Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
under the armpits, and with Slim hefting the legs and a lifeless head flopping against
my chest we crab-walked him down four long flights of steps. He was dead on arrival,
and I had to change out of my blood-soaked jumpsuit before the next call. Externally
less impressive injuries also could prove fatal, as in the case of a suburban couple, she
sobbing and the husband stoic with a blue-edged .22 caliber hole in his chest. He spoke
calmly to police—“Well, we were arguing, and the wife, uh, accidentally shot me”—then
got on the gurney, lapsed into unconsciousness, and died just as we unloaded him at the
hospital.
One Friday night we were called to an embankment on the city's outskirts and found
a policeman bent over a car hood giving mouth-to-mouth to a toddler. The two-year-
old had turned cyanotic from a penicillin shot, and during a frantic drive for help her
father lost control and rolled the vehicle. I took over from the cop, tilted the girl's chin
back, and checked with a finger that she hadn't swallowed her tongue; then I sealed my
lips over her nose and mouth and began soft, puffing exhalations. I could feel the tiny
chest expand and subside—
that's it, come on darlin'
—and every few breaths I pushed
on her sternum with two fingers, compressing the heart and causing blood to flow. The
cop's flashlight beam revealed color in the child's face as I continued CPR and struggled
upslope with her. Slim took over as I proceeded to guide the hysterical mother into the
front seat and drive to the hospital; within minutes, after handing her daughter over to
a physician, we collapsed outside the ER. A nurse soon emerged with the news that we
hadn't saved the little girl, and even now I can remember her blond curls and pellucid
skin, the sour milk taste of her mouth. I still recall the abysmal grief on that young wo-
man's face and how cold the green corridor tiles felt when we slumped against them
weeping.
All that weekend I thought about quitting, but the next Tuesday, on a sunny April af-
ternoon, my crew helped deliver a baby. Father and grandfather were pacing curbside in
front of a ramshackle house, exclaiming, “She's having it, she's having it!” An eighteen-
year-old woman lay on a couch in the front room, prepped that morning by an in-
tern who'd decided birth wasn't imminent and sent her home. Now she grimaced and
groaned, her puffy face flushed and beaded in sweat. I parted her legs and encountered
multicolored swirls of liquid, a taut three-inch vaginal opening, and the wispy hair of a
crowning infant.
This baby is coming now!
We helped the woman rise up against some
pillows and laid out clean towels, all the while talking calmly to each other and the
bystanders. Then as she screamed and bore down, I held my palms upward to cradle the
head and pressed fingertips against her perineum, to slow birth and prevent tearing.
The baby came sliding out fast once its head emerged—
with the umbilical cord
wrapped around his neck!
I grasped the slimy, vein-swollen noose and pulled enough
slack from the birth canal to untangle it.
Noproblem!
Next we suctioned fluids out of his
mouth and nose with a bulb syringe, dried him off, and wrapped the wrinkled, blotchy
newborn in a small blanket. By then the cord had collapsed, so I applied a two-part
“umbili-clamp” that severed it, leaving a short piece attached to the infant and a longer
one draped upon the woman's belly. Soon everyone was smiling and the whole family
was crying as we wheeled new mother and healthy, nursing son up to the same doctor
she'd seen earlier that day. I was grinning too, but back out in the hospital parking lot I
had to lean against the ambulance doors and steady my hands to light a cigarette.
