Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [33]
There is a man at the corner of Hoe Avenue waving to us. He runs into a tenement house, and we follow closely behind. “What’s the matter?” yells Lieutenant Welch. “Is there a fire?” But the man doesn’t speak English “Meda, meda,” he keeps saying. Come, come. Here, here.
Lieutenant Welch and I follow up the stairs. The others wait below in case a hose line has to be stretched. The man leads us into a bedroom on the fourth floor. A woman, I guess his wife, is lying under a sheet on the bed. She is sweating, and breathing irregularly. The room is wet with heat, and the radiator is steaming. The place is stuffy, like the back of a saloon.
“We’ll have to wait until a Chief gets here with a resuscitator,” the Lieutenant says. “It looks like she may have asthma, or it could be an emotional attack.”
That’s true, I think. I have seen many Spanish women gasping for air, only to be quickly revived when an ambulance attendant puts smelling salts under their noses.
“Let’s get her to a window,” Lieutenant Welch says. “This place is like an oven.” He puts a chair in front of the window, and motions to the man that we want her to sit on it. The husband understands, and pulls the sheet from her. She is naked, but for a pair of panties.
Lieutenant Welch and I lift her to the chair, and her husband wraps her in a blanket. She is a young girl, about twenty-five, and her breasts are full and erect. The blanket is draped over her shoulders, and opened at the front. I pull one end over her bared breasts, and across her arm. How strange that the first rule of administering first aid to women is to cover them up, because no matter what their injury might be, no matter how severe, they may worry more about their modesty.
Lieutenant Welch opens the window, as I wipe her forehead with a towel. The night air hits her, and she begins to understand where she is. It looks like she’s all right, but that’s not for us to determine. I wish the hell we could get out of here. I wonder how Bob is. Is he hurt bad? Will he live? Will I get to see him before he dies? Why do we always think of the worst when a friend is involved?
The Chief of the Eighteenth Battalion arrives. He sends his aide down for the resuscitator. Lieutenant Welch and I carry the woman back to the bed. She doesn’t speak English either, but it seems as if she is telling us that she feels all right.
The Chief asks her, “Do you need an ambulance? Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“No! No!” she says. “No ambulancia.” She understands that. The Chief says that our job is done here. The woman lies back on her pillow, and is breathing quite regularly now. “Gracia,” she says. “Gracia, gracia,” her husband says.
We race back to the scene of the accident. Chief Niebrock has already taken Bob to the hospital in the Chiefs car. John Milsaw is sitting on the curb. He is shaken. Charlie McCartty finds himself in a role he has played before. He’ll be O.K., John. Don’t worry.
Marty Hannon tells us the story. Matt Tunney was driving Engine 85’s rig. They were going to Jennings Street, but they saw a man waving wildly one block before, at 170th Street. Matt jammed on the brakes, but Ladder 31 didn’t have enough time to stop behind them. John Milsaw tried to avoid the guys standing on the back step, but couldn’t. Beatty tried to jump out of the way, but got caught between the back rail of the pumper, and the front of the truck. It was just his arm and leg though. If his chest had been hit, it would have killed him sure. The alarm at Jennings Street and Southern Boulevard was false.
“What about the guy waving?” I ask.
“Drunk,” Marty says sadly. He spreads his hands, and says, “What can you do?” His Irish face looks like it is going to be wet with tears.
It is now seven-thirty, and daylight is shining on the South Bronx. We are all sitting in the kitchen awaiting news of Bob. I have had five cups of coffee in the past three and a half hours. We’ve all sat here since the accident, except for the two false alarms and the one rubbish fire.
Bob limps slowly into quarters, being held up by