I once found a baby in the trash!

I once found a baby in the trash. On a beautiful summer morning we were engaged in our normal coffee and BS session when an alarm came in for the engine company. The horn went off. I didn’t pay much attention as I was riding on the ladder truck that day.

The pumper bros rushed out of the kitchen while I continued to eat my breakfast of eggs and green chili. In double company stations there are generally two kinds of trucks, a pumper truck, that’s the one that carries the water and hoses and such and runs their wheels off all day and night.

Then there is the ladder truck, the one with the big ladder on its back, it carries lots of ladders hence the name. It also carries rescue equipment, the jaws, and truckies. For that day I was a truckie. Truckies are the well rested firefighters that are called out for rescue, fires and the random medical call while the pumper is unavailable.

At that point in time I was not a paramedic, I was an EMT as were all my co-workers, so we weren’t powerless on medical calls we just didn’t do as many as the pumper jockeys.

We heard the update from dispatch that the engine was responding to a female with severe bleeding, and then went back to our conversation and meal. About ten minutes later the phone rang and I answered it. It was my captain from the engine.

“Hey Tim give me Bob”, Bob was my lieutenant on the stick. “Hey Lou it’s the captain.” I handed him the phone to my lieutenant and watched. It wasn’t normal for an officer to call the station while on a call. “Okay Cap we’re on it.” Bob hung up the phone, “Let’s roll guys, Cap says there is a baby in a trash can over on (whatever street)”

We ran to the truck, babies in any emergency situation are scary for two reasons, one they are babies and most of us were fathers. Second because they are babies, they can’t talk to you, they can’t explain what is wrong with them, and they make a lot of noise. I worked with a guy that was always relieved when babies were crying loudly, because sick babies don’t cry. That is scary. So scream your little heads off, it’s a good thing.

Once on the truck the Lou explained that the patient they were with was a teenage girl that had delivered a baby that morning by herself before going to school. She thought the baby was dead and had put it in a brown paper sack and hidden it in the trashcan behind the house.

Your mind fills with so many thoughts at that point, first off how terrible for a girl to deliver a baby by herself and then have it be a dead baby. Then go off to school and be hemorrhaging in a dirty school bathroom. Tragic, where were the parents? How do things like this happen? Buy you get used to things like that on the job.

We got to the address, nice little house, well kept structure and yard, flowers were blooming, the lawn was mowed, perfect slice of Americana. The Lou says it’s in the trash behind the house.

We moved around back, it was a nice day bright sun, no neighbors watching, very quiet I remember. As we rounded the back of the house there was a short little wooden fence in front of us, as I went for the gate a dog charged me from behind the fence, we all fell back a bit startled and froze up for a second.

“It’s just a damn dog get in there.” the Lou barked right back. “We got the dog TimO, you get the baby.” said my old pal Tommy. We bunched up like a SWAT team at the gate, me at the end of the stack, Tommy and Greg the other firefighter in front of me.

“On three.” “Three” Tommy yelled at the dog and yanked the gate open, he and Greg charged at the dog and I slipped in behind them and went for the trashcan. I pulled the lid off the blue can and right there on top of the trash was a neatly folded brown paper sack. I could tell by the way it looked this sack hadn’t just been pitched in the trash; it had been placed there with care.

There was a layer of clean newspaper layered under the bag; I think to keep it from touching the real garbage. As the dog retreated snapping and barking with Tommy and Greg yelling and flailing I reached in for the bag and grabbed it.

I got the brown sack up to about shoulder height when the baby cried inside the bag. It scared the shit out of me and I almost dropped the bag. “It’s alive.” I yelled. The others spun around and looked. The Lou yelled “get out of there”. I ran from the yard and headed to the truck.

I opened the bag and there was a freezing cold, blue little blond girl, she was shaking and crying. I snatched her out of the bag to cuddle and warm her, I tried to get as much of my warm skin on her as I could, I yanked my shirt open and pressed her to my chest, talking to her the whole time.

She was making those wonderful little baby noises and I called for the baby warmer. We all gathered around her like four men and a baby. Here is this precious and not so tiny (over 8 lbs.) baby and four hulking truckies. Great day.

Turned out later that the mother was in fact the niece of one of my fellow firefighters that day. He had just seen the girl and no one had a clue she was pregnant, she had concealed very well. The mother and father were just kids themselves. They married had a bunch more kids are still together today. A couple of years ago I got a photo in an email that said “Do you recognize this girl?”

It was a high school graduation photo; there stood a beautiful young woman in her cap and gown, smiling a brilliant smile. The next sentence said, “You pulled her out of a trashcan 18 years ago.” Good day that one.

Not All Calls Have Happy Endings!

