“So what’s the most dramatic call you ever went out on?” I ask the EMS guy, who’s sitting with us in the back of the ambulance.
I’m not the one strapped flat onto the gurney, that would be my friend Herb, who has a mysterious blood cancer. But we are leaving the hospital, not en route, so there’s time for some relieved, he ain’t the one dying today, chit-chat.
There are a lot of different ambulance companies in New York City hospitals. Our two guys, from their skullcaps, appear to be from an Orthodox Jewish outfit, though not full-tilt Black Hat Orthodox, and young, maybe early twenties. The one sitting with us, I can tell through the invisible, gripping yarn tendrils on either side of my head, is a good talker. I am sleep-deprived, a little hyper, eager for some distraction after Herb’s red blood cell crash and his two transfusions.
“Did you say dramatic or traumatic?” he asks.
“They’re kind of the same,” I say, thinking about it.
Then, as fifty years of newspaper feature writing sharp-elbows me, “Traumatic.”
I can see the guy’s brain weighing it. HIPPA Confidentiality vs. Good Story. It’s no contest.
“Well, there was this old guy we picked up at a nursing home, his O2 was 73,” the EMS guy says.
“An oxygen level of seventy-three? You can live with that?” I ask.
“Barely,” the EMS guy. “I was intubating him as we were driving. It was pretty intense. I’m yelling, ‘Faster’, we’re tearing through lights.”
We’re heading down Second Avenue, Manhattan, rush hour traffic, not speeding, there’s no need, but fast enough. When we hit a pothole we all bounce, but Herb, prone, feels it the most.
“I hate these things,” Herb says.
“What was his problem?” I ask EMS.
“He was septic,” EMS says. “Some of these nursing homes, they’re pretty bad. They leave people sitting around in dirty diapers. I was amazed we saved him.”
High tension at the time, no doubt, but I’m sure he’s got better.
“What else?” I ask.
“You know the pin on a fire extinguisher?” the EMS guy says. “It’s the thing you pull so you can press the lever. We got a call that this girl – maybe about 18, 19 – had swallowed one.”
I have trouble with a Tylenol.
“She swallowed a piece of metal?”
“Small piece,” the EMS guy says, making a prune-sized circle with his fingers. “You ever hear of Pica. It’s a compulsion to eat weird stuff. This girl had it.”
And she could get it down? Where they’d pick her up?
“Mental hospital,” the EMS guy says. “Her name was Julie. Very nice girl, acts like nothing happened. “Hello, Julie, we’re taking you to the hospital.’ ‘Fine.’ So I strap her down and we take off and I turn away, doing the paperwork. Then I hear this” – he mimics the sound of somebody chewing on something with bulk and stretch – “Shmsh, shmush, shmush. I turn around and I see Julie has gotten the straps off and she’s chewing. ‘Julie,’ I say, ‘Are you eating something?’”
He continues the chomping sound and mimes Julie, mouth stuffed, shaking her head, ‘No.’
“I say Julie, ‘Open, your mouth.’”
He mimes another, ‘No.’
“I try to open her mouth,” the EMS guy says, “But she’s fighting me. I climb on top of her, I force her mouth open and see she’s chewing a glove. She’s got into the box of gloves and she’s eating one and trying to swallow it. I’m trying to pull it out and she’s fighting me.”
I’m laughing. I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m laughing. This guy should be a feature writer, I think. He is a writer. I wonder if he knows. This guy could be doing stand-up.
I look over at Herb. He’s mildly entertained, but not as much as he would have been three months ago. Serious illness shrinks the size of the universe, it’s a bubble enclosing you: When will I get out of this damn ambulance and away from this noise? When will I get back to my room? I had two transfusions and I still feel like shit.
“I finally pull out the glove and we get her to the E.R. and everybody gathers around,” the EMS guy says. “They know her. She’s a regular. ‘Hey, Julie!” ‘Hiya Julie!’ ‘What did she eat this time?’”
“When did it start, this weird eating?” I ask the EMS guy.
“Don’t know,” he says. “It can be part of schizophrenia.”
Schizophrenia usually shows itself in the late teens or early twenties. I flash briefly on the girl’s parents, which must mean I’m old.
What do you do in a situation like this? Hide non-food objects? That would be everything. Confide in your closest friend? “How’s Julie?” / “She’s doing better. She did eat the top of an electric toothbrush the other day, but it passed right through.” If she’s in a mental institution, does that mean her parents abandoned her? Maybe they just couldn’t handle it. Maybe they were trying to keep her safe. Maybe they got to the E.R. as soon as they were notified and saw the nurses and aides doing the, ‘What did Julie eat now?’ entertainment special around their kid.
My brain pushes it aside and quickly goes to its Let Me Top This default.
“Ever hear of the Death Museum, that used to be in the New York City morgue?” I begin.
Herb shoots me an annoyed, I can’t believe you’re doing this here, look.
“They had a really raunchy exhibit, you had to know it was there and ask to see it,” I tell the EMS guy.
I use a Yiddish word for ‘boy’, teasing him.
“I don’t know if I should tell it to an innocent Yeshiva buucher like you…”
But of course, I do.
Isn't pica a type size? I just Googled. Now see the sad condition. As I have searched for it online profilers will naturally assume I suffer from it. Thanks, Joyce.
Please don't make me call Paul Harvey.