“Are you fu*%ing blind? Can’t you see I have Sanskrit writing in my mouth?”

The call came in for “possible stabbing victim,” but it was in an elderly retirement community. Weird. Don’t see that every day, especially at two o’clock in the morning.

As we arrived at the scene, there were a couple of police cars with their lights on, in different areas of the road, looking for addresses with their spotlights. It was really dark out. As we pulled up, we parked the ambulance next to the curb, shut off our lights and got out. I asked my partner, “Did they give us an apartment number?” The retirement community had multiple apartment buildings surrounding a central outdoor grass space with trees. My partner asked on the radio, if we had anything further on the location. As I was listening for the response, I heard a yell come from the middle of the grassy area. It sounded like a deep, throaty, eery yell, kind of like Linda Blair’s demonic voice from the Exorcist. I yelled to the cops that I thought the guy was in the middle of the park, and started walking toward the yelling with my flashlight, scanning the park.

One of the cops caught up to me. I asked him what information they had on it. He said they had a report of someone breaking the glass entry door on one of the buildings, and then banging on doors in the building. “You should see the blood in the hallway. It’s smeared all the way down the hallway on the walls, like kids’ fingerpaints.”

We finally found where the yelling was coming from.

In the middle of the park, lying in the grass, was a young male with no shirt on, covered in tattoos and blood. He was lying on his back in the grass, the grass oily and dark with blood, a lot of blood. The man was yelling in the gravelly demonic voice, incomprehensibly. We walked up to him and leaned down to ask him what was going on. Someone’s flashlight glinted off of a metal object and I saw the knife, lying in the grass, inches from his hand.

I stepped on the man’s wrist, and kicked the knife away with my other foot, yelling to the officer to grab it. My partner grabbed the other wrist. I said to the guy, “I’m with the paramedics, man. What happened?” He lifted his head up from the ground. He was pale, and I could tell he had lost a lot of blood. He was covered in it and so were his jeans. It looked like most of it was coming from his groin area. With his head up, he opened his eyes wide and yelled something nonsensical. I told him we were here to help him and needed to know what happened.

I asked him again, “What happened, man?” He said, “The Devil has been talking to me for three days. He told me to kill myself.” I asked, “You did this to yourself?” He picked his head up again and yelled, wide-eyed, “I told you, motherfu*%er, demons are in my apartment! They have been talking to me.” I asked him what he did to himself and he told me he “…buried the knife in my groin on both sides,” which, it turned out, described his injuries accurately. Knowing we would be starting IV’s on the guy, my partner and I each put a tourniquet on the arm closest to us to try to get his veins to pop up enough for us to see. This guy was bleeding to death and we needed to keep his blood pressure up and stop the bleeding. I threw a roll of gauze to one of the cops, who had latex gloves on, and asked him to put pressure on the side that was bleeding the most.

My partner, who had left to get the stretcher and was heading back with it. we picked the guy up and put him on the stretcher, buckled him down, and headed back to the ambulance. My partner had set up a couple of IV’s for me and asked me if I needed anything else. I told him, “Let’s go. I can get it done on the way to the trauma center.” A police officer rode in with us, as is common with violent crime scenes, to try to get some information from the guy before he possibly died from his injuries.

I was sitting in the seat at the head of the stretcher looking at the guy from his head down to his feet. The officer was holding pressure on both of the wounds while I started one IV in the guy’s right forearm and then started a second one in the left External Jugular vein of his neck.

The officer was trying to talk to the guy, who was intermittently somnolent and manic. The officer asked him if he had tried to hurt anyone else, to which there was no reply. I asked him again, for the officer, “Hey man,” shaking him a bit to try to get him to stay awake, “Did you try to hurt anyone else?” The man opened his eyes wide again and yelled, “The Devil’s been telling me to kill myself for two days! I’ve been reading scrolls by candlelight! I have demons inside me.”

I made a quick phone call to the trauma center to tell them we were coming. I hung up the phone and asked the guy if he had any medical problems, still sitting at the head of the stretcher. Again, I had to shake him a bit to get him to respond, and when he did, he yelled “I have demons inside me! Are you fu*%ing blind? Can’t you see I have Sanskrit writing in my mouth?!”

“I have demons inside me! Are you fu*%ing blind? Can’t you see I have Sanskrit writing in my mouth?!”

I just had to look, even though I wasn’t even the slightest bit sure I could recognize Sanskrit if I saw it.