The Paramedic Who Knew My Name

The scoop hit the floor first.

I was in the pantry, up on my toes, hunting for the box of coffee filters that Gerald always pushes to the back behind the flour. It was ten minutes to seven on a Tuesday morning in October. I heard the metal scoop bounce on the linoleum, and I said, without turning around, “You’ll want to pick that up before the dog finds it.”

We have not had a dog in six years. That is the kind of thing you say after forty-one years of the same morning.

Then I heard Gerald hit the floor, and I do not have anything to tell you about that sound except that I have never heard it since and I would know it anywhere.

He was on his back between the stove and the table, one slipper off, his eyes half open and looking at nothing. His color was the color of dishwater, and his mouth worked like he was trying to drink from a glass that wasn’t there. I have sat with enough sick people to know the difference. What he was doing was the thing a body does when it has stopped but hasn’t been told.

“Gerald,” I said. I said it the way I would say it across a crowded church basement. “Gerald.”

I got the phone off the counter. My hands were the hands of somebody else, and it took me two tries to hit the nine.

A woman answered on the first ring. “Jasper County 911, what is the address of your emergency?”

I gave it. Cedar Street, the house with the green shutters, and I heard her typing. I told her my husband was sixty-seven and he had fallen and he wasn’t breathing right.

“Is he awake?”

“No.”

“Is he breathing normally?”

“No. He’s making a sound. He’s not breathing.”

“Ma’am, I’m sending help right now. I need you to put the phone on speaker and set it down by his head. Can you do that?”

I could. I put it on the floor next to his ear, which struck me even then as an odd thing, to put the phone where he could hear it, as if he might want to say something.

“Now I need you to kneel beside him. Put the heel of one hand in the center of his chest, between the nipples, and put your other hand on top. Lock your elbows. You are going to push down hard and fast. At least two inches. About twice a second. Don’t be afraid of hurting him. I will count with you.”

I want to be plain about this part, because people have asked whether I remembered my training. I did not need to. The district made every teacher take the course every two years, in the library, on a rubber torso named Brenda. For thirty-eight years I knelt on that carpet, pushed on Brenda’s chest, and thought about what I would make for supper.