Rescuing Providence: Part 1 - 0800 Hours Through 0840 Hours, a Book by Michael Morse

Monday, March 28, 2016

Michael Morse, Author

 

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I always thought that a day in the life of a Providence Firefighter assigned to the EMS division would make a great book. One day I decided to take notes. I used one of those little yellow Post it note pads and scribbled away for four days. The books Rescuing Providence and Rescue 1 Responding are the result of those early nearly indecipherable thoughts.

I’m glad I took the time to document what happens during a typical tour on an advanced life support rig in Rhode Island’s capitol city. Looking back, I can hardly believe I lived it. But I did, and now you can too. Many thanks to GoLocalProv.com for publishing the chapters of my books on a weekly basis from now until they are through. I hope that people come away from the experience with a better understanding of what their first responders do, who they are and how we do our best to hold it all together,

Enjoy the ride, and stay safe!

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Captain Michael Morse (ret.)

Providence Fire Department

The book is available at local bookstores and can be found HERE.

PART 1 

RESCUE LOG, LIEUTENANT MORSE 

WEDNESDAY, 0800 HOURS 

Minutes before it could ruin my morning tranquility, I disable my alarm clock, giving me a few more precious moments of peace. Beside me, my wife, Cheryl, lies sleeping, softly breathing. I’d been awake since 4:00, lying in the dark, alone with my thoughts. I couldn’t get the events from past week out of my mind. I had left the city exhausted, physically and emotionally drained after working 72 hours in four days. Since then I’ve had a few days off, and it is time to get back to work. I’d prefer to lie there forever, warm, safe, and happy, but I can’t. In an hour, it will be time to go. 

The city of Providence is home to about 180,000 people, but during the workweek that number swells to 350,000. On nights and weekends thousands more flood downtown for the clubs, theaters, and other activities. The city’s fire department consists of 500 members manning 15 engine companies, eight ladder trucks, and five rescues. Three battalion chiefs (fire prevention, training, communications), arson investigators, and administrative chiefs round out the department. We are the second-oldest paid fire department in the country, Cincinnati being first. For more than 150 years we have kept the city safe. Fourteen fire stations strategically placed throughout the city enable us to respond to most emergencies within minutes. 

Four different platoons ensure 24-hour, seven-day coverage at the least cost to the city. We work two 10-hour days followed by two 14-hour nights, 48 hours a week. When overtime is available, we work between shifts. Two groups work every day with the other two off. The schedule takes some getting used to, but once adjustments are made, the hours work out well. Working first, second, and third shifts eventually takes a toll, but it is manageable. 

I have managed to forget almost everything about last week, forcing the memories deep into my subconscious mind, where I hope they will stay forever. But some things refuse to stay buried. The kid who fell off the roof has to make room as another painful image crosses my mind. Lying safely in my bed, I let it in, close my eyes, and drift back to Broad Street. I remember a good- looking kid dying, a bullet hole in the middle of his chest and another in his abdomen. He was 15. The bravado that had helped him survive on the streets left him, snuffed out like the spark of life that faded in front of me. 

“I’m going to die,” he said to me, with resignation, not fear, in his voice

 I don’t like lying to people who I know will be dead in minutes because it doesn’t seem fair. It’s hypnotic in the back of a rescue when the fight for life is lost and resignation appears in the victims’ faces. I tell them to hang on, to keep fighting, but they know the truth. I can see it in their eyes. I am the last thing they see before leaving this earth forever. Going back to work to do it again is something I dread. 

My old station wagon waits for me in the driveway, windows covered with frost. Leaving my family inside the house, I get in and start her up. Having no time for the defroster to do the job, I drive while peering out of the tiny porthole I made by scraping the windshield. The world seems a small place when viewed from a moving vehicle through a tiny hole. I have a 15-minute commute to the station; the view should clear by then. 

