Read with us: City Life – a book by Michael Morse

by Michael Morse, contributing writer, excerpts from his book, City Life

Take a breathtaking ride ride along with emergency responders.

Rescue Lieutenant Michael Morse brings you into the homes, minds and hearts of the people who live in one of America’s oldest and most diverse cities. He takes you along for a breathtaking ride as he responds to emergencies that can be heartwarming, hilarious—and sometimes tragic. From the profound to the absurd, from challenging situations to total disbelief, it’s all simply a day at work for our firefighters, EMTs and police officers. 

Introduction

There comes a time when every one of us will need somebody. It is unavoidable. No matter how independent, isolated, or self-sufficient a person wishes to be, there is no escaping that fact. None of us can do it alone. Many have tried, and ultimately failed.

This is a book about people needing each other. There is no shame in that; there is no more basic human condition, for without each other, we have nothing.

I began writing accounts of my interactions with people who had called 911 for help when I realized that my position exposed me to worlds that most of us would never experience. It is an honor to be allowed into a person’s home, or into their lives when away from home, during a moment in time when their need is greatest, and is not something to be taken lightly. There is dignity to be found in just about every encounter we experience, and the people I have helped are the root of inspiration for this book. Their stories help unravel the mysteries of the human condition, and by telling them I hope to create a better understanding of the people we share this existence with, and how our differences need not keep us separate, or alone.

Some of the stories that follow are disturbing, others heartfelt, and many will leave you with a grin or scratching your head, much like I would do when responding to people’s emergencies in the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The people at the other end of the 911 calls are what matter. I am simply telling their stories.

Few are fortunate enough to be allowed into the innermost essence of others. Being one of the few has made my experiences more vibrant and my understanding of the people I share this time on earth with far deeper than I would have ever dreamed possible. Most of us get through our lives sharing ten percent or less of the thoughts that run through our minds. In times of crisis, that ten percent expands exponentially; the whole person is exposed. Sharing these experiences not only with the people who need help, but with my family, the people I respond with, and even the city itself, gives me the opportunity to be a better husband, father, friend, and firefighter.

Even now, somewhere somebody is in trouble, a call is being made, a dispatch transmitted, lights flashing, bells tipping, horns blaring . . .

Chapter 1

September

Humanity (or Lack Thereof)

When she regained consciousness, he tightened the noose. Then he punched her in the face and waited for her to pass out. She did. A few minutes later he tightened the noose again. Eventually he grew bored and let her go, telling her she would never leave him. She called her mother, who called us, 911. I found her standing outside a three-decker in South Providence. Her two-year-old son cried hysterically in his grandmother’s arms, screaming for his mother. I walked her toward the rescue; my partner met us with the stretcher. She lay on it, too dazed to speak, cry, or anything. She had been held captive for four hours and tortured. Outside her apartment life went on. The sun was bright, kids enjoyed the last few days of their summer vacation, construction workers worked on a stone wall a few houses down, oblivious to the horror a few feet away. I took her to the hospital. I hope she recovers.

Kellie

She looked sick, but then so many of them do after a long weekend. Providence College has its fair share of parties. Inside the health center the guys from Ladder 3 finished taking vital signs and gave me the preliminary report. Nelson, who looks a lot like Wayne Newton, gave me the story.

“She’s twenty-one, started throwing up last night at midnight. No medical history, doesn’t take medications, and has no allergies. She seems a little confused.”

Usually our college-age patients walk to the rescue, but not her. Her name was Kellie, her Irish name as beautiful as her face. She tried to answer my questions but her words were garbled. I became worried about her condition; we transported her immediately to Roger Williams Medical Center. Renato drove in his usual way, meaning I never felt a bump or turn in the road. En route, Kellie started to have seizure-like activity. As she vomited I handed her a basin. She didn’t understand what it was and threw up on herself instead. She shook as I held the basin to her face, then fell back on the stretcher when I let her go. Her eyes couldn’t focus on mine. I put her on a non-rebreather with high flow O₂ and let her rest. I felt her skin was cool and damp as I swept the hair from her eyes.

The nurse at the hospital took my report and immediately got her into a room, where she was seen by the doctor on call. I heard them mention a bleed as I washed the sweat and vomit from my hands. I had just taken off my gloves to do the report when she got sick. Five people were working on Kellie as I left. The doctor said it was probably a head bleed from an injury or meningitis. I hope it’s meningitis and whatever got on me has been washed away.

