“463, Shooting Edgewood and Homestead, on a 1.”
“Woo—hoo!” Tom said as I lit up the ambulance.
“Woo—hoo!” I echoed.
He was excited because he was a spark at heart and loved trauma, loved the chance to be quick on the scene, and get the patient to the trauma room, tubed and with two lines to the acclaim of the trauma team, and the nurses who doted on him.
I was excited because drug dealers were my bread and butter. One too-bad homeboy a month was all I needed to fund our hookups in style—flowers, nice dinner, some wine—all the while still contributing to my Rainy Day Fund, which I had also christened my California Escape Plan should I need a new start.
I spotted a body lying on the street corner. People were still running every which way. A cop car was ahead of us, and the officer was out, gun drawn, looking in several directions. I thought I heard more shots fired and the cop ducked down behind his car. A lone body was good—it meant no one had had time to roll him before I got to him.
“They’re still fucking shooting,” Tom said.
“Hi-ho Silver,” I said. “Let’s get him loaded and get him out of here.”
I spun the ambulance up on the curb between the direction the cop was pointing his gun and where the body lay.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said. He was on the exposed side.
“Crawl out this way,” I said, rolling out the driver door. He followed me. I had the stretcher pulled, and yanked out a board. Tom was already tubing the guy, using his perfected digital style. He always carried a number 8.0 ET tube he kept in his side pant-leg pocket. It was the quickest way to intubate someone: open their mouth and use your fingers, manipulate the tube down and shove it in between the chords by lifting up the epiglottis at the same time, then use your middle finger to give the tube an upward shove.
The tube in, we rolled the patient on the board, lifted the stretcher, heard a few more rounds, then slammed it into the back. I hopped in, made certain to cut his jacket off, and then, while Tom popped in an IV, I bounced into the driver’s seat, slammed the ambulance hard into reverse, spun the back around, and then floored it back up Homestead. In and out in two minutes.
The guy didn’t make it, but we had an awesome scene time, and I scored over two grand—my biggest payday in three months.
“You are a crazy motherfucker,” Tom said again after he’d finished writing his form.
“What are bullets when you have a job to do?” I said. “When you have a living to make?”
He looked at me like I was crazier than even he thought.