This weekend my local newspaper ran a story about a call from many years ago that I have written about here in the past. The article by Bill Vogrin, here is a link http://sidestreets.freedomblogging.com/2013/02/02/sometimes-lives-start-badly-and-there-is-no-happy-ending/17883/ was done with great skill as he (and I) both had hopes for a much different ending to the story. What Bill discovered is that sometimes there aren’t happy endings to stories.

What Bill did find was heart breaking and a true tragedy. Before he published it we had a few conversations about what he had found and how he should handle the information he had collected in his long investigation. Much delicacy was required of Bill, he wanted to tell everything he knew, but doing so would have injured innocent people once again, and he knew it.

So how do you tell the story and at the same time protect the innocent? Well you do what Bill did, you write with courage and skill and heart. I believe the more intelligent and caring reader may be able to find a clue or two in the piece that could lead to finding a beast among us.

If you never read my first post about this a year ago or haven’t read Bill’s article I’ll give you the Readers Digest version of it. My crew and I found a live baby in a trashcan, the daughter of a teenage girl, who believed the baby to have been still born. She was so young herself that the baby was given to the grandparents to raise and so that baby grew up and was eventually returned to her parents.

Yes the two teens that had created her had gone on to marry and have more children, so the return of their first child should have been a celebration right? Wrong! Her “father” and I use that term with great reluctance was accused of and arrested for raping his own newly returned daughter.

Bill found that this dirtbag had made bail and then fled from the law, his whereabouts still unknown as of today. He grew up and went to school in my hometown and may have returned here to hide out as the crime was committed in another state.

I have to admit that when Bill called me with what he had found out I was greatly disturbed as I had created in my own mind a happy ending for the little girl I had pulled out of the trash so many years ago, and told Bill as much. I wanted the fantasy; I wanted my version of the truth, not the real truth.

As Firefighters and this is true for most emergency workers, ambulance medics and EMTs, police and so forth, we rarely ever know what the outcome is of the emergencies we respond to. There is no follow up, no one calls or emails you a week or month or year later to say hey “Do you remember that call you went on?”

All there is for us on most days is the next call and we answer that one, as the last call is cleared from our memory. On the rare occasion our next patient may be transported to the same hospital and we can ask doctors and nurses for follow up, but that is risky as there are laws in place read HIPPA, that prevent us as well as hospital workers from reveling information about a patient.

So depending on the nature of the call, critical life threatening to minor injuries we don’t get much feedback. For the critical life threatening about the only tool we have is watching the obituaries for the next few days, I know it may sound morbid to you that we scan the obits for a patient we treated but it really is a tool we use.

Maybe not for all calls but the ones where the circumstances were unusual or you felt an emotional connection to the family or friends of the patient, in other words the calls we cared about. Some days we saw the obit other days weeks went by with no mention, we took the absence of an obit as a victory.

On other occasions our patients would just show up at the fire station days or weeks later to thank us, what rewarding days those were because we found out firsthand that we had made a difference and also because they generally brought us some sort sweet snack which was always devoured the moment our guests left.

So what Bill did was go find the truth, a truth I wasn’t prepared for and he put into motion more thoughts and more memories of days gone by. I pondered other critical calls I had had over the years and I wondered how many people are still walking this earth because of the difference that a bunch of firefighter and paramedics made on one given day.

I am sure nationally there must be thousands or even more than thousands still out there. I like to think they are having babies, or bouncing grandbabies on their knees. That they have gone on to do something amazing in the world or gone on just to still be a best friend, brother, sister, son or daughter they could be to those around them.

And I hope every now and then they think of us, the men and women of the emergency services business, and out of nowhere they smile a smile that only they know the reason for. That thought makes my day sometimes.

First baby delivery!

There is a strange weather phenomena in Colorado and maybe elsewhere associated with child birth, an Albuquerque low we call it or used to call it until Albuquerque got mad I heard. Anyway a low pressure cell parks itself over what is now referred to as the four corners area, I guess no one lives in four corners or those that do don't care what we call weather.

When this set of circumstances comes into play women that are really ready to give birth, do. See the lowered atmospheric pressure pisses babies off I guess, never had one myself,  and they want to bail out of the womb. An additional problem with these storms is in the winter they bring a shit load of snow with them, which makes giving birth while driving on snow packed streets even more difficult, women are such babies themselves when giving birth. So instead of cowboy'n up and driving to the hospital they call 911 and have us come get the baby.

My first experience with this was when I was 19 years old and had been a fireman for a very short period of time. The department I worked for was very small and only two of us were on duty at night and the guy I worked with didn't care to get up at night, even on good nights. so I went by myself on most calls.

This particular night a call came in for an emanate birth. "You take it" my partner said "and if you need help call me". Dispatch told me that "a woman was alone at home and giving birth, the front door was open so just go right in."

