Moonlight Serenade

You never know what lies in store when you respond to a neighborhood park for a man down at 10:30 at night. Could be an assault victim, an overdose, or anything under the sun...er, moon. But most often it is just a drunk, or I should say an allegedly intoxicated person. In any case it is always a little touchy and you have to be on your guard because altered people are always unpredictable.

The guy we went on tonight was no exception. We arrived to find him sitting on the ground and the PD sitting (very relaxed) on the picnic bench in front of him. Apparently he is well known to them, but my crew is all new to this district and we had never met him. He was surrounded by empty vodka bottles and was slurring his words. He jumped with a start when my firefighter approached him but calmed down quickly. I took up a position at his side in anticipation of taking his vitals (pulse and blood pressure). He somewhat answered some of the questions my firefighter/medic was asking him and then he paused and stopped talking. I then spoke up to tell him I wanted to take his blood pressure. I guess he hadn't noticed me before then because he jumped and started crawling backwards away until we convinced him I was just another one of the firemen. Of course, we had just come from a report of a car fire and I was dressed in my full turnout gear which should have been a tip off but, as I said, the altered are unpredictable.

I took his pulse, checked his blood sugar, and got the automatic blood pressure cuff going when our patient suddenly broke into song. "I see trees of green, (mumble mumble) too". My firefighter perked up with recognition and looked over at me smiling. I looked back at him and said, "Hey man, it's a wonderful world". We had been out on the water boat training earlier in the day and had been running a few calls in the evening and we were all feeling pretty good so it was a pretty true statement. Our patient continued to attempt the song as we got him loaded up for the ambulance, "I see blue...jeans, and more trees too". Being drunk and homeless he even had a bit of that raspy, gravely quality to his voice that old Louis had.

When's the last time someone sang to you at work?