The first traces of dawn touch the sky as I leave the suburbs and head toward the city. Some of the homes lining my street show signs of life as I pass. Lights in the little upstairs windows appear, soon to be frosted with steam from the shower. My windshield clears as I navigate the turns in the road that hugs upper Narragansett Bay. To my left sit homes of affluent families, their lawns glistening with frost. People are drawn to this area, seduced by the magnificent view. To my right, fog rolls in with the sunrise, creating a mystical illusion as reds and orange from the rising sun mix with the cool blue of the water and whiteness of the fog. I’ve heard that seals swim in these waters, though I have never seen one here. But every day that I travel this road I look, thinking today will be the day. Silhouettes of rocks that form the breakwater appear through the mist; I know that the seals are just beyond. 

Ten minutes from my home, about a mile past the water view, I enter another world. Providence’s skyline appears on the horizon, creating an impressive backdrop in the distance. Homes are mixed with businesses on the main street; the side streets are lined with tenement houses we call “triple deckers.” When I started my career with the fire department, a lot of these houses were vacant. Elderly people hanging on to memories of more prosperous times lived in some of the old homes; poor people with nowhere else to go filled a few others. Now, the area shows off the results of an improving economy. One by one the homes are being repaired and filled once again with people. A diverse community has sprouted here. Spanish and English are heard, sometimes a mixture of the two. What crime exists is underground and mostly out of sight. Families live here in relative safety, optimism having replaced the despair so prevalent years ago. 

The Port of Providence dominates the waterfront. Oil tankers make their way from the Atlantic down the Providence River to the tank farms. Metal recycling and other industry fill the shoreline. It is a popular dumping ground for stolen cars, and an occasional body will be discovered here as well.

Last Christmas morning I had responded to the area for a “man down” and found a 20-year old with a bullet in his head. His lifeless eyes stared blankly, not seeing the bleak landscape, his skin the same gray as the frozen pavement he had died on. The security guard who found the body was shaking, maybe from the cold, maybe not. We looked at the corpse for a while, our breaths more rapid than usual, frozen mist as we exhaled the only movement on the deserted street. 

“Rescue 1, will the police be needed?” My radio cracked and interrupted the spell.

 “Roger, this is a crime scene with a DOA.” 

“Message received; police are on the way.” 

“Rescue 1 in service, and Merry Christmas.” 

I put the mike back into its clip, got in the rescue, and waited for the police as the security guard stood over the body, lost in his own thoughts, my hopes for a quiet Christmas morning with my second family shattered.

The dead guy was a street hustler, fond of preying on gay men, charging them for his favors and then sometimes beating and robbing them. The police are still sorting out the circumstances surrounding his murder. My guess is that he robbed the wrong guy and ended up on the wrong end of the gun that put a hole in his head. 

A few blocks from the fire station, high school students wait for the bus by the side of the road. I am enjoying my morning and the peace it brings, but I know the kids do not. It seems like yesterday that I was in their place, dreading the early mornings and wondering why school started so early. Though we live in a different world and time, we share the same hopes and dreams. Adolescent frustration feels the same now as it did then, whether growing up in the suburbs in the 1970s or in the city today.

 I see flashing lights in front of my destination. Rescue 1 is on the ramp. I hope that it was coming back from a run, not going out. The relief on Vinny’s face as I pull in tells me all I need to know: they are going. Another day begins.

WEDNESDAY, 0657 HOURS

 HEAD INJURY 

“The truck’s all set,” says Vinny. 

“How was your week?” I ask. 

“What do you mean?” he replies.

 Vinny, the captain of Rescue 1, is a 15-year veteran. I’ve never gotten a straight answer from him, but I always try. I’m sure that he worked a lot of overtime this week, but he never complains, just keeps plugging along. He is my age, 42, but looks much older. 

“Where are we going?” I ask him. 

“50 Prairie Avenue for a terrible tragedy; everybody’s waiting for you, hurry,” he responds in a deadpan voice.

 I know that Vinny is as exhausted as I was when he relieved me four days ago. He opens the door and gets out, and I get in. He hands me the portable radio. The torch has been passed. 

Mike is behind the wheel, grinning. 

“Rescue 1, are you responding?” 

“Rescue 1 on the way,” I say into the mike.

 “Rescue 1 and Engine 3 responding at 0657 hours.” 

