Mortal Men Read online

  Mortal Men:

  Paramedics on the Streets of Hartford

  A Novel

  by

  Peter Canning

  Dedication

  To the men and women of Professional and L&M Ambulances who worked the streets of Hartford, and to those who have succeeded them at American Medical Response/Hartford and Aetna Ambulance.

  To the members of the Hartford Police Department and the Hartford Fire Department.

  To the Emergency Department staffs of Saint Francis Hospital, Hartford Hospital, John Dempsey Hospital and Connecticut Children’s Hospital.

  And to the citizens of the great and diverse city of Hartford.

  “…mortals, who come out like leaves in summer and eat the fruit of the field and presently fall lifeless to the ground.”

  —Homer

  “Glory to fill the world…”

  —Ovid

  Disclaimer

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product 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.

  Chapter 1

  “Four eighty-two. One forty Scarborough Street. Shooting to the head. On a one.”

  “Scarborough Street?” Troy said. “No gang-bangers in that neighborhood.”

  “Where’s Scarborough?”

  “Take Broad down to Asylum, bang a left. I’ll show you.”

  I hit the lights and sirens on. Our red and white ambulance surged north on Broad, then swung west up Asylum.

  “It’s got to be a barrel for breakfast job,” Troy said.

  Troy was twenty-eight, a broad-shouldered six-foot-three, wearing a New York Yankees hat, and smiling like he owned the world, or at least could have his way with it. I hadn’t known him an hour.

  “Four-oh-four to dispatch,” a voice on the company radio said, “I’m turning onto Scarborough now. I’ll be there in one.”

  “Atreus,” Troy said. “He’s always jumping my calls. Step on it.”

  I switched the siren to wail. Ben Atreus was the chief paramedic. When he introduced me to Troy as Troy’s temporary partner, by the way Ben smiled and Troy grunted, I sensed bad blood between them.

  “Time’s a-ticking,” Troy said

  I ran the ambulance hard on the center line. Traffic parted. We crossed Woodland. The road dipped and then curved.

  “Four-oh-four out.”

  Troy cursed under his breath. “Take this right up here.”

  I swung around a stopped city bus and then turned right onto Scarborough. It was a long flat street lined by giant maple trees. Large, stately homes were set well back from the road, many behind hedges or iron gates.

  “Keep going. It’ll be down toward the Albany end on the right hand side. We should see the cars in the drive. There they are—down there.”

  A Capital Ambulance fly car, its red lights still whirling, was parked behind three police cars in the circular driveway of the white columned brick house. I shut off the siren as I drove through the entrance.

  We wheeled the stretcher across the damp, recently cut lawn. A police officer met at us at the front door. “You’re not going to need that. It’s a seventy-eight. In the library. I hope you have a strong stomach.”

  We walked through a living room, where moving boxes were piled. The walls held only picture hooks.

  Ben Atreus stood by the French doors open to a brick terrace. A man in his mid-thirties, he had the red complexion of someone with high blood pressure. He wore a white supervisor shirt with a gold badge over the left breast pocket. He nodded solemnly to us. “C-MED four-oh-four,” he said into his radio, “a patch to Saint Fran with medcon, please.”

  “Med eight. Stand by.”

  Brahms played from an unseen source. There was a Persian rug in front of a large marble-faced fireplace. Empty bookcases lined the high-ceilinged room. A man sat in a chair behind a massive mahogany desk. I looked at the face. There was nothing there. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Just torn bloody flesh. Bits of tissue, blood, and hair stuck to the ceiling. You could still smell the acrid discharge of gunpowder.

  On the desk was a single photo. Taken in front of a ski lift, the man stood with his arm around the waist of a pretty smiling woman.

  A policeman took pictures of the shotgun that lay on the floor by the man’s feet.

  Ben’s heart monitor was on the desk, still attached to the corpse. A green flat line with occasional complexes scrolled across the small dark screen.

  “He’s still got a rhythm here,” Troy said.

  “Agonal,” Ben replied. “I’m just waiting for medical control for permission to presume.”

  “Go ahead four-oh-four, Saint Fran’s on.”

  “Hey!” the officer shouted at Troy. “This is a crime scene.”

  Troy had the man out of the chair, lifting him like he was a doll and laying him down on the floor.

  “No, it’s a resuscitation scene,” Troy said. “I could use some help here.”

  “He’s dead,” Ben said.

  Troy had the airway kit out. “Protocol says all medics must agree with the termination decision.” He snapped a curved steel blade onto the laryngoscope. “I oppose.”

  Ben shook his head.

  Kneeling over the body, Troy stuck the blade into the goop. He peered down into the opening, and then passed the long plastic tube into the mess like a straw into Jell-O. “I’m in.” He looked up at me. “If you’re on the clock, I could use an ambu-bag and some compressions.”

  I handed him the ambu-bag from Ben’s gear. Ben still hadn’t moved as I got down on my knees and placed my hands on the man’s sternum.

  “Go ahead, four-oh-four. Saint Francis is on the line.”

  “Disregard,” Ben said into his portable.

  I started compressions.

