This Body

As we parked in front of the well appropriated Laurelhurst home, I noticed several police cars parked around the house. There were about five police officers in the house and they looked at us with faces that shouted their appreciation for our arrival. I'd never encountered this look from the seasoned Portland cops I was used to working with and it made us wonder what was up. 

 One cop motioned upstairs. When I looked up the stairs I saw a healthy-looking, middle-aged man standing at the toilet in his underwear. The bathroom was directly in line with the long staircase and another officer stood at the door and looked quite eager for me to come up. Upon arrival at the top of the stairs I saw a wild look in our patent's eyes. He was aware of our presence and of the people in his home, but it was obvious he was in serious distress. 

 The man looked at me and spoke of himself in the third-person. "This body has to use the restroom," he exclaimed. After he finished using the toilet he turned to go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs stood his worried wife and teenage daughter. He walked up to a table and began to collect his wallet, keys, and spare change. "This body has to have his stuff," he said directly to me. He was purposeful and intentional. 

Although he was distressed, walking around in his underwear, and speaking of himself in the third person, I could tell he was thinking somewhat rationally. Whenever he would speak, I would tell him, "I understand." It wasn't a lie; I knew he was in distress and I understood that. It didn't matter that I didn't understand his purposes or actions; I saw him and heard him. 

 Through the confusion of the scene, I learned that he was the manager of a nice Portland restaurant that was rapidly going bankrupt. The employees hadn't been paid in a few weeks and some had accused this distressed man of stealing from the till. He looked at me and told me that "this man must go get dressed before leaving."  He obviously knew that we'd be taking him to the hospital and he didn't want to go in his underwear. I asked my partner, Sandy, to go get the stretcher and I followed the man upstairs. 

 As he entered the bedroom and went over to his clothes which were lying on the bed, he told me that he had no intention of committing suicide. "If this body was going to do that," he calmly said, "I'd have used this." as he casually pulled a 12 gauge shotgun from under the bed and mindlessly pointed it at me. With a calm, understanding attitude, I replied, "I understand." (Meanwhile, several cops rushed in and took the gun away from him.) 

 With that, we walked back downstairs, with me saying, "I understand," a lot. We walked into the cool night air and out to the ambulance (Where Sandy and replaced the gurney). Before we left, he asked for a glass of water, which we got for him. Then we quietly drove to the hospital while I continued to be empathetic. 

Upon arrival at Providence Medical Center, we walked into the emergency department and turned our friendly, psychotic patient over to the staff there. My partner and several of the cops thought I'd performed some magic act with this man. But all I did was offer him the kind of respect and listening ear we all crave on a day to day basis. 

 {edits made to correct spelling and meaning errors}

The Governor's Mom

The eastern slope of the "West Hills" are filled with nice homes and noted people. These people expect good service, quality paramedics, and clean ambulances. Well, when your ambulance covers downtown Portland and all of the intertwined communities, running 15 calls a day, you'll just have to settle for two our of three.

Short story: Shortly after transporting a not so clean, not too sober, and not at all affluent transient from downtown, we responded to the home of of the former governor's mom and transported her to the hospital.

I've always thought, "If she only knew where that blanket had been..."

Washington Park

Life was never the same for me after a warm Summer evening in 1980. Like most days in this category, it was uneventful - that is until the call came in. In fact, I don't remember anything until just before our response to a sharp corner on Knights Blvd. that evening.

One of our Portland Police buddies, a former Buck Ambulance EMT, had just left. The cops liked to hang out in our quarters on the corner of NW Broadway and Glisan. Buck ambulances had been responding out of that building since back in the day of horse drawn ambulances. On the way to the scene we were notified that our cop buddy was on scene and the multiple patients were critical. We asked for additional ambulances.

Nothing could have prepared this 21 year old rookie for what I was about to see. Upon arrival we found a large American car with its top wrapped around a huge Douglas fir tree. We could only see the undercarriage and wheels. The whole car was bent about 30 degrees and the roof was crushed onto the top of the seats.

There was no access to any of the people in the car. We didn't know how many there were or their condition. Stumbling around in the underbrush, 40 feet over a steep embankment, in the dark, left everything quite confusing. Through a small opening in the rear window I found some one's back and there was a hand protruding through the right passenger window between the ground and the tree. There was no pulse.

A Portland firefighter and I crawled on top of the car, which was now the driver side door. We pried it open with a halagon tool to reveal the 18 year old male driver. He is the first, of many, I pronounced "dead" in the course of my EMS career.

There wasn't much we could do until additional heavy equipment and personnel arrived. Someone started an IV on the protruding hand, we set up a rudimentary incident command, and established limited communication with someone inside the car.

Soon a heavy wrecker arrived and we carefully pulled the car off of the tree and lowered it onto its belly. The Jaws were fired up and the roof removed. It was a grisly scene under that smashed roof. We found two 18 year olds in the front seat: a boy and his date. They were both dead. The front seat was completely crushed, as were their occupants. The backseat passengers were pinned by the front seat and the deceased in the front seat were pinned by the dash.

Both backseat passengers were conscious, but seriously injured. Unfortunately we could not remove them until we removed the two front seat victims; which was going to take some time.

The back seat passengers were not wearing seat belts. When the car left the road, turned on its side, and hit the tree - top first, they were thrown up into the rear window. The 17 year old girl is the one whose back I discovered on the initial assessment of the scene. As the roof was removed, she became my patient. Without the roof to support her, her upper torso was left projecting out of the car. Her hip/pelvis were fractured and she most likely had spinal injuries. I used my upper body to support her during the 45 minutes it took to extricate her. But my support was more than physical and medical, I also poured my heart into supporting her emotionally.

The 17 year old girl I held in my arms that night was the younger sister of the dead girl in the front seat. The 17 year old boy next to her was the younger brother of the dead boy in the driver's seat. Both of these kids, who were the age of my younger brother at the time, had to watch as their older siblings were unceremoniously extricated from their entrapment in the front seat of this crushed car. Time was of the essence for our living patients, but we had to remove the crushed bodies before we could remove, treat, and transport their once beloved family members in the back seat.

It seemed to take forever, but once this little girl in my arms was free, we put her on a backboard and carried her up the hill to a waiting ambulance. It wasn't until we had left OHSU and were back in our quarters that I began to fully understand the very public hell we had just experienced. 30 or so responders; police, firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics and just pulled these two kids from the grip of a death machine.

The images of that scene will never leave my head. Even now I wonder how it affected my colleagues at the scene. Is this what we signed on to do? No one told us it would be this hard, and this ugly.



I can only imagine what a fun day that foursome had enjoyed. Good kids out enjoying a warm Summer day in Portland. Then his attention wandered, or most likely he was going too fast and the car began to skid. The car left the road going way too fast. Laughter turned to screams and before they had time to even catch their breath the car came to a grotesque stop. Two were dead and two didn't even know what day it was, let alone where they were, or what happened.

Who knows how long that car sat there before someone discovered it over the embankment? Who knows how long those kids in the back seat cried and prayed for help to arrive? Who knows where they are today, 27 years later?

It can never again be the "same as it ever was."