Get Well, Kellie

The chief called at 2200 hours and told me to report to Roger Williams Medical Center. Kellie has bacterial meningitis and I was exposed. I had hoped she didn’t have a bleed in her brain but I never expected this. Viral meningitis is bad, but not deadly. Bacterial meningitis kills.

It seems every year I read in the paper some poor kid who came to college and caught this bacteria somehow and died. Kellie’s family is with her in the intensive care unit. She is intubated and fighting the infection but is in critical condition. I’ll find out tomorrow if she lives or dies. As for me, I’ve taken a big dose of Cipro and should be all right. The medicine makes me sick, but not as bad as Kellie. I’m staying on duty until the morning.

Good News

It appears that Kellie may pull through. She has been extubated and woke up for a little while. She knew who she was and where she was but wasn’t quite sure what had happened. She is lucky. Her roommates made her seek medical attention instead of going to sleep, which is what she wanted to do. The infection was caught before doing irreparable damage. Six firefighters and about forty staff and students were given antibiotics as a precaution. Her roommates saved her life. I love a happy ending and hope things continue to improve.

Tiny Package

What struck me first was the beauty of her children. A boy and two girls, anywhere from two to six years old, greeted me at the door. We exchanged shy grins and smiles as I made my way toward the patient. The guys from Engine 11 were already there and had assessed her vital signs and condition. She was weak and experiencing heavy vaginal bleeding. Her dark skin managed to look pale and translucent, and I could see her hair under her scarf was damp with sweat and matted to her head. The kids watched us fearlessly as we did our work. Jerry told me her vitals were stable, that she had a miscarriage. I wondered how he knew.

“The fetus is on the shelf,” he said, deadly serious.

I looked toward the direction of his gaze at a tissue, neatly folded in half. Renato had the patient on her feet and with help from Jerry and the other guys was helping her out to the truck. I was alone for a moment with the kids and the fetus. The woman’s husband walked in. He spoke English so I told him we were taking her to Women and Infants Hospital, a two-minute trip.

“I know,” he said, not arrogant but demanding. “I’ll follow in my car.”

He left the fetus to me and walked outside. The kids were no longer smiling. I think they sensed my trepidation. A girl of about fourteen gathered them to her and they all left the room. I picked up the tissue and anxiously peeled back the top layer. Last night’s Cipro made my stomach feel queasy, but this was overwhelming. I’d seen pictures of aborted fetuses, but this was altogether different.

I was mesmerized for a moment, surprised by the effect the fetus-shaped mass had on me. Somebody had washed it off and gently placed it on the tissue. I saw the eye; the head was separate from the body. I cradled the tissue in my hands and walked outside.

Expect the Unexpected

“Is that French?” I asked my patient.

“Oui,” he replied.

“Did you learn that in Haiti?” I asked, making assumptions because of the color of his skin and prior experience.

“No, Montreal.” His eyes rolled back in his head and he started shaking.

“He’s seizing,” I told Renato who had to pause his attempt to establish an IV. Slowly the tremors ceased and he opened his eyes. This time he spoke Russian.

“Is that Russian?” I asked with a smile.

“Of course, comrade!” he replied, then spoke Swedish, which I recognized from my grandmother who came directly from there two generations ago. “I know how to ask for toilet paper in ten languages,” he laughed.

During transport I learned that he was a successful actor who did a lot of TV work in the seventies and some movie and stage stuff since. If you watch TV Land and catch a rerun of Good Times or Laverne and Shirley you will see him. I wondered why he landed in a methadone clinic. The answer was not what I expected. He has end-stage liver cancer and will die soon. His doctors suggested methadone as pain relief.

We had a nice conversation while traveling the five miles to Roger Williams Medical Center. I used to tread gently around dying people but have learned from them that they have no time or patience for bullshit. He told me if not for his Christian beliefs he would have already committed suicide. I understood. We shared our opinions of the afterlife and a special bond was formed. When we arrived at the hospital I said good-bye.

Some days I feel like the luckiest person alive.

9-11-06

I don’t take for granted the things I have, my beautiful wife and kids, family and friends, good health and all that goes with it. I am more fortunate than most. That it could all end suddenly as it did for those poor souls five years ago is something I will never forget. Their lives ended that day, and a little of me went with them.

