BOOK THREE
Top of the World
21
Do No (Serious) Harm
A man stabs a woman in the chest. He does it with a dull pocketknife, rusted and grimy from a decade spent in his pants pocket. She screams and staggers backward, trailing blood through a crack house thatâs beyond filthy, urban decay taken to a hellish extreme. To the junkies and dealers, this place is home. To the neighborhoodâs elderly and infirmâpovertyâs hostagesâitâs a haunted house. Windows broken or missing. Door long since kicked in. Water leaking through the roof that warps the floors and turns the plaster walls into mush. A toilet no longer connected to the outside world, filled and overflowing with unimaginable waste. A rotating cast of crackheads turned genderless by desperation, who, with their lips blistered from white-hot crack pipes, give five-dollar blow jobs.
So what if a woman is stabbed in the chest? Itâs just another day in the Zoo.
This is the first call I run after upgrading from EMT to medic. My first call working for Grady. Iâm sitting in the passenger seat, uniform too new to fit right, with a studied look of nonchalance. The day the notice arrived in the mail that Iâd passed my paramedic exam, I applied at Grady. As luck would have it, they were hiring. I underwent a physical, a written test, and a practical evaluation, smiled through an interview, then deposited my sign-on bonus. We spent three weeks in a classroom learning the Grady Way, then another three with field training officers, putting it into practice. Now Iâm speeding through the streets, trying to focus but unable to think through the sirenâs scream. Weâre in the Bluffâthe very part of town that Pike railed about three years ago during my ride-alongsâon our way to a crack house known as the Zoo, a place so notorious that someone has taken the time to spray-paint the words over the missing front door. As Biggie once said, if you donât know, now you know.
We pull up on-scene and walk through the house, but the patient is no longer here. We find her a block away, shirtless and screaming, fingers crack-burned, lips crack-burned, pants wet from God knows what. She has a red flower of flesh bursting out from her left breast. I try to listen to her lungsâostensibly to see how far the knife has penetrated into the chest wall, and whether her chest cavity is filling with air or blood. In reality, I just need something to do. My hands tremble, my heart flutters, thereâs a weakness in my stomach. I listen but hear nothing. Which could be bad. It could also be that weâre surrounded by noises: the distant whirl of a siren, the scream of the patient, the insistent yelling of the bystanders, the shouts of the drug dealers as they warn each other of approaching cops.
Iâm starting to panic. I run through Chrisâs list of rules and land on âNever let âem see you sweat.â I take a deep breath, followed by a longer exhale. Itâs not helping. The patient is still screaming. My partner is waiting for direction, but not for long. If I donât make a decision and set the chain of events into motion, sheâll begin to act on her own, and thereâs no recovering from that. The call will be out of sequence, and worse, when itâs over, word will spread that I froze. To nut up, as they call it, is an act of paralysis, and it would leave an indelible black smudge on my reputation. No one would want to work with me, and those forced to would never trust me. All of this is in danger of happening, seems destined to happen, whenâwithout warning, without provocationâthe patient turns and runs. Disappears between two houses. I look at my partner, and she looks at me. Before either of us can say a word, a cop walks up behind us and says, âDid you see the tits on that broad?â
The day Chris passed down to me those three rules, he also gave me his clipboard. Itâs the clipboard we carried with us on every call, through every house, every situation we went through. It was the dented reminder of the confidence Iâd built and the experience Iâd gained in our time together. After he gave it to me I turned it in my hands, felt its heft. I opened it and took out the patient pen. Chris yanked on the end, and it farted. We both laughed.
Months later, Iâm laughing once againâthis time with a cop I donât know and at a patient whoâs all mine. As we stand in the street watching the patientâshirtless, pendulous breasts swinging in the heatârun in and out of view, I add a fourth rule: Look for the weird and take time to laugh. My mind has been so crowded with the practicalities of medicine that Iâve forgotten why Iâm here in the first place. And itâs this. So I can stand in the street and witness this moment. I smile. I laugh. My hands stop trembling. I motion for the cop to go one way around the house and for my partner to go the other. They flush her out, and Iâm waiting. Sheâs still yelling, and it occurs to me that itâs not only unlikely but impossible to scream with your lungs punctured and filling with blood. This isnât serious. We take her to the ambulance and away from the chaos. She stops yelling but keeps talking. Still alive, still panicking, still very high on crack.
