Unknown condition

"18 young, take it to 143 street and 8th Avenue for the unkown condition"
"18young, 63 on the way"
"Unkown condition". Someone called 911and stated they needed an ambulance and hung up. No further information regarding the type of medical problem the caller(or family member, friend, enemy) was experiencing at the time. Could be anything from a drunk to a shooting.
Five minute ride to the location. Mentally preparing. Been on that block a hundred times in the past. Abandoned buildings, crack houses, methadone clinic on the corner, mental health clinic a block away. Have to be careful. Unkown condition is a low priority job. Police don't respond in with us.
" 18 young, put us 88, on scene"
"10-4, young, no call back, unable to get further for you"
" 10-4, thanks central"
Stepping out of the ambulance I'm immediately brought back to the present moment by the biting cold typical of a February evening in New York City. I immediately regret leaving the heater-warmed interior of the vehicle.
The building is a pre-war, five story tenament, depressingly grey, partly illuminated by the last rays of the day's dying sun as it dips below the Hudson River a mile to our west.
Fire escapes in front littered with garbage, some windows fronting iron gates, others empty of windows or frames with the surrounding brick blackened by scorch marks. An "X" spray painted by firefighters over the main entrance of the building to denote structural instability caused by past fires.
Walking into the building brings no relief from the biting winter's cold. It actually feels colder inside than out. Even in such cold the place smells terrible. Like an port-o-john located in the middle of a garbage dump.
We climb the three flights of stairs deliberately, stepping over mounds of garbage, long dirty diapers, and piles of dog shit that litter every step and landing. I learned a long time ago not to hold my breath as I climbed through such filth. Its better to take in the fetid air in small increments than one giant breath
Each floor contains five apartments with two to the left, two to the right and one directly in front as you ascend onto the landing. Doors painted a fading red, hallway baby shit yellow, made barely visible by a sickly flourescent bulb buzzing away on the ceiling above.
"Rob, what's our apartment number"
"3A, its over here on the left, ah shit"
Rob and I have worked together for the past two years. Good guy, short in stature but makes up for it in width, broud shouldered, large round head planted on a thick neck,
short, very muscular arms.
I turn towards the door and immediatley apprehend the source of my partner's distress. The door is pockmarked by dozens of chips, scrapes and depressions, telltale signs of past visits by police officers using their nightsticks, flashlights and radios in announcing their arrival to the apartment's occupants.
Turning down our radios, we listen for any type of noise from the apartment. Nothing heard. Cautiously I begin to knock, not too hard, hoping that no one would answer thereby enabling us to make it an unfounded job( then we could contact the dispatcher "central, no one is answering, if you have no call back and no further, we're going to make this an unfounded job" then we could get out of the God-forsaken place). Rob looks at me with narrowed eyes. He dosen't have to say it, I know what he's thinking,
"come on Roc, knock a little harder". I shake my head in an exaggerated gesture of disgust. I turn back to the door, make a fist and begin to pound on the door.
"Hello, EMS, is anyone..." The door is unlocked, opening a crack with each pound of my fist. We become silent, listening. The apartment is silent, no footsteps coming to the door, no one answering my knocking, no teleivision blaring. Cautiously, I push the door open a bit and peer inside. It takes my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the dark apartment, bereft of window shades. I say a silent thanks to the sun for sticking around for a few more minutes for if it wasn't for those dying rays, the aparment would have been pitch black.
From my limited vantage point I can make out a man laying in the middle of what appears to be a living room about ten feet away from me. The copious dark fluid and the position in which he is laying on the floor immediately give me the immpression that this guy is probably dead (after a while you can tell who is bullshiting and who is really hurt, or dead, just by the way they are laying when you first encounter them).
Rob, looking over my shoulder immediately lifts his radio to his mouth and requests police backup from the dispatcher. Meanwhile I begin to push open the door a little more at the same time.
"Hello, this is EMS".
I want to make sure anyone that may be in the apartment knows full well that it is ambulance personnel and not the cops who are entering the apartment. Not seeing or hearing anything, I try pushing the door open wider. It gets to a certain point and then stops. I attempt to push harder and am immediately taken aback by the realisation that not only is the door not opening past a certain point but that it is in fact being forcefully pushed back against be by someone behind the door but currently out of my sight.
