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Read With Us: CITY LIFE – a book by Michael Morse – Chapter 11
Home Sweet Home
Zimba and Lakota have settled in nicely. Cheryl and Michael still have a way to go!
Look What I Found
Back to work tomorrow. I finally found time to take the dogs for a walk . . . look what I found! I knew the water was around here somewhere, just didn’t know the serenity and view would be so nice. The picture was taken from Gaspee Point. In the distance is East Providence, with a little of Providence on the left. The dogs went fishing; I just took it all in.
A quick twenty-four-hour shift tomorrow, a few days off, then back to the grind until fall. The move went well, all things considered. Feels like a fresh start.
Troubled
She was handcuffed, lying facedown on the floor, surrounded by cops, firefighters, and social workers.
“Watch her, she spits,” said one of her counselors when I helped her to her feet.
“She needs a psych eval,” said another counselor, handing me a package of paperwork.
I took a quick look at the information and found what I was looking for.
“Danielle, what’s going on here?” I asked, keeping my distance.
“These assholes don’t listen! Big tough guys beating up a little girl!” She glared at the police.
I glanced back at the paperwork and saw her medications. Depakote, Clonipin, Prozac, lithium, birth control.
We walked toward the rescue, her in handcuffs, me walking next to her.
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“They’re dead!” she nearly screamed but was unable to get the necessary volume. It’s tough to shout when your body just wants to cry. She was barely holding on to the tough facade.
I asked her if she would be okay during the ride to Hasbro Children’s Hospital. She looked me in the eye, saw I could be trusted for now, and promised to be good. The police followed the rescue in their cruiser; the staff at the family counseling center went back to work.
She sat on the bench seat across from me while we rode. I started the state report while she stared at me.
“They didn’t have to wreck my shoes,” she said. Her flip-flops were thrown into the back of the truck after her, probably by one of the firefighters. I picked them up off the floor, put the good one on one foot, fixed the other one and put it on her other. Having something on my feet always makes me feel better, and it seemed to help Danielle. Maybe it took her mind off of being handcuffed.
“All better,” I said.
“I wish,” she responded and looked away. Tears started now. When all the rage is spent it’s hard to keep them back, especially when you are fifteen years old.
“I want to go home with my mother,” she sobbed. “I hate Woonsocket. I want to go home.”
“Where is home?” I asked, not mentioning that she had said her parents were dead.
“Warwick. I just want to go home.”
Our short-lived friendship ended when we arrived at Hasbro. The wall came up again, her game face back on. The tough girl returned, ready to battle anybody who got in her way.
I went back in service and got ready for the next call. I wish I could have done more.
No Parking
Divine Intervention won’t even get you a parking spot in Providence!
Forgetting
Some looked happy, some sad, some looked at nothing at all. People are paid to watch them now, make sure they don’t wander. After a lifetime watching their families grow, providing comfort, wisdom, direction, and roots, their role has diminished along with their vitality. Places like these have cropped up everywhere, an alternative to full-time nursing home care. It’s not the best solution to a problem many families face, but it does provide safety and comfort for those whose lives have been shattered by Alzheimer’s disease.
Our patient, a small, frail eighty-five-year-old lady, had been experiencing chest pain since the morning, I was told when I arrived on scene. She was in a private room away from the main activity room, a nurse, her daughter, and other staff members attending to her. They had given her a nitro tablet and told me all about the incident, how the pain began and radiated into her jaw and left arm. When I asked her she said her pain was seven out of ten on a one-to-ten scale.
Her vital signs were stable; we moved her onto our stretcher and wheeled her past her associates and into the bright sunshine. A minute later we were in the rescue, her on the stretcher, me on the bench. I asked her if the nitro pill had helped with her pain. She asked, “What pain?” I asked how she was feeling, she said, “A little tired, otherwise fine.” She wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
I didn’t know which story to believe.
Survivors
A couple in their early twenties went for a walk on Broad Street to get something to eat. Six guys mugged them, stole their McDonald’s, roughed him up, then ran away. They were in the back of the rescue when the cops dragged one of the assailants over to be identified.
“That’s him,” they said, and the cops took the kid away. The guy’s injuries weren’t too bad—some bruises, a lump on the head; it could have been worse. Another young man was stabbed to death three blocks away a few nights ago while waiting to get into a popular nightspot. A girl was stabbed seven times last night and is still in critical condition. Try telling two kids whose dinner was just stolen by some punks that they are lucky, and they won’t believe you. They were talking about getting a gun as we rode toward Rhode Island Hospital.
