Waiting for the Paramedics

Sometime during the 10th hour of the 16.5 hr charity event my team organized for Lou Gehrig's disease (another story for another time), I got a phone call. It was pretty cold, so I thought "ooh, sweet, I will take the call indoors at the dining hall, where it is warm."

There were some weird people in the dining hall. This was on College Avenue, the campus where they teach History and English and Emotions and the like. The Engineering campus isn't exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, but the College Ave kids are just plain odd. I didn't spare any thought to the fat guy lying on a bench, to the goth girl fixing her all-black makeup, or to the ditzy girl chatting away on her phone.

Neither, apparently, did anyone else. When I got off the phone 10 minutes later, the goth and the bimbo had moved on, but the fat guy was still lying prostrate on the bench. He didn't look like he was taking a nap, either... he had a gym towl on his face, and he was stirring.

"Are you okay?" says I?
"Idunno, thinkIneedwater" slurs he.
"How do you feel?" I prompt.
"Dizzy nmyhands arenumb" he groans.

While I'd sat through a First Aid certification back in February, my freshest memories of care-giving have been the late-night vomit-fests with 21 year olds. So I treated him like a drunk.

"Watch him," I instructed the newspaper-reading girl on the next bench, who I'm pretty sure did not. I walked into the cafeteria and told the first staffer I saw to call whoever it is they're supposed to call when someone passes out in their building. He gave me a water bottle to give the dizzy guy. The newspaper-reading girl was gone, although her newspaper remained.

Trusting that Rutgers Emergency Services were en route, I did the only thing I could think of. Question after inane question, I kept him talking. He could only muster one-word answers, but still I persisted. It was like a very bad first date. Occasionally he would try to sit upright, and he'd inevitably collapse back to the bench. So I guess it was like a very bad first date with a baby deer.

Maybe 15 minutes later, the ambulance arrived. Once the EMTs addressed him, I took that as my cue to leave.

There's really no climax to the story, no resolution or moral. I'm not lamenting the fact that dozens of passers-by ignored a man who needed medical attention, nor am I trying to promote myself as the end-all of Good Samaritans. If anything, I'm just trying to demonstrate to my friends and family that despite my misanthropic rants and over-the-top claims of awesomeness, I may actually be a pretty decent guy.