Grizz.”
“Guess not,” he sighs. “Sometimes, you don’t survive the hurricane even when you’ve survived the Goddamned hurricane, you know?”
0000 hours, 9-14-08, 22 hours post landfall.
“AD, you gotta drive for a bit,” BP yawns. “I can’t go any more.”
I blink sleepily, yawn and stretch. Frankly, I don’t see how she’s lasted this long. We’ve been in Texas since 1400, ferrying people from Orange and Bridge City, a few from Port Arthur, a few from the Louisiana coastal communities. Some of the people we’ve been carrying were coming back home from the evacuation from Hurricane Gustav, only to be turned around and sent elsewhere, because they may not have a home to go to. A lot of those facility evacuations, BP coordinated. She’s a stone bitch, but in these situations, perhaps that’s what is needed. She gets the job done, and efficiently.
“Pull over at the next gas station, if you can find one open,” I yawn. “We’ll swap places, and you can sack out on the stretcher. There’s Cokes in the ice chest if you want one.”
Interstate 10 in southeast Texas is desolate. Orange, Texas is a lake. Bridge City is just as bad. Beaumont is devastated. From the news reports I’ve seen, and chatter from EMS crews we’ve talked to here and there, nothing is left of Galveston. None of the towns have power, and everywhere you look, the only lights you see are the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, convoying to the areas hardest hit. There are utility trucks parked in endless ranks at deserted truck stops, their buckets extended skyward for reasons unknown. You look out there, and it looks surreal, like a monstrous game of Chutes And Ladders.
Tractor trailers carrying massive generators and emergency lights snake toward south
east Texas from the west, and I’ve lost count of the number of ambulances I’ve seen. In the areas already assimilated by The Borg, we’re running emergency calls, and letting the out-of-state crews handle evacuations. Some of the facility evacuations, however, we’re handling on our own.
BP and I are headed to Beaumont, where the folks at St. Elizabeth’s are in dire straits. The hospital has no power, and what generators they have aren’t keeping up. They have to evacuate.
We arrive at the ER entrance to find a long line of ambulances parked there, waiting for patients. There are trucks from all over south Texas, a few Borg units from the Southwest Hive, even trucks from Arkansas, Missouri, and Ohio.
Standing outside in the breezeway, I spot a familiar face. “Howdy, Les,” I grin. “Who’s in charge here?”
“Nobody,” he smiles tiredly, “but rumor has it that the ALS trucks are evacuating the ICU to Houston. The BLS trucks will evacuate everyone else to parts unknown.”
“Do they realize that Houston is in no better shape than they are?” I shake my head. “Last I heard, they had two and a half million people in the dark. And it ain’t like their hospitals ain’t prone to flooding.”
“Who knows?” he shrugs. “Maybe they’ll eventually get it sorted out, but right now I’m too tired to care. There’s a lady in the lobby you’re supposed to check in with. Look for the lady with the crazy hair and the stylish pantsuit, wearing white rubber boots. Can’t miss her.”
Inside the lobby, the scene is controlled chaos. Harried nurses scramble everywhere, their scrubs soaked in sweat. Many of them are wearing rubber boots. I amble over to the administrator wearing the white rubber boots and introduce myself.
“Great, you guys are the seventh ALS ambulance,” she smiles in relief. “A couple more, and we can start evacuating the ICU.”
“Any reason some of them can’t go two to a truck?” I ask. “We’ve got a wide-body rig. We can handle two.”
“Already asked ‘em that, AD,” yawns one of the Borg Southwest medics from her chair, leaned against the wall. “They say no.”
“These are very sick people,” the administrator explains, as if the idea of loading more than one very sick person in an ambulance in a disaster situation is patently ridiculous.
I say nothing, and just look around. The heat is tolerable in here, but apparently the emergency environmental systems are having a helluva time with the humidity. There’s a sheen of water on the floors, and the walls are sweating. Every place you touch is damp.
