Breaking Barriers

It's the end of a 16-hour double shift and I'm not a happy camper as the call comes in for an 80-year-old woman in Midwood who has fallen and can't get up — meaning she can't get to the door to unlock it and we're probably going to have to call the FDNY for additional resources to break down the door, which will take extra time.

"I just want to go home," I grumble to Bronson as he puts the truck into gear and heads toward the address, an old, rundown apartment building that probably doesn't have an elevator.

We buzz the super's apartment to get in, and head up the stairs, as I figured, to the fourth-floor apartment. The super says he doesn't have a key.

"What kind of super doesn't have the key?" I say. He just shrugs.

I ring the bell and hear the old woman shout: "Who the hell is it?"

"Ambulance!" I shout back, lips close to the crack in the doorframe. "You called for an ambulance?" I shout a number of times, but she doesn't seem to understand me. I keep knocking and ringing the bell. She keeps yelling, calling us nasty names.

"Great," Bronson says. "Another pleasant patient, grateful that we've come to her rescue." We've had a lot of difficult people during our long shift and at this point are pretty sick of humanity — we've seen so little of it.

I lean against the hallway wall and pick my cuticles. I'm not going to have a screaming match with her, and I'm not going to blow my top in frustration. I'm going to wait patiently for the FDNY to come and bust the door to smithereens.

A fire truck arrives and the men prepare to knock down the door. You can see they're getting into it, bringing out the Halligan tools and stomping around in their boots. I wish I was one of them. All of a sudden, the super arrives with the woman's sister, who lives three floors above. She opens the door with her key, and, anticlimactically, we enter the apartment as the firemen, annoyed, leave.

We find our patient on the floor, frail and helpless, lying just out of reach of her walker. She says something in Russian to her sister, who then explains to us that she tried to reach for her walker and fell.

"No English, but she knows all the curses," Bronson mutters to me.

I check out the old woman. She's completely fine, not injured at all. She says to her sister, who translates, that she just wants to be lifted up. I try to talk to her through her sister, find out her name, medical history, what medications she takes, etc., but her sister is talking about irrelevant things and not very helpful at all. The super comes to the rescue by breaking out in perfect Russian, which I had no idea he spoke. "She doesn't want to go to the hospital," he tells us.

I try to insist, but he shakes his head. "No way. You don't understand Russians. They could have their arm torn off by farm machinery, they will not go to a hospital." He shrugs. "They think they're never going to come out."

"Preposterous," I say.

"You should see the hospitals in Russia," he says.

Point taken. I sigh and call Telemetry. We're not allowed to let patients more than 65 or less than 5 refuse medical assistance without the okay of either a FDNY doctor or, as the case will be with this woman because she speaks no English, an EMS lieutenant who will come on scene and ascertain that she is indeed medically fine and mentally competent.

I remember the woman calling us nasty names and chuckle. When the woman questions the super in Russian — "What's so funny?" he says she says — I say, "She's got spunk." He translates this and then she laughs, too. Then she says something in Russian. "What'd she say?" I ask.

He says, "Where she comes from in Russia, they call it ‘chutzpah,' and you don't get far without it."

I have to laugh. That word is as New York as bagels and lox. "Tell her she's come to the right place," I say.

Ms. Klopsis is an emergency medical technician on an ambulance in Brooklyn. This column details her observations and experiences. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients.