She was unlike Brian, who simply played at being a night person because he had to. He didn’t choose to work the night shift. The overnight had chosen him, or rather; The Chipmunk had forced it on him. So when he was on and felt the need, he took naps.

Along with the snoring came the farting. In his sleep, Brian would often let loose rips that rattled the windows in the bus. These would often make her jump in her seat like a teenage girl who had been grabbed by her boyfriend at a bad horror film. Whatever was in his diet that was giving him gas was working. The ventilation system of the ambulance worked well enough to keep the secondary effects away from her, but the noise… It was ear splitting.

Brian was bothersome and disgusting at times, but he was her partner. Mel loved him like an annoying big brother.

She had awakened him twenty minutes into his nap to respond to a call in Brooklyn Heights. It was a generalized EDP call: Emotionally Disturbed Person. One never knew what to expect on an EDP call. They could run the gauntlet from a drunk on the sidewalk to a full-blown schizophrenic episode.

Brian and Mel had been partners for almost five years. Brian had moved to the Brooklyn garage from the East Harlem station at Saint Luke’s to be here with Amber shortly after they were married. The only open slot was on the overnight with the promise of going to days. However, after rubbing The Chipmunk the wrong way a time or two, that possibility had quickly evaporated. He often rubbed The Chipmunk the wrong way. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

Mel dodged a yellow cab coming off of the ramp from the Brooklyn Bridge at Cadman Plaza. She caught a glimpse of the enraged expression on the cabbie’s round chubby African face. The red and blue flashes of the emergency lights on the top of the bus reflected wildly in the whites of his widened eyes against the contrast of his purplish black skin of his face.

He shouted something in Swahili, or perhaps, Nigerian. Whatever the cabbie was screaming, it wasn’t pleasant. He had tried to slip in front of the bus, and Mel wasn’t having it. She gunned it and swerved in front of him, missing his front bumper by only inches. The cab jogged wildly to miss them as Mel blasted the air horn, which drowned out the whaling of the sirens. The language of his hand gesture was universal. The cabbie’s dark middle finger flew up in stark contrast against the white steam of a street vent as his angry image grew smaller in her rearview mirror.

“The next time you try to cut off an ambulance, picture your mother riding in the back, asshole!” Mel added over the PA for good measure. She loved her job.

She smiled. Running a cabbie off the road was simply a bonus. Those guys never learned.  If they weren’t trying to cut in front of her, they were tailgating. Cabbies liked to use her ambulance as a plow to surgically cut through heavy traffic. Running them off the road was the game she played nightly with cabs, and she was very good at it.

“Speed it up, Mel! What the fuck are you doing?! This guy is crashing again!”

Brian was really bossy whenever someone was dying in the back of the ambulance. He fought tooth and nail to keep them alive. It was his passion for saving lives that she respected most. They had been partners long enough that she perhaps knew him better than anyone else, with the exception of Amber.  Most in their field had the drive to save lives, but his seemed like some sort of addiction or a basic fundamental drive to sustain life like breathing or eating. Brian needed his patients as much as they needed him.

Mel, Brian, and Amber had all been members of the same class in the Methodist Hospital’s Paramedic Program. They had studied together, done their internships together, and tested together. Mel was the one who had introduced him to Amber. She was there at the beginning.

“Mel!”

“We’re getting there! Four minutes,” she shouted as she ran the red light at Union and 4th. They could have arrived at the ER already, but LICH was on diversion. Methodist was their secondary hospital.

On the stretcher was the patient, a 45ish balding gentleman. He was hooked up to the EKG monitor that was generating a very odd arrhythmia.

Brian had encountered similar rhythms in the past. He called them “Arrhythmic Soup.” This one was different. It had a mixture of short stretches, normal sinus rhythm, ventricular fibrillation in places, and was seasoned with an occasional premature ventricular contraction thrown in here and there. Add in the fact that he was tachycardic, and that made this rhythm very curious indeed. It was as if his system couldn’t decide which way to crash, but crash it would. He’d crashed twice already. Brian had gotten him back. He saw it coming again and very shortly.