Right now, my rig has better climate control than this hospital. So why don’t we get to loading patients into it?
BP and I make a brief reconnoiter of the ICU and cardiac telemetry floor, where we find the ICU nurse manager harriedly barking orders into a radio.
“AD of Borg,” I introduce myself. “This is my partner, BP. We’ve got a bunch of bored critical care medics sitting around outside, looking for honest work.”
“And I’ve got more than you can handle, AD,” she assures me. “We’re just waiting on your Supervisor Drone for this area to show up with a couple more ambulances, and then we’ll start loading patients.”
“Going where?” I ask. “Surely not Houston?”
“That was the original plan,” she shakes her head. “But we thought better of it. Half of them are going to Overrated Heart Hospital in southwest Louisiana, and the other half are headed north to Alexandria.”
“I’ll take two of ‘em going to OHH,” I immediately offer. “If we wait around much longer, my partner’s Red Bulls are going to wear off.”
“I’m not going to send my patients two at a time,”she states flatly. “That’s too much to ask of any one medic.”
“Better that the patients sit here in the heat for another four hours, waiting for one of these trucks to make a round trip?” I point out. “Are all of them monitored?”
“Well, one of them isn’t,” she muses, “and another doesn’t have to be on a monitor. In fact, my sickest patient’s family just signed a DNR.”
“I’ll take the DNR patient right now,” I offer, “and come back in a few minutes for your most critical patient. Which one is that?”
“We’ve got one with sepsis, on a Dopamine drip. She’s shaky, but she’s holding a BP in the 90s. She’s got an arterial line, though. Can you handle ‘em both?”
“Point me to their rooms,” I assure her. “I’ll take two, and if you can find one more that doesn’t need a monitor, we’ve got another truck that can take two patients as well.”
“I really appreciate it,” she says warmly. “That saves us from having to wait for two more ambulances.”
BP and I hustle back downstairs for our folding highway stretcher, and I buttonhole the Borg medic dozing in the hallway on the way out.
“The ICU Stuporvisor says we can each take two if you’re up to it,” I whisper. “We can both be back at the hive in a couple of hours, and maybe get a minute or two to rest. Whaddaya say?”
“I say find me someone to watch my first patient while we go back to load up the second,” she says happily. “Let’s do it!”
Twenty minutes later, I’ve loaded my DNR patient on the bench seat and gotten her squared away with a babysitter to check her vital signs, and we’re loading our second patient onto the stretcher. After a moment to zero the transducer and a longer moment to explain to BP what a phlebostatic axis is, we’re rolling our patient into the elevator.
As we push our patient through the lobby, a Southeast Texas Borg Hive supervisor I don’t recognize holds up an imperious hand. “Hold up a minute,” he orders. “There’s been a change of plans. You guys are not taking this one. You’re taking Lazy Medic’s patient to Alexandria instead.”
“And who are you?” I ask politely.
“My name is Eric Cartman,” he snarls, “and you must respect mah authoritah!”
“Um, isn’t Lazy Medic from that neck of the woods? So why are we taking his patient to his home station, while he takes our patient to our home station?”
“He’s called for crew rest, and we have to let him have it,” Cartman blusters. “If he takes your patient to Overrated Heart Hospital, he can get to bed two hours sooner.”
“Meanwhile, we get to bed six hours later,” BP observes sourly. “All due respect, dude, but that makes no fucking sense whatsoever. I’m tired, too. In fact, I’m calling for crew rest. Check the dispatch logs, and you’ll probably see I’ve been on duty longer.
“But…but…but…you must respect mah authoritah!”
“Tell ya’ what,” I offer, “You go tell Lazy Medic to move the patient I already have loaded from my truck to his, and then come back here while we hold an impromptu critical care paramedic class in the dark, and I’ll gladly swap patients.”
“Wait a minute…you have two patients? And you’re a critical care truck?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t know we had any critical care trucks coming.”
