Bronson’s Effect On Women

It’s a quiet day and during lunch Bronson has been telling me about the argument he had with his wife the previous night. It had something to do with work uniforms, the hamper, and a leftover egg roll. Trapped inside an ambulance with this slob for eight hours, I have a little taste of what his wife must experience. “If I was married to you, I’d fight with you, too,” I reassure him, gathering his takeout containers into one giant pile and stuffing them into a bag. “Calgon, take me away.”Bronson calls me an expletive and starts doing the newspaper’s sudoku puzzle — another irritating habit — when the call comes in for a “sick.” The KDT indicates a 90-year-old female has had vomiting and diarrhea for two days. It also says she has Alzheimer’s and that she’s yelling and combative. Bronson starts the bus, and I take his sudoku puzzle and stuff it into the trash bag along with everything else.We arrive at the sixth floor of a building on Ocean Parkway to find the patient standing at the open door to her apartment. She’s frail. Her home health aide is in the kitchen, drinking a glass of ice water in lieu of air-conditioning. The odor in the hot apartment is offensive, but on the walls I see photographs of a young woman with a handsome husband and three smiling children, probably none of whom she can remember. I don’t like Alzheimer’s patients. They’re depressing.The woman is loud. “I didn’t call you,” she yells. “I’m fine.”“She’s going to be difficult,” I whisper to Bronson. He and I make small talk to try to calm her. Bronson tells her she reminds him of his grandmother.“I don’t care about your grandmother,” she says.“Is she always full of piss and vinegar?” he asks the home health aide.“I hate her,” the woman says, pointing at the aide. “Why did you call 911?”“Take her to the hospital,” the aide says.“I’m not going anywhere,” the woman says.“Yes, you are.”“No, I’m not.”Bronson makes like a referee: “1 … 2 … 3 … shut up.” Then he tells the woman, “No hospital, but we need to have you checked out, okay?”“Okay? What do you mean okay?” she replies, and sticks her tongue out as her face contorts into a weird mask. It’s an odd maneuver, and I’m repelled but engrossed, like a child looking at a weird bug.“That’s pretty scary,” Bronson says. “It could be Halloween.”“Halloween?” the woman says. “What do you mean Halloween?”“She’s going to the hospital,” I tell the home health aide. As I fill my chart with information from the aide, the woman continues to yell at Bronson. He sets up the stair chair and tries to pick her up but she’s flailing her arms.“She’s feisty,” he says.“Watch she doesn’t bite you,” I say, pointing at the teeth marks on his left arm by a crazy female patient earlier last week. Keeping his arms clear of her mouth, he gets the woman strapped into the chair, but she keeps yelling as he wheels her past a couple of her neighbors, “They’re killing me! Help me.” The neighbors bite their lips and turn away.At Maimonides, the woman is fairly quiet but will not let the triage nurse take her vitals. “I hate you!” she shouts.“She’s having a bad hair day,” I say to the triage nurse. “Alzheimer’s,” I explain. She pages an ER technician, an affable young man who talks soothingly to the woman in Yiddish and manages to get her vital signs. He’s obviously got the magic touch with Alzheimer’s patients.“You’re nice,” she tells him. “Unlike that devil,” she says, pointing at Bronson.We turn in our paperwork and I’m glad to leave. We carry on with our afternoon, and as we drop off the next patient, we pass the woman and her home health aide. When she sees Bronson, she sits up in her hospital bed, shakes her finger at him, sticks her tongue out, and contorts her face into the scary mask from before. “You’re going to pay for this,” she yells at him. “You’re going to pay for this until the day you die.”I recall Bronson’s argument with his wife. “Do you have this effect on all women?” I ask 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.

Bronson’s Effect On Women

Bronson’s Effect On Women

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