I Ain’t Going!
“I ain’t going to no hospital!”
“Yes you are.”
“No, I ain’t!”
“Yes you are.”
“No I ain’t!”
This was going well.
I was in the first-floor apartment of a diabetic seventy-year-old man. His skin was grey and diaphoretic, and blood oozed from untreated eczema in his crotch. He was conscious and alert but obviously in need of medical intervention. The guys from Engine 3 were in the tiny place with me and Vicro, the man’s two daughters and a bunch of grandkids filled the kitchen and doorway.
One of his daughters called us because she was afraid for her father’s well-being. He lived by himself, kept the place up fairly well, and was fiercely proud of his independence.
“I’m taking you to the hospital, even if I have to kidnap you.”
“You and what army?”
I looked over to Rob Crellin, a firefighter from Engine 13 with a remarkable resemblance to Harry Potter.
“Me and Harry Potter.”
Rob grabbed his right side, I took the left. We lifted him to his feet and started toward the stretcher. I couldn’t believe the power that exuded from the tired old man’s body. He stopped us in our tracks.
“I ain’t going!” he shouted.
The man’s family did their best to talk him in to going, but he adamantly refused. I refused to give up. This guy wouldn’t make it through the night, I was sure of it.
“Let’s go,” I said to Rob. We picked him up and dropped him onto the stretcher, no nonsense this time. The strength he showed a few minutes ago was spent. He sat, rejected in the stretcher, as we strapped him in and wheeled him out of his home, maybe for the last time.
Once in the truck we took his vital signs. Blood pressure 64/40 with a pulse of 130. Possibly dehydrated, maybe internal bleeding. I felt his abdomen for point tenderness and masses, started a large-bore IV, and started fluids. The hospital was less than a mile away.
He ended up in a trauma room, more IVs, more fluids. Later that night I looked in on him. The doctor told me it was probably renal failure. Add that to his list of ailments. The man peeked at me through the labyrinth of wires and tubes and motioned for me to come closer. He offered his hand. I took it. In a low voice he said, “Thank you, boys. You knew what was best.” He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Kickball
Just when I thought I had seen everything, the Providence Kickball League loses a player. She was running after a ball that had been kicked with abandon over her head when she fell forward, landing on her shoulder and possibly breaking her collarbone. Her teammates hovered over her while we immobilized her, first applying the cervical collar, then rolling her on her side and putting her onto the backboard. The opposing team, the Zombies, possibly extras from the Night of the Living Dead movie, stood to the side as the wounded player was removed from the field to the cheers of the large crowd that had gathered.
Fourteen teams belong to the league, mostly twenty-somethings having a ball. Or should I say, kick-ball. It seems like a great way to make friends, have some laughs, and stop taking ourselves so seriously. Play ball!
Fifty Days
The countdown has started. Fifty days until the 1207th finishes their time in Iraq.
“Hot, sand, and wind,” is how Bob described his environment to me yesterday when he called. It still amazes me that he is in another world yet only a phone call away.
Keep your guard up, folks. You are in as much danger today as you were when you got there. Be safe and get home, all of you.
Ninety-Four
Amelia is ninety-four and has been taking her medication the same way for years and nobody, I mean NOBODY, is going to tell her different. We arrived at her home at 1034 hours. After knocking at the front door and not getting an answer, we went around the back. Meanwhile, Amelia was making her way from the back of the house to the front door. We knocked on the back door, no answer because Amelia had just struggled through her house to the front. I could hear cursing from inside. I had no idea what was going on at this point. I went back to the front door to see if I could pry it open, only now it was already open. I looked in and saw my patient walking back to the rear door. She moved pretty well for an older person.
I walked through the entryway past some stained-glass windows into a perfectly preserved fifties-style home. The workmanship was remarkable. Carved oak stairs, antique furniture that looked like it came off the showroom floor, a tile kitchen that would put today’s workmen to shame. When I caught up with Amelia she was breathing fire.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“These pills! I’ve been taking the same ones for forty years! I’m not taking these, they’re not my pills!”
“Try to relax,” I said, taking the prescription bottles from her hand. Our other five rescues were on other calls, surrounding cities and towns were responding into Providence on mutual aid, but I couldn’t just leave her hanging. She was really upset.
After some consultation we found that her doctor couldn’t be contacted, and the pharmacy had substituted her usual prescription with a generic type of the same medication. The dosage was different—she had to either cut the pills in half or take one every other day. She wasn’t going for it, no way. The pharmacy went as far as sending a technician to her house to explain the situation. Nothing helped so she called 911, which is where we entered the picture.
