I was walking to my car from my office this morning when I came across two people standing over a person laying on the sidewalk. We were at the intersection of Prairie and Fannin, which is a fairly crowded area, yet only two people seemed to have found a person sprawled out on the ground to be a reason to stop.
The man on the ground appeared to be in his mid-twenties. He was laying on his right side, and in the fetal position. His eyes were open, but not moving nor blinking. Other than the fact that his rib cage was moving ever so slightly, he appeared to be quite dead.
When I walked up, one of the two people who had stopped was just getting off the phone.
"Did you call 911?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I was walking right behind him when he just went down."
I tried shaking the guy by the shoulder. He didn't react in the slightest. He was wearing a medical bracelet of some sort. I looked at it, but it didn't have a name on it. I shook the guy by the shoulder again, and he didn't move. I could tell by his appearance that he was homeless.
I moved my finger in front of his eyes, and there was nothing.
I mean nothing.
I was glad that he was still breathing, and also (embarrassingly) relieved that I didn't know CPR. If he hadn't been breathing, I would have been in a real moral quandary over performing CPR on the guy. As it stood, I had pretty much used up all of my medical training.
Within a few minutes, a fire engine pulled up with a crew of three men and one woman. They reacted swiftly and calmly.
"Oh," said one of them. "It's him again."
"You know him?" I asked.
"Yep," he replied. "See the bracelet?"
As one of them began unpacking their equipment, the Captain leaned over the downed man and tried to get his attention.
"Hey," he said.
I'm not trained in CPR, but I think I also said "Hey" when I was trying to wake the guy up, too.
The Captain then made a fist and started rubbing it on the downed man's chest.
The downed man started moving around like my 20 month old when I tickle him. I'm pretty sure that he was growling, too.
They put an oxygen mask on the guy and the Captain kept doing that thing on his chest every time the man seemed to slip back out of consciousness. Soon, they had him sitting up.
I asked another one of the firemen if I needed to stick around for any reason -- I was on my way to the jail to visit one of my misunderstood clients. He told me "nah" and I left as the ambulance was arriving.
It wasn't that dramatic of a moment, I guess. Fire Fighters rush into burning buildings and do heroic things on a much more epic scale quite frequently.
But seeing the confident and competent way those three men and one woman handled the situation impressed the hell out of me.
Sometimes it's the small things that serve as nice reminders that there are people out there to to help pick you up when you fall down.
No matter who you are.
1 comment:
The technique used by the firefighters is one that most cops use as well. It's one I learned, from HFD, many years ago when dealing with a highly intoxicated person. It's worked every single time I've used it. But, one must be careful because sometimes, that person wakes up swinging. My favorite HFD story happened 20 years or so ago. I was headed back to the station after a late arrest around midnight. I was just north of the loop on 45 north and I saw flames in the neighborhood to my west. I exited the freeway at Crosstimbers and found the house. I called for HFD and heard from neighbors that an elderly lady lived there alone. I couldn't get in the house due to burglar bars. The fire truck pulled up and I told them there was possibly a lady inside. They sprang into immediate action and made it inside in a matter of seconds. Luckily, the lady wasn't home. But I was truly impressed. Those guys are truly heroic.
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