The cab of the rescue, a 2003 Ford F-350 diesel-powered workhorse, looks exactly the same as it did four days ago. The “wharf rat” sits on the dash, ever vigilant. He has been in the same spot for years, his plastic tail stuffed into a crack in the plastic. If rats could talk, the stories this one could tell.

 I adjust my seat. Vinny likes to move the seat forward and recline the back as far as it will go. I prefer to sit as straight as possible. Lingering body odor wafts from the back, invading our space. It smells like day-old shit and probably is. A lot of our patients live on the street and are more worried about survival than hygiene. Considering the amount of work the truck does, it is remarkably well kept, a testament to the work ethic of the people assigned here. 

A lot happens in this truck. Lives are lost, futures altered, hope abandoned and then reborn. Time relentlessly marches forward, oblivious to the fact that some of the people who enter Rescue 1 are changed forever. We go into people’s homes and take them away, sometimes for months while they recuperate from whatever ails them. If they are fortunate, they return home to find that time stopped for them while the rest of the world kept moving. They tear off the calendar’s pages, stopping when they reach the present day. Some never return, instead either put in the grave or moved to a nursing facility. Family members are reminded how fragile our existence and tenuous our grasp on life are when they clean out their loved ones’ homes and see evidence of the final days. Newspapers, phone messages and mail, sometimes months old, bear the date of the accident or illness, serving as a grim reminder of the day when for them time stood still. 

I don’t expect a “terrible tragedy” at our destination. Years of working with Vinny have made me aware of his ways. If this truly were a life-threatening emergency, he wouldn’t have waited for me. Between true emergencies we transport a lot of nonemergency patients. People’s ideas differ about what an “emergency needing a fire department response” is. 

Sirens fill the morning air and flashing lights mix with the colors of the rising sun, bouncing off buildings and reflecting off glass, as we make our way to our patient through the back streets and light early morning traffic. Fifty Prairie Avenue is a high-rise building with six floors and about 200 apartments. Most of the residents are elderly people on fixed incomes.

 “How were your days off?” I ask Mike. He is relatively new to the job, three years, but has an unusual knack for the work we do. 

“Henry’s birthday party was a huge success,” he says. 

“Was the house ready in time?”

“Sixty people were there and not a single complaint.” 

“How did Amy handle it?” “She did all right, got a little tired toward the end though. I’m glad Sammy slept through the whole thing. He’s more work at a month old than Henry is at 2 years.”

 We ride to our destination in comfortable silence. I see more of Mike than I do my wife.

 Mike steers the rescue into the parking lot of the high rise and parks behind Engine 3. We get the stretcher from the back of the rig and head for the elevator. A minute later we are inside our patient’s apartment. She is an elderly woman, sitting in her wellkept kitchen on a chair, shaking. Spices and pans sit neatly on the kitchen counter waiting to be put to use. Magnets secure pictures of her smiling grandchildren on the front of an old Westinghouse refrigerator, cheering up the old appliance. Blood spatters the kitchen floor. She is conscious and alert, with some swelling around her eyes and a bloody nose. 

“What happened?” I ask, crouching to her eye level. “I was walking into the kitchen and fell flat on my face,” she responds. 

“Did you feel dizzy and faint or just trip?” 

“My feet got all tangled up, and I fell flat on my face!” We put a cervical collar around her neck and have her lie flat on a long backboard, keeping her neck and back aligned, and put her on our stretcher. I have her pinch her nose and give her a towel to control the bleeding. Mike assesses the woman’s vital signs, and we make our way to the elevator to the rescue.

 The crew of Engine 3 assists us as we load the patient into the truck. I notice that Donna is not with them. While helping load a motor vehicle accident victim into the rescue a few weeks ago, she heard and felt a “pop” in her sternum area. Further tests indicated the presence of a growth behind the breastbone. She is a great kid, one of the few women in the department, and she is very well liked throughout the job. We deal with sick people all day long with detached efficiency, but when it’s one of us, the reality of our vulnerability hits home. This job has a way of making us feel invincible, untouched by the sickness and suffering that surround us daily. It seems inconceivable that one of our own may have succumbed to something only “other” people have to deal with. I hope she is all right. 