  “So what? He’s not dead?” the officer said.

  Ben reached slowly for his IV kit. “No, I guess not, not for another twenty minutes anyway, and not here.”

  Troy squeezed the ambu-bag he’d connected to the tube, forcing air into the man’s lungs.

  Ben wrapped a tourniquet around the man’s arm, and then reached for a catheter. “This is completely wrong. He’s a suicide.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe he changed his mind at the last minute, maybe that’s why he took his face off instead of the back of his head.”

  “Maybe he just had bad luck.”

  “Well then, his luck has changed.” Troy winked at me. “I’m here.”

  “Oh, please,” Ben said.

  The trauma center was a mile away. While Ben and Troy did CPR, I followed Ben’s directions and took a right on Albany, and followed the street down into the Hartford north end, passing a housing project, turning right down onto Homestead Avenue, where brick factories stood behind barbed wire.

  “Check this out,” I heard Troy shout. “We have a pulse.”

  “It’s just the epi talking,” Ben said. “It won’t last.”

  I turned right onto Woodland. Potholes jostled the ambulance.

  “Slow down,” Ben shouted.

  At the hospital when I opened the ambulance’s back doors to pull the stretcher, Troy unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from the man’s limp arm. “One eighty over one hundred,” he said. “I’ll take it.” Ben, with a sour look, kept squeezing the ambu-bag. Troy laid the IV bags on the man’s chest and resecured the straps. “Okay, let’s get him moving.”

  The trauma team, garbed in green scrubs with surgical hats and gloves on, awaited us as we
entered the trauma room off the main hallway. We lifted the man on the board from our stretcher to the trauma table.

  “He was in ventricular asystole when I arrived,” Troy said. “Intubated with a number nine-point-oh. He’s gotten two rounds of epinephrine. One atropine. He’s in a sinus tack now with a BP of one eighty over one hundred. A sixteen in his right AC and a fourteen in the left. Lungs sounds equal with good compliance.”

  “My God,” Dr. Singer said. “How did you get a tube in that?”

  “I wiggled it around a little bit till I found the right spot,” Troy said. He handed the ambu-bag to the respiratory therapist at the head of the gurney. A tech cut the man’s pants off with trauma shears.

  Dr. Singer nodded for the therapist to squeeze the bag as she listened for lung sounds on the left and right sides of the chest. The doctor was a tall woman with Buddy Holly glasses and a girlish face—I guessed her to be in her early thirties. “I don’t believe I’m even looking at this. What happened?”

  “The police got a call for a distraught man,” Ben said. “They heard the blast when they were at the front door.”

  She turned to the trauma team. “Let’s go people, what are you gawking at? I want a pressure and another line! Get some X-rays! Let’s get him prepped!”

  While I stood outside cleaning the stretcher, Ben and Troy argued in front of the ER doors.

  Troy pointed to the patch on his shoulder with his bottle of Coke. “Paramedic,” he said. “I save lives.”

  “Who are you kidding?” Ben said. “You didn’t do anyone any favors.” He turned and walked away.

  Troy noticed me watching then. “A little excitement for your first call. I told you it was going to be a guy eating steel.”

  I nodded that indeed, he had.

  “All in a day’s work,” Troy said.

  He raised his Coca-Cola to his lips and guzzled it empty. He tossed the bottle end over end toward the trash can fifteen feet away. It clanked in. He pumped his fist.

  Chapter 2

  “So you’ve worked the road before?” Troy said as we left the hospital.

  “I’ve worked a few places.”

  “Well, you did a fine job. Don’t mind Ben, he’s a prick.”

  I just headed down the road. I had worked a few places, starting in Maine and most recently in Las Vegas. Being an EMT was a handy job—there was work most places you went. The pay wasn’t great, but you could work as much as you wanted. I’d met people in this line of work like Troy—cocky, talented, and no idea of what their future held.

  “Where am I headed?” I asked.

  “Right on Farmington, left on Sisson, then hop on the highway West. We’re going back to the office to resupply. I need to see Linda, my regular partner, so I told them we need to decon and change the main. She’s out on light duty. Don’t get used to working with me. As soon as the doctor clears her, she’s going to be sitting in your seat. You’re all right, but she and I are a team.”

  “Fine by me,” I said.

  “Atreus has her helping him with QA while Karen Priest, his assistant chief medic, is on vacation. Linda should be back in a couple days. She was supposed to talk to the doctor this morning. Hopefully he gives her the okay.

  Linda Sullivan was in the hallway posting a notice on the bulletin board when we walked in. She hugged Troy and kissed him on the neck. His hand went right to the small of her back. A tall slender woman of no more than twenty-six years old, she had lively brown eyes, freckles on her face, and brown hair back in a ponytail. She wore the same navy blue uniform as the road personnel. I could only imagine what she looked like in a dress. I wouldn’t have been a man if I hadn’t felt a jealousy in the way she smiled at Troy.

  “Great news,” she said.

  “You got cleared?”

  “No, Ben just offered me the Karen Priest’s job.”

  “What?”