The patient had been picked up outside of his Brooklyn Heights condo passed out flat on his back pale, wet with shock and an erection the size of the Baja California. Fluids and elevation had taken care of the shock somewhat, but his blood pressure was still low. It was way too low to be sporting a boner like this. Like his life of late, this patient made no sense to Brian.

Sitting in the captain’s chair was his daughter, who was dressed as a ghetto fairy. This was one of the more original Halloween costumes Brian had seen tonight. She was sobbing.

“Yo, Tinka Bell! Anything you want to tell me about what you slipped your dad?”

“I told you!  I don’t know!”

Brian watched the monitor. There it was:  a wavy amber line against the black background. The last of the Q R S complexes rolled off the screen. In its place was a total random wavy line. Nothing else looked like that, V-fib. He had crashed. At least, there was some sort of continuity now and a clearly defined path to follow.

He ran the steps of the protocol in his mind… a mnemonic he had learned all those years ago as a medic in the Air Force.

Shock

Shock

Shock

Everybody Shock

Little Shock

     Brian charged the defibrillator to 200 millijoules. The high pitch whine told him that the first charge was set. He placed the paddles on the patient’s chest, one on the right and the other at the apex of the heart.

“Clear!”

He spoke the word out of habit, realizing that nobody else was there. It was a habit he never deviated from, like using his turn signal while driving on an abandoned dirt road. He fired the defibrillator, and the current shot straight through the man’s body into the metal of the stretcher and straight into Brian’s leg pressed against the bottom rail.

It was if someone had just jammed a white hot ice pick into his calf. His body was no longer under his direct control. Impulsively, he jumped up, slamming his head into the roof.

“EEEEEOOOWWWWW! Motherfucking shit bastard FUCK!”

Tinka Bell’s eyes widened, and she stopped blubbering for a second. It was only a second.

“You were touching the stretcher, weren’t you?” Mel said as she swerved past a livery cab hard enough to slam Brian back down on the bench.

“Yes! I was touching the goddamned stretcher!”

“You know better.”

“Just get us to the fucking hospital!”

“Geeze, somebody put on their cranky pants tonight.”

Brian’s ear piece rang, and he popped the blue button.

“Hello.”

“Brian?”

“Hi, Amber. I’m a little busy right now.”

“You are always busy. I need to talk to you.”

“C’mon, Amber, I’m working a guy up right now.”

“It’s always something with you.”

“I’m not blowing you off. Really, can’t it wait until we’re back at the shop?”

“Yeah, I guess it will have to.”

The phone went dead.

“God, I’m having a shitty night.”

“You shouldn’t blow off your wife like that,” Mel said.

“Don’t you start.”

Brian saw that despite the current jumping through the stretcher into his leg, it had done the patient some good. The rhythm on the monitor had returned to a shaky semi-normal sinus rhythm. At least that was something.

“Is he dead? Oh God! Is he dead?!”

Brian had pieced Tinka Bell’s story together from a few coherent ramblings mixed in with a lot of nonsense.

Apparently, he had grounded her tonight, Halloween of all nights, over some test scores—either History or Geometry, he wasn’t sure which. She had, in return, slipped him something in his brandy. She had had hopes of stoning him just enough as to not notice her slipping out for the evening to do whatever it was ghetto fairies did on Halloween night. She had returned to her father standing in the fountain in the dead cold with a smile on his face and wearing only his designer silk boxers. Shortly after that, he had collapsed in the driveway.

“No, Tinka Bell, he’s not dead, not any more. What in hell did you give him?”

“My name is Jessica!”

“Okay, Jessica, what the hell did you give him?”

“I don’t know!”

“You put some stuff in your dad’s drink, and you don’t even know what it was!”

“It wasn’t supposed to do that!”

“If you don’t know what it was, how the hell are you supposed to know what it’s going to do?”

