Thanks! I’ll proofread it again – I have a few changes I’m working on. I’m not “faking it;” I’ve been a paramedic for 911 for 18 years and all the scenes I describe are ones from my own experience! The rest of the story is online here at Urbis and on my personal blog if you’d like to read it. My next project is a prequel to this story, then a sequel. So, yes, it is something of a “middle chapter.”
Glad you liked it, and many thanks for the review!
Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / Found Wanting - Chapter 12 (Analysis)
Found Wanting
Chapter 12
Marc and Brian went about the rest of their shift as if nothing unusual had happened, other than Brian feeling nervous and occasionally asking Marc about his “therapy.” They were truly partners now, linked by more than just working in the same ambulance together.
“I take it you’ve never gotten caught?” asked Brian.
“No. Closest was when you kept asking about that dialysis code we had a few months ago. Yes, that was one of mine. The circumstances have to be absolutely perfect. Our friend the rapist was probably the riskiest one ever. Tell you what, let’s not talk about this too much, okay?” Marc suggested.
“Good idea,” Brian agreed.
They finished out their shift, transporting a female with abdominal pain, a male that had gotten beaten up, a man complaining of chest pain, and a woman that had passed out, “overheated,” according to her friends, despite the forty degree temperature. Marc chose not to give the friends a lesson on physics; they did not seem to be the type that would be interested in the laws of thermodynamics. It was more likely that the patient’s heavy crack abuse and heart rate of a hundred and fifty may have had something to do with her complaint.
The rest of their shift was otherwise uneventful. When Brian went home, he again got little sleep as he pondered his role in the rapist’s death, but he felt better than the night before for two reasons. For one, he now knew the truth about Marc and had begun to empathize with his reasons for doing what he did. Second, he considered his own part in what had transpired in the back of his ambulance. The rapist was not only a child predator, but one who manipulated the system to his own advantage specifically to subvert justice at Brian’s own expense, as well as Marc’s and the police, which he would try to evade by calling for the ambulance. He imagined how many real patients with legitimate medical problems had to wait for an ambulance while the rapist played his little game with EMS. In addition to realizing that his own tax dollars were being used to pay for the continuous abuse of the police, EMS and the hospital visits, that thought infuriated Brian, and he felt better that today, He and Marc really had made a difference in the world for the better.
The next day, Brian and Marc were both in a good mood. They had shared a moment that made both of them feel better about the world they lived in and it is the sharing of a moment like that with someone makes it all the more enjoyable. They didn’t speak of the incident, but it occurred to each of them how perverse it was to enjoy their mutual feelings when it involved killing someone. ‘I’ve enjoyed calls where someone was critically hurt or sick, or even died before; enjoying yourself at someone else’s expense is part of the nature of this job,’ Brian thought to himself.
‘Those are usually the best calls,’ Marc also thought. ‘Making a difference while there’s death all around is why I became a paramedic in the first place.’
Both medics chuckled a slightly evil laugh to themselves as they pondered the enjoyment they got at the rapist’s expense.
“Stand by to copy,” said Mandy over the radio. She gave them a call at Canal and Royal for a “female down.”
“Oh God, who will this be?” Marc complained.
They pulled up to the corner they had been to so many times before for Aaron Sparrowhawk, David Spencer, Ivan Sunville, Deborah Gill and lots of their other frequent fliers. Down on the sidewalk near the liquor store was a woman that neither EMT recognized. Another woman, obviously drunk but talking constantly, sat next to her. The patient was soaked in urine and passed out from the bottle of cheap gin next to her.
“Y’all gonna take care o’ her? She’s my frien’. I called you when she pashed out,” the other drunk woman slurred to them.
Marc put on a pair of gloves before he dug through her wet pockets looking for any identification. “I hope it’s her own urine, at least,” he said as he withdrew some sodden paperwork from her pants.
“Let’s see... Discharge paperwork from two hospital visits, one yesterday, one from two days ago,” he said as he unfolded the yellow sheets of paper and read them. “Both say ‘diagnosis: acute alcohol intoxication.’ Discharge instructions: ‘Stop drinking.’ Looks like our princess here is a little non-compliant with her discharge instructions. Oh and there’s one more paper here, a court summons. Can you guess what for?” he asked Brian.
Brian laughed a little, “Oh this a tough one. But I’ll just take a stab at it - public intoxication?”
