heart to apply the cervical collar as tightly as it should go. I am claustrophobic about such things myself and know this is only a test. I wrap it loosely around Xavier’s bull-like neck. Harry comes over to inspect my handiwork. He sticks two fingers in the space between the collar and Xavier’s tan flesh. He wiggles it, indicating that Xavier has room to move, room to become an instant quadriplegic. “You killed him,” Harry shouts at me. “FAIL!”
5
By the midpoint in our EMT training we are laying hands on one another on a regular basis. We hear lectures and we take notes but we also spend a significant amount of time rolling, lifting, wrapping, splinting, and feeling each other’s bodies, looking for imaginary bullet holes, leg breaks, and flash burns.
This Thursday is a special class. Instead of being at the police station we are meeting at the town fire department, where we will practice placing each other on stretchers or stair chairs and carrying each other down flights of stairs. Like second-graders going to a museum we are lectured by Frank to be on our best behavior.
“Do not touch anything. . . . Do not talk to the firemen. . . . Do not ask them questions.”
All thirty-two of us file silently into the firehouse at 7 P.M., our hands close by our sides. We resist touching the big shiny fire engines or gawking at the men and the equipment. We are led upstairs to the great room, where the stretchers and stair chairs are laid out with their straps. The firemen are even more annoyed than the cops by our presence. They sit in a semidarkened room watching HBO on their big-screen TV and mutter as we walk by. We are plebes, probies, maggots. We are invisible and meaningless beings.
There is no ladies’ room, just a men’s room with urinals and one stall. I have to pee. I walk in and find a fireman using the urinal; he glowers at me and I run out. We are not allowed to touch anything but no one said we couldn’t look.
The decor of the upstairs of the firehouse is funny as hell. Miss Manners would have felt at home. New Canaan is a rich town with lots of old money and the firemen’s private digs have mahogany piecrust tables, well-polished old silver loving cups, charmingly thread-bare Oriental carpets, and tasteful wing chairs. It looks like the Yale Club with a few fire hats strewn around.
In this cozy collegiate atmosphere my worst nightmare is about to begin. My Achilles’ heel in this class has been my age. I am over fifty and not in great shape. I know that much of this class is about brawn, about the ability to carry people down stairs, out of the woods, up from holes they have fallen into. One of our guest instructors is Anne, a woman paramedic from Norwalk Hospital. She is solid sinew from head to toe. When I wrap my arms around her midsection to practice the Heimlich maneuver I can feel her abdominal muscles beneath her uniform shirt. Even Frank, who looks to the casual observer to be out of shape, is as strong as a bull.
The first part of the class is not too bad. We load each other onto stretchers and four of us carry the “wounded” one around. By nine at night, after two hours of stretcher work, it is time to practice the stair chair. The stair chair is a folding chair used to carry someone in a sitting position down the stairs. It is useful for people who cannot be placed in a prone position or who need to be transported down narrow stairwells where a stretcher cannot go. Frank calls out our names. We are divided into groups of five. My group are all men, huge men. The biggest of them is Sven, a twenty-three-year-old Swede who is six feet six and weighs a good 250 pounds. Sven is teased in class about his formidable bulk. Frank decides I will be the one to carry Sven down three flights of stairs. To make matters worse, the lights in the stairwell have burned out or been turned off. I can’t get a straight answer why the staircase is dark, but Frank insists that “it duplicates
5
By the midpoint in our EMT training we are laying hands on one another on a regular basis. We hear lectures and we take notes but we also spend a significant amount of time rolling, lifting, wrapping, splinting, and feeling each other’s bodies, looking for imaginary bullet holes, leg breaks, and flash burns.
This Thursday is a special class. Instead of being at the police station we are meeting at the town fire department, where we will practice placing each other on stretchers or stair chairs and carrying each other down flights of stairs. Like second-graders going to a museum we are lectured by Frank to be on our best behavior.
“Do not touch anything. . . . Do not talk to the firemen. . . . Do not ask them questions.”
All thirty-two of us file silently into the firehouse at 7 P.M., our hands close by our sides. We resist touching the big shiny fire engines or gawking at the men and the equipment. We are led upstairs to the great room, where the stretchers and stair chairs are laid out with their straps. The firemen are even more annoyed than the cops by our presence. They sit in a semidarkened room watching HBO on their big-screen TV and mutter as we walk by. We are plebes, probies, maggots. We are invisible and meaningless beings.
There is no ladies’ room, just a men’s room with urinals and one stall. I have to pee. I walk in and find a fireman using the urinal; he glowers at me and I run out. We are not allowed to touch anything but no one said we couldn’t look.
The decor of the upstairs of the firehouse is funny as hell. Miss Manners would have felt at home. New Canaan is a rich town with lots of old money and the firemen’s private digs have mahogany piecrust tables, well-polished old silver loving cups, charmingly thread-bare Oriental carpets, and tasteful wing chairs. It looks like the Yale Club with a few fire hats strewn around.
In this cozy collegiate atmosphere my worst nightmare is about to begin. My Achilles’ heel in this class has been my age. I am over fifty and not in great shape. I know that much of this class is about brawn, about the ability to carry people down stairs, out of the woods, up from holes they have fallen into. One of our guest instructors is Anne, a woman paramedic from Norwalk Hospital. She is solid sinew from head to toe. When I wrap my arms around her midsection to practice the Heimlich maneuver I can feel her abdominal muscles beneath her uniform shirt. Even Frank, who looks to the casual observer to be out of shape, is as strong as a bull.
The first part of the class is not too bad. We load each other onto stretchers and four of us carry the “wounded” one around. By nine at night, after two hours of stretcher work, it is time to practice the stair chair. The stair chair is a folding chair used to carry someone in a sitting position down the stairs. It is useful for people who cannot be placed in a prone position or who need to be transported down narrow stairwells where a stretcher cannot go. Frank calls out our names. We are divided into groups of five. My group are all men, huge men. The biggest of them is Sven, a twenty-three-year-old Swede who is six feet six and weighs a good 250 pounds. Sven is teased in class about his formidable bulk. Frank decides I will be the one to carry Sven down three flights of stairs. To make matters worse, the lights in the stairwell have burned out or been turned off. I can’t get a straight answer why the staircase is dark, but Frank insists that “it duplicates
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