She began to cry again, forcing her special Halloween makeup to run down her cheeks in little gobs that she smeared away with her fingers. She was at her breaking point. Brian saw that. Chastising her for her mistake would serve no purpose. It would do his patient no good to continue the assault on her. It wasn’t his place to be angry at her for being a stupid kid. He spoke softly to her with an apologetic tone.

“Jessica, what’s your dad’s name?”

“Sonny.”

“Has he ever had a heart attack?”

“Yes.”

“Is he on medication?”

“I don’t know. He takes pills.”

“What kind of pills?”

“I don’t know pills! Just some pills!  Some blue, some white!”

“Okay, just try and stay calm. We’re going to do all we can for your dad… Fuck me!”

In the short space of time he had spoken to Jessica, Sonny had slipped back in to V-fib. He was crashing once again. The more it happened, the less likely he would come out of it.  Unlike the spirit, the human body can only take so much.

“Sonny! You are really starting to piss me off!”

Brian had never brought a patient back a fourth time. He was about to set a personal record. This time, he was careful not to touch the stretcher.

Detective Jackie Miller grew up in Bensonhurst and, against the wishes of her Jewish mother, had attended NYU’s program in Criminology, and later, the graduate program at UC Irvine.

The reason: her Irish father, who had served his entire career in the 72^nd police precinct in which she now served. She had history there, not only from her father, but also from herself.

She had interned at the 72^nd in high school, beginning as a file clerk during her summer vacations. She had been a rookie there and was now a 15 year vet. The 72nd was like her family, the family that that had taken her in when her father died of a heart attack when she was a senior in college.

Methodist Hospital was part of her territory. She had never arrested a ghetto fairy, but nothing surprised her or Billy, her partner, anymore.

Her mousy frame and long blonde ponytail were misleading. Brian had seen her body slam perps almost twice her weight when they had gotten out of hand.

Jessica sat quietly sobbing in the back of the R&P police car with her hands cuffed behind her, her black fairy wings resting on her lap.

“Dispatch, we have one under at Methodist,” Jackie reported into her walkie talkie.

“Copy, one under.”

She turned back to Brian.

“Jackie, he was alive when we got here – died on the table.”

“Doesn’t count as a save if he died on the table,” Mel said as she walked past them carrying resupplies for the ambulance.

“Yes it does. He was alive when we got him to crash room. I brought him back four times.”

“If you say so.”

Mel climbed into the bus and began restocking.

“What else did she say to you?” Jackie continued her interview.

“She was pissed for being grounded and slipped him something in his brandy.”

“Something?” Billy chimed in.

“She had no idea what it was. She said that he was taking white and blue pills because of his heart condition. I’m thinking the blue ones were the ones that gave him that huge boner. You wouldn’t know about that, would you, Billy?”

“Fuck you, smart guy. Nothing wrong with my plumbing. I got four kids to prove it.”

“At least he died with a smile on his face,” Brian said.

“You are fucking sick,” Mel responded. “You men and your dicks.  What is that about?”

Both Billy and Brian shrugged their shoulders as if on cue.

“Then you noticed, too?”

“No, not really.”

Mel continued to restock the back of the ambulance for the next run.

“Melody, you have anything else to add to the report?”

The Chipmunk, Mel’s grandmother, and Jackie were the only two people who ever used her full name.

“No, not really.”

“Hell of a thing,” Billy said. “She’s got to live with this the rest of her life.”

“Yeah, it’s all fun and games until somebody dies.” Brian glanced over at Jessica in the car. She seemed to be zoning out.

“You call Social Services, Jackie?”

“Yeah, they’re going to meet us at the 72nd.”

The two detectives followed the R&P out of the hospital parking lot in their unmarked black Crown Victoria.

“I don’t like that guy. He’s a smartass.”

“You see this?”

Jackie pulled the top of her blouse open to reveal a bullet scar on the top right side of her chest.

“When the hell did you get shot?”

“Six years ago, before I made detective. And guess who saved my life?”