“Blood pressure 124/78, pulse 80, and her glucose level is 124. It looks like you’re going to live forever with those vitals,” Mike says to the woman before leaving the back of the truck to drive. I stay in the back with her. She doesn’t seem the talkative type, so I respect her wishes as we make the two-minute ride in silence. The radio is tuned to the local rock station, Led Zeppelin blending perfectly with the siren and providing a nice background for our short journey. 

The hospital is in the middle of a major expansion, and the temporary rescue entrance is right next to the construction site. I can only imagine what the patients think as we wheel them past the work crew. I don’t notice the chaos anymore. 

Rhode Island Hospital is Southern New England’s designated Level 1 trauma center. It has been treating people on the grounds since 1863. It serves as the major teaching hospital for Brown University’s medical school and more than 6,000 people work there. In 2004, 114,888 patients sought treatment in its emergency room, making it one of the busiest in the country. 

The sweet smell of fresh vomit mingled with antiseptic greets us. Ron, today’s triage registered nurse (RN), is at the desk. Rhode Island is a small place, and everybody seems connected somehow. My brother and Ron were members of the 1207th transportation unit of the Rhode Island National Guard until Ron retired. With the war in Iraq raging and no end in sight, we have a lot to talk about. The 1207th was deployed last January. Ron had gotten out by then but still often inquires about his old army friends. However, the emergency room (ER) is too busy for small talk today. I give a detailed description of my patient’s chief complaint, medical history, prescriptions, and allergies. Ron signs the state report, and the patient belongs to him. 

On the way out of the ER I stop and talk to Domingo, one of the security guards. Emergency rooms in the city can be wild, and Rhode Island Hospital is no different. Six guards are always on duty. They all look competent, are large, and act professionally. 

“Mike! You doin’ OK this morning?”

 “Fine, Domingo. How’s your daughter?” I ask.

 “Five years old and the smartest one in her school. You know that she goin’ to be president one day?” 

“I hope she runs as a Republican.” 

“Don’ even say that,” Domingo replies in mock outrage. 

“When she is president, we be eatin’ losster every day!” He pronounces lobster without the “B,” so it sounds funny. Every time he says it, I laugh out loud.

 “A losster in every pot!” I proclaim and walk back to the truck. Mike is waiting, truck cleaned, the cervical collar restocked, and everything ready to go.

 Mike stops the truck in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts shop on Eddy Street and asks, “What do you want? I’m buying.” 

“Large coffee, just milk. Thanks.”

 “You coming in?” 

“Not this time.”

 “All right, see you in a few.” 

He heads into the donut shop, and I take my cell phone out of my top pocket and call Cheryl. I left home only a little while ago, but I like to call from work to say good morning. For 14 of our 20 years together I’ve been a firefighter. The long hours make it hard to keep a relationship fresh, but we do a pretty good job of it. She answers after a few rings. I could tell by the husky tone of her voice I had called too early. 

“Hey, babe, did I wake you up?” I ask. 

“No, I was sleeping anyway,” she answers. Still fresh. 

“Sorry. I’m probably working tonight; there’s an opening at Rescue 3.”

“Call me later.” 

“Love you, bye.” 

“Love you too.” 

I click off the phone as Mike walks back to the rescue; each hand holds a large coffee, and a bag dangles between his teeth. The bag probably has a breakfast croissant with cheese and sausage. I don’t know where he puts it. He doesn’t carry an ounce of extra fat on his 5 foot, 10 inch frame.

 The traditional uniform is a light blue, collared shirt with dark blue work pants. A white, yellow, black, and red patch with the words “Providence Fire Department” around the sides and the slogan “In omnia paratus” (In all things, prepared) in the middle adorns the left sleeve. A black belt and black shoes complete the uniform. We don’t wear a badge because we don’t want to be confused with the police. A few crew members have been issued black polo shirts to wear on a trial basis. Mike is wearing one today. 

“That shirt looks stupid,” I say. 

“Oh, man, what are you talking about? This is the future.” 

“Then the future looks stupid too. Thanks for the coffee; I’ll get you later.” 

