ordinary drama

"You don't understand," she said, wiping away tears. "We don't have any money. How are we going to get home?"

"Uhh..." I said, turning to my partner. He broke in.

"I have an idea. Hold on one minute."

As he called our supervisor with his cellphone, I looked at the little girl. She sat quietly on the couch as her mother cried. She didn't look too bad, I thought. Maybe she could wait a few hours for the medicine. I listened to her lungs again. They seemed mostly normal, with only the faintest sound of wheezing on one side. Her mom said she'd woken up at 4am with trouble breathing. Her mom said she had to crawl into bed with her to make her go to sleep. It was 11am now and she was better, apparently.

Everybody has asthma in this part of the city. It's just a sad fact of life. Her aunt was supposed to be over at 5pm with an inhaler, but the doctor told her to call paramedics. He thought we could just give her a breathing treatment--which she needed--and leave. It doesn't work like that. If we give the kid the medicine, she's gotta go to the hospital. It's not our choice; it's just the way the system works.

"How are we going to get home?" her mother cried again. "We don't have any cash. Their father left us"--she pointed to her three children, ages 1, 2, and 3--"and now he only sends money when he feels like it. I don't work, I don't have a job. I have to be here, taking care of my kids."

She looked away, pausing for a moment. "We just got kicked out of our old apartment because we couldn't pay the rent. That's why we are here now. Her aunt is supposed to come by at five with her inhaler....what do you call it? Alb-..."

"Albuterol," I said. "An albuterol inhaler."

"Yeah, that's it." she said.

My partner got off the phone and motioned for me to setup the breathing treatment. "Okay, here's the deal," he said. "If we go to St. Francis hospital, they will give you a metrocard or cab voucher or something so that you can get back home."

She stopped crying, for a moment, and almost smiled. Almost.

I turned on the oxygen for the breathing treatment and asked the little girl to hold the nebulizer and put it into her mouth. She didn't want it, and now she too was crying.

Her mother got serious. "Hija," she said, "this is going to help you, now hold it in your mouth and breathe." After a few minutes of struggle, the girl calmed down. I listened to her lungs again. The air movement was louder and I could hear a distinct popping sound on the right side. What I had taken for normal was in fact quite dimished. The girl was a lot sicker than I had thought. The popping sound was in fact pneumonia. She had been sick for a week, and the infection had spread to her lungs.

As we meandered over to the ambulance, I looked at the woman and her family. They poor, but they were cute. The girl even had a bunny rabit beanie to wear. I smiled as we helped them into the ambulance.

Later, at the hospital, as my partner and I bullshitted with the other paramedic crews, I looked back at the little girl. She was climbing onto her mother's leg. She smiled at me. I smiled back, and her mother, seeing this, smiled at me too.

Comments

[Tom Reynolds]

So what would happen if you start the treatment, and then the patient refuses transport to hospital? Over here we aren't allowed to kidnap patients, so they would be left at home (complications notwithstanding). Actually, this tends to happen with us a lot with asthmatics and epileptics.

Nice writing by the way.