Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [56]
“Get us some ice,” Danny says to the girL She is high, and doesn’t seem to comprehend what is happening. “ICE,” Danny yells, but the girl still stares at him.
The young man moves to the refrigerator. Danny and I kneel at either side of the strapping hulk on the floor. Danny has a handful of ice in his hand, and places it under the guy’s testicles. I take some ice and place it on the back of his neck. Danny slaps and pinches his cheeks, as I shake his shoulders as hard as I can. Chief Niebrock enters and orders Lieutenant Lierly to send one of the men from Ladder 31 down for the resuscitator, but Billy-o has already gone for it.
“What’s his name?” Danny says to the girl.
She understands, and responds, “Peter.”
I check his pupils—not dilated yet. The pulse is very weak. “C’mon Peter, wake up. Get up. Talk to me. Tell me how you feel. The dope is gonna kill ya if you don’t wake up. C’mon.”
Billy-o enters with the resuscitator, checks to make sure it is on the inhalator position, and puts the facepiece over the guy’s nose and mouth. The pure oxygen helps. His wife is there now, and whimpering, “He’s not a junky, he’s not.”
Danny asks, “Then why did you turn him on?”
“He turned himself on—he took too much,” she cries.
Danny looks at me. “Yeah, he turned himself on. He almost turned himself off.”
I know what he means. Danny has a look of disgust on his face. He understands the misery—the guy on the floor, his nodding friends, his helpless wife—caused by drugs, but he has seen so much he is convinced that nothing can be done about it. The ambulance attendant comes with a rolling chair, and the men carry the guy out. As we leave the apartment, Danny says, “This is some shithouse.” I take a quick look around, and nod in agreement. “A shame,” he says.
As we walk down the stairs I think of the muckraking novels of the beginning of this century. Things were bad then. Jews without money were ill-used, the Irish and Germans and Serbs and Italians were without money and ill-used. But that was fifty and seventy years ago. The people of the South Bronx are without money, and they aren’t used at all. They are left to pine in lethargy while their children put needles in their arms.
In the kitchen again. It is eleven o’clock. Billy-o and Jerry Herbert are cooking lunch. Two two-foot pans are on the chrome counter, and Billy-o is filling them with sausage—the long, thin breakfast type. Jerry is cutting green peppers to mix with the already cut onions. Fourteen loaves of Italian bread wait slicing in the corner of the counter, enough for twenty-eight sandwiches. It will be a good lunch for sixty cents.
Three short rings on the department phone interrupt the business of the cooks. The housewatchman yells, “Eighty-two and Thirty-one. 1335 Simpson Street. Third floor.” He yells it again, and adds, “Chief goes too.” The pumper leaves quarters, followed by the truck and Chiefs car. Up 169th Street. To Simpson. There is smoke seeping through the frame of a third floor window.
“Stretch three lengths,” Captain Albergray says as he hurries by. We drop three lengths, and the pumper takes off to a hydrant, leaving a tail of hose in the street as it moves away. Vinny Royce has the nozzle, and he enters the building. Willy Knipps and I follow, dragging the folds of empty hose.
The stairway is filled with exiting Puerto Ricans—old men trying to walk faster than they should, young girls with babies in their arms screaming back to still more young girls, old ladies being guided by pretty teenagers. There is much confusion as the parade moves by. An old man trips, a woman sobs uncontrollably, a toddler is lost by a hysterical mother. The rapid sound of Spanish seems even quicker in the excitement, and higher in the echoing halls. Sharp series of shrill noises bounce from the walls, making the exodus seem even