  “She’s quitting to take care of her sick father. She’s not coming back. Ben needed someone so he asked me.”

  “You didn’t take it, did you?”

  “Of course I took it. It’s a raise and regular hours. I can take my kids to school and be home to cook them dinner.”

  “But you’d be giving up the road.”

  “You think that’s bad? With my back?”

  “But they didn’t even post the job.”

  “They don’t have to. Ben can hire whoever he wants.”

  “What about us?”

  She gave him a light stiff-arm away. “Don’t be so happy for me.”

  “I’m sorry, I am happy for you. It’s just I was expecting you back with me.”

  “Oh, you’re so cute when you’re sad.” She pulled him back towards her. “I’ll miss you too, but this is a raise—and the hours—it’s perfect for me. You should come over tonight when you get off. We can celebrate.”

  “I’m going hunting with Pat. I told you about that.”

  “Don’t say I never invite you over.”

  A voice on the intercom said, “Linda, if you’re in the building, there’s a call for you on your line.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “It’s probably the doctor.”

  “A lot of good that does now,” Troy muttered as he watched her go. He looked troubled. Then Ben stepped out of the men’s room. “Nice,” Troy said.

  Ben turned. “You heard about my new assistant?” He didn’t try to hide his delight.

  “I’m sure your motives were pure.”

  “She was the best person for the job.”

  “You never even posted the job. You don’t know who would have applied.”

  “Oh, you mean you wanted to be my office girl?”

  Troy stammered.

  “I know you liked working with her,” Ben said, “But even if she didn’t take the job, you wouldn’t be working with her anymore anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Get used to Lee as your partner. We have another new policy. No more double medic cars. No more dedicated emergency cars.”

  “What are you, crazy?”

  A voice from behind us said, “It comes from me.”

  I turned to see a deeply tanned man of medium build walking toward us. He was in his early thirties with a sweeping black mustache, curly black hair. In his slacks and black polo shirt, he looked like he’d just gotten off the golf course.

  Troy’s eyes narrowed. “I should have known you were in on it too, Bruce.”

  Bruce Atreus, Ben’s younger brother, was the operations manager. He was the one I spoke to when I called from Las Vegas to inquire about work. He told me he could schedule me seven days a week if I wanted. When I said that was my intention, he’d given me the job right there on the phone.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Bruce told Troy now. “It’s a business decision. We’re losing transfers to Champion. From now on the closest car will get the call whether it’s a transfer or an emergency. We’re going to spread our medics around. Every medic gets a basic partner.”

  “That’s not right.”

  “Maybe not, but that’s the way it is. You want to keep your job, don’t you?”

  “And I thought I’d never miss Sidney.”

  “Sidney’s dead. You lost your guardian. I could fire you for insubordination.”

  “If you didn’t need me so much, maybe you would. But in the meantime, insubordinate this.” Troy raised his middle finger. “The both of you.” Then he walked out.

  “Keep an eye on him,” Ben said to me.

  I nodded. They were the same words he’d said to me that morning when he’d assigned me to Troy for the day.

  When we cleared from our resupply, dispatch sent us downtown to area ten. I glanced at Troy as I drove on the highway. His eyes were brooding.

  “Where are we supposed to post down here?” I asked as I got off the Asylum Street exit.

  “Take a right, go under the railroad bridge, and then take your second left on Union Place.”

  He had me park across
from the train station in front of a restaurant called Papa’s that served pizza and sandwiches. He stepped out of the ambulance, unbuttoned his paramedic shirt and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “I’m going into Dooley’s.”

  “In there?” Dooley’s was next door to Papa’s. A neon Budweiser sign glowed in the window.

  “That’s what I said. You have a problem with that?”

  “You might want to take this with you.” I handed him his portable radio.

  He suddenly smiled. “Hey, you’re all right.” He clipped the portable on his belt, and then walked into the bar that promised “Happy Hour—Two for One Drinks.”

  I sat in the ambulance and ate the roast beef sandwich and apple I’d brought in my small cooler. I read through Troy’s Hartford Courant. The Red Sox had lost a heartbreaker on the west coast the night before. City and state officials were holding an emergency meeting about the escalating gang violence in Hartford. Gang members jailed several years ago in a major crackdown were now getting out of prison and flexing their muscles. The resulting turf wars had the city on a record homicide pace. The day before there had been a double slaying at the Charter Oak–Rice Heights housing project. On the front of the Connecticut section there was a photo of Troy ventilating one of the victims with an ambu-bag as the patient was wheeled across the grass, another EMT riding the stretcher doing compressions.

  Ten minutes went by. No sign of Troy.

  “Four eighty-two,” dispatch called.

  “Four eighty-two,” I answered slowly.

  “One seventy Sisson Avenue Building three, apartment two-four-seven, for the swollen legs. Priority two.”

  “One seventy Sisson Avenue,” I repeated.

  I watched the door of the bar. Troy did not come out. After three minutes, I picked up the radio. “Four eighty-two. We’re having trouble getting the engine started. I think it’s flooded. Just letting you know we’re going to be a little late, if we can get it going at all.”