The new shirts are a hit with most of the guys. Call me oldfashioned, but I prefer the more formal look of a button-down collar. A polo shirt belongs on the golf course. I key the mike on the truck radio, “Rescue 1 is in service.” 

We are at the mercy of the dispatchers. Before we make it back to the station, the truck radio comes to life.

0840 HOURS OVERDOSE

 “Rescue 1 and Engine 9, a still alarm.” 

When somebody picks up the phone and calls the fire department, it is called a still alarm. A box alarm means a mechanized alarm has been activated; a still box usually indicates there is a fire.

 “Rescue 1 and Engine 9, respond to the corner of Wickenden and Benefit Streets in a silver Saab for a possible overdose.”

 “Rescue 1 on the way,” I say into the mike. 

We head toward the East Side, about four miles from Allen’s Avenue. Rescue 5 from the North Main Street Station should have been first due there, but they must have been on another call. When one rescue is busy, the next closest one is called. Sometimes things get crazy, and the closest rescue is three towns away.

 The East Side of Providence has a distinct personality, different from the rest of the city in a lot of ways—money, and lots of it, being the biggest. Brown University dominates the area. Many of the historic homes that line the residential streets are owned by the university and rented to students, professors, and support staff. While contributing greatly to the city’s cultural and academic status, the college contributes next to nothing to the tax base. 

We drive over the Point Street Bridge toward Wickenden Street. Engine 9 is already there, and no silver Saab is in sight. The officer in charge of Engine 9 signals with a shrug of his shoulders, the universal communication. This happens a lot. Somebody takes too many drugs, overdoses, and becomes unresponsive; his or her friends panic, call for help, and then realize the trouble they have brought on themselves and drive away, hoping the problem goes away. Sometimes it does, sometimes not. I have found numerous addicts dead where their friends left them. 

I inform the dispatchers through a radio transmission, “Rescue 1 to fire alarm, nobody on scene at Benefit and Wickenden; we’re going to look around the area.” 

We drive up Wickenden and find the street full of people even at this early hour. Antique shops display their wares in store windows, restaurants are filled with the breakfast crowd, and traffic has picked up. A homeless man stands at the end of a highway off ramp holding a sign proclaiming himself a “Homeless Vietnam Vet.” Some cars stop, and the occupants put something in the can he holds. (A few hours later he will cash in his earnings at a local package store. Later still one of the city’s rescues will respond to the area to help a man found lying in the street. They will find the “Homeless Vietnam Vet” drunk and hostile and take him to an emergency room for treatment.)

 The air is crisp. Early spring in New England doesn’t offer much relief from winter’s grasp; yet after months of bitter cold, a 45-degree, sun-filled morning fills the most jaded pessimist with the hope of warmth. A brave few drink their coffee while sitting at sidewalk tables the coffee shops provide, warming their hands with steam rising from their cups. As the temperature rises, the tables will fill.

 On the way back to the station I spot a silver Saab stopped in an intersection. The passenger seat occupant is facing backward, kneeling on the seat and leaning into the back. His pants have drooped, exposing half of his ass.

 “Mike, look, someone is smiling at you!” I say, pointing at the car. He spots the buttocks.

 Grinning, he says, “I thought the moon was gone for the day.”

 The car pulls behind us, horn blaring as we make our way onto the Point Street Bridge. I bring the radio to life. 

“Rescue 1 to fire alarm, we have the overdose. Have Engine 9 meet us at Point and Richmond.” 

“Engine 9 received.” 

The car follows us over the bridge and into a parking lot at Point and Richmond. I get out and walk to the car. I see a man leaning over the front seat; his pants, worn gangsta’ style, have slipped to his knees. He is trying to help a young girl in the back. She is barely breathing, her skin ashen. 

“What’s going on?” I ask the driver. I pull on some rubber gloves, the pale purple, latex-free material stretching over my hands, giving me minimal protection should I be exposed to bodily fluids. Slowly, the rest of the crew follow suit.

 “I don’t know; she just stopped breathing,” he responds.

“Heroin?” 

“Yeah.” 

