Diamond in the Rough

  Diamond in the Rough

  A Novel

  by

  Peter Canning

  Copyright © 2016 Peter Canning

  Smashwords Edition

  To all the paramedics and EMTs who have selflessly worked the streets of Hartford for the love of the job and the benefit of their patients.

  “The Jungle is dark but full of diamonds.”

  –Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

  “Kindness to the living and the dead.”

  –Ruth 2:20

  Disclaimer

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales, is entirely coincidental. However, some of the names of lesser characters are the names of real people I have worked with on the streets of Hartford. I use their names to honor them. They are unsung heroes and deserve recognition.

  Prologue

  The woman wanted me to read her dead son’s manuscript. She found me as I played with my young daughter in a park near my home. (I had not returned her emails). The woman said her son had worked with me as an EMT on the streets of Hartford nearly a decade before and had held me in high regard. (Ah, flattery—it weakened my resolve to offer a firm but polite no). As I pushed my daughter on the swings, she begged me as a parent to consider her grief. Her son’s life had gone for naught and the hard lessons he learned would not be shared unless I could help her gain a publisher for his earnest tale. Yes, she was shedding tears as she spoke. My daughter came to a stop on the swing. Daddy, why did you stop pushing me? Daddy, why is she crying?

  I did not recall the woman’s son’s name, but when she handed me a faded Polaroid of him in uniform, I recognized him. He had worked for us for several years. During that time, I perhaps worked with him only a time or two and had no memory of our shifts together. Like many others in our business, he had moved on and had not been heard from since. According to his mother, he was living in New Jersey and working as a repo man (he was out of EMS altogether then) when he came upon a wreck on a country road. A yellowed newspaper article she put in my hand said he had dragged a young woman out of a burning car. A high-voltage wire fell on him after he had secured her safety. There was no mention in the article of his previous EMS career or of any special ceremony other than that his family had a private service for him. Here in Hartford, I had heard nothing of his death. He had just been one of many faces to move through the EMS business. She handed me the manuscript and, in a new fit of sobbing, begged me to read it. My daughter asked again why the woman was crying. I had no choice but to assent. The relieved woman gave me a heartfelt hug, blessed me and told me I would not regret it.

  I felt bound and a little curious to at least read the first page, and perhaps skim through the rest to see if he mentioned me (he didn’t). Still, I must tell you, I was captivated from the first sentence. There certainly was more to this young man than met the eye. I must caution, though, that at the same time I was drawn into his story, I was also repelled by the crimes and behavior he described. I have always held up our profession as an example of people at their finest, and here was one of our own admitting to serious misdeeds. While I was unaware of any of these events taking place, I found his account of EMS in Hartford in those days largely accurate, and the events, sadly, not beyond the realm of possibility.*

  In the end I felt his story, rather than being hidden in a drawer, deserved public scrutiny. And while I in no way condone any of his crimes, it is better for us to hear his story and understand the demons that drove him. Perhaps we can then strive to be better people ourselves for having visited the darker places of his psyche. And maybe we can all find it in our hearts to show mercy to his frail soul. EMS is strong in our communities and will survive any doubt this book might raise about the general responder’s decency.

  Other than a few changes to protect the confidentiality of real people and patients, a few spelling corrections, and deletion of numerous gratuitous sex scenes, here is the tear-stained manuscript his dear mother entrusted to me.

  Respectfully,

  Peter Canning, Paramedic

  Hartford, Connecticut

  December 2015

  * Fortunately today, the hiring process and mandatory background checks have gone a long way to promoting fewer opportunities for weaker individuals to gain employment in EMS.

  Chapter 1

  I know what I did was wrong. I just want people to understand I didn’t set out to become a thief. I was only looking for love.

  It was a fact. I was no Tobey Maguire. I stood five-seven, one hundred and twenty pounds. I had a shaved head, bad teeth, bony arms, and was so skinny people made TB and tapeworm cracks about me. I was twenty-three, living in a boarding house, working as a maintenance man for a cab company and doing my best not to get my ass kicked. I had a flaming skeleton devil head tattoo on my right arm that I had gotten to make myself look tougher, but people even made fun of my tat. I had wanted a menacing specter, but they said my devil looked more like a goofball than one of Satan’s crew. Sadly, it was true, and once you are branded with indelible ink, it doesn’t come off easy.

  I cleaned the offices and garage at Yellow Cab, washed, vacuumed and changed the oil on the rides, and when one wasn’t signed out to a regular driver, the owner let me work the streets. I worked mainly at night, and split everything I took in with my boss. It wasn’t the best deal, but it helped pay off the money I owed for burning down my neighbor’s garage. They were never able to prove I had done it deliberately—they thought I had done it in retaliation for my belief that he had poisoned my dog—but since I agreed to pay the bastard back, they decided that was punishment enough, and it kept my adult record clean, my juvenile stupidities already purged on my eighteenth birthday.

