LEARNING LESSONS OF LIFE & DEATH ON THE JOB
Just two weeks on the job, I get called to a job where two kids were playing chicken with a train on the railroad tracks in Queens. They both lost.
Paramedic Luis Lopez has made a lot of saves during his 23 years with the department both above and below ground.
The ones underground, in transit, can be hard to shake off, he said.
“Every now and again we get called in because someone got inebriated on the train, took a wrong step and the next thing you know they’re caught between train cars, or under a train or between a train and the platform,” said Lopez, 48.
Sometimes, they are still alive.
“It’s the worst when they are so badly hurt,” the Queens paramedic said. “You have to deal with them as best as possible, for the most part just bring them to the hospital alive.”
“This lady opens this door, starts cursing, and threw an entire microwave at us.”
PARAMEDIC LT. PATRICIA LUC (AT RIGHT)
In her 13-year career responding to emergency calls in Springfield Gardens, paramedic Natasha Howard has experienced triumph and tragedy. Yet nothing prepared her for the coronavirus pandemic.
“You had no idea what was next, it was the scariest,” Howard, 35, said. “There was a lot of anxiety and at the beginning, so much was not known.”
Howard and her partner didn’t know what the next COVID call would bring, nor if they were fully protected from getting the virus themselves.
The calls kept coming. “We would get like 10 calls a day for people needing help,” she said. “There wasn’t a second to breathe. It was a very trying time.”
Then it seemed overnight, the calls starting dropping off.
“It was weird and kind of eerie,” she said. “We went from 12 or more calls a day to no one is calling anymore.”
“We saw so much death in between. When the calls stopped, it was almost like everyone died,” she said.
As an admitted adrenaline junkie, paramedic Lt. Patricia Luc felt she was ready for anything when she joined EMS.
But there were a handful of jobs that forced her to take a step back — sometimes for her own safety.
“This lady opens this door, starts cursing, and threw an entire microwave at us,” Luc (photo), 37, recounted about the time she and her partner responded to a call of emotionally disturbed person in Astoria, Queens. “We all cleared and nobody got hit, but it shows some of the dangers no one else is dealing with.”
The most moving day of her career had nothing to do with a 911 call.
The Queens paramedic was waiting on line at a bodega when she realized a young woman was staring at her.
“I was like, ‘Oh, God, what now?’ ” she said she thought.
After a few seconds, she said the young woman asked: “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Sorry, love,” Luc responded. “I don’t remember.”
“A few years ago my grandmother was very sick and you brought her back,” she replied. “I just wanted to say thank you.”
“That made me feel good,” Luc said. “It makes you want to continue on.”