Are you Feeling Me?

We're sent for a difficulty breathing. As we arrive, we see a police car blocking the street and two fire engines. A fireman tells us there is a downed power wire and we should swing around the block to approach the address from the other side. Because of a dead end street our trip around the block is more like a trip around four blocks, and we have to go around a cemetary. As we race past, we see a man on a bicycle, laying on the ground, who looks like he is trying to get up, but can't, and another man seems to be trying to flag us down. Since we are already en route on a priority to a difficult breathing we are committed to that call and cannot stop. I call it in on the radio instead.

The difficulty breathing turns out to be nothing. It takes us several minutes along with the fire department to find the caller, and we finally discover it is a woman on home 02, who has had to switch to her portable because of the power failure, and she is worried her 02 will run out. She has over 500 lpms in her E size tank, which she is only running at 1.5 liters. I estimate she has an hour and a half left. While we are explaining that we do not refill oxygen for people, and are helping her get the number for her oxygen company, the radio dispatches a car for a shooting nearbye. I'm am wondering if the guy we saw on the downed bike was shot. As we hear sirens all through the neighborhood, we finally get the woman's daughter to agree to take her mother to the hospital or call us back if the oxygen company does not come or the power does not come back on before the tank runs completely out.

On the radio, they have not found the shooting victim, and they ask us about the guy on the bike. We say we'll go around the corner and see if he is still there. We find the police out with a man in the general vicinity. We spot the bike laying against a fence. The man is not shot, but he has a huge hematoma on the side of his face, and he is talking jibberish. He has alcohol on his breath. As near as we can figure out, he got jumped by two men. The jibberish seems to be a combination of alcohol and Southern dialect that reminds me of the guy named Leroy Wells who tried out this year for American Idol.

Leroy Wells Audition

He was from Lousiana and was completely incomprehensible, except when he said, "Can you Dig it?" This guy talks on and on, and then says, "Are you feeling me?"

The cops are cracking up. I think the guy is just drunk, but he has a huge hematoma and I can't rule out that his brains haven't been scrambled because when I ask him simple questions like his social security number, I get a long stuttering bebop type answer that ends with him saying, "Are you feeling me, dawg?"

We finally convince him to go to the hospital. He is concerned about his bike, which has a smashed front wheel. We resolve the issue by hiding it in the bushes on the other side of the cemetary fence, and promising to write its location down so he can retrieve it the next day.

"They jumped me dawg," he says, "But I fought back. I made them feel me," he says.

"Well, maybe we'll find them at the hospital," I say.

And then he starts to laugh, and goes on to another long uncomprehensible riff.

"I feel you," I say.

"That's right, tell me now," he says offering me a soul shake, and then he goes back to his own language, but at least he is smiling, his semitoothless smile. "Maybe they can check my teef," he says.

We take him to the hospital.

***

Did two transfers, an OD, and a non person home medical alarm.

I went to this great vegetarian Rastafarian restaurant, and got dinner -- rice and peas, stew peas, potatoes, and two kinds of funky vegetarian entrees. All very good. And healthy. The Spanish food, which I also like tends to be mainly fried or fatty.

I'm off tomorrow.

Have to get back to the gymn.