“Wow, really?”

“I didn’t like him at first either, but guess what? I’m pretty sure I’m still here because of that smartass. He’s been through a lot. Cut him some slack.”

“Duly noted.”

Brian had tried to enter a few lines in a small leather notebook he always carried with him, but could think of nothing to write.  His therapist had suggested he keep a journal four years ago. He’d stopped seeing her, but kept writing. He found it difficult to concentrate and began pestering Mel.

“Mel, you think they will ever make a fifth Indiana Jones Movie?”

“Anything is possible,” she said, not bothering to look up from her Kindle.

“Harrison Ford has got to work, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember when we were working the circus last year, and that midget clown kept hitting on you? You gonna tell me you weren’t the least little bit curious?”

“Ewwwww. God, there is something seriously not right with you.”

“Just seeing if you were awake.”

It always amazed Brian that Mel could read and carry on a conversation at the same time. They had been sitting under the Brooklyn Bridge for almost an hour. Not their usual 98., Usually, they were parked under the arch at Grand Army Plaza. It was slow, too slow for Halloween night. So far no trick or treaters had been run over, or shot. No one else was dying of a heart attack, and no drunks were passing out even though it was just after midnight. It was absolutely still – at least here in DUMBO.

Listening in on the chatter from Manhattan across the river things were going to hell. This was why they had moved from their usual spot to cover a forming void in service. It seemed that everyone else was busy. Dispatch had placed them here in case they had to make a quick run into Chinatown.

Brian hated working in Chinatown. Hardly anyone spoke English, and he certainly didn’t speak any dialects of Chinese. Even the people who spoke English in Chinatown didn’t really speak English. At least not the type of English he could understand. He usually made an idiot of himself by falling back on the universal rule that if one spoke English loud enough, slow enough and used a lot of hand signals, anyone could understand him.

“They’re making a movie called Cowboys and Aliens with him in it.”

“Sounds good.”

“I always thought that they should make one called Cowboys and Vampires. I’d pay to see that in 3D…”

“13 Willy, pick up,” the radio squawked.

Mel dropped her Kindle in her lap and snatched up the mic.

“Thank God. 13 Willy, go.”

“Please don’t be Chinatown,” Brian muttered to himself.

“13 Willy: 200 Water Street, the Green Plum. See the choking victim, no BLS available.”

“Copy that.”

“Cool!”

Mel flipped on the siren and lights and pulled out.

“What?  That someone is choking?”

“No, it’s a great upscale Irish restaurant.”

“I didn’t know that there was such a thing as an ‘upscale Irish restaurant.’”

“Funny.  They are like the only place in the whole city where you can get decent haggis. Oh man, my mouth is watering just thinking about it. It’s just around the corner from my place. Maybe I should pick some up on the way home.”

“What the hell is haggis? It sounds nasty.”

“No, it’s not. You take a sheep’s stomach and stuff it with oatmeal, liver, onions, and a few other…  parts… boil it slow for a day or so, and…”

“Stop! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I took Amber there on, like, our third date…”

“… And she still married you?”

“Well… Yeah… I’ve taken her back there a lot of times. She has this thing for veal.”

“I’m so glad I’m a vegetarian.”

“Hey, my grandmother used to make special haggis with a recipe she brought over from Limerick. God, that brings back memories…”

“It’s going to bring back my lunch if you don’t stop talking about it.”

The Green Plum was literally right around the corner from where they sat. It was built out of an old brick warehouse along the cobblestone of Water Street in DUMBO. For DUMBO, the best thing that ever happened was 9/11.

9/11 had set off a mass exodus from TriBeCa and other lower neighborhoods of Manhattan. Seeing these opportunities, investors had bought up all of the warehouses for development. The residents here had easy access to lower Manhattan and peace of mind that no aircraft would drop out of the sky on top of them. What terrorist in his right mind would want to bomb Brooklyn?

DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge by the Overpass) was now a posh mecca of high-end restaurants, upscale loft condos, art galleries, and boutique type shops.