We do a quick assessment, and it turns out she was only stabbed in the boob. Still, it looks nasty. The human bodyâhers, mine, everyoneâsâis basically sausage. Puncture the skin, really puncture it, and fatty tissue explodes out like a pink mushroom cloud. It stays that way, wobbling like chewed bubble gum, until itâs stuffed back in and the hole is closed. Itâs neither practical nor hygienic to do this in an ambulance. I would never get the wound clean enough and in the end sheâd wind up with a big festering boob. Which really isnât ideal. So I put a clean dressing on it while the cop tries to figure out what happened. The conversation loops around and around until it comes out that her boyfriend caught her smoking his crack, and well, the rest we know. The boyfriendâs name is Fat-Fat, and the victim doesnât want to press charges. The cop hops out and closes the door. My partner puts the truck in gear, and we roll away.
When itâs all over, my partner and I laugh and then run more calls. Sheâs unaware how close I was to coming unglued, how close she was to issuing my death sentence by telling everyone that Iâm no good.
⢠⢠â˘
It continues like this day after day, calls coming in and me on the very edge of panic. Itâs only a matter of time before the Big One shows up. Every new medic knows his first real test is out there, so I waitâhalf dreading it, half breathless with anticipation. When other medics speak, I hang on every word, peppering them with questions. I try to be discreet, but my desperation shows. What did you do? Howâd you know to do that? What were the signs? Had you seen someone catch on fire before, or was the treatment something you learned in school? Iâm looking for answers or help or peace of mindâan indication that Iâll be able to handle the moment when itâs my turn. I casually solicit tips and advice, anything thatâll tell me what I should already know, what Iâm paid to know. For my peers, weâre talking shop and telling war stories. Everyone else is looking for a laugh; Iâm looking for advice.
Then one day it arrives. My first real test comes without warning, as just another call, though itâs not. This stranger, the one whose death will fall in my lap, appears from nowhere to read my fortune and decide whether my future holds a transfer to a quiet fire service or a decade of riding out the madness on an ambulance.
My partner and I are sitting around talking when the call comes in. Our radio crackles with static and then the wordsâperson shot, multiple wounds. My skin goes cold. Sheâs twenty-nine, and sheâs been shot six times at close range. What that isâbeing shot six times at close rangeâis beyond malice or anger. Itâs pure hate. Itâs death by a loved one. It happens on the far edge of town.
Weâre a long way out when the dispatch comes in, and with traffic, weâre slow to arrive. I hop out of the truck, and even from here I can see her, floating in a thick pool of blood thatâs congealed into red pudding. The crowd is screaming, all emotion and panic. They know the victim and the perp, they know the police canât control them. Over the shouting, I hear the patient gurgling through blood and clenched teeth. This is the real thing. Someone has been shot but not killed, and now Iâm here, alone, to deal with it. My partner is competent but new, and just an EMT, so itâs all on me. No one to fall back on, no one to help, no time to think. The patient, my patient, is dying.
We lower the stretcher. Sheâs nothing but holes, blood, and a pair of brown eyes locked to the right and staring at a serious brain bleed. Someone is screaming for everyone to back up, to stop touching us, to give us room. I think itâs my partner, but it could be me. Itâs hard to say. My brainâs in a blender. I suction the patientâs mouth, watch blood swirl up the tubing. Then we strap her to a backboard and the stretcherâs up and moving. More suctioning. In the ambulance, air conditionerâs blowing warm air. Counting holes. Ventilating. Suctioning. Finding more holes. An IV in each arm. Fluids. Lots of fluids. A call to the hospital interrupted by a seizure. Enough seizure-stopping Versed to put down a horse. Finally, serenity.
Right before we get to the hospital, I do a final count for holes. Three in her chest, one in the neck, one in the face. Iâve slipped a hand under her head to check for head shots when her eyes pop open. I let go. Her eyes close. I press again. Her eyes pop open. Thereâs a firefighter riding with us, and we look at each other as it becomes clear: My finger has slipped through a bullet hole and into her skull, and whatever Iâm poking in there is making her eyes open and close. I say thatâs probably not good, and he nods. âNo, I donât think thatâs good.â
âIâm not gonna do that again.â
âProbably best.â
At the hospital, sheâs quickly assessed, further sedated, intubated, and taken to surgery.
The woman dies a little while later, though her boyfriendâbarricaded in his apartmentâhangs on for a few more hours. We clean the truck, restock what we used, and go back in service. We run more calls. Iâm not good yet, but I can lay to rest the question of whether Iâll panic when the Big One comes. I am and always will be a Grady medic.