The man is reluctant to admit to illegal drug use but sees the seriousness of the situation. The girl in the back of the car is in respiratory distress. She has overdosed and will die in minutes without intervention. With help from the three members of Engine 9, we pull the unconscious girl from the rear of the Saab and into the back of the rescue. As soon as we are done, I see the silver Saab speed away.

 I know that the other firefighters have been through this ritual numerous times, and I imagine the victim has as well. Without a word from me, the crew members place the girl on high-flow oxygen, and a firefighter assists ventilations with a device called a bag-valve mask. They assess her vital signs and start an IV. While the crew do their thing, I draw up some Narcan, which counteracts the effects of narcotics. It is our most-used drug. 

“Pulsox 82 percent, blood pressure 60/40, respiration’s 6; she’s in respiratory arrest,” says Mike. The syringe is ready.

 “Watch out,” I say to the guys. Sometimes an overdose patient vomits violently when he or she regains consciousness. Narcan gives instant withdrawal. 

I pinch off the line, push the drug, and then flush. The medication is on the way. The five of us sit back and wait. Slowly her color returns, and she begins breathing on her own. 

“You are in a rescue with the fire department,” I tell her as she wakes up. Her look of confusion turns into anger as she realizes what is going on. 

“What happened? Where are my friends?” she asks. 

Mark, one of the firefighters from Engine 9, lets her have it.

 “You and your asshole junkie friends were shooting some shit, you did too much, and they left you for dead. If we hadn’t come along when we did, instead of you asking us what’s going on, the medical examiner would be cutting open your chest looking for the cause of death. Have a nice day.”

With that rebuke, the crew of Engine 9 leaves the truck and takes off. 

I usually don’t get mad at the drug-addicted patients we care for. I understand addiction. The girl in my care is a living, breathing 26-year-old. One wrong turn, and she would have been dead in the back of an old Saab. She looks as though she has lived a tough life; her skin is pale and blotched, her hair damaged by too many treatments. She may have been pretty at one time and could be again. She is slightly overweight, not from living well, probably from abusing alcohol. If she continues on this path, the extra weight will slowly melt, and she will become haggard. For now, she has youth on her side. She is lucky; sometime we arrive too late—either the victim has taken too many drugs or it is just his or her time, and all we can do isn’t enough.

 Sometimes the overdose victims who didn’t make it reappear in my mind, their faces still and pale with the grip of death as we work on them, trying to squeeze more life out of their tired bodies. We do our best for them, breathe for them by filling their lungs with oxygen, pump their hearts for them, and fill their veins with drugs to counteract the poison they’ve ingested. Their peaceful ride that started with a little heroin and turned drastically wrong ends in our truck, and they never know it. Sometimes they make it back, sometimes not. 

I look at the girl sitting on the stretcher in the back of my truck and marvel at the miracle of life. I am quietly thankful I don’t have to add her face to the others that haunt my memories. 

“How are you feeling?” I ask. 

“Like an idiot. What happened to me?” 

“You were with some friends. They say you overdosed on heroin.” 

“I’d been clean for two and a half months. I hurt my back at work and got a prescription for Vicodin. I guess that was a big mistake,” she says.

 “You are lucky; you could have died. Almost did actually. Don’t give up on yourself; sometimes something like this can be what you need to keep you from having another relapse.” 

“It’s so hard.” 

“I know.” 

She is back to normal for now, but the Narcan has a short life and will be out of her system soon. We transport her to the ER for observation since there is a chance that she could go back into respiratory arrest. After checking her in at the triage desk, I go back to the treatment area to wash my hands. Two sinks located at the center of the room offer a great vantage point while washing. Patients fill the twenty 10 x 6–foot treatment areas, separated only by curtains. Doctors and nurses converge in the middle of the room, with the treatment areas circling the perimeter. The patients have nothing to do while waiting to be treated, so the center of the room becomes something of a stage, with the doctors and nurses— and sometimes rescue guys—providing entertainment for the bored audience. 