Okay how hard could this be? I mean women have been giving birth for centuries without the help of 911 and paramedics right?


The house was a mansion, just huge. I sloshed through the wind and blinding snow to the door, cracked it open and stepped in. Silence! "Hello" I called out wondering if I should take off my shoes. "Back here" I heard. I tracked the voice to a bathroom.

In the tub was a half naked woman, the working half was exposed and it was working. I don't mean to be crude here, but in my recollection this was in fact the first time I had seen a vagina in real life, and it didn't look anything like what Playboy had showed me.

She had her legs splayed over the sides of the tub, she was sweating, she was loud, and red. Quit scary for my teenage eyes. I froze and considered running away. What the hell was this? "oh good" she said. Good what good God I thought.

This was not how I had imagined it, in fact I had never imagined this. Who imagines this? A teenage boy, a pregnant woman, a winter storm, a bath tub, and this bulging hairy apparition before me.

I freaked, I started running around the room screaming "Boil the water! Get the towels! or something to this effect. She calmly, between contractions snagged my hand in a very tight grip.

"Now look" she said. "I'm gonna need your help with this." She was patting and rubbing the back of my hand like a comforting mother, which she was this was her fifth. "It's gonna be fine", just then another contraction hit and she crushed my hand. "Oh no!" I said, as my eyes fixed on some additional hair becoming visible down there.

"Get the baby" she barked. "Let go of my hand" I said. She did and I moved in to position. This should not be a boys first experience with what I had been trained to think was the happiest place in the world. Because at the moment I never wanted to see one of these things again.

Apparently babies come out faster the more the path to the exit has been used. This kid wasn't waiting for a doctor, an ambulance, or even for me to breath. Like a watermelon seed this kid came out, just wham baby.
I caught her before she bounced off the porcelain more out of athletic experience than safety concerns.

Beautiful she was, a little slippery and noisy, but beautiful. After that one I had the opportunity to assist in the births of eight more over my career. Oh by the way she was in the tub for easy clean up, real thoughtful woman she was. God bless her!

Firefighters can solve any problem.

Firefighters are by nature natural problem solvers. If you think about it we get called for everything nobody else knows what to do with. A citizen calls 911 because something in their life has exceeded their ability to handle it.

The call takers and dispatchers are highly trained professionals that spend many hours in educational classes and are constantly being given new techniques in how to help the general public.

Emergencies that are clearly of a police nature go to the cops, things that are medical go to the FD and the ambulance service, fires duh. What about those gray areas? One thing that seems for some unknown reason to always fall to the fire service is water, water in all its manifestations.

We don’t own the water it is a tool we use in our job, but we aren’t responsible for water. When someone has a water leak in their house they call 911 and are worried that the water is going to get into their electrical system and short it out and then cause a fire. So we get the call.

What do we do? We show up, turn off the water and disable the electrical breakers that are affected. But we aren’t plumbers or electricians we can’t fix it. When there is a big rain storm and the streets become flooded we get the calls for that too.

Okay saving someone that has become stranded in flood waters, we do that, we love that it’s cool. But water flooding through your window wells isn’t really an emergency to us. Yet we go.

One last time we don’t do cats in trees. We don’t do bears in trees, or mountain lions, or any number of critters that climb. We have rescued baby ducks and baby foxes from storm drains, but that is just because we got called and because we want to solve problems.

One December night as we had all settled in for some popcorn and TV the doorbell rang. At the door was one very distraught mother and small child. She was on the verge of hysterics. We wanted to help and got her and the child inside as quickly as we could.

In her hands she clutched a shoebox. We got her to calm down and just tell us what the problem was. Between gasps and shudders she explained that Santa had given her daughter a hamster for Christmas, he name was…

“Mr. Cuddles.” The little girl chimed in.

“and I squeezed him too hard and stuff came out his butt.”

The mother pushed the shoebox toward me.

“He’s in there and he’s alive. But he’s kind of dragging his… his I guess his intestines around behind him.”

I took the box. We all exchanged a WTF do we do glance.

“Okay, so you want us to fix him?” I asked.

“I don’t think he can be fixed I called an emergency veterinarian clinic and they said he should just be put down.”

She began to cry all over again and her daughter grabbed her leg and began to cry and apologize for hurting Mr. Cuddles. We assured her we had experience in these matters and would be able to help her.

An outright lie, but she was killing us with the little girl and all the crying, we just wanted to help her out and get them out of the station.

“We will take care of Mr. Cuddles, and do our best. Okay?” I said.

“Will he be okay?” asked the little girl.

“Honey we will do our best for Mr. Cuddles but he may be hurt too bad to be fixed, if that is true we will still take care of him.”