22
The Private Life of a Public Hospital
Grady isnât a hospital. Itâs a trauma center and a stroke center, a burn unit, a psychiatric facility, an enormous public resource. Itâs a creaking bureaucracy, underfunded, overburdened, and struggling to pay its bills. Its campus is dotted with clinics and sprawls across an immodest number of city blocks in downtown Atlanta. So itâs a hospital, yes. But itâs more than that.
Grady is an ecosystem. Swirling around it at all hours of the night are creatures from every level of the food chain. Thereâs a woman who lives in the bus enclosure out front and sings at the top of her lungs. Sheâs not singing songs but hymns, and when we arrive in the morning, we arenât merely punching in to workâweâre receiving communion. Out in the streets, just beyond Gradyâs front doors, are ambulances, doctors, nurses, visitors, the homeless, half-medicated lunatics and patients whoâve dragged their IV poles outside to smoke. Huddled together on the sidewalksâwhich are dotted with chewing gum and droplets of blood and the occasional human turdâare anxious family circles praying for loved ones, and the local news reporter whoâs camped out because something tragic has happened. Something tragic always happens.
Thereâs a McDonaldâs beneath the parking deck. Hospital trash is taken out a few yards from the ramp where ambulances bring patients in. This ramp is new. The old one was smaller and faced a different direction and was bordered on one side by a wall. Regularsâvagrants and homeless and down-on-their-luck localsâwould sit on the wall and smoke cigarettes. Every time an ambulance came in, theyâd clap and cheer. That wall became known as the Rooter Wall, the people perched on its ledge Rooters. To this day, patients transported repeatedly to Grady are called Rooters, and everyone who works here walks a fine line between love and hate when it comes to Rooters.
All this before we get inside.
Grady was built in 1892, and the original building still stands. The main hospital is much newer and infinitely larger and was once segregated into two facilities: one for whites, the other for blacks. Jim Crow is gone but not by much, and poor blacks, ever mindful of their separate-but-equal past, still refer to the hospitalâthe place they were born, where theyâre healed, and eventually, where theyâll dieâas the Gradys.
Thereâs a main entrance with an atriumâmarble floors and high ceilings, a receptionist, mounted plaquesâbut anyone sick, anyone coming by ambulance, enters through triage. Triage is a three-ring circus, and its main attraction is the human body gone suddenly, maybe irrevocably, wrong. Triage is run by two nurses, and at any given time itâs occupied by a couple dozen patients in various states of need. The main floor is home to the waiting room and its hundreds of souls in limbo. Itâs also home to the ECCâwhat youâd call the ER. The Red Zone houses trauma; the Blue Zone houses medical. Both have a couple dozen rooms, plus twice as many informal hall spots where patients end up, despite having been shot, because someone has confirmed the wound isnât life-threatening. The Red Zone includes the trauma bays where the most critically injured are treated. Itâs also home to Red Obs, which is a cramped parking lot for violent psych patients too sedated or too in need of medical help to head upstairs.
The Blue Zone has no trauma bays, but it has the CPR room, four critical-care rooms, an asthma room, and the hospitalâs detention area. Prisoners from the city or county jail, the men locked up in the federal penitentiary, all get handcuffed to a bed and brought to detention.
The ECC is a wild place overflowing with patients, competitive doctors, overworked nurses, and a ballooning coterie of support staff. It was built in the nineties, designed to replace an ER that took the worst the city had to offer, that functioned with a chaotic precision and whose tile walls sported a handful of bullet holes until it was demolished.
The cafeteria is on the second floor; labor and delivery is on the fourth. Every time a baby is bornâa child known from that moment on as a Grady Babyâa lullaby is played over the hospitalâs PA system so everyone knows another life has entered the world. This city has a lot of Grady Babies, thousands, and the song has announced the arrival of so many for so long that halfway through, it fades and hiccups only to gain strength toward the end.
The morgue is in the basement. The psych ward is on thirteen.
Grady is a strange place and very much a part of this cityâs fabric. The EMS department is no different. Wearing a Grady uniform, driving a Grady ambulance, gets me into and (more important) out of countless dangerous situations. People walking down the street, all of them Rooters, many of them Grady Babies, stop and wave as we drive by. Hey there, Grady is yelled every day from every frayed corner of this city. But itâs not easy. The call volume is enormousâover a hundred thousand a yearâand the patients (mostly homeless, many drunk) are a handful. Turnoverâs so high that people whoâve been around a while wonât speak to me until Iâve made it six months. Thatâs the first threshold. If I havenât been fired or quit o...