“Very good! You win the bonus round!” Marc joked back. He read the name off the papers. “Ronnie Ritchie? Is that you?” he shouted at the woman while rubbing his knuckles on her sternum to wake her up.
“Ow, damn it!” she shouted back at him, jumping slightly from her sidewalk stupor. “Yeah,” she answered and laid back down on the pavement.
“She jusht got in town lasht week from Chicago. I been keepin’ her company, bein’ all new in town and all,” the drunk friend offered.
“She’s only been in town for a week and she’s already been arrested and gone to the hospital twice for being passed out drunk?” Brian marveled. “What did she come to New Orleans for?”
“She didn’t have nothin’ else to do. Y’all don’t have to take her to the hospilal,” slurred the friend. “I jusht wanted you to make sure she’s okay.” She was very near passing out herself, barely able to sit up straight, her dirty, stringy blond hair almost completely covering her face.
Marc and Brian couldn’t leave her to sleep it off. “If she decided to get up and stumble into traffic or fall and hurt herself, somehow we’d be the ones liable for it,” Brian explained to the friend. “You set the wheels into motion when you called us, and we can’t leave her like this.”
Upon realizing that the ambulance crew was going to take her friend away, she picked up the gin bottle from off the sidewalk and began to slug back the remnants of it. Brian pulled the bottle out of her hand and emptied it out into the gutter, saying “Why don’t you get up the street and go home? You look like you’ve had enough yourself.”
Marc had fetched the stretcher and he and Brian lifted Ronnie onto it. As they fastened the safety belts around her, a fresh puddle of urine pooled between her legs. “Fabulous,” Brian commented as he considered the task of cleaning the stretcher at the hospital. “I guess this’ll be a new frequent flier. We get rid of one abscess on the ass of humanity, and immediately there’s a new one to take their place.”
“I think there’s a waiting list,” Marc said. “It’s a never-ending cycle.”
At the hospital, Brian scrubbed the stretcher clean and Marc smoked as they waited for their next call. Mandy called them over the radio, “Copy a phone number.”
Marc jotted down the phone number on his clipboard and keyed up his radio, “Ten-four. Who am I calling?”
“It’s the coroner’s office,” Mandy replied.
Brian and Marc stared at each other, panicky looks overtaking both their faces. “Oh shit,” Brian said.
Marc pulled out his cell phone and dialed, taking a deep breath. It rang on the other end for an agonizing ten seconds. “Hello?” whoever it was at the coroner’s office answered.
“Um, hi. This is Marcus DeSalle with New Orleans EMS. I was asked to call this number.”
“Oh, thanks Mister DeSalle. This is Evan Thompson with Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office. I’m a death investigator. You picked up a Raymond Naquin yesterday? He was under arrest with NOPD and died in their custody.”
“Yes, sir, I think that was his name,” Marc replied as evenly as he could as he waited for the death investigator to mention some damning evidence against him.
“Well, of course there has to be an investigation whenever an arrestee dies; I’m in the process of doing that. Can you give me some details about the call?” Thompson asked.
Marc moved the phone away and whispered to Brian, “It’s about our guy yesterday!” Brian’s eyes got even more panicky as his fear was confirmed.
“Um, well, he was complaining of chest pains when we got to the scene,” Marc began, trying to not sound worried over the phone. “At first, my partner and I thought he was bullshitting us just to try to get out of being arrested, but when we put him on the EKG monitor, we saw that his heart rate was about thirty. A few minutes later it dropped down to nothing and we started CPR and worked him all the way to the hospital.” Marc tried to give as few details as he could. “Did, um, did the autopsy show anything?”
“Well that’s the thing,” Thompson responded. Marc closed his eyes and waited for the hammer to fall.
“The autopsy showed some heart disease, but not a heart attack. There was no specific infarct in his heart. He had some liver damage, consistent with a history of alcoholism, but not really enough to kill someone. There wasn’t any trauma so it’s not like the cops roughed him up or anything. Toxicology report showed alcohol and marijuana, but not enough to kill him either.”
Marc offered nothing; he merely replied “Hmm, that’s strange. We worked him like we would any other cardiac arrest.”
“Yes, I have your report right here. Looks like you did a good job.” Marc took a breath, feeling like it was his first breath in years. “Can you tell me anything that might have happened? Did Naquin tell you anything that might shed some light?” Thompson inquired.