  I liked driving, working the Hartford streets, both the customer contact and the knowledge of the roads, which came in handy for my later employ. If people wanted to talk, I was more than happy to converse with them. If, which was most often, they wanted me to just to drive, I easily assumed the role of the invisible man.

  My mother didn’t like me working at night, particularly in the North End, but she didn’t complain when I kicked some cash her way to help meet her mortgage or to subsidize her Monday bus trip down to the casino. Our unwritten deal was if she hit the slots jackpot, I would receive an equal share, but any profit she ever made on any particular visit just went back into her general slot fund, which was always eventually returning to zero. That was all right. At least I got a motherly kiss and an “I love you” after Sunday dinner, which was more action than I was getting from women of my own age.

  The closest I came to any sex was the business that went on in the back seat of my cab. I’d pick up old men at the elderly housing and take them for a ride down Ashley Street, where a crack whore would get in the back and give them the business for ten bucks. Sometimes the whores would just take the cash and bolt. Then I’d get stiffed because the poor old guys wouldn’t pay me the fare, blaming me that they’d been ripped off, as if I were the pimp. Hell, I wasn’t even getting a commission, not that I had the nerve to ask for a percentage nor the desire to profit from such a trade.

  Those crack whores were mean, nasty women, who no doubt had mean, nasty upbringings that had dragged them to that point where they had sold their souls to the rock which made them do what at some point in their life must have been unthinkable acts. After a while I learned which women to avoid—the rip-off artists, the ones who’d spit the exchange back out on the seat, and the ones who were cops. I promised not to tell what the one who showed me a badge said to me. Let’s just say silence is expensive and talkin
g even more so. Everybody’s got a racket.

  On Saturday nights I cruised downtown where all the high school, college and young nine-to-five working-girl lovelies were dollied up and out drinking at the bars. One night a young redhead and her man came out of the Pig’s Eye Pub and hailed me as I came slowly down Asylum Avenue. She was skinny, blue eyed with a freckled nose. She was real cute in her lime-green sun dress. She couldn’t have been old enough to drink. He was older, maybe mid-twenties, broad-shouldered, wearing a white shirt with a loosened red power tie, carrying a suit jacket. He looked like he had a good job and could have whatever woman he wanted. He asked to go up to Girard Street.

  They hadn’t been in the back long enough for me to write their destination down on my manifest when he asked her to straddle him, and she did and started tugging at his belt. All that shifting around and groaning and in no time she was bouncing off him and telling him to keep doing what he was doing. When she’d arch her back I could feel her long hair against my head.

  I was embarrassed and leaned forward to avoid letting her hair touch me, but then I admit I kind of got excited myself. I don’t consider myself a pervert—I mean the only porn I ever bought myself was an occasional Penthouse or Swank—a guy has to get by when he can’t afford the cover charge, a beer and tips at the tittie bar—but hearing her say over and over what she was saying, well, I tried to imagine she was saying it to me. Her hair had a wonderful scent—like bubble gum and strawberries. She was young and wild and crazy and I imagined she wanted me like girls in the movies want the hero. I drove as slowly as I could, and then instead of parking right in front of the apartment, I pulled a little bit past to a spot not under a street lamp. I heard a groan then, and she tried to keep riding, but he said, his voice changed, “Easy.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “Play that song for me.” She kissed his neck, and as she did, his eyes met mine in the rear view mirror. He looked irritated.

  “I’m tired,” he said to her.

  “I’ll get you going again.”

  “Ow,” he said, “No, I need to sleep.” He nudged her off him.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “That’s it?” she said as he buckled his pants.

  He reached into his wallet and handed me twenty bucks. The meter only read five dollars and forty-five cents. “This ought to cover it with a tip. Take her where she needs to go.”

  “That’s it?” she said again.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been fighting a migraine all night. He’ll take you back downtown. Here’s my card. Call me. We can hook up another night.”

  He handed her the card. She took it, and then threw it back in his face. “I can’t believe you. That’s it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Get out,” she said. She hit him. “You fucking jerk!”

  He looked at me as he stepped out of the car like she was the crazy one and maybe I might have some male sympathy for him. I just shook my head. I couldn’t believe the way he was treating her either.

  “I agree with you on that one,” I said to her, after he’d disappeared inside.

  “What!”

  “I agree he’s a jerk.”

  She just grunted, and looked out the window.

  What I wanted to say was something smooth, something soothing, and maybe a little funny, something to make her feel all right and maybe see me in a different light—as a man, not as a witness to her humiliation. I didn’t think anything I could think of would work. I told you I was no Tobey Maguire, because if I was she would have ended up home with me, not in my boarding house, but in my Prospect Avenue mansion overlooking the city.

  “Where can I take you?”

  “Back downtown.”

  She turned her face to the window.

  I was silent as I drove her back to the Pig’s Eye Pub, where I waited while she went in, only to see her come out and look around like a lost little girl.

  I called to her. “You going to be all right?”

  She looked at me at first like she was going to blow me off, like what kind of creep was I to be stalking her. But she had no friends at that moment. “They left,” she said.

