Circa 1980
We get the call at 7:30.
Debbie Wietz is my partner on Rescue 140.
She cranks up the heater and I grab the Microphone on the Chevy Rescue truck's console as we pull the rig up to a white washed stucco house set a hundred feet back from the curb.
The call had come in as a possible seizure and that looked to be acurate as I calmly approached a Spanish looking women in her mid twenties sitting on a dark overstuffed chair in the gloom of the living room.
I opened the trauma kit and and retrieved the blood pressure cuff as Debbie called into the Fire Station on her walkie.
Suddenly, she called out softly,but urgently. "Michael, come here, you've got to see this." She was standing ten feet away, in the dimly lit bathroom. "Ma'am, " I said to the patient, "I'll be right back, OK?" I walked over to Debbie and she gestured towards the toilet.
I peered into the bowl.
It was a purplish foetus, or more properly, a neonate.
I scooped the infant from the toilet.
"Debbie, all the station, tell them we are transporting, get some firemen over here for the seizure patient."
Within seconds Tony Garcia and Henry Vega entered the room and began working on the mother.
I began doing CPR on the baby as Deb and I hurried to the Rescue truck.
Street lights lit the cab's interior as Deb guided the vehicle through the otherwise darkened streets while simultaneously reporting to the ER on the Med radio. Although CPR is not successful very often, the best candidate for resuscitation is a young person.
I could feel the air gently whooshing into her lungs as I blew into her nose and mouth.
I heard Debbie speaking softly on the radio to the ER doctor, "Her color is improving, Meds. She's crying!"
Within a few minutes we were in the parking lot of the hospital and relieved by the er team who inserted a breathing tube and began giving the baby oxygen.
Afterwards Debbie and I and a couple of Nurses celebrated the successful revival of the infant in the parking lot with cigarettes and cokes.
The mother named the child Naomi Manuel.
