The call comes in at noon for a “sick” in Bensonhurst, in a large housing complex off Cropsey Avenue along the Belt Parkway, and I get anxious. Most of the calls here are for elderly people, and the simple sadness of the elderly living alone, facing the end of life, bothers me more than all the bloody car accidents, train-track suicides, and falls from rooftops we’ve handled combined.

Bronson does not feel this way. He’s never false, and he talks to the patients straightforwardly, not condescendingly. To treat sick elderly people with respect and dignity, rather than with sugarcoated jollity, takes real compassion.

I’m glad he can do it because I get so melancholy during elderly sick calls that I just close up shop. Their TVs are always on for company. I would rather deal with blood and gore any day.

But when I read the details of this job on the computer screen, I perk up. It’s not an elderly call. It’s a 25-year-old female who’s disoriented inside an apartment.

Traffic is particularly heavy, probably because of the wet roads. We arrive at the scene and enter an apartment on the first floor of a six-story building. The place is neat and clean, but as we go inside, a particularly foul bathroom odor hits our noses. “Fantastic,” I mutter.

Two women are in the living room. One is in her 50s, the other in her 20s. The younger woman looks confused. I ask the older woman what happened.

She tells us she’s the home health aide for the elderly man who resides there. “Where is he?” I ask.

She points over her shoulder down the hall. “In bed.”

She says the younger woman is the man’s housekeeper. “I came to work at 9 in the morning. About half an hour later, Molly here comes knocking, crying up a storm.”

“Why was she crying?” Bronson asks.

“She said she got a phone call from her mother in Jamaica early this morning. Her kid brother had been struck by a car and killed.”

We approach the young woman, who’s sitting on the couch glassy-eyed. She says she just hung up the phone with her mother. “That was way back in the morning,” I say. “Back at your house.”

She blinks uncomprehendingly. “I just hung up,” she insists. She says she doesn’t remember leaving her apartment or how she came here. Then she starts crying again. Bronson and I try to calm her down, but it’s no use.

“Why did you take so long to call 911?” I ask the home health aide.

She shrugs. “I thought I could calm her down.”

I am overwhelmed by the stench of feces. “Why don’t you go clean the old man up?” I ask.

She shrugs again. “Just going to do that.” And she disappears down the hall. But she doesn’t go into the old man’s room. She goes into the bathroom and turns on a radio.

I’ve seen it a hundred times. Getting paid by Medicare to do nothing. I tiptoe down the hall and peek into the old man’s room. Like all the elderly bedridden people I’ve seen who don’t have family to speak up for them, he’s lying in his own filth, half asleep or half awake — it’s hard to tell — being ignored.

I envision stabbing the home health aide in the heart with an ice pick. “I’m reporting you for neglect,” I tell the closed bathroom door and go back into the living room.

Bronson is putting away his paperwork and picking up our medical bags. He’s the only one there. “Patient’s gone,” he says. “Where?” I say. He shrugs. “Jamaica.”

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.