Before the gentrification, this neighborhood had simply been known as “the scary place where artists lived.” Now, it was heavily patrolled by PD due to the close proximity of the Gold Street projects. The police did a good job of keeping the crackheads and street skells out.

This was Brian’s neighborhood. He had been lucky to purchase a loft here when they were hard to give away. It was now worth well over six times what he had paid for it. His first date with Amber had been here. He had proposed marriage to Amber here at the Green Plumb.

Mel pulled the ambulance up in front of the restaurant. Even at this hour of the night, it was busy here; perhaps an art show had let out or an off-off-Broadway play in the nearby theater had ended. At any rate, DUMBO was a bustle. Through the massive glass pane with a huge Green Plumb painted on it, they could see that a crowd had formed around someone on the floor. There was panic in the huge dining room. A man in a kilt sporting a long black groomed pony tail and a neatly trimmed five o’clock shadow beard came half flouncing, half scurrying out of the front door. On his face was a look of total fear and utter panic.

“Hurry! Please hurry! She’s choking!”

Brian slung his equipment bag and followed the kilted host in through the front door.

On the floor was a very pregnant woman in a black designer cocktail maternity dress. Her eyes lifeless and wide open in terror, unblinking. That was never a good thing.      Brian took charge.

“Everybody back up!  Yo, William Wallace, keep all these people back. Have your attack waiter help you out.”

“That’s not my name!”

“Attack waiter?” Mel asked quietly.

“Gay attack waiter? You never heard of that?” He whispered back.

“No.”

“And you call yourself a New Yorker.”

A man in a black tux was leaning over her holding her hand, a look of total panic in his eyes.

Brian knelt down next to her and placed his cheek near her mouth, testing to see if there was the slightest air exchange from her lungs. He neither heard nor felt any. He felt her chest for movement, there was none, no exchange of air, and her lips were dark blue.   Brian tried to blow a breath into her. She was totally blocked. He looked up at the attack waiter.

“When did she start choking?”

“Me?”

“Yes you!”

“Right after I brought the entrées. She was drinking San Pellegrino. She wanted Merlot, but her condition…”

“How many minutes?!”

“Why are you screaming at me? I didn’t do anything to you… A long time… I don’t know…”

William Wallace interjected, “The Yardleys were two minutes late at 11:47… Around then.”

“I got no pulse,” Mel said.

Brian looked at his watch; it was 12:06.

“Oh God!” the man in the tux wailed, making Brian jump. Until then, he had hardly even noticed him.

Brian took his laryngoscope and tried to see down into the woman’s larynx.

“I can’t see anything, Mel. Give me the Magill’s.”

Brian fished around in the woman’s airway with the Magill forceps for anything that was blocking her airway. As he worked, he spoke to her husband.

“How far along is she?”

“What?”

“How far along is the baby?”

“We’re due in two weeks.”

Another ambulance pulled up outside. Two dark haired female paramedics came hurrying into the dining room carrying their gear.

“I can’t see anything!” Brian said.

“She’s flat in two leads.”  Mel had been busy hooking up the monitor while Brian was still trying to clear her airway. He shifted his attention to her belly, placing both hands on it.

Brian felt a small sharp kick from inside her.

“The kid’s still kicking! It’s going into Hypoxia!”

There was a sharp gasp from the crowd that seemed to be gathering closer to watch them work. One of the other dark haired paramedics looked down at Brian. Her arms were crossed.

“Hi, Amber.”

Amber nodded.

“Suit up, Mel. Pass me the OB kit…”

“Brian, let’s transport her.”

Brian clicked his Bluetooth earpiece.

“Dial ‘Telemetry.’”

“Brian…”

“She’s been down at least 12 minutes according to Mister Wallace…”

“That’s not my name!”

“…the kid’s got maybe 4 minutes. We’ll never make it to the hospital. We can’t hyperventilate her; whatever is in there is too far down to cric her. She’s got no airway.  Suit up.”