  “Where do you live?” I finally asked.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I’ll drive you there.”

  “I have no money.”

  “It’s on me,” I said. “I’m done for the night anyway,” which I wasn’t. “Get in.”

  I hit the meter off. “You can sit in the front if you want.”

  “I’m fine back here,” she said.

  “Okay, your preference.”

  I put the radio on. Bob Seger. “‘Night Moves.’ You like this?” I asked. “This is a great song.”

  She didn’t answer. I keep glancing up in the rear view mirror as I drove. She was crying, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and decided silence was best. If I couldn’t be the hero, I’d best not be a fool.

  She lived about fifteen miles away in Glastonbury, in a big house at the end of many dark roads. When I approached the drive, she said, “Right out here is fine.” She got out, closed the door and tottered up the long drive, not a word to me.

  Instead of going to Cousin Vinny’s on West Service Road, where I sometimes went to see the dancing girls, I went home and lay in my single bed and dreamed I had a different life. I dreamed that I lived in a big house at the end of a dark road, and that I was handsome and brave, and that at night, I made love to my cute red-headed wife who slept with her cheek on my strong chest knowing I would always keep her safe.

  Chapter 2

  Fred Waters and I went to high school together. We were best pals. Some called us Beavis and Butthead. I didn’t care for it, but in high school, you don’t choose your handle. We were motorheads—into cars—even though neither of us had one unless our moms let us use the family auto, which was rare after we got busted for underage drinking while watching the street racing down behind Bulkley High School. Believe me, we would have been too embarrassed to drive their rusted station wagons down there where souped-up Civics and Mitsubishis ruled.

  Fred had more luck with the girls than I did, though, and he wouldn’t have had any luck at all without grape juice and gin, which made Fred’s ascension into a chick magnet more remarkable. Now instead of juice and gin, he had stories—and good ones.

  Fred was an EMT and worked for Capitol Ambulance in the city. He lost the bad haircut, got a military buzz cut, and started lifting weights. He set his sights on becoming a paramedic firefighter and hooking on with a city pension job in East Hartford. So in the meantime, while he applied to medic school, he was just pounding out the hours on the ambulance, making good pay with the unlimited overtime—pay enough to afford his own apartment, make payments on a new pickup and have cash to spend on the ladies.

  A couple nights a week when he’d get off work, I’d meet him and some of the guys he worked with at the Brickyard Pub on Park Street for beers and pizza. There was a regular crowd of women there, particularly on Thursday nights, and we often ended up with tables pushed together and pitchers of beer lined up on the table with plates of nachos, buffalo wings and potato skins. Fred would be wearing his black boots, cargo pants and navy blue “EMS in the Jungle” tee-shirt, showing a medic swinging on a vine over the city rooftops on the front with “HARTFORD EMS” on the back. Looking at his biceps, I was thinking a little time in the gym would do me well, but then again Ronnie Meyers—Fred’s partner—was as scrawny as me and he always had a girl sitting on his lap. I thought what really made the difference were the stories they told, how they were always the center of attention. He and his buddies would tell their incredible tales, and the chicks would dig it. Me, I just sat like a little grinning idiot, happy if on any given night, when they’d push the tables together, a girl would be stuck next to me, and I could at least go home with the scent of perfume on me.

  “So we get called to Edgewood Stre
et for the shooting,” Fred says, as a blonde named Candy refills his beer, and the brunette Mindy, a hairdresser from down the street who has been his choice of the month, rubs his neck. “The address is the same one where we did that triple heroin overdose I told you about last week—the one where Spencer shoots one guy with the Narcan, wakes his ass up and has him do CPR on one of his buddies while I pounded on the chest of the other, and Spencer tubed them both while we waited for backup. That building is like EMS Central Training Academy. Shootings, overdoses, presumptions, assaults, fires, even a baby delivered there, but listen to this—this one tops them all. We go charging in there because the junkie who met us out front is going nuts, and you know junkies never get excited about anything except getting their stash ripped off. We go flying up the stairs with the cops right behind us.

  “I get up there and I see this guy lying on a mattress holding his groin. The guy’s going, ‘My dick! My dick!’ The cop behind me shines his Maglite on him, and where his dick should be there’s nothing but a crater, a crater filled with blood.

  “‘He hit ’em with a shotgun,’ the junkie who led us up there declares. ‘A shotgun—Boom, right in the fucking nuts!’

  “‘My dick! My dick!’ the guy screams.

  “And you can see it lying there, hanging by a tiny piece of tissue, like he almost shot it completely off, floating in the bloody crater like a dead whale.

  “‘Who did this?’ the cop demands. ‘Was this over drugs?’

  “‘Drugs?’ the junkie goes. ‘He shot him in the dick!’

  “Ronnie’s running down to get the scoop stretcher so we can carry him down the stairs. I’m calling for a medic on the radio and dispatch is asking, ‘What do you have? What do you have?’ I want to say, ‘He’s shot in the dick!’ but in deference to the FCC, I just say, ‘Shotgun blast to the groin!’