There is not an overabundance of privacy in the ER. While drying my hands, I see another addict waving at me. I brought her here last week because she was complaining of abdominal pain. She was living in a halfway house and working for the Salvation Army. While at work she called for a rescue because of her pain. While we were transporting her, she told me that she had been clean for six months and her life was really going well. She needed to get to the hospital because her stomach hurt so badly that she needed painkillers. I tried to talk her out of her plan, knowing that she was fooling herself into thinking that a few harmless prescription painkillers wouldn’t set her back. Apparently, my talk hadn’t done much good. Now she tells me that she is here because she overdosed on heroin yesterday and got kicked out of her treatment program. Hands clean, I head back to the truck. 

Mike and I make our way back to the station to catch up on things. Usually not much happens on our days off, but if anything out of the ordinary does occur, there will be a heated discussion about it at the firehouse. The topics include women, fires, promotions, transfers, bad meals, mistakes made, bad haircuts, sports played or watched—anything can come up and be fuel for discussion for days. I was told early in my career that there are three foolproof ways to communicate in this world: telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-fireman. 

The Allen’s Avenue Station is located within blow-up distance of the area’s fuel tank farms. Any problems resulting in an explosion will render us useless, as it is difficult to fight fire and rescue people while in the form of ashes. The station is a brick building with three floors. 

Mike pulls the truck onto the ramp, hits the button on the overhead door opener, and backs the truck onto the apparatus floor. I see that Engine 13 is not in the building. I hope they are in the neighborhood shopping for lunch. Between box alarms, fires, station and truck maintenance, and rescue runs, we firefighters shop for and cook our own meals. When things get too busy, there is always take-out, but we prefer to make our own. 

Mike stays on the apparatus floor to wash the truck, and I head to my office on the second floor to do the reports. My “office” is a 15 x 20-foot space crammed with a bunk, couch, recliner, two lockers, a desk, and a television stand. Most of the space is covered with dust. We are overdue for a good cleaning. The rest of the upper floor consists of Engine 13’s office, a luxurious space compared to the rescue room; the dorm, which the firefighters assigned to the engine share; the kitchen; and what we call the day room. The kitchen is functional at best, with a series of household stoves providing the means to prepare some elaborate meals. They only last a year or two before needing replacement. Firefighters are not known for their gentle methods. Our dishwasher also takes its share of abuse and needs repair or replacement often. The day room is the largest room on the upper floor. A wide-screen television dominates one corner, two recliners and a series of couches propped in front of it. The only pieces of furniture that the city provides are two long tables, each seating six people. The chairs that went along with the tables fell into disrepair in the 1950s, and we are waiting for replacements. In the meantime, we bring in stuff from home or pool our money and buy things. Every fire station in the city has a money fund which we call the “dinky.” A weekly assessment of a couple of bucks is all it takes. One person manages the finances and purchases. It is a good system based on honor and is seldom abused. 

Just as I make it to the top of the stairs, the tone hits. The tone is a relatively new addition to the station, having replaced the traditional fire bell. For years a loud bell would tip, and everybody’s heart would stop. The old bells are now coveted collector’s items worth thousands of dollars. They represent an era of firefighting long gone. At one time the city had fire stations in every neighborhood. Horses hauled the steamers to the fires with the firefighters riding along or running behind. When motorized trucks took over, more ground was covered in less time, and one by one the neighborhood stations were shut down and the men reassigned. 

Now, the stations are equipped with state-of-the-art public address (PA) systems. Each truck has its own tone so we know right away whose turn it is to hit the pole. The tone doesn’t shock your system like the traditional bell; it is designed to gently nudge your brain into action. My brain has endured a lot of nudging over the last few years. I hear a long uninterrupted tone—Rescue 1 is being called.

 

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Michael Morse lives in Warwick, RI with his wife, Cheryl, two Maine Coon cats, Lunabelle and Victoria Mae and Mr. Wilson, their dog. Daughters Danielle and Brittany and their families live nearby. Michael spent twenty-three years working in Providence, (RI) as a firefighter/EMT before retiring in 2013 as Captain, Rescue Co. 5. His books, Rescuing Providence, Rescue 1 Responding, Mr. Wilson Makes it Home and his latest, City Life offer a poignant glimpse into one person’s journey through life, work and hope for the future. Morse was awarded the prestigious Macoll-Johnson Fellowship from The Rhode Island Foundation.

 

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