“Yeah, okay. You’re right.”

She tossed him the OB kit, which he unrolled. He could hear the phone being answered on the other end.

“Brooklyn Telemetry, Dr. Mullins.”

Brian and Mel pulled the blue paper gowns on over their uniforms. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and took a scalpel out of the sterile wrapper as he spoke.

“This is paramedic Brian Sheahan. I have a pregnant female, early 30s, asystolic in two leads secondary due to compromised airway times 12 minutes… Her due date is in two weeks… Yes, strong fetal movement… No, sir, ETA to closest ER is 11 minutes… Yes, sir, I’m requesting to go off protocol.”

“What do you need, Brian?” the other paramedic asked.

“Just try and keep everybody back, Beth. This is not going to be pretty.”

“What are you going to doooooooo?!”  whined William Wallace.

“I’m getting ready to mess up your carpet.”

“Oh God. We just had it cleaned…”

Brian took his shears and cut the black Ann Taylor Maternity dress open, exposing the woman’s bare stomach as he listened to his ear piece. He felt along the woman’s pubic bone.  No one in the crowd noticed the petite woman with the red ponytail held in place by a New York Mets cap who had slipped inside and was holding a video camera pointed at the paramedics and their patient.

“Yes, sir. I’ve got it.”

Brian made a quick deep cut along the woman’s bikini line. Where he did, the skin parted and ripped apart. There was a huge gush of amniotic fluid, blood, and urine that exploded out like a bloody water balloon that had just burst. Mel turned away and vomited at the smell. She then quickly turned back without losing her rhythm, wiping her mouth on the paper blue gown.

“God, I hate that part.”

The gay attack waiter fainted and was caught by William Wallace, who began fanning him with a menu. A few screams split the ambient noise of the dining room coming from some of the other bystanders. Four of the other patrons began retching and spewing their expensive meals on the newly cleaned carpet. Then, the dining room began to clear as if someone had shouted “Fire.”

Brian reached carefully into the wide incision in the woman’s pelvis. He closed his eyes and felt a tiny foot, then a leg, then two. He carefully pulled out the infant boy, who immediately began to wail in protest.

Brian suctioned the mucus from his nose and mouth. The skin of the baby was bluish in color, but quickly transformed to a pink shade before their eyes.

“Mel, cut the cord.”

Mel took the scalpel from where Brian had placed it on the sterile wrapping of the gloves and made a clean slice, leaving 6 inches attached to the baby, which she clamped off.

“Welcome to the world, buddy.” He wrapped the baby in a thermal blanket from the OB kit and handed him gently to the father.

“I’m sorry for your wife, sir.”

The man said nothing as they helped him onto the stretcher holding his son. He looked at the child for a moment and then watched as Amber and Beth unwrapped a sheet and placed it over the mother. Reality hadn’t caught up to him yet.

Brian peeled off the blue gown and latex gloves and smiled at Amber.

“Remember this place?”

“Yeah.”

She handed Brian a brown 8 1/2 X 11 envelope. This was all too real to Brian.  He’d seen this coming. Then again, seeing this coming didn’t take the edge off. It was like knowing that a patient was about to crash and realizing that there was not a thing he could do about it.

“We’ll take care of the mother’s paperwork. You need to get them to the hospital.”

They wheeled the father out on the stretcher as he held the child. The redheaded woman with the camera magically stepped out of the crowd.

“Hi, Brian.”

“Fuck off, Brooklyn,” Mel said to her. “Goddamned paparazzi”

“I’m a stringer, not a paparazzi. There’s a difference.”

“Whatever.”

She pointed the video camera at Brian.

“Brian, how does it feel to be a hero?”

“Hero? That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“No.” She smiled at him.

They carefully loaded the father, who was cradling the baby on the stretcher, into the back of the ambulance.

Brian started to climb in.

“What did Amber give you?” asked Mel.

“Our divorce papers. It’s final.”

Email me: tom@kindlemojo.com with comments.