The icy mud puddle soaks right through my jacket like a dry sponge as I block several punches thrown at my face. Blood from his torn and broken fingers sprays hot liquid across me. His face exudes pure rage and hate, his eyes now wild and unfocused. I don’t know what he is seeing, but he isn’t seeing me. He's not even really fighting me; he's fighting whatever's in his head. Unfortunately for me, the effect is the same.
Now, like doctors, we've taken an oath to do no harm, but most doctors don’t find themselves in this situation. Not having any real choice, I start to fight back, maneuvering for a submission hold. It does me no good. I can’t get the leverage. So, I reach up between punches and blocks to grab his right ear. With a firm grip, I yank it up and back to make some room between us. It allows me to drive the open palm of my left hand into the corner of his jaw.
This works to my advantage and stuns him for a moment, giving me a chance to flip him off of me. My partner has just come to the front of the vehicle and is shouting into his radio for backup. He rounds the side of the ambulance and tackles the guy right back into the mud.
The struggle gets intense for a minute, the three of us rolling around on the icy sidewalk, splashing through the mire. Our patient screams and fights back even harder.
After what feels like an hour, we wrestle his arms up behind his back until both fists are almost touching the opposite shoulder blades. It’s a painful hold, but it shouldn’t cause any permanent damage. My partner, also a big guy, gets one knee on the upper back of our assailant's neck and uses his other to help pin his hands down. This gives me a chance to plant my knee into the lower back of the burly, crazed man, and gain control of both his legs. With my hands free, I pull a vial and syringe from my belt pouch.
I spend a difficult few seconds trying to get the needle through the rubber top of the vial while being tossed in the air by the thrashing person beneath me. Finally, I manage to draw up a few cc's of Versed. This is not as easy as it sounds, considering this guy is still doing his best to get up and literally kill us.
I make a mental note to remember this address for the next time we get a call here.
With limited options, I jab the needle into the side of his leg, through his filthy boxers. and push the plunger in fast. Contrary to what you may have seen on TV and movies, you can’t just stick the needle in someone’s neck, and it never works in mere seconds. Stabbing a person in the neck with a needle is a good way to kill them, not give them medicine, and most sedation drugs take anywhere from five to forty-five minutes before they work. So, my partner and I settle in for the long haul.
Thankfully, the first backup units start to arrive. Other medics and EMTs jump in and help us safely restrain this guy.
I roll off the thrashing lunatic while dripping with sweat and icy rain. Wiping my sleeve across my face, I accidentally leave a trail of cold, slimy mud on my cheeks. Two minutes later, the cops finally show up. They put some handcuffs and leg restraints on our patient, allowing everyone to back off for a minute and let him calm down. About another five minutes pass, and the Versed does its job as our patient is finally sedated.
I can feel my adrenaline starting to wear off while my co-workers begin giving us shit for being soaking wet, muddy, and on the wrong side of an ass-kicking. Hell, I would have done the same to them. Without further ado, we get back to the business of treating the patient and transporting him to the hospital.
I take a minute to get a quick look in the side-view mirror of the ambulance and see that most of his blood landed on my cheek and not in my mouth or eyes. As I turn away, something catches my eye: a fleeting shape, perhaps a face, appears over my shoulder in the reflection. Peripheral vision can be unreliable in the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, but humans have evolved enough to notice obscure motions as a survival trait. Something had flickered in the mirror. I stare for a moment, but I just see myself staring back. I shake my head and chalk it up to strobe lights and nerves.
One of the EMTs has splinted and bandaged the patient's fingers by the time I get in the back of the truck. By now, the cops find a few empty packets of angel dust and a crack pipe in a pile of clothes, along with the man's ID. Self-medicating at its finest. This happens a lot. A person runs out of meds or maybe has never seen a doctor, but he knows something is wrong with him. So, he takes some drugs to try to feel normal. The problem with street pharmacy is a person thinks it will work if they just find the right drug or combination of drugs. So far, I’ve never seen it work.
My partner radios ahead to the local hospital and gives them a heads-up that we’re on our way, and we start rolling. I turn the heater on high and throw a blanket over our sleeping beauty.
A few minutes later, we pull into the ER, and the triage nurse greets us with no pleasantries. “What the hell did you bring him here for?” she demands, filled with the
