Stories from the Streets: 100 Years from Now
I scramble around, working like a fool—thousands of EMS calls a year, every year for 20 years, trying to make a difference, thinking I have, hoping it isn’t all for nothing. I know that in 100 years every person living now, at this moment, will be gone and all new people will inhabit Earth. The overpowering urge to do something that matters dominates my thoughts when I think of things like that, how fleeting our time here actually is and how soon we will be forgotten.
That I am a rescue captain on one of the busiest ALS vehicles in the country counts for something, I think. At least I tell myself so. Some days things all come together, like there is some cosmic plan where everything makes sense. Other days, not so much:
Dim lighting illuminates the living room turned bedroom. A commode sits by the window, recently cleaned. The smell of Lysol mixes with the smell of dying, the familiar aroma that stays with us as we journey through the years. The couch is pushed to the side for now, but it will be back in position where the hospital bed now sits—tomorrow, maybe; definitely by week’s end. She’s tired, sick and ready, waiting to go, but life is funny, those that wish and pray for it to end must wait while others never get a chance to know the peace and satisfaction that comes from a life well-lived. The family is prepared and the vigil is underway; I'd be surprised if there isn't a schedule somewhere, making sure she won’t die alone.
A light rain falls in the inner city, freshening the decay that coats the gutters, bringing with it a much-needed rinse. The rain mixes with oil that has accumulated on the roadways since the last rainfall four weeks ago, the combination turning the street into a skating rink. The kids in the car don't know enough to be careful; they haven’t lived long enough to experience a rain slick road on a lazy afternoon. The fact that the cops are on their tail and they have a grand in the glove box and a bag of rocks under the seat throws caution out the window as the driver hits the gas, skids through an intersection, sideswipes an innocent person’s car, then slides into a little tree, its trunk barely five inches in diameter, but enough to encroach the passenger compartment and kill the teenage girl who wanted so badly to sit in the front seat. She never had a chance, never thought it would end before it got started, never grew up, or old, or learned that it could all change in an instant.
She’s in the bathroom of her rented third floor apartment, bleeding; a lump in the toilet floats. The pain in her abdomen seems miniscule now that her heart is broken. It’s her third miscarriage, her husband is at work and has no idea. She’s alone, truly alone now that their child is gone. She fishes it out of the bowl, wraps it in a facecloth, calls 9-1-1, and sits on the bathroom floor to cry. We arrive and have no idea the turmoil going on inside her, or what she carries in her facecloth. We only know that she is bleeding and needs us. She sits on the stretcher as we ride in silence toward the Emergency Room, wondering if she will ever have a family, if the immortality that creation brings will visit her, or if her legacy die with her and her empty womb.
Another girl screams as we wheel her into Woman and Infants. She’s crowning. The baby’s head pokes out just as we transfer her from our stretcher to theirs; seconds later another baby is born in Providence. The nurses take over, and I wipe my brow and thank the rescue gods we made it in time as the umbilical cord is cut. The new mother turns her head and tells the nurse to “get that thing away” from her. She will be smoking crack within the hour, now that she got rid of the curse in her belly. Not that the curse stopped her from smoking before; she was high as a kite when we picked her up from a condemned building that was littered with addicts and their paraphernalia.
He’s building a fence, been digging for a few hours. His chest hurts but he ignores it, keeps on digging. A neighbor finds him unconscious next to a pile of dirt and calls us. The neighbor knows CPR and starts, and we continue, doing our thing, and get a pulse. In the hospital they continue and get him breathing on his own. We consider it a victory and get back to work, where another guy is sitting watching TV, feels chest pressure, takes a nitro and calls us. He has two stents and a history of open-heart surgery—and he’s a diabetic who eats bags of chips, drinks bottle after bottle of Coke and weights almost 400 pounds. He goes to the cath lab, then home and back to his chair, and his chips. The man digging holes for his fence posts goes to ICU where he stays for a while, then dies, never regaining consciousness. He was 51.
We deliver babies, pull people from wrecked cars, administer the right drugs at the right time and truly make a difference, most of the time. It’s funny how we tend to dwell on the other times, when all we can do is wonder.
It’s a crazy world we live in, but at least everybody will be different 100 years from now.
Michael Morse, EMT-C, is captain of Rescue 5 in Providence, RI, and has served on the city’s busiest engine, ladder and rescue squads as a firefighter, rescue technician and lieutenant during his 21-year career. He is the author of the books Rescuing Providence and Responding.
