This is a story within a story, an excerpt of experience that happened to occur on deployment in Newark, NJ in the height of the Covid19 pandemic.

“Whats the craziest call you’ve ever had?”

It’s the question. As soon as someone learns what I do for a living, that I work on an ambulance (and in a big city to boot), this question tumbles effortlessly out of almost every eager and curious face in the conversation. And for good reason, I guess: every first responder does indeed have at least one call they’ll remember forever, for better or worse. Even among us as professionals, it’s a type of get-to-know-each-other conversation starter: what’s the wildest call you’ve ever had? It hits different, knowing the person you’re talking to has also had their share of wild calls. When a civilian asks the question, it’s hard to tell what they really want.

Do they want the gore or the disgusting, the emotional depth, or the excitement? Do they want a story about lights and sirens and driving fast, the thrill of moving oncoming traffic out of the way, or do they want raw human connection- the kind that only happens in the heat of an emergency? Are they looking for entertainment, or do they have space to hear about a potentially traumatizing personal experience?

When I learned I was to be deployed for Covid19, one of eight EMTs from our local office heading to Newark, NJ to provide relief to first responders there, I was sure that the deployment itself would be my story. You know, the one I’d never forget- “the deployment” as a blanket and arching experience is what I’d tell people when they asked me about the craziest thing I’d ever seen from the seat of an ambulance. What I didn’t understand then, and that I know quite clearly now, is that the deployment itself would be full of stories. With coronavirus as a terrifying backdrop, I would still be experiencing the variety of the 911 experience in a new place. The “being chosen” of deployment, though excellent, was actually the least exciting part of the whole experience by the end.

Being deployed to Newark in the time of Covid19 reminded me of all that I have and all the more I wish I could have given, in how I wish the bounty of the aliveness in my body and in my family and friends could be shared. I realized on a deep and heartaching level the privilege I have in my safety of coming home, knowing no-one I live with is infected or sick, the security of calling 911 knowing someone would arrive in minutes. Serving on deployment made me so grateful for the ease of leaving. But Newark brought me as much joy as it did grief. I was surrounded by resilience too bright to ignore. The smiles and encouragement pouring endlessly out of my new home base at University Hospital EMS made it hard to leave. They are my family now, so it feels natural that there’s no other place I’d choose as the birthplace of one of the wildest and craziest calls of my budding career. What follows is my take on a tale of humility, anxiety, well trained professionalism and above all those things, an incredible pride of what cooperation and strong teamwork can look like under pressure.

‘The baby call’ took place on my second day, midway through making death pronouncement after death pronouncement. After finishing yet another, I walked back to the ambulance, took off my face shield, and felt the emotional exhaustion welling up. We had just pronounced our third death of the day. I breathed deeply the way I have to in order not to cry and made a long, low grumble as I exhaled to channel some of the rage that apparently comes with saying, out loud for the fifth time in two days, yes this new person I’m meeting for the first time is, indeed, dead. I sat down in the drivers seat of the rig hoping for a break and not really knowing what that could even be. I remember wondering if it was going to be this way for the next 12 days of my life. Wondering how people who’d been here for a whole week before me had made it this far. Wondering how the city of Newark, struggling with this for 6 weeks, had made it this far. Mark and I cleared from the call quietly. We were barely into the length of the day, beleaguered by the weight of the mammoth task at hand and the knowing that it might go on and on and on like this.

Back at the station, dispatch hailed us on the radio with a new assignment. We waited for the inevitable “cardiac arrest,” or the “breathing problem,” and my heart jumped into my throat when the call detailed a “breech birth in progress.” I clapped my hands together in surprise, and Mark and I both smiled. Though a breech birth (baby coming feet first) is never a comfortable prospect, especially in the field, the idea of new life coming into the world amid such dulling death brought warmth to my sad bones. I was trained as a birth doula years ago, and assisted two incredible women as they brought their babies Earth-side (not as an EMT in the field, but in more controlled birth center or home midwife experiences). So though I’m not a mom, I know firsthand the rush and joy and fantastic gift it is to behold new human life being born. At this point, as an aside, Mark and I had built confidence in each other as a working duo- we were good at anticipating each other on scene, and did our jobs well. Neither of us seemed intimidated at the potential of encountering a complicated birth in the field: humbled, yes, but not quite intimidated. It’s fair to say we were stoked, but more than anything, we were relieved just to have a call that wasn’t either death or explicitly Covid19.

En route, dispatch gave an update that Baby had been born and we arrive on scene a minute later to find our fellow EMT-only BLS partners’ ambulance already there, with the crew presumably inside. Mark and I begin the PPE ballet as quickly as possible. We both hop out of the ambulance to finish tying our gowns when Steve Silva, one of the EMTs of Newark UH EMS, rushes out of the building with a bundle (of Baby) in his arms. Mark looks at me and says “get back in the rig, we’re going right now.” I abandon my gown and mask, jump back into the drivers seat, and watch Steve hand off the baby to Mark. In the next sixty seconds, Mark and Baby load up in the back of the ambulance and the only details I know are what I overheard in the handoff: Baby is minutes-old, has gray/blue coloring, and is not doing well. The supervisor on scene and Jocelyn Wall, the other EMT taking care of mom, advise me on the closest hospital equipped for this high acuity emergency. Joyously, my destination is only a mile and a half away, but my insides wince with the first worry about the next looming challenge: the transport.

