The call comes in for a “man down,” at a senior citizens’ assisted living building in Sheepshead Bay.

It’s one of the nice residences, with roomy apartments and good furniture. Still, it smells of disinfectant. A lot of people live here, but no one calls it home. I’m instantly sad.

A social worker informs me that residents live in their own apartments and are looked in on during the day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are provided. Other personal care is provided on an as-needed basis. We take the elevator to the eighth floor, where two maintenance workers are feverishly trying to break an apartment lock. The social worker tells us that Mr. Hanover is 90 years old.

After asking the maintenance workers to stop working, I shout, “Mr. Hanover! Are you okay?”

“Fine!”

“What’s wrong?” I shout.

“I can’t get up!” he shouts back.

“Doesn’t anyone have a key?” I ask the social worker. It seems counterintuitive that there would be such limited access in a building full of elderly people. “Yes, but Mr. Hanover likes to install his own locks.” She sighs. “We’ve discussed it with him a number of times.” “I like my privacy!” he shouts from the other side of the door.

She shrugs. “Anyway, we should have the door open in no time.”

The maintenance workers look at each other with a different story. “Medeco,” one says, referring to the brand of lock. “It’s no use.”

I call for the Fire Department. Meanwhile, the police show up, as is routine on such calls.

“Fast guys,” I say.

They grin. “You’ll go gray waiting for FD.”

Ah, I think. That old PD/FD antagonism.

The cop laughs. “They sure love breaking doors down, though.”

“Should I call ESU?” I ask. The Emergency Services Unit is the SWAT of NYPD. It would break down the door carefully so that it could be easily resecured, while the FDNY would bust it to smithereens. Because the maintenance workers will have to secure the door, the cop doesn’t care if the FDNY busts it. “Don’t bother them,” he says, of ESU. “Let New York’s Most Destructive do it.” The maintenance workers again start trying to get the door open. They manage to loosen the locks, and then one of them kicks the door three times. It flies open on the third kick. “Banzai!” one yells.

Inside, the 90-year-old is seated on the floor in front of the TV, on a folded blanket, apparently uninjured. Bronson and I help him up and into a chair. “I only needed help getting up off the floor!” he shouts. “Now leave my apartment!”

We ask him how he got onto the floor. “I wanted to watch the game up close!” he shouts.

“He’s quite crotchety,” Bronson whispers to me.

“You’d be crotchety, too, if you lived here!” he shouts.

Bronson asks if the man takes any medications, and while he’s doing that I make the mistake of asking him his medical history.

“Will you shut up! I can’t talk to two of youse at once!”

The social worker says she’ll get his medical file.

Mr. Hanover says he doesn’t want to go to the hospital. Because he’s over 65, we’ll have to call the Telemetry doctor to get the RMA – the Refusal of Medical Assistance. Bronson says, “Sir, I know these questions are going to sound silly, but I have to ask them.” Then he asks the three standard questions to ascertain Mr. Hanover’s mental alertness.

“What’s your name?”

The man glares. “Frank Hanover, you bastard.”

“What day is it?”

“Sunday and I haven’t gotten my stinkin’ paper yet.”

“Where are we?”

Daggers come out of his eyes. “On Mars!”

“Okay, okay,” Bronson says. He gets on the phone with Telemetry.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hanover yells at me: “Get out of my house!”

“Sir,” I say. “If you yell at the Telemetry doctor that way, they’re gonna make you go to the hospital.”

He shouts, “They can’t make me do anything!”

Bronson gets the doctor on the phone and explains the situation. He then puts Mr. Hanover on the line and I go into the kitchen to fill out the paperwork. When I peek back into the living room to ask Bronson if the social worker brought the medical file, Mr. Hanover puts his hand over the phone and yells at me, “How am I supposed to hear the doctor?”

It’s not his fault, I think. He’s not in his own house. He’s in a glorified nursing home. With people paid to check up on him and bathe him and put a plate under his chin. People paid to care for him. Not his family.

It’s not his fault, I think. He just wanted to see the game up close.

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