We are never truly safe; it could all be gone in an instant. I still have this instant, and in honor of those who perished I’ll make it the best moment of time that I can.

Overdose

A guy my age, dressed only in boxer shorts, was lying on the bed in a puddle of vomit, a couple of syringes next to him. The person who called us stopped CPR when she saw us and walked out of the room. Renato got the bag-valve device, hooked it up to the portable oxygen tank I had carried to the fourth floor, and started bagging. I got the IV setup ready.

The tourniquet should have made his veins stand out but didn’t. I fished around his left arm for a while, didn’t find anything, and pulled the needle out. As soon as I did, blood leaked from the site. I guess I had a vein but didn’t realize it. Narcan negates the effects of narcotics. I would rather administer it through an IV, but intramuscular or subcutaneous does the trick. I pinched the skin near his triceps, drove the needle home, and pushed the plunger. Two milligrams usually does it.

The guys from Ladder 4 and a Providence police officer joined us in the room. Renato kept bagging. A few minutes later the man started breathing on his own. He denied drug use but the evidence was overwhelming. I let him get dressed and walked him to the truck. On the way to the hospital he told me he was going away to rehab on Thursday to get some help. I told him he was seconds away from death. Thursday was almost too late.

Blood Money

She was getting ready to close for the night when a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt suddenly appeared at the drive-thru window. Instead of stepping back, the girl tried to stop him as he tried to pry the window open with a screwdriver. She failed. He forced the window open and went for the cash drawer. Again she tried to stop him. He grabbed a handful of her hair, pulled her head toward the window, and stabbed her in the face with the screwdriver. Luck was all that saved her left eye. She will be scarred for the rest of her life. She saved the company about eighty dollars with her heroics. The thug got away with the fives and ones. Tens and twenties littered the floor, covered with her blood.

There is true evil walking among us. I see it all too often.

Love Doctors

She didn’t want to come out of the bathroom. I could hear her wheezing from behind the closed door. Her husband finally talked her out; we gave her an albuterol treatment to help her breathing. She had been crying. As the medicated mist began to work and her airway opened she began to relax. She forgot her inhaler at her friend’s house, where they had spent the evening having a few drinks and some laughs.

I tried to get her to go to the hospital but she didn’t want to go. They had a great night with their friends but as often happens with married folks on a Friday night, a stupid argument got out of hand and it looked like their night would end badly. During the argument she had an asthma attack. Her husband called 911 because he didn’t know what else to do.

Me and Renato sat at their kitchen table as she finished the medication. We talked a while and had some laughs. By the time we left, the couple had ended their fight and couldn’t wait to get rid of us so they could “get down to business.” As we drove away I saw the lights go down in their tiny second-floor apartment.

Home

“Engine 11 to Rescue 1, bring some sheets and the stair chair.” I keyed the mic and answered.

“Rescue 1 received, on scene.”

The apartment house used to be a one-family place in what used to be a prestigious part of Providence. Peeling paint covered the ornate entryway that protected the carved oak doorway from the weather. We passed under the scrollwork, through the doorway toward our victim. Residents peered from the cracks of their partly opened and chained doors lining the hallway.

The guys from Engine 11 had opened the windows inside, forcing the putrid air down the stairs we were climbing. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose and mouth and entered apartment 6. Anna waited, lying in a pool of urine, her legs covered with feces.

“I fell off the toilet,” she told me. I asked her how long she had been on the floor.

“Just a couple of days.”

I checked for any bleeding or gross deformity before trying to move her. The clean white hospital sheet I placed over her was a sharp contrast to her under things, years old and yellowish grey, whatever color the material once held washed away. We managed to get her onto the stair chair, a long a laborious ordeal inside an environment we found reprehensible yet Anna called home. The guys carried her into the fresh air toward the rescue as I took note of her living conditions. Refrigerator empty. Closets empty. Floors and walls covered in filth, rat and mice droppings swept to the corners, displaced cockroaches scurrying for cover, no room to hide in walls already full.

Anna begged me not to take her away from her home. She told me she just needed to tidy up and get some rest. I felt like I betrayed her when I put in my report that she needed intervention, her living conditions unfit for humans.