Before we get too far into the weeds with the details just yet, let’s take a wide angle perspective for a moment. This is my second day working on deployment. It’s my second day not just working in Newark but also ever being in Newark for anything at all. I don’t know where the hospitals are, I don’t know the best routes to use for anything, and I certainly don’t know where we are on this particular call in relation to anything else. How great that the destination is only a mile and a half away, but my stomach turned realizing I didn’t know anything about how to get there on my own. Looking out at my fellow EMTs, medics, and supervisors, I couldn’t find anyone with a shred of doubt in my ability to get us there, but I’ll be damned if in that moment I wasn’t having trouble finding a whole lot of confidence in myself.

The difference between Mark and I’s jobs on this call become starkly and immediately clear. Mark, as the paramedic, is in the back working on Baby, who it turns out was born very premature at 25 weeks old (healthy gestation for most babies is between 38-40 weeks), was not oxygenating well, and whose heart rate was dangerously low. My job as an EMT in this particular scenario is to drive immediately, and to do it fast, safely, and well. Unfortunately for me, a big part of driving is knowing where you’re going- did I mention it’s my second day in Newark? So before doing anything else, I take a deep breath. Mark didn’t need help in the back. The other EMT crew on scene, Jocelyn Wall (also UH EMS) and Steve Silva, were transporting Mom safely in their ambulance. We would all meet at the hospital- we just had to get there. With another deep breath, I look briefly at the route Google Maps has chosen for me, and deciding it looks good (what the hell do I know, I’ve never been here before), I follow my navigation system.

Commence the mind boggling and fantastically terrifying ways I begin to practice deep and immense trust for the next most important 15 minutes of my life.

Trust step #1: It is clear that my only job on this call is to drive, and everyone on scene trusts that I can do this job, and so I will fucking drive like the best driver I’ve ever been and ever could be so help me Gods n Goddesses.

Trust step #2: It is my training to use the tools available and trust my mind. Trust my training. Talk to dispatch. I radio in to let them know we’re currently en route with a newborn baby, and to alert our destination (keep communication lines open and keep my status updated, check). GPS tells me I am five minutes from the hospital, and I hope that in running lights and sirens, I can turn that five minutes into three.

I’m keeping my eyes on the road, holding the radio in the same hand that’s also on the steering wheel while my other hand changes the sound of the siren at intersections. Folks in Newark couldn’t care less about an ambulance, sirens or no, so being extra diligent at intersections is absolutely essential. My eyes are on a constant pendulum, sweeping back and forth, left to right to left and occasionally flicking to the rearview mirror to check on Mark, glance at the side mirrors, left to right and back to Mark and back to the road. My phone is sliding around on the passengers seat and I’m trying to keep my mental gymnastics in check. The chatter on the radio seems incessant for a while. I can hear them hailing our rig number, maybe wanting details from me that I couldn’t quite make out, but I abandoned listening because, with a chirp of confusion in the back of my mind, the GPS has brought me to merging on the highway. I didn’t remember seeing a highway in the route overview prior to leaving, but no time for second guesses now. An entrance ramp isn’t the place to pull over for a moment and get my bearings.

I take another deep breath, wondering how long it had been since I last inhaled, and I giggle at how my brain could produce such a singularly unexpected thought so unrelated to my driving. At around this time, Mark announces from the back “CPR in progress, CPR in progress.” It wasn’t a yell, but it also didn’t need to be. I am vibrating with the intensity of every moving moment now- I gather that I’m now in what folks call “flow state.” I pendulum my eyes again and wait for a break in radio conversation to update dispatch, who would then update the emergency department, “Seventeen Fourteen Alpha, CPR in progress on newborn baby, still en route to University Hospital.”

I am on the highway, checking my GPS for the next update, and I watch in horror as it routes me immediately off the highway again, and then navigates me through a U-turn to get back on the highway going the opposite direction. I know I didn’t miss a turn. Something is wrong. The 5 minute arrival prediction changes before my eyes to a 10 minute estimate. A slow panic starts to seep out in an explosion of sweat from my armpits, the hair on my neck stands up, and my fear briefly gets the better of me. I know from experience how loud it is to ride in the back of an ambulance, so I yell “FUCK” to absolutely no-one at all, confident that Mark can’t hear a thing. I realize with the gravity of a deflating balloon as I merge yet again onto the highway that I have a dying newborn baby in the back of my rig and I’m caught in a GPS loop because my phone-satellite connection is completely confused. I admit to myself in quiet terror that I have absolutely no idea where I am or where I’m going.

