Susan* is 70 years old and called 911
today for a runny nose and some neck
pain. She’s been sick for several days
but hasn’t seen a doctor. She lives in a
“single-room-occupancy” government-
assistance high-rise downtown, where
she shares a small room with a younger
man she tells me is her friend. We’re in
a crowded American coastal city, with
ancient tenement-style hotels crammed
next to new-money high-rises, condos
and row houses. A tourist might walk
an extra few blocks to avoid a neigh-
bourhood like Susan’s.
She wears an oversized orange
sweater and unravels one sleeve withher thumbs as we talk. The sweater
isn’t as dirty as a lot of the clothes worn
by the people we treat, but it’s not
clean. I take Susan’s vital signs and
hook her up to the cardiac monitor. I
turn up the heat in the ambulance.
Susan is like most of my patients:
lonely, destitute and nursing a minor
medical complaint. I’ve worked on a
911 ambulance for five years in three
different counties: urban and rural,
rich and poor, wet and dry. My job isn’t
really what people think it is.
On TV, paramedics are always rush-
ing to try to save a woman crushed
under a building, a man bleeding out
or a baby taking its last breath. There
*BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS HAVE BEEN CHANGED. are a lot of sirens, there is a lot of“I think it’s encephalitis,” she tells
me. “Because it hurts back here,
in my neck.” The woman motions
to the back of her hairline, which
is greyed and dry.
reader’s digest
72 september 2019