Sugar

After the hospital pronounced the jumper, we got cleaned up — wiped down the blood, restocked, shook the snow out of our jackets — and went back in service.

It didn’t take long.

Within minutes, dispatch sent us another call. “Sick person.” Woman in her 20s, up in the projects again. Pretty much our whole shift was up there that night.

It’s funny — places like Trenton, where I’ve also worked, are just pure chaos, but there aren’t a lot of resources. In New York, it’s a different kind of madness. It’s louder, bigger, but you’ve got police, fire, EMS — dozens of people show up on every call. In some ways, it feels overwhelming. In others, you feel like you’ve got backup everywhere you turn.

This call wasn’t dramatic. The woman was in diabetic ketoacidosis. She needed help, but it was straightforward. We got her to the hospital without incident.

We were driving back, just starting to thaw out, when a guy flagged us down from the side of the road. Shivering, out of breath.

“I’m having chest pains,” he gasped.

We pulled over, and I motioned him into the rig. It’s easy to get jaded in EMS, to write people off based on the surface — drunk, junkie, psych call. But a junkie can have a real heart attack. An anxious person can be dying. You can’t afford to assume.

I asked him how long he’d been feeling the pain.

He coughed, breathless. “Well, I had my last bump of coke about an hour ago.”

Okay. Good to know.

We got him inside. A medic unit pulled up. They hooked him up to a 12-lead EKG, checked him over. Heart looked fine. After about twenty minutes, they cleared him.

But during those twenty minutes, while we sat together, I listened. He talked. I remembered every detail. Near the end, I referenced something he’d told me earlier, a small thing.

He looked surprised. “You remembered that?”

I smiled. “You’re my whole world right now.”

That’s how I try to treat every patient, no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done. For twenty minutes, thirty minutes — however long we’re together — they’re it. And sometimes you don’t realize how badly someone needs to feel like they matter, even for that long.

We cleared him with a refusal, got back on the road.

The next call came in around 4 a.m.

Altered mental status. Man in his 60s.

Another project building. Another cramped apartment.

We buzzed up. An elderly woman let us in — house dress, hair pinned up, frying fish on the stove like it was lunchtime. She didn’t speak English. Wasn’t panicked. Just pointed to the bathroom.

Two cops were with us. The bathroom door was locked. We could hear groaning from inside.

“We’ll wait for fire to come pop the door,” one of the cops said.

I was feeling a little cocky at this point. I looked at him and grinned. “Don’t you have kids, man?”

I pulled out my Leatherman, jammed the screwdriver into the knob, and popped it open.

The door only opened a few inches. The guy had collapsed against it.

I squeezed through the crack and pulled the door closed behind me.

Instantly, I realized I was in the smallest bathroom I have ever seen. Four feet by four feet, maybe. Barely enough room to stand.

On the floor, completely naked and soaking wet, was the patient — curled into the fetal position, smiling faintly up at me.

I knelt beside him, asking questions. He answered, but mostly with yeses and nos, not really coherent. I asked if he was hurt. No. If he had any medical conditions. No.

Meanwhile, I was trapped in there with him — no gear, no room, no help. I had them pass my equipment in through the narrow crack of the door.

Vitals: blood pressure okay, heart rate okay, breathing okay.

But something wasn’t right.

Finally, my partner Megan got up to the apartment with the stretcher. We got the blood glucose meter through the door.

Fingerstick: 37.

Way too low.

I pulled out oral glucose and coached him through it, squeezing it into his mouth. He sucked it down, smiling like we were sharing a milkshake.

We got him up — had to practically bear-hug him off the ground, which, in that tiny wet bathroom, was… closer contact than I would’ve preferred. Got him onto the stretcher, wrapped him up, and maneuvered out of the apartment.

In the ambulance, I rechecked his sugar.

20.

That’s when my stomach dropped.

Blood sugar that low isn’t just dangerous — it’s lethal. I gave him another full dose of oral glucose, but I knew it probably wasn’t going to be enough.

I leaned in close, made sure he could see me.

“You’re probably going to lose consciousness,” I told him. “But you are safe. We’re right here with you.”

He looked at me, really looked at me, like he understood.

We raced to the hospital.

As soon as we rolled into the ER, the team swarmed him. I shouted the numbers — blood sugar dropped from 37 to 20 even after treatment.

The attending doctor looked at me and laughed grimly. “Oh, it’s Mr. So-and-So. Diabetes, Parkinson’s, a bunch of other stuff.”

Of course he had a medical history. He just didn’t — or couldn’t — tell me.

They slammed an EJ line into his neck, flooded him with D50 sugar solution. Worked on him hard.

We stood there for a moment, watching. Knowing he was in good hands now.

Then we turned around, back into the snow, back into the night.

That was the last call of the shift.