I take another deep breath (there’s a theme here), and get off the highway with the hope that GPS will catch up and reroute me on side streets to the hospital. A few turns later and I start to recognize where I am. Days seem to have passed since we started this drive, but it appears everyone has waited for us- further up ahead I see our supervisor with his rig pulled out into the middle of the road, motioning me towards the ambulance entrance of the University Hospital Emergency Department. I have no idea how long I’ve been driving, or how they knew I had gotten lost, but I could feel the shame and embarrassment of my disorientation creeping up the back of my throat. At this point I’m convinced of two things: Baby is dead, and if I hadn’t gotten lost, maybe they wouldn’t be. I pull into the ED and try to keep up with Mark, who probably set the new world speed-walking record into the hospital carrying Baby. An entire team of nurses and doctors were waiting for us, and two other ambulance crews watched us transfer care. I let myself out after I saw Baby leave Mark’s arms.

A supervisor, who folks affectionately call ‘Tuna,’ was one of two chiefs who came to the hospital to meet all the responders on this call. He followed me out of the ED to my ambulance. I was pulling off my mask as he watched me move through the feelings, and when the strap of my mask broke, so did my resolve. Tears leaked out of my face and he told me to take a seat in the ambulance. Sobbing ensued, and fellow EMTs materialized. They surrounded me quietly, hands on my shoulder or knee. Between a few of those awkward sob hiccup things, I curse loudly, tears still flowing, and my peers respond only with knowing nods as I let the tension and fear of the past 15 minutes shakily unravel from inside out.

Tuna asks if this is my first time handling something like this. I nod. He asks gently if I would like some information. I nod again. He shares that Baby is alive and stable, mom is healthy, and my partner is doing great. I bawl briefly again. I’m surprised to see Mark sitting in the passenger’s seat simply beaming with joy and pride, exclaiming, “that was freaking AWESOME!” when he fist-bumped me. Nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) came down to commend us for an incredible response, and they took our picture. We did it. It’s over.

We took some extra time before clearing for the next call. We got ice cream and sat in the parking lot of an auto parts store near Baskin Robbins eating our rewards, processing the first moments of many to come where people referred to us as ‘heroes’ and meant it.

The weirdest thing about being a first responder is that every day is full of small ‘hero’ moves. Things that are routine for us are someone else’s worst day ever. Moments that, upon reflection with anyone outside of the profession, seem normal but are absolutely panic-inducing for someone else to imagine. It’s humbling, and sometimes I want to ask folks to wait on doling out the hero title for a few years; it makes me laugh out loud when I really think about it. “Dang, y’all! You called 911 and you got ME? Good luck to us all, amirite?” But who really believes even newbies can’t do amazing things?

Experiences like the baby call are what we train for, what our worst case scenarios are built on, and what each one of us worries about actually getting, no matter how long we’ve been in the field. I can’t tell you how many coworkers I’ve talked to who all agree that getting a sick baby is 100% everyone’s worst nightmare. But it’s also the occasion each of us strive to rise to every time we clock in for the job. So it’s incredibly surreal when a call like this drops on you, because it just as easily could’ve landed in the lap of another crew and been handled supremely well. It is simultaneously effortless and exhausting. I was using every inch of my brain for every nanosecond of that call, and yet felt like I was functioning on pure instinct and muscle memory. It is basic and also the most challenging. There’s no way to handle it except the best possible way I can, relaxing and ‘cracking open a can of calm’ (as my EMT school leadership would say). Weighing and measuring every single action with scrupulous analysis is essential, with hawk-like foresight and hyper-critical hindsight, knowing it could truly make or break the outcome and save a life. A contradiction of the most extreme sorts: relax… but by god, don’t fuck it up.

The call couldn’t have moved so well without everyone involved, and sometimes I get a little sad at the acclaim and brief fame that graced Mark and I at the end of this call. The picture at the NICU couldn’t possibly have fit all of us: dispatch, the BLS crew, nurses, supervisors, and Mom/Baby, but they each belong in the spotlight. Dispatch was clear, concise, and responsive. The BLS EMT crew, Jocelyn and Steve, triaged and treated Mom and Baby quickly and effectively on scene prior to our arrival, and they transported Mom safely. The supervisors on scene managed information and and support perfectly. Mom did an incredible job handling a breech birth on her own at home, and Baby fought alongside NICU staff like a champ to stay here.

What an honor to share this experience with so many other people, and to watch life force its way forward anywhere, but especially in an environment so impacted by death and sickness. In the ambulance bay I wept in understanding that Baby was alive- yes because it was a close call, yes because I had a hand in it, but it was also because it was a win we needed. This call was life changing for me not only for the ways it challenged me in my profession, but also for the way it reminded me of the bright wisdom that still persists in desperate situations, in the heaviness of chronic death of Covid19. There is birth, newness, and breath inspiring if we can remember to take it in.

I will never forget the that breathing was most helpful and powerful skill I used repeatedly on this call. Is it hokey? Maybe, but I’ll be hokey all day if it helps things turn out as well as this call. I took a deep breath in every moment that I wasn’t sure about. Each exhalation brought my next step closer to the taking. I love this job because it leaves me grateful for, and humbled by, the world moving around and around. I’m just trying to keep up in turning with it, wielding the mighty power of such a simple tool.