The Wildest Night

December 16, 2020

The storm had already started when FDNY activated Central Park Medical Unit under Mutual Aid. That night, I was riding with Megan, a seasoned EMT, and Dylan, who was just seventeen and already sharper than most adults I knew. We were working Bus 9, responding directly to FDNY calls — our rig, our uniforms, but part of the city’s system.

We hadn’t been on more than ten minutes when dispatch hit us with our first call: “Sick child.” Then, mid-response, a reroute.

“Jumper down.”

We were only seven blocks away. We pulled up fast. Heavy snow was coming down, muting everything. One cop was there already, family members screaming and pointing, and he just said, “He’s up there,” nodding toward the scaffolding attached to a 10- or 11-story building.

I grabbed the AED — just that, for some reason — and started climbing. My leg snagged on barbed wire that was strung alongside the scaffolding. I felt the rip but didn’t care. Not then. My brain was already elsewhere.

At the top, another cop. And the kid.

He was 19, facedown, slumped against the wall of the scaffold. Not mangled. Not bloodied. Just still.

I remember pausing — not long. Half a second maybe. Just long enough to register the impossible. His body looked young. Strong. He looked like a person who had once had plans.

What I felt in that moment wasn’t fear. It was weight. Like the moment pushed down on my chest before I ever started compressions.

“Want me to cut the shirt?” the cop asked.

I nodded, knees already dropping to the cold steel deck.

He sliced the fabric open.

I placed my hands and started CPR.

This was the first time I had done compressions in a traumatic arrest. I knew the protocol. I knew the odds. But when you push down on someone who’s just fallen ten stories and feel their chest break, it changes the way you think about “knowing” anything.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

I remember hearing the sounds and registering them like feedback from a broken machine. Then came the blood — from his nose, from his ears.

I kept going.

Thirty compressions. I paused, instinctively blew into the air — not into him. I had no BVM, no mask. But muscle memory runs deep.

I shouted to the cop: “I need a BVM!”

He leaned over the edge and yelled down: “We need a DVD up here!”

I almost smiled. Almost. But I couldn’t stop. My arms burned. My back screamed. I ignored them.

Six minutes, maybe more, before help came.

Then FDNY was there — ladder up, medics climbing. Megan and Dylan arrived.

Still, I didn’t stop.

One of the medics dropped in an OPA. Another got a BVM on him.

“You’re doing great,” one of them said. “Keep going.”

Finally, a Stokes basket arrived. We rolled him in. Lowered him down.

As I climbed back down, a young woman — his sister, I think — ran toward me in the snow, hysterical.

“Is he breathing?! Is he breathing?!”

There’s a moment in EMS where everything slows. Where words feel like decisions.

We’re trained not to lie. Not to soften. Ambiguity doesn’t help.

So I looked her in the eye and said, “Right now, we’re breathing for him. And we’re pumping his heart for him.”

She grabbed my arm, like her legs might give out. I felt the tremble in her hand on my jacket.

But I couldn’t stop. I had to keep moving.

We loaded him into the rig. I resumed compressions. The medics set up to intubate. I prepped suction — his airway was full of blood.

Then we hit a wall.

Nobody had the keys.

Megan hadn’t made it into the ambulance yet — she was still making her way down from the scaffold. The FDNY medic snapped: “Are we gonna code this kid right here, or are we fucking going?”

Right then, the president of CPMU pulled up. He’d been listening on the radio.

“Can you drive?” he asked.

“I don’t have the keys,” I said.

He ran to find Megan. She jumped in seconds later. We were moving.

Still compressing, I stayed on his chest through the entire ride.

We rolled into the trauma bay like a scene out of TV, but in real life, there’s no dramatic music. Just bright lights, hard floors, and hands moving fast.

“CPR for ten minutes,” the medic reported.

“No,” I said. “Twenty.”

He turned to me, wide-eyed. “Twenty? Oh… shit.”

The trauma team went to work. A med student asked the attending why they were still trying.

The doctor didn’t miss a beat: “His family is right outside. We need to be able to say we did everything.”

Fifteen minutes later, they called it.

I stepped out into the snow.

Everything felt still. Quiet. My whole body was vibrating. Not with emotion. With adrenaline. It felt like being underwater, but hot and sharp at the same time.

They wheeled out our backboard. Covered in blood.

We wiped it down in silence. My gloves were soaked.

The squad president came over. “You okay?” he asked, noticing the tear in my pants.

“I’m good,” I said. “Still got a night ahead of us.”

Dylan was up front, filling out the chart. I checked in.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “A friend of mine… same age… took his life last year,” he said. “So it’s sitting with me. But I’m okay.”

Before we left, the FDNY medic came over.

“What’s your name?”

I froze for a second. Thought I’d done something wrong.

“I’m putting you in for a commendation,” he said. “You were incredible tonight.”

We looked at each other for a second, and then I turned back toward the rig.

We still had work to do.