‘Boy, could I!’ Marc pondered.
“No, he just said his chest hurt. I picked him up a few months ago when he was under arrest before and he was complaining of chest pain then too, but I couldn’t find anything wrong with him. We just took him to the hospital and followed the usual protocol for chest pain - oxygen, IV, aspirin and nitroglycerine,” Marc said.
“Yes, I was reading his arrest records,” said Thompson. “He was quite a winner. Four arrests for child molestation, one conviction. Spent four years in Angola for that one. A couple more for failure to register as a sex offender, some for public drunkenness, theft, indecent exposure, trespassing. Nineteen arrests in all. It seems that he went to the hospital upon all of his last seven arrests. The cops called for EMS each time.”
“Yes, like I said, I picked him up one of those times. I figured he was just trying to get out of being arrested, but we still have to treat him. Do you think that he had some underlying problem that no one ever picked up on?” Marc suggested, hoping his idea would fly with the investigator.
“Hm. I suppose so. That’s the only thing I could think of either,” he said.
“Yeah, I can’t really think of anything else. Maybe the combination of his chronic problems and whatever else he had going on was what did him in,” Marc offered what he hoped would sound like a clinical analysis, trying to curry Thompson’s favor.
“I’ve pretty much exhausted any other means of death, without shooting in the dark for some weird diagnosis. Judging from this guy’s history, I don’t think anyone will miss him too much anyway. My report will just say he died of natural causes. Thanks for your time. You keep safe out there,” he finished.
“Thanks, you too!” Marc bid him, hanging up his phone. “Whew!” he sighed to Brian who had been hanging onto every word of Marc’s conversation.
“Well? What?” Brian asked, almost hysterical with anxiety.
Marc cast him a long look, relief evident in his expression. “Natural causes.”
“Oh Jesus! Thank God! I almost shit myself!” Brian replied, finally relaxing in his seat.
“No kidding! That death investigator seemed to think no one would miss such a scumbag, either,” Marc commented.
Both sat in their seats, quietly contemplating their fate had any evidence been found implicating them. Marc had thought about it many times, of course, but this was the first time he actually had to speak to the coroner’s office to lie about his actions.
After a few minutes, Brian spoke up, “Marc, I think it may be time to reconsider this. I know that it feels good, even right, to put these shitbags out of our misery, but that was just way too close.”
Marc paused for a second before replying. “You know, I was just thinking the same thing. Getting rid of them doesn’t really get rid of them. That’s obvious, like our new shitbag, Ms. Ritchie, demonstrated this morning. I don't know if it's worth going to jail, or getting my own dose of potassium chloride for doing the world a favor.”
Brian nodded meaningfully, but thought to himself ‘He didn’t actually say he would stop killing people, only that he was thinking about it and that it’s not worth jail. But I’ve done enough with this. I’ll just take that as a “yes” and shut the fuck up about it.”
“Good idea,” he said to Marc. After a minute, Brian turned to Marc and asked “By the way, how did you get started on this crusade to get rid of the people causing all our social ills?”
Marc laughed, thinking back to a long time before. “How much time do you have? That, my friend, is a whole other story.”
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oknapp reviewed Version 1 -
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Bo reviewed Version 1 -
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I like the continuing story of Marc and Brian and what moves them to do what they do. The story is very readable and i like your use of how a drunk talks when trashed. The descriptions of “patients’ is very well done and I can easily see these situations in my mind. I like Marc’s biting sarcasm in the day to day encounters. This could be a good Tv plot
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Catastrophe reviewed Version 1 -
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I like the idea of EMS technician as vigilante, and wish I’d caught the rest of this story.
Negatives: You’ve got a couple of construction errors, like switching between single and double quotes on the same sentence. Even though you say this is the last chapter, it seemed like a middle chapter in terms of conversation and exposition. (Though that may be because I missed the first parts.)
Positives: You seemed to know about medical practices as EMS performs them. If you’re faking it, you’ll need to confirm it all works as you present it before you publish. I liked the line “It rang on the other end for an agonizing ten seconds.” Good way to emphasize the tech’s nervousness.
Good luck with this story!
tavnis reviewed Version 1 -
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I’m not not an expert in grammer, but I did notice errors. Other than that, i very much enjoyed the story. I would love to know how many paramedics and other public safety officers feel this way, or have actually taken part!
Revise the piece so it reads smoother.
enjoyed
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