“Why wouldn’t the other gang shoot them in the head?” asked Justin mystified.
“Body shots are a common gangbanger tactic. Shoot to kill, not a headshot, so that a dead gangbanger will attack members of his own gang. The gangbangers are forced to take down their own colors. It really fucks with their heads.”
“Wow. That’s intense.”
“No kidding.” Drifts put the ambulance in park. “We’re here.”
The neighborhood they stopped in was dirty and menacing. People out on the street gazed at them with curious, mistrustful eyes. At the corner, a fat hooker in a bra and sweatpants loitered under a streetlamp. Twenty feet away, a drug dealer sat on the stairs of an apartment building and handed something to a fidgety-looking man.
Drifts picked up the mic. “Triple-Three on scene.”
They had parked in front of a decrepit four-story apartment building. Justin stepped out of the ambulance looking around nervously. Neither Drifts nor Ramirez appeared to be concerned as they pulled out their stretcher and medical bags.
“Hey kid,” called Drifts. “You better stay in the rig for this one.”
Justin stared between the two of them. “Seriously?” Ramirez shrugged.
“Nahhh!” Drifts grinned. “I’m just fucking with you. Man! That never gets old!” Ramirez chuckled and Justin looked relieved.
“Is that man selling drugs?” Justin asked, indicating a man sitting on the steps of the apartment next to the one that they were entering.
“Looks like it,” said Ramirez.
“Shouldn’t we like . . . call the police?” asked Justin.
“”Why?” said Drifts. “He’s not bothering us.” Justin’s eyes bulged.
They entered the building. The hallway that they stepped into was dimly lit and stank of cigarettes and urine. The elevator was at the end of a tunnel-like hallway. Its door ground open and Drifts growled, “There is no way we’re going to get our stretcher in there.”
“Leave the stretcher,” said Ramirez. “We’ll take the bags up and see what we’ve got. Who knows, maybe we can get them to sign a Refusal.”
“Refusal?” asked Justin.
Ramirez answered. “Form people sign when they decide not to go to the hospital.”
“They do that?”
“As often as we can get them to,” said Drifts.
They grabbed their equipment and stepped into the elevator car. It made an audible groan under their combined weight. The partners exchanged concerned looks around nervously as the door whined closed. Drifts pressed the fourth floor button and the car lurched upwards.
Minutes later the doors opened as noisily as before and they stepped out looking thoroughly relieved. “That took forever!” Drifts complained. “What a piece of. . . ”
Before them sat a Hispanic woman holding her knees as she crouched outside the door to an apartment.
Drifts approached her. “Ma’am, are you okay? Did you call 911?”
She looked up at him blankly. “No English,” she said, annunciating each syllable carefully.
Drifts looked up exasperated. “Of course you don’t. Leo.” He waved the paramedic forward.
Ramirez spoke in rapid Spanish, conversing with the woman.
Drifts and Justin watched their exchange blankly. “What did she say, Leo?” Drifts asked when they had finished.
“Her mother is sick inside here.”
He reached for the door knob. It turned easily but opened grudgingly when he pushed, revealing pitch darkness. He tried the light switch. It remained dark. Drifts and Ramirez looked at each other and slipped out their flashlights, shining them into the room. Immediately, they could see why he’d had a hard time opening the door. The entire apartment was filled with wall to wall clutter that reached waist height. Piles of trash and clothes, several old TVs, and lamps, toppling stacks of books. He even saw a turned over stroller at the top of a pile in the center of the room.
“How can people live this way?” asked Justin.
“You’d be surprised at how many people do,” Ramirez said.
There was a precarious, twelve-inch path through the center clutter. They started down it with Justin followed by the two partners. The woman did not move to follow.
Drifts shouted, “Shit!”
“What is it?” demanded Ramirez.
“A fucking rat ran across my boot!” Drifts said. “The damn thing was bigger than a cat!”
They could hear more scurrying within the dark, cluttered room.
They reached the room at the far end of the apartment and pushed the door open. A pungent odor struck them. Ramirez flipped the light switch on and the room was bathed in a sickly yellow light. Ramirez’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh my God!” cried Justin.
“Whoa. . ,”Drifts said, pausing in the doorway.
Lying there on the bare mattress was a large, elderly, Hispanic woman, naked except for an over-flowing adult diaper. Urine and feces spilled out onto the mattress staining it. Tattered gray hair lay in curtains around her head caked with dried vomit. Two rats scurried off of the mattress as they flicked on the light. She was covered in rat bites, some old and infected, some recent. Strips of her flesh were chewed off of her thigh and fatty underarm and two of her toes were missing. Her wrist and ankles bore angry red scars indented into the flesh of her extremities. She was taking slow, ragged breaths.
Drifts silently pointed at the head and footboards of the bed.
Ramirez nodded. “I see it.” At each corner of the bed dangled pieces of rough rope, all of which were stained red.
“Hey, kid!’ said Drifts. “Justin!”
Justin who was swallowing convulsively looked from the lady to Drifts.
“Go get this lady’s daughter. We need to talk to her.”
“But. . .” Justin gulped audibly, “But. . . I. . . I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Fuck!”
“Easy, Sam!” Ramirez said, “It’s his first call.”
Drifts took a deep breath and modified his tone. “Sorry. Just go give her a ‘come’ here gesture. That should work.”
“Okay.”
Drifts looked around in disgust. “Man, I hate putting our stuff down in places like this. That’s how roaches get into the rig.”
Ramirez grunted as he started an IV. He had already set his bag down on the filthy bed beside her. Drifts followed suit then put an oxygen mask on her face and hooked her up to the cardiac monitor.
A moment later Justin arrived with the daughter behind him. Without looking at her Ramirez asked, “Cuanto tiempo tiene de estar asi?”
