Raisinettes And Roaches

Bronson and I are doing an overtime tour on a crisp fall evening. Thankfully, it's pretty quiet. "Gotta sleep," I mumble, bunching up my jacket and resting my head against it. I close my eyes.

I open them and see Bronson taking out a portable DVD player and two movies he rented from Blockbuster. "I can never sleep on overnights," he says.

Annoyed, I reply: "Apparently, neither can I."

The DVDs are a romantic comedy and some cop movie with Cuba Gooding Jr. He attaches the player to one of those FM transceivers that wirelessly broadcasts the movie's sound through the ambulance's speakers. "Start with the cop movie," I say. Somehow, working on an ambulance makes you tend toward realism.

We arrange the tiny video screen so we each can see it, sink down in our seats, and get comfortable. "Where's the popcorn?" I ask. He reaches into his bag and pulls out two packets of Raisinettes. "You're so thoughtful," I say.

I must have dozed off, because I wake up halfway through the movie in a rain of bullets and shattering glass. It's the squawk of the computer screen that has woken me. I check my watch. It's 11 p.m.

"Damn," Bronson says, pausing the movie.

I rub my eyes and tilt the computer screen so I can see it better. "A 37-year old female asthmatic in Coney Island," I read.

We get to the location as two police officers we know and like from the 60th Precinct pull up. We enter the building together, take the elevator to the fourth floor, and knock on the door. No answer.

Bronson tries the doorknob. The door opens.

Inside, we find a 300-pound woman in orange pajamas with pink plastic curlers in her bleached-blonde hair sitting on the sofa, inhaling albuterol via her own nebulizer — a plastic device that attaches to a portable oxygen tank, diffusing the liquid medicine into a mist to be inhaled over the course of about 10 minutes. The medicine opens bronchial passages for easier breathing — urgent in bad asthma attacks when a pocket-size inhaler no longer suffices.

The woman waves hello and keeps breathing the mist deeply, in and out. Her lungs sound as if they're clear, but I take my stethoscope and lean in for a closer listen, pressing the diaphragm of my scope against the print of tiny green witches on her pajamas, not wanting to shock her skin with a cold instrument. Definitely clear. I stand upright and pluck the scope from my ears. Something's not right. I look around.

The apartment is crawling with cockroaches: on the couch, on the walls, on the floor. I break out in a fine sweat and am rooted to the floor, frozen. At least they're not waterbugs. If they were, I'd already be out the door or on the window ledge. It's my one phobia. But roaches are bad, too.

Bronson tactfully suggests we get the patient hooked up to our oxygen tank and bring her downstairs. "Before we get any ‘guests' in our bags or clothing," he says politely.

Without letting our medical bags touch the floor, we package the overweight woman in a stair chair and, with the help of the cops, roll her into the elevator.

On the ride down, Bronson whispers into one of the cops' ears. They look at the woman, then at me, and laugh. "What's so funny?" I ask. They laugh some more. It's rude and unprofessional. "That is so high school," I say.

Inside the ambulance, we get the woman set up on the stretcher with the help of the cops. That's when the patient's albuterol treatment runs out. Bronson hands me another vial and can't contain his guffaws as I unscrew the nebulizer's clear plastic canister and pour in this second dose.

I scream, drop the canister, and leap from the ambulance. Bronson and the cops break into fits of laughter as one cop tries to step on the bug that has crawled from the nebulizer and is frantically trying to make its way across the ambulance floor. "He's heading for my medical bag," I shout. "Get him!" I'm sweating all over. "Use your big flat feet!"

The cop stops."Who you callin' a flatfoot?" I surprise myself as I too start laughing — and tell him that I've never seen him move so fast. Then, splat! He gets the cockroach. He dusts his hands off. "10-91," he says. "Condition corrected."

The cop's partner peers at the flattened cockroach, one bent leg still twitching, and reaches in back of his duty belt. "Want me to cuff him?"

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.