I called the doctor’s office and got stuck in the answering system, never connecting with a human. The message that stood out was, “If you are having an emergency, hang up and call 911,” which is exactly what Amelia did. I called the pharmacy and talked to the pharmacist. This had been going on for two days, I was told. He promised to page the doctor and have him call Amelia. She refuses to take any medication until she hears from him.
She’s ninety-four with a weak heart. The system is pushing her to her limit. I offered to take her to a hospital to get straightened out, but she refused. We did all we could do, which I’m afraid isn’t enough.
Neighborhood Feud
“Rescue 1, respond to 25 Lennox Street for a pregnant female assaulted.”
“Rescue 1, responding.”
Vicro started the engine, hit the lights and siren, and sped out of the station toward our victim. It took four minutes.
“Rescue 1, on scene.”
Engine 10 was parked in the middle of six of seven police cruisers. A crowd of fifty or so people wandered about, hurling threats at each other. The street was divided with us in the middle. Our patient sat on the cement steps in front of 25 Lennox looking totally out of place in all the madness. Lieutenant Dolan from Engine 10 gave me the story.
“She’s twenty, was knocked to the ground, punched and kicked by two women.”
I walked through the crowd of cops toward the victim. Things were under control, but barely.
“Can you check my baby?” the girl asked as I approached.
“We’ll get you to the hospital so they can check you out,” I replied, helping her to her feet. We walked back through the crowd toward the rescue. Once inside she told me what had happened.
“Four people with clubs and bats got out of that car,” she said, pointing to a car through the rear windows of the rescue. “They knocked me over and kicked me in the stomach. One of them was on top of me, punching me.” She didn’t cry but was close. “Is my baby okay?”
Vicro had finished with the vitals, which were normal.
“I’m sure everything will be fine.”
Some cops came in the side door and asked if she could identify the assailants. They indicated a woman standing next to the car behind the rescue with another police officer.
“That’s the one who was sitting on me, punching me!” she said. She identified another; they were taken away in cuffs. We left the scene, which had become a circus. News people, onlookers, even the city councilman was there, giving an interview. The quicker we got away, the happier I was.
On the way to the hospital my patient talked. She is due on September 7 but hopes the baby waits until the tenth so she can finish her CNA class. She wants to be a pediatric nurse and is well on her way to reaching her dream. The people who attacked her were after her mother, she said, an old neighborhood feud. She just got in the way.
The people involved in the neighborhood feud just may get in the way of a girl from a rough neighborhood getting out.
No Escape
Monday night, all quiet. It had been a busy day, eleven or twelve runs since 0700, nothing serious, just enough to keep us rolling. At 2325 hours, Engine 6 got a call for a box alarm at one of the apartment buildings on Westminster Street. I couldn’t believe my luck; I was certain I was going out when the tone went off and blow lights filled the station. I did the “ladder roll” when the lights went out and was instantly asleep. Seconds later, the phone rang. Once, twice, a half ring . . . Henry got it, lights out again. A minute later I was called to the apparatus floor. No rest for the wicked.
When Engine 6 left the barn, some asshat thought that the open door was his invitation to rummage around the station. Luckily, Chris Wright, who hours earlier had made perhaps the finest fajitas I have ever eaten, saw somebody enter the station before the door closed and called from the engine to warn us. When Henry got to the floor he saw a wiry Hispanic guy rummaging around the rescue. We shook him down—he didn’t have time to steal anything—and tried to throw him out. The guy went into a crazy routine, acting like he was Jesus Christ and carrying on for a while before we grew tired of his act. Henry’s prior employment at the Adult Correctional Institute (ACI) showed through as he handled the perpetrator perfectly. I radioed for the police when the guy started acting aggressive. A few minutes later a cruiser showed up and put the guy in the back of his car.
The guy was a street hood with a lengthy record who had just been released from prison in Ohio. His specialty was breaking and entering and robbery. In a strange twist of fate, his brother, also a cheap hoodlum, is recovering from stab wounds he got during a fight a few streets from the Hartford Avenue station. I think I had him in the rescue.
The cop took him away; we checked the locks and waited for the next call. I hate it when the sanctity of our station is invaded. This is our home when we’re away from our families. It isn’t perfect, but it’s all we’ve got between us and them.
Read past Chapters, 1-10, here:
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.