She looked at her mother and shook her head. He repeated himself shouting this time.
She stammered as she finally answered. Ramirez’s eyes bulged. He opened his mouth to respond, but shook his head and looked down at his patient.
“Man, I’m having a hell of a time getting a blood pressure here,” said Drifts. He noticed his partner’s expression. “What?”
“She said she’s been like this for three days.”
“Oh . . . no fucking way. . .”
“We need to check her for bites,” said Ramirez.
“Seriously?” said Justin. “You think that she might have been bit by a. . . .”
“We don’t know,” said Ramirez.
He and Drifts rolled the old woman from side to side in quick rough movements. They stripped off her diaper and Justin gasped at the sight. Both of her butt cheeks had large, deep red gouges. Pus mixed with blood and feces made the smell unbearable. The two partners laid her again on her back.
“Was that . . . a bite?” asked Justin.
“No,” Ramirez said shortly. “Those were bedsores.”
Drifts growled. “She sure as hell wasn’t lying there for just three days.”
“So she wasn’t . . . bitten?”
“No,” said Ramirez, “but she’s very sick.”
The old woman gasped loudly and did not breathe again. “Ah shit,” said Drifts.
The three of them glanced at the monitor. It showed a cardiac rhythm that wasn’t conducive to life. Ramirez pressed the timer button on his watch. The two younger men glanced back at him. Both of their eyes fixed on his watch.
“Justin, start CPR. Sam, get on the horn. We need help here now,” Ramirez said in an urgent, yet calm tone.
“I never done CPR on anything but a dummy before.”
“Ride-alongs are to break you in, kid,” responded Drifts.
“What if she turns?” he asked in a small voice.
“She won’t for at least five and a half minutes,” said Ramirez, “and most of the time they turn closer to seven. So we have about six minutes to try and bring her back to life before we have to take measures to prevent the alternative. I need you to start CPR now.”
Justin lurched forward. He jerkily placed his hands on her chest and began to push up and down. Suddenly a high-pitched wail erupted behind them. They twisted around to see the daughter's horrified face.
"Keep doing CPR," Ramirez told Justin as he faced the daughter, explaining to her what was going on.
She looked from her mother to Ramirez. Her expression became a sneer, "Usted hizo esto! La mato! Va mato a mi momma!"
Ramirez shook his head as he tried to talk to her, but he broke off as she charged at him, screaming. He raised his hands to defend himself, but Drifts was already there. He grabbed her around the waist pinning her arms to her side and hauled her back.
“What the hell did you say to her, Leo?"
"Nothing! She thinks we killed her!” said Ramirez.
Drifts said, “Oh that’s fucking rich!”
“Just get her out of here! Justin and I will handle things in here!"
Drifts looked as if he doubted that Justin would be very much help. "I'll radio for help out in the hall.”
"You do that," said Ramirez.
“Give me a shout if you need anything."
“Will do.”
Drifts carried the thrashing woman out of the room.
Ramirez glanced at his watch and then pushed a syringe of epinephrine into the IV. He placed defibrillator patches on her chest and motioned for Justin to stop compression as he checked the monitor. "Step back," he said calmly. "I'm going to shock her."
Justin leapt back as if she had suddenly become scalding hot. The monitor released a low whine as it charged. Ramirez pressed the button and her body jerked as she was shocked. "No change. Continue CPR."
Justin retook his place at her chest and began to pump. "Man, this is hard work," he panted. "I never . . . oh my God!" he shouted as he leapt back.
"What's up?" demanded Ramirez, deftly grabbing his flashlight.
"I think I just broke a couple of her ribs!"
Ramirez slipped his flashlight back into his belt loop. "That happens. It’s nothing to worry about. Please keep going."
Ramirez intubated her and began to bag oxygen into the tube in her throat.
He looked at his watch with mounting tension. Justin was sweating profusely and his arms trembled from exertion.
Drifts came back into the room. "How much longer?"
"Not much," said Ramirez. "How's she doing?"
"The daughter's freaked but has control of herself, for now."
"Where is she?"
"On the floor in the hallway, crying."
Ramirez grunted. "Did you call dispatch?"
"Yeah. Fat lot of good that did. That's what I came back to tell you. There was a huge shooting a few miles away that has pulled most of our resources. They've dispatched us a fire engine and a couple of police officers, but they might as well be coming from Timbuktu for all the good they will do for us. Right now we're alone."
Ramirez glanced at his watch and sighed. "Sam, you better go back out and cover her. We're going to have to use the hot-drill."
Drifts nodded and left. Justin stammered, "We are?"
Ramirez nodded as he pulled the hot-drill out of the medical bag. He pressed a button on the handle and the drill bit glowed white hot. He slipped a pair of goggles on and handed a pair to Justin.
"Are you going to drill into her head?" asked Justin.
"No," Ramirez looked at him intently. "You are."
"What!"
Ramirez nodded. "You might not get another opportunity like this. Here, I can stand over your shoulder and help you. This way the first time you do it isn't when you're alone in the field."
"Shouldn't we try a little longer to save her?"
Ramirez held his gaze. "Back when we first started to work in EMS after the initial outbreak was suppressed, I was so sick of death. When someone died and hadn't reanimated yet, I would delay calling a code as long as I could. I didn't want them to turn, and I didn't want to use this." He held up the drill. "What I did, regardless of my intentions, was very dangerous and nearly got some good people killed. No. I won't wait any longer, and neither should you. Like it or not, she’s dead. It's our job to protect the living."
Justin nervously took the drill as Ramirez handed it to him. "All right, stand over by her head. First, disconnect her from the Ambu bag and turn off the oxygen. Otherwise you’re likely to light everything on fire when you turn on the cauterizer."