Finding the dead
posted on November 30, 2009 at 10:39 am
Here’s a great read about being an EMT. It’s a good reminder that many people hold jobs the rest of us could never imagine:
Usually we find them in houses. Always upstairs, always in a tiny room. The sick and dying tend to know something is wrong and, if they can, they make their way to the bathroom. I’ve seen countless bodies, stiff and swelling, pinned between the toilet and the tub. Even when they’re in the bedroom or the kitchen the bathroom light is on, the medicine cabinet open and pawed through. By the time we’re called no one has spoken with him in days and a son or daughter has come to check on him. Usually they get no closer than the front door when their worst fears are confirmed. Once a woman rotted in her stifling hot apartment for two weeks before someone finally called. As we walked around, faces covered with towels, her neighbors were so ashamed they wouldn’t meet our eyes. ‘I just thought it was a rat in the wall,’ one woman told me. The smell was drifting out into the street and I asked her how big a rat did she think it was. She shook her head, embarrassed, then went back inside and locked her door.
Read the rest.
Kevin’s a former newspaper alum and a great writer. Can’t wait to read his published work.
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