Now there is something about me, I'm not sure why, but when startled I don't become frightened but come instantly to a state less of anger than rage. Forgetting a moment the present situation, I forcefully push open the door into the person standing behind me, at the same time demanding an explanation.
"Man , why the fuck are you closing the door on me"
"You don't wanna come in hear" booms a voice from behind the door.
Creaking my head around the door frame I see a thirty-something black man in a tattered tee shirt, about five-ten looking staight at me. He appears intensly agitated and furthermore is sweating profusely, sending a shaking chill up my spine and at the same time dissapating my anger at being startled. Thinking quickly, I lower my voice, and speak in a respectful tone,
"Sir, we're the ambulance people"
"You don't want to come in here", he spits out
"But sir, that man over there looks like he needs medical attention"
" I said, you don't want to come in hear"
Regaining my composure a little and bouyed by the knowledge that the police were probably on the way, I try to push my way further into the apartment.
"I told you, you don't want to fucking come in here" the guy behind the door screams, catching me by surprise, startling me again. I could feel the rage coming over me again but before I can say a word, he lifts his arm and points a revolver right in my face.
"Man, I fucking told you, don't come in my motherfucking house".
"Ah shit", I think to myself, here it is, I'm gonna get my fucking head blown off by this fucking lunatic.
Suddenly, a picture flashes into mind. Its the front page of the Daily News with a picture of me laying beneath a white sheet and the caption above "Ambulance Driver Shot Dead".
Looking at the man, not knowing what to do next, I blurt out.
"Alright sir, no problem, just let me back out from the door and we'll leave"
"Get the fuck out now!!!", he screams.
Backing out quickly, I turn and push Rob towards the stairs,
"run, he's got a fucking gun!!" I shriek at my partner. we both make for the stairs, gliding past the garbage we so gingerly stepped over to avoid on the way up, expecting to be shot in the back at any moment.We explode throught the front lobby and onto the sidewalk gasping for breath and almost into the arms of the two police officers who reponded to our backup call.
"Guys, there's a fucking EDP up there with a gun, pointed it right in my fucking face" (EDP short for Emotionally Disturbed Person, in other words, a fucking lunatic).
"What apartment?"
"3A"
"There's some one down in the apartment, I think he's DOA"
"You see anyone else"
"No"
"Okay", one officer says as he hurriedly brings the radio to his mouth,
" 35charlie with an emergency transmission"
"35 charlie, go"
"be advised we have a possible barricaded EDP with a gun at our location with a possible person shot, we need ESU forthwith along with the sargent"
"10-4 charlie, do you have EMS with you"
"10-4 central"
Robs grabs for his radio,
"18 young central"
"young, go ahead"
"be advised we have an armed EDP in the apartment with a possible DOA, PD is on the scene with us"
"10-4 18 young, lieutenant is on the way. Are you guy's alright"
"10-4 central"
The evening air becomes filled with sirens. ESU( better known as SWAT the team) comes screeching around the corner tailed by multiple sector cars and several ambulances that were in the general area coming over to make sure we were all right.The ESU members don their protective gear along with their highpowered rifles and machine guns and work their way to apartment 3A.
After a three hour standoff, the guy with the gun finally gives up without incident.
I asked the one of the ESU cops what set this guy off.
"The guy he killed was his brother. They argued over how to split a bag of about a thousand subway tokens they had robbed over the past couple of months. One thing led to another, the dead guy threw a punch, the perp pulled a gun out and shot him in the head. Killed his brother over a bunch of fucking tokens."
Given the all clear by PD, we walk back into the apartment to pronounce the victim dead.I bend down to get a closer look at him. Dime-sized hole in the forehead, fist-sized hole in the back of his head. Probably had the same view right before he died that I had a short time ago. But alive I was and not laying next to him with an extra hole in my head.
Me and Rob walk back down those stairs for the second time that day, not as quickly as the first time but almost as intent on getting the hell out of there. We head back to the ambulance.
"18 young, central"
"18 young, go"
" central, we're going to make this an 83, not removed left with PD" 10-83 being the code for a DOA.
"10-4 18 young, you guys all right."
"yeah, 10-4 central"
"good, cause I have an asthmatic holding on 118 and lex, let me know when your ready"
"Fuck", I grunt to my partner, "its five-to-five. The bastards are giving us a late job. Son of a bitch"
"18 young,are you ready"
"10-4 send the job over"