Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Alex Teach
Wednesday, 27 August 2008 20:31
One night in the life of a man in blue

The biggest problem with wearing black boots to work is that you can’t always see the blood on them until after you’ve already gotten home and tracked it across your carpet. I’m not talking about a perfect “Bigfoot imprint” cast across white Berber, the print you envision a pre-murder- trial Robert Blake pointing a pen at on a 1977 Baretta rerun, but rather the telltale outlines of your 11-wide here and there as you get from the entry to wherever you shed your polyester and brass at the end of a long day, evening, or night.

The blood itself is a different story altogether. It’s the same whether you are coming to on a strange couch or getting off work and discovering it after the fact, because it always warrants the same question: Is it yours or someone else’s? And if it’s someone else’s, how?

In this case, it was probably from the night before. A very, very drunk man had, for reasons yet known, decided to choke his very, very drunk brother. For about 30 minutes or so. Whatever the source of the aggression, I only knew that I was made aware of it while trying to get to work, and I took the appropriate detour to intervene in the night’s activities.

I arrived as fellow officers were already on the porch of the house separating them and calling for an ambulance. It was dark but still warm outside, and my body armor was driving me crazy with chafing and heat as I walked towards the house. The aggressor already in-hand, I focused on the victim and ensured his breath rasped rather than ceased. After the usual eternity, an ambulance arrived and he was carried to a stretcher that was shoved into the ambulance with all the grace of crushing a soda can, and the real professionals went to work.

Our patient was delirious and struggling, and we worked to secure him to the stretcher while a young EMT tried to get an IV started to administer fluids and sweet, sweet sedatives. As a paramedic took charge of his right arm, I used both hands to pull the man’s left wrist straight for the EMT, while another officer sat on his legs to restrain them. The sweaty, moving target was combative enough that the first attempt to get a vein left me holding my left hand up to shield a flow of blood from hitting my face and arms, and prompted the paramedic to take over and ultimately make the stick in the opposite arm one-handed, with use of his foot and an unsurprised face I’ve only seen before in combat veterans and the mentally shattered.

EMS supervisors arrived to assist and I crawled out of the ambulance, but had trouble getting the gloves off due to the slickness of the blood. I hadn’t even started my shift yet, when a call of a separate shooting came in from a half mile away. That victim ultimately declined an ambulance because “it wasn’t that bad,” and told me the robbery attempt that led to the shooting happened because of the recent revelation in the news that her house was a fencing operation for stolen goods, and that was part of the business.

I look to the sky from call to call because no matter what the time of day, it’s at least a constant. Sky, clouds, stars, or darkness…the sky is always there and the same. So dependable, so beautiful, it is constant in a world where nothing makes sense, and I love it for that.

I once stood on the porch of a house to pick up a man for a minor warrant, and was asked to wait while the man finished having sex with his sister, since he was going to jail and all. It seemed a reasonable request, before my senses returned and I added another crime to his pending offenses. It’s easy to fall into the absurdity of it all, but that was just one call from just one shift and you have to be careful about that.

I don’t sleep much. I’m OK: My body just doesn’t ever adapt to staying up all night and it ruins my circadian rhythms, according to my doctor. The dreams don’t help, but they are not the cause. They’re always lightning and wind, and screams, and I get sucked away, but I hardly sweat anymore and I get by…but it sure would be nice to sleep more often. I’m doing the right thing, and it makes a difference. And I’m here to tell about it.

I hope you wait to see.