Real Heroes

Every day the news comes home, “American soldiers killed in Iraq or Afganistan.” Every day some poor soul’s family confronts the fear they have kept hidden, their loved one is gone forever. Most of us watch from the sidelines as somebody’s son, brother, wife, or husband boards the plane toward war. We watch from the safety of our living rooms the everyday heroes who fight this war for us. My brother is a member of the 1207th Transportation Company of the Rhode Island National Guard. It’s his turn. His wife and four kids will wait until next September for him to come home from Iraq. There are some long days ahead. Be safe, brother.

Vacation

Vacation is almost over; I’m looking forward to getting back to work. This week went too fast. Providence managed to survive without me. Thursday will be here soon enough, we’ll start over then.

Overwhelmed

We have six rescues in Providence, a city of 175,000. On the best days the pace is unbearable; days like today are truly impossible.

At 0852, Rescue 2 responded to the north end for an overdose. They found a naked man screaming next to the railroad tracks. He had been doing coke all night and decided to climb one of the high-tension electrical towers that power Amtrak’s high-speed trains. In the dead of night, probably around three or four, he touched the wrong wire. He was knocked unconscious, his melted skin fused to the nylon warm-up suit he had been wearing. Nobody saw him until the morning. He was out of his mind when help arrived. The rescue crew had to wrestle him to the ground and restrain him. They were covered with his dead, smoldering skin for their troubles. They were being treated at the same hospital as their victim for exposure to whatever disease the man was carrying.

Rescue 5 went out at 0910 for an emotional woman who was acting violent toward her family. They managed to get the woman into the rescue. Moments later she vomited into the bucket Teresa had just handed her. Among other things she has hepatitis C. The vomit sprayed from the bottom of the pan into Teresa’s eyes. She was treated at the same hospital as the woman, hard plastic lenses attached to her eyes while they flushed them with sterile saline from an IV bag. The process took three hours, leaving us with four rescues.

Another rescue went out for repairs for the morning, leaving us with three. The calls for help were nonstop. Rescues from surrounding towns called in to Providence to pick up the slack. Some people waited thirty minutes and more for help.

Tale of Two Cities

The call was for a seventeen-year-old pregnant girl with trouble moving. We were greeted at the door by the seventeen-year-old girl’s two-year-old son. Another teen girl led us upstairs into a bedroom where our victim rested. She said her neck was stiff and she couldn’t walk. I had her move her head from side to side, then up and down. She did it but said it hurt when she moved and had to go to the hospital for some muscle relaxers. I have given up arguing with people.

“Where are your shoes,” I asked. She reluctantly walked down the stairs of her rent-subsidized apartment. During the two-block ride to Rhode Island hospital I copied her information from the state medical card she gave me. I noticed on the lower left edge of the card her co-pay arrangement: Emergency room co-pay, $0. Prescription co-pay, $0. Office visit co-pay, $0. Taxi ride to the emergency room by an advanced life-support rescue, dispatch of Engine 13 with four firefighters to assist with a potentially serious problem, $0.

I asked her why she didn’t have friends or family take her to her doctor’s office. She stared at me with a blank expression and ignored me. The state’s Rite Care program provides full health care for children and their caregivers until the child turns eighteen.

Later that night we were sent to I-95 north at the Thurbers Avenue curve for a vehicle into the Jersey barrier. A car had lost control on the wet, slippery highway while navigating the tough curve in the road. The car was totaled, both air bags had deployed. Standing in front of the wreck was a twenty-year-old girl, covered in glass and holding the back of her head. We got her into the rescue. I automatically assumed we would take her to the emergency room, but she adamantly refused.

“Why?” I asked. “You might have a concussion.”

“I don’t have health insurance,” she said. Rachel was driving home from work, traveling from New Haven to New Bedford after her shift. She was tired from working twelve hours and commuting two. Her employer didn’t offer health care. She was out of school, living in an apartment with her friend, and barely making ends meet. The car was her roommate’s. She should have been seen that night at the emergency room but knew the bill collectors would be relentless in their pursuit of payment. I had her sign a form stating she refused transport against medical advice, and then led her to a state police car. They got her off the highway to a safe place where she waited for a ride home.

NEXT: October

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Michael Morse, [email protected], a monthly contributor is a retired Captain with the Providence Fire Department

Michael Morse spent 23 years as a firefighter/EMT with the Providence Fire Department before retiring in 2013 as Captain, Rescue Co. 5. He is an author of several books, most offering fellow firefighter/EMTs and the general population alike a poignant glimpse into one person’s journey through life, work and hope for the future. He is a Warwick resident.