LITMIR.BIZ

      I don’t know what is going through a person’s mind when they are preparing to commit suicide. Frequently, I think the answer must be nothing, because they sometimes do the strangest things.

      In big cities, people often jump out of tall buildings to commit suicide. I have been unfortunate enough to actually observe a couple of jumpers hit the pave ment and it is a shocking experience. The body makes a sickening noise that is somewhere between a splash and a thud—I always called that unique noise a splud. When a jumper goes splud, the body actually bounces. Not quite like a rubber ball, but the body definitely rebounds. It’s the bounce that gets the biggest response from witnesses, because it can look like the person is trying to get back up off the ground. The crowd has a big influence on what a jumper does. I have witnessed a small group of people chanting “jump, jump, jump” when a person is perched on a ledge, contemplating the drop in front of him. These chanters actually got other people to join them and their prompting eventually did convince the jumper to step off the ledge. When he jumped, a cheer went up from the crowd that lasted until the splud and the bounce. At that moment, the once boisterous crowd went dead silent. I doubt any of them were ready for what they saw. They suddenly realized what they were doing, what they had participated in and dispersed quickly. People who encourage and witness a jump tend to leave or deny seeing it, while new rubberneckers come to look at the body.

      Steve Estes and I were called to a jumper who, after being taunted and beckoned by the crowd, jumped and made a pretty substantial splud. Steve was a former ARP, a Puerto Rican gang member, who got out of the gang and became one of the city’s best paramedics. He lived in the neighborhood he was raised in and was considered a local hero, simply because he was a survivor and now a medical man. He loved the neighborhood and hated the gangs and drug dealers that were killing his people. For him, the degradation of the neighborhood was a very personal loss.

      Steve and I went through the usual routine with this jumper, who was still alive when we arrived. Normally when treating a jumper we were watched by a crowd. The onlookers in this case, however, did not want to acknowledge what they had witnessed or contributed to, and they had left. We were there alone with the bloody mess on the pavement. I wondered how those chanters felt when they heard their first splud. The head and neck of the jumper were severely damaged, and it was hard to get air in and out of his lungs. A mixture of blood and phlegm came bubbling and foaming out when we tried to use the respirator to pump oxygen into his lungs. He had multiple broken ribs and our chest compressions were producing a lot of grinding of bones and probably doing little to benefit his circulation. Although the odds were against us, we pressed on with our efforts to save him. We worked well together and did everything right, but he died anyway.

      As Steve and I worked our way through the rest of that picture-perfect summer evening, we resolved to head to the beach the next morning. One of the perks of working nights in an East Coast city is that there are beautiful sunrises over the Atlantic Ocean. That particular summer I worked almost exclusively nights. During the day, I would often head to the beach and sleep there all day long. I therefore had the world’s best tan—or at least the best tan I had ever had. This system of working nights and sleeping on the beach worked very well for the most part. One day, however, I woke up to find the beach completely empty. The reason for this was painfully obvious—it was raining. I was so tired that I hadn’t noticed the light, cold rain that was coming down on me and the lifeguards had all sought sanctuary in their little huts as the bathers left the beach. As I gathered up my stuff and headed home, I felt the eyes of the lifeguards on me and could imagine the conclusions they must have jumped to when they saw me sleep through the rain. Maybe they thought I was dead. I wondered if any of them had bothered to check for a pulse.

      I was looking forward to a day at the beach now, but still had to focus on the shift and calls at hand. Steve and I were dispatched to a call of “woman choking.” We got there to find a woman of about 45 in obvious respiratory distress. She wasn’t choking, but she was vigorously coughing, wheezing and sputtering. There was also a distinct chemical smell in the apartment. We got vitals on a Ms. Reichert and gave her some oxygen, while she explained what had happened. She had chronic asthma and used a prescription inhaler whenever she had an asthma attack. Well, this particular attack was severe and she fumbled around in her purse to find her inhaler. She found it and quickly took a big hit from it, inhaling the spray deeply into her lungs. Unfortunately, she had accidentally grabbed her can of pepper spray. This chemical can be lethal when inhaled by an asthma patient.

      Ms. Reichert had immediately called 911 and also took her asthma medication. When we got there, her apartment was filled with enough pharmaceuticals and paraphernalia to suggest a person plagued by medical problems. She was in great distress as we took her to the hospital. I drove and Steve took care of Ms. Reichert. He kept her talking to try to prevent her from getting too excited and to keep her mind off of her problem. After we arrived, Steve told me that Ms. Reichert had recounted her sad life story in the back of the ambulance as the effects of the Mace wore off. Apparently she had not only medical but family problems. She had recently lost her parents, had a sister in California that she never saw and felt all alone. Steve advised the ED staff at the hospital that this woman might be depressed. The ED was very good at treating the immediate physical injuries, but Steve was concerned that they might miss the psychological ones.

      The next evening we got a call that came in as “California woman requests ambulance for her sister.” The address was the same fifth-floor apartment of Ms. Reichert. When we got to the apartment, the door was locked and there was no answer when we pounded on the door. Steve and I employed an old ambulance trick to get in—we made enough noise in the halls for the neighbors to complain. We told the neighbors to call the building superintendent to bring the keys to let us into the apartment. While waiting, I had a bit of a brainstorm and knocked

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