“Promise?” she said.

“Yeah we promise.”

“Thank you guys so much, I didn’t know what to do my husband is deployed and he normally handles this kind of thing.” Said Mom.

“Well thank him for his service and we are glad to help.”

With that she and her daughter left. As soon as the door closed it began.

“What the hell do we do with a hamster with its guts squeezed out?” asked Blue.

“Let’s take a look.” Said Davey our lieutenant.

He took the box and opened it. Inside was a little fuzzy ball, and it met the description offered by the mother. He slipped the lid back on. Now Davey was a country ass Kansas boy and had grown up on a farm, but he had never been presented with quit a dilemma like this one.

“Well I’m open to suggestions boys.” He looked us over.

“What do you think TimO, can you give it an overdose of some kind of drug that will do the job?” he asked me.

“I don’t know Lou, I can’t give him any of my narcotics I have to account for those.”

“Something else then?” asked Blue.

“We could just drown him, put some rocks in the box and put it in a bucket.” Offered Bobby the driver.

“That’s what we used to do on the farm with unwanted animals sometimes.” Said the Lou.

“Is that humane?” I asked.

“I don’t know, you’re the one that said we could take care of it TimO, not us.” Said Blue.

“We could just leave it outside in the cold I’m sure that would do it.” said Bobby.

“What if they come back to see how it went and see the box outside? That would be awkward.” Said the Lou.

“Let me call one of my Docs and see what they say, maybe they’ll have an idea.” I said.

I went to the office and called one of the emergency rooms and got one of my favorite Docs on the phone. I explained our situation and she offered to help. She gave me permission to mix up a little cocktail of meds, our own version of lethal injection and signed off on the treatment.

We buried the little hamster out in the flower garden the next day.

Do Firefighters do God's work?

Was I doing God’s work? I have been asked this question about my firefighting career and the answer seems simple, yes. But maybe it isn’t that easy. Why would God pick a miserable, unworthy, alcoholic to do his work?

No man or woman can ever know the mind of God I know that. I have had many conversations with God about this over the years. I know I talked with him often when what I was doing was important to me, but was it important Him?

I remember one Christmas morning in a beautiful home with the whole family gathered for the opening of presents and I was there doing CPR on the grandmother under the tree.

I remember the surrealness of it. The setting was right out of a Hallmark calendar. Myself I had spent that morning with my own family doing the exact same thing this family was doing but here I am trying my best to do all the advanced medical procedures I know on grandma.

I had a habit of praying to God under these conditions. Silently of course, didn’t want to spook the boys with overt praying (sorry about that God) on a call. So I would ask God are you going to help on this one? The outcome did and at the same time didn’t rest with me.

He would give clues though in small ways. Dead people and that’s what you are when you have no pulse and aren’t breathing, dead, are very difficult to get IVs on. The absence of a heartbeat flattens out a person’s blood vessels making the insertion of an IV needle very hard.

I had a reputation of being able to get those sticks when others couldn’t and I believe that was the direct result of my conversations with the almighty. I would once again silently pray that if it was His will that I get an IV then I’d get it and if it was my patients turn to board the heaven bus, I wouldn’t.

So was I doing God’s work? I have no idea. Over the course of my career I was a firsthand witness to those boarding the bus and never got used to it. It was like being the ticket agent for a flight you knew was going to crash. You still took the tickets and wished the passengers well. Buh bye.

I delivered nine healthy babies during my career and regular readers know that. I have never mentioned the many times it wasn’t a healthy baby. There were more deliveries than nine but only nine successful births.

So when that happened I didn’t question God on why that happened, I had to turn my focus to the living, the survivors. Only years later and many gallons of vodka later did I realize that I too was a survivor of those events.

I would drink and wonder why did I end up in this job? Why me, I never wanted to be a firefighter. Did God pick me and if he did why? Why did I have to see this stuff? Why did I have to listen to the anguished cries of the survivors and yet no one heard mine?

Probably because my screams were as silent as my prayers, they were private not for public consumption. Now I’m not saying I was hand selected by God to be a firefighter but God does have a way of picking losers to be his agents, and I did feel like a loser for much of my life.

God has a strange roster of losers he has worked with, and once again I am not claiming divine selection or placing myself in the direct company of those listed below, just saying God makes strange choices.

Noah got drunk.
Abraham lied about his wife.
Sarah laughed at God.
Jacob was a deceiver.
Samson had serious anger management issues.
David was an adulterer and a murderer.
Elijah struggled with depression.
Peter denied Christ.
Paul was Saul.
Paul said it best:

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."  ” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28 MSG)

Did I do God’s work? Perhaps and am now finding that my chances to continue still exist.

I’ll return to fun stories next week, promise.