Jennifer Murphy - First Responder: Life, Death, and Love on New York Citys Frontlines: A Memoir

A Memoir of Life, Death, and Love on New York City's Front Lines

First Responder

Jennifer Murphy

For Ylfa and Mike,

and forever and ever amen for Pat

Thank you for saving my life

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

K ONSTANTIN J OSEF J IREEK

Heroes are rare.

J AMES B ALDWIN

I n compliance with healthcare privacy laws, the locations, times, names, and identifying details of patients have been changed aside from race, as race plays a critical role in healthcare and medical outcomes. Similarly, details concerning investigations and crisis cases have been altered to protect client confidentiality. Any similarity with an actual case or patient is coincidental. With the exception of a handful 9/11 veteran first responders who specifically asked that their real names be used, the names and, where necessary, identifying details of active-duty first responders have been changed so that they could speak freely without fear of recrimination and to protect privacy. My memories of emergencies have been cross-checked with other first responders where possible, and differing accounts of what unfolded on scene are included for the readers review. Dialogue has been recalled from memory, my memories substantiated by years of journals and notes. In the spirit of nothing about us without us, stories from the personal lives of first responders have been included with their blessings and at their direction, with hope that the public might see us more clearly in the fullness of our humanity, and experience what it feels like to walk in our shoes.

T he second you put on a uniform people forget youre a human being. They call you a hero. Endow you with superhuman qualities you may or may not possess.

Bravery. Strength. Resilience.

Im not by nature a courageous woman. Bravery is a performance. Its something I had to practice in order to excel at on the street, where the stakes were unbelievably high. Before I could demonstrate valiance in the face of human catastrophe, I had to be hauled through the hellscape of failure.

Of the four Fs that comprise the bodys survival responses to stressfight, flight, freeze, and yes, fornicatefreezing was my least favorite to experience on scene. Yet there I stood one green summer afternoon in Brooklyn during the summer of 2018, a six-foot-one, redheaded emergency medical technician, a physically unmissable woman, concretized at the sight of a bleeding food delivery biker lying supine in the sunlit street, having just been struck by a car.

Holy shit, I thought. This is an emergency.

Now, I dont know about you, but when I see someone wearing an EMT uniform, Im pretty sure theyre supposed help out in this sort of situation.

But that didnt mean I could. I was glaciated by fear. Id been an EMT at Park Slope Volunteer Ambulance Corps for a few months, and this was my first serious trauma job. While Id opted to play the part of rescuer in the theater of pre-hospital emergency care in the streetsa choice that seemed dizzyingly stupidmy nervous system demanded I hide in plain sight. Anxiety rendered me useless.

It was a show, this accident. So many people on scene, the sidewalks spilling with onlookers. Where did they all come from? Didnt they have anything better to do on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, the sun high and the sky blue? I usually worked nights, so Id never had to face this kind of crowd in daylight. It was too bright out. I wanted to yank the sun out of the sky and kill the lights. The glare coming off a fire rig parked to the side was incredible. It made everything I looked at turn garish and red. There was a police car blocking the street, cops directing traffic, telling the gawking crowd to stand back. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see.

But there was everything to see. It was the only thing to see.

I understood now why they called war the theater. The emergency rendered me an actor frozen onstage, unable to remember my lines. Humiliated by my inability to move, I stood in the street clutching a stretcher whose brakes I couldnt get to work, sweating through my uniform before an audience of bystanders whod gathered to watch the gruesome matinee, shocked to see how many people had taken out their phones to record videos of a strangers pain. Not just the strangers painmine. They were recording me, too. I wanted to run screaming offstage. If there were an eject button, I would have hit it.

There was so much happening all at once. Everyone in action but me, drowning in a sea of surreally slow time. There were voices all around me, but I couldnt tell where they were coming from. I heard only a high-pitched ringing in my ears. It wasnt just the guy laid out in the street with blood guttering from his forehead, darkening his face and spilling into his eyes, his legs twisted to the side as if he were running. It was the swarm of firefighters encircling him, then looking at me, waiting, expecting me to do something. Act!

Was this really happening? It was unreal. Too real. Another ambulance was parked up the block. Bystanders had flagged it down, but the EMTs couldnt take the downed biker because they already had a patient stretchered inside their truck. It was up to me. Us. Where was he? My partner?

There. Ship wasnt hard to spot on this affluent, mostly white block of brownstoned Park Slope. A burly Black rescuer and career EMT twenty years my junior, he stood a few inches taller than me. Ship had a serious disposition and gobs of experience in the field. Often when we arrived together on scene people looked up at us in speechless shock at the sight of two towering rescuers sliding off the truck.

Ship worked with a fleet of turnout-geared firefighters to collar, backboard, stretcher, lift, and load the patient into the ambulance without any assistance from me. The audience scattered like thrown dice. Their show was over.

For us, it had just begun.

On the back of the bus, as we call ambulances in New York City, my hands shook terribly. I could barely grip my hot-pink stethoscope. The truck stank of blood and sweat and turned my stomach to liquid. My mouth went dry and tasted of chalk.

Ship hovered over the stretcher and assessed the biker for trauma, cutting off his pants and groping his legs, asking him questions about the location and severity of his pain, taking his vitals. I tried to ask the patient questions, too, but he spoke little English. He had no identification. No insurance. No problem. As one of the citys volunteer ambulance companies, we transported patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Words uttered by the critically injured and sick as well as those approaching death were always humbling and sacred to witness. Agonized men often cried out for their mothers. Others mumbled spiritual pleas to angels near and far. Undocumented workers frequently asked for their bosses.

Call my boss, the patient kept saying. Wheres my bike? I need my bike.

A Fire Department lieutenant came up to our truck and asked for the patients name, then assured the guy he would keep the bike at his firehouse. Weve got your bike, buddy. You can come get it once youre out of the hospital.

Wheres my bike? the patient asked.

Concussed people repeat themselves. Getting them to understand what happened is like trying to eat soup with a fork.