“Not even close. The police officer standing guard over him, issued that loudmouth a ticket and a court date, then left him to us. The second the officer was out of the department, that piece of work was demanding we unhook him. He even refused to sign our Against Medical Advice form. I’m sure he was late to choir practice or something.”
Ramirez smirked. “That’s probably it.”
Gloria glanced at her watch. “Well, boys, it’s getting close to quitting time for me. I’m going to check on my patients before I get my ducks in a row for a report.” She smiled at Drifts. “Are you going to give me a call sometime, Sam?” Drifts grinned at her, then winked. She shook her head and walked away, taking a moment to glance back at him and offer a small smile.
Justin met them in the hallway. Ramirez asked, “How’s our patient doing?”
Justin shook his head. “I’m not sure. They didn’t keep him in the trauma room long. They hung up some blood, put in some chest tubes, and intubated him. Right up to that moment he was crying out for his momma. It was pretty sad. After all that, they rushed him out to the operating room.”
Ramirez nodded. “I figured it would go down like that.”
Drifts glanced at his watch. “We’ll, we’ve done about as much damage to this night as we can. Let’s put this bitch to bed.” He looked back. “Because it looks like I’ve got a date.”
“You do?” asked Justin.
“Yep.” Drifts smirked, “Looks like Gloria wants to get acquainted with my bed rails.”
Justin opened his mouth to respond, mulled it over for a moment, then closed his mouth.
Ramirez smiled. “You’re learning.”
Drifts saw the exchange. “What?”
“Nothing,” said Ramirez. “Let’s go to the truck.”
They loaded into Triple-Three. No sooner had they closed the doors than a car barreled up into the driveway of the hospital.
“What the fuck!” Drifts exclaimed.
The car screeched to a halt outside the ER doors. The front doors of the car banged open and a shirtless boy and a large woman wearing only a nightgown and slippers emerged. The boy darted ahead of her as she ran with her breasts swinging side to side with each of her strides. “My baby! My baby!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
They watched the ER doors close behind her and Justin asked, “Do you think that was Antoine’s mother?”
Ramirez nodded. “I’ve seen that run before.”
Drifts gave a low whistle. “That is one hell of a way to end a night.”
Ramirez looked at his partner sharply.
Drifts slapped his forehead. “Aw shit!”
“Sam . . .”
Drifts growled. “I know! I fucking know! I’m sorry! It just slipped!”
“What?” Justin looked between the partners.
Ramirez sighed. “It is an unwritten rule that you don’t make references to finishing up a night ever.”
Justin looked confused. “Why is that?”
“Because, if you do,” Drifts groaned, “you get a call. Especially on a night like this.”
“Really? That sounds like a silly superstition to me.”
Ramirez held up his hand and pointed it at the radio. As if waiting for his cue, the Dispatcher spoke, “Unit Triple-Three! Unit Three-Three-Three, I’m sorry to do this to you, but we need to call you out of Memorial Hospital for a code one shortness of breath.”
Drifts pounded the steering wheel emphasizing each strike with a curse. “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
He snatched the mic out of its clip and gripped onto it as if it was the dispatcher’s throat. He took a deep breath then spoke in his Radio-DJ-Smooth-Jazz voice and practically cooed into it. “Triple-Three.”
“Impressive,” Ramirez remarked.
The restraint seemed to cost the EMT some part of his soul. “Thanks,” he said through bared teeth.
Unaware of the precarious position of his imagined throat the dispatcher continued, “You are en route to Thirteenth Street and Romero Avenue for a six-year-old male with shortness of breath.”
Drifts lit a cigarette and gunned the engine and swerved the ambulance around the still-open doors of the parked car. Out on the street, he hit the lights and sirens. Justin and Ramirez prudently kept their silence as he took several drags of his cigarette and blew the smoke out of his cracked window.
The light of dawn began to peek over the horizon. Drifts glared at it as if the sun had personally insulted his mother. “Where are all the other trucks out here? Where the fuck are all the daytime crews. Shouldn’t they be putting wheels to the ground soon? They can’t all be running transfers already! Why couldn’t they pull them out of the chute like they did to us?”
“I have a theory,” Ramirez offered.
Drifts looked at his partner, who studied his map book, “Do tell, oh wise one.”
Ramirez didn’t look up. “You’re calling me old aren’t you?”
“No.” Drifts blew a stream of smoke out of his window. “I would never disrespect my elders in such a way. Anyways, you were saying?”
“Well, I think they gave us this late call for one simple reason.”
Drifts looked at his partner. “What?”
“I think they really don’t like you.”
Justin snorted.
Drifts said, “You know you might have everyone else fooled, Leo, but not me.”
“How’s that?”
“Well everyone else might believe that you really are this kindly, sweet old man . . .”
“Old?” Ramirez arched an eyebrow.
“I didn’t stutter,” Drifts continued. “But really you’re kind of a coldhearted son of a bitch, aren’t you?”
“It’s true. Now what do you plan on doing with that information?”
“Do? Nothing more than learn your ways so that I can fucking use them to my own devious ends.”
“Very good, my young apprentice.” Ramirez patted Drifts’s shoulder.
“Touch me like that again, and I’ll add pervert to the list.”
Ramirez let his hand linger there. “If you feel you must. Turn left here on Geillor.”
Drifts turned Triple-Three down a bend. “Seriously, Leo, quit touching me.”
“Why, does it make you uncomfortable?”
“No, but I never thought I would have to bring you up for sexual harassment.”
“Well, you should be familiar with the process for as many times as you’ve been through a hearing. Although, wouldn’t this be your first time you were on this side of the proceeding.”
Drifts brightened. “Oh yeah! That would be a novelty.” He looked down at the hand still on her shoulder. “Seriously, Leo, get your hand off my fucking shoulder.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?” he asked again.