Nice job of managing your resources there, Dipshit. Perhaps next time you’ll talk to some of your crews before you show up two hours after the fact and start throwing your weight around.
“There are three more of them parked out there,” I point. “May we load our patient now?”
“Yeah sure, go ahead,”
he mutters. “Thanks, you guys. Good job you’re doing here.”
“Fuck you, Dipshit,” I mutter under my breath as BP closes the rear doors.
2000 hours, 9-14-08, 42 hours post landfall.
“Now what the hell is this bullshit?” BP mutters irritably as we pull in and park next to the curb.
“What’s going on, Foster?” I ask tiredly as we approach the police officer on scene. He’s a bucket-bellied cop of perhaps fifty, standing under a dark carport, pointing his flashlight into the eyes of a frail old man wearing paper hospital scrubs. He smells vaguely of donuts.
Foster, that is, not the old man.
“Get your friggin’ light out of his face, Foster!” BP explodes. “Fucking dumbass!”
She’s a real charmer, my partner.
“Sorry,” Foster stammers apologetically, clicking off his Streamlight. “Found him wandering up the street, knocking on doors at random. One of the neighbors called 911.”
Mais non, I’m just trying to get home!” the old man protests indignantly.
“And where is home, cher?” BP asks gently, recognizing the lilting Cajun accent. She kneels next to the man and offers her most winning smile.
If only every patient were eighty years old and helpless. BP loves the old folks, black or white. It’s the younger dumbasses and malingerers that she can’t stand.
“Well, I’m from Alligator Bayou!” the old man smiles. “I just wanna go back to my house! The hurricane, he gone by now, n’est pas?”
“Cher, Alligator Bayou is under water,” BP explains gently. “Your house is probably gone.”
“Naw, my house, she still there! There mebbe two feet of water in there, that’s all! Them possum cops, they made me leave!”
“The Wildlife and Fisheries boats rescued you, you mean?” I ask. “And they brought you here?”
“Mais oui,” he confirms. “And the hospital, they say I got to go, so the water, it must be gone by now, yeah? I got to get home!”
“What the hell?” I wonder aloud. “They just kicked the poor old guy to the curb, and didn’t even bother to make sure he had a place to go?”
“All the folks the DWF rescued,” Foster shrugs, “they admitted ‘em to the hospital for 24 hours, and a few for 48. After that, they turn ‘em loose.”
“Yeah, but to go where?” I point out angrily. “He doesn’t have a home to go to!”
“You got any relatives, ma cher?” BP asks. “Anyone we can call for you to stay with?”
“Mais non,” he shakes his head, “nobody but me.” His eyes mist over, and his lower lip trembles. “I just got to get home…how I’m gonna get home now?” he asks plaintively. I bite my lip and blink my eyes hard.
“Cher, we’re gonna have the officer take you to the shelter. You give it a few days, and someone will arrange to take you back home. I’m sure everything will work out fine,” BP lies soothingly.
“You guys can’t take him back to the hospital?” Foster asks hopefully.
Not this time, Officer Donut. This is one you will not turf to the Big White Taxi.
“Not this time,” I say flatly. “He was probably discharged from this hospital less than an hour ago. He needs a shelter, not a trip back to the ER.”
“You take him to the Red Cross shelter, Foster,” BP orders, “and we’ll go back to the ER.”
“What for?” Foster asks. “If you’re not taking him?”
“Because I’m going to go snatch a knot in a certain charge nurse’s ass,” BP vows, coldly furious, “and then I’m going to drag her around by those fucking hoop earrings until she can recite the number to the Red Cross shelter from memory.”
“I believe she’ll do it, too,” Foster observes, sotto voce, as BP stalks back to the rig.
“You have no idea, Foster,” I shake my head in resignation. “Just remember, if someone from the hospital calls in an assault charge on her later, don’t even bother questioning me. Because I didn’t see a thing.”
“I’ll just be glad when everything around here gets back to normal,” Foster grunts as he helps the old man to his feet.
“Me too, man. Me too.”
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