“You’re damn right it does.”
Ramirez removed his hand smiling. “Okay then.”
“Don’t think you’ve gone and made some sort of fucking point. I’m incapable of learning such lessons.”
“I’ve gathered as much,” Ramirez said dryly.
Justin chuckled in the back. “You guys are too much.”
“Shut up, kid,” Drifts snapped.
A few minutes later, they pulled up onto Romero Street. They passed several kids who stood by the street waiting for the school bus and waved at the ambulance as it passed by.
The crew waved back.
“Man this is just fucking depressing.” Drifts grumbled. “We shouldn’t be still on when kids are going to school. This isn’t right!” He keyed the mic. “Triple-Three is on scene.”
“On scene,” answered the dispatcher. Drifts gave the mic his middle finger.
“That’s telling them, Sam.”
“Viva the motherfucking resistance.”
A woman stepped out on the porch and frantically waved at them. Ramirez acknowledged her with a simple wave back as they climbed out of the rig.
Commotion from across the street drew the team’s attention. Over a dozen young men lounged on the porch of a house directly opposite them. They were drinking, smoking and joking loudly with one and another while one of them was actively grilling meat on a propane grill.
Drifts glanced at the smoke and flames and then looked over at his partner. “Who the fuck, grills this early in the morning?”
Ramirez shrugged. “I’ve been known to from time to time.”
“Come on, really?”
“Sure. I like being outside as much as I can.”
One of the young men nudged another. “Hey it’s the meat wagon!” he said loudly enough for them to hear.
Another said, “Someone should go tell Johnny.”
The one at the grill catcalled. “Hey, you boys here to kiss someone’s booboo?”
“If you are, I have one just below my waist!” someone else added. They all started to laugh.
“Hey that’s Tanya’s house!”
“I would kiss that bitch’s booboo any day anywhere!”
“You’re not lying!”
Drifts growled under his breath. “I have had it up to here with fucking gangbangers!”
In a low tone Ramirez said, “Ignore them.”
The EMS crew approached the porch, where they left the cot at the bottom of the stairs. An attractive young woman appeared in the doorway. “Thank you so much for coming.”
Ramirez held the door open for his partner and student as he met her eyes. “What’s going on today, ma’am?”
“My son Taylor, is having an asthma exacerbation. I’ve already given him all his treatments, but they aren’t working.” She wrung her hands. “He has an appointment with his pulmonologist this afternoon, but I don’t think he can wait! I would have taken him to the emergency room, but my car is in the shop.” She hammered her thigh. “Of all the times to be without a car!”
“I understand, ma’am. You did all you could,” Ramirez reassured her. “Now let’s see what we can do to help your son Taylor, right?”
She nodded. “Yes. He’s in the back bedroom.”
“Lead the way.”
She led them through the small-yet-inviting home, down a hallway lined with pictures of the young woman and little boy they assumed was Taylor. She opened the door to the last bedroom and ushered them in.
Sitting up on a bed was a boy of six wearing a breathing-treatment mask. The aerosolized medicine puffed around him as he rapidly breathed. He looked up from petting a cat on his lap. He stared at them with wide, fearful eyes. The young woman stepped forward and addressed him with a smile, “Taylor baby, don’t be afraid. I called the paramedics to come and take a look at you.”
Ramirez stepped ahead of his crew smiling gently. “Hello, Taylor.”
From the doorway, he could see that Taylor’s breathing was labored. The little boy’s nostrils flared as the space between below his clavicle sucked in with each inhalation. His lips were very pale.
“Hello . . . sir,” said Taylor.
Ramirez knelt by the bed. “You don’t have to talk, young man. Please save your air for breathing.” Drifts stepped forward and placed the tip of the pulse oximetry probe on Taylor’s finger. Ramirez pulled free a stethoscope from the medical bag and listened to Taylor’s chest. The little boy’s lung sounds were severely diminished. He sat back and motioned for Justin to listen as well. Ramirez stood up and looked at Taylor’s mother. “What have you given him so far?”
“He’s had several albuterol treatments and a Combivent.”
“Any steroids?”
She nodded. “Of course. How is he doing?”
“He looks pretty unwell. We need to go to the hospital now.”
“Damn it! I knew I should have called sooner!”
“D-don’t cuss . . . Mom-ma?” Taylor scolded his mother.
Her expression softened. “Momma’s sorry, baby. Save your breathing, like he said.”
“Leo,” Drifts called up to his partner.
Ramirez looked at the reading. “Does it match his heartrate?”
The pulse oximetry read oxygen saturation at 74 percent heartrate 152 beats.
Justin nodded. “Pretty close. I’ve counted it at 156.”
The mother’s hand went to her mouth, “I’ve never seen his pulse ox that low before.”
“Go ahead and get your things, but hurry. We’re leaving soon.”
Taylor looked from his mother to the rest of them. “I . . . don’t . . . want . . .”
Ramirez knelt down and clasped him on the shoulder. “I know you don’t want to go, Taylor, but the hospital’s the only place that can help you breathe and feel better. I wouldn’t insist otherwise.”
The young mother darted from the room and returned a moment later with her purse. “Ready.”
Ramirez asked Taylor. “May I carry you?” Taylor nodded and the medic scooped him up in his arms. Ramirez smiled at him, “It has been a time since I could carry my daughter this way.” Taylor smiled back. Justin hooked the boy’s breathing treatment mask to their portable oxygen tank.
“Leo, do you want me to leave the stretcher by the stairs for you?” Drifts asked.
“No. I can carry him to the rig. You can load up the cot,” Ramirez answered.
“You got it.” Drifts proceeded ahead with medical bags. Justin followed behind Ramirez carrying the oxygen tank.