A Little Perspective

Today was good. I felt re-energized after meeting up with my long lost brother. I was giving a quiz in class, so the workload was minimal. I took my advisory out to lunch as my little holiday gift to them. All I had to do was get through gym chaperoning and I could take my brother's laptop to the shop and go home for some relaxation before school tomorrow. This should have been my clue that all was far too good to be true.

It was the kind of announcement you hope will never happen when you're in the presence of your students. "We had to call 911 for Alonzo, he's having trouble breathing." I could tell from her face that Ms. K was serious. The one-hundred and twenty-plus 10th graders were distributed all around Chelsea Piers Fieldhouse, engaging in all manner of gym activities. I had been watching some students playing soccer and critiquing their lack of a passing game when Ms. K found me. She didn't kid around about things like this. I followed her to the benches near the batting cages, where Alonzo was not doing so well.

He's not the best student. Hell, he's close to failing in more than one class, including mine. He's quite proud of his pseudo-badass status. But I saw real fear in his eyes as he struggled to maintain consciousness, breathing only shallowly and lacking either the will or ability to keep his head up. Ms. K, our English teacher, had called 911. She and Aurelius, the Social Studies teacher, were helping to calm him down. I took charge of crowd control, shooing the rest of the students and talking with the school administration on the phone while my colleagues tried to keep our ailing student responsive. Soon I found myself holding Alonzo up, physically supporting his weight and then maneuvering him into a supine position when the EMTs arrived, checking out his vitals and administering oxygen.

We herded the students out of the room. The EMTs lifted Alonzo onto a gurney. Ms. K started pushing students towards the buses. I grabbed Alonzo's belongings and followed the gurney to the waiting ambulance. Aurelius followed me, relaying information to the school via cellphone and dealing with the stubborn stream of students who were trying to follow her to the ambulance. The two of us managed to finally send the last of the students to the buses, but only after much posturing and pouting. Aurelius noted that many of our more attention-seeking students were eager to have everyone notice just how concerned they were. Neither of us had time for that kind of bullshit.

In the ambulance, Alonzo didn't look so hot. He was in and out of consciousness, and was confused and disoriented when he was awake. We waited outside while the EMTs were trying to stabilize him and figure out where to take him once they did. St. Vincent's was closest. We made ready to leave. I hopped into the passenger seat of the ambulance, Aurelius set to walking after us.

I remarked that it was my first ride in an ambulance, front or back. "It's better to be in the front," quipped the driver. Traffic graciously moved aside as we made our way to the hospital. Alonzo was rushed out on the gurney while I haphazardly gathered his belongings and mine from the back of the ambulance. By the time I had scooped up everything, the EMTs had moved him inside.

I burst in through the doors carrying coats, shoes, backpacks and bags.

"The kid on the gurney?"

"Back and to the right."

I spotted the entourage and followed them back into the depths of the ER. Patients were strewn about on beds. Doctors and nurses strode around, armed with clipboards and stethoscopes. The whole group of us wheeled into an area labeled "Pediatrics," which seemed ridiculously small. A waiting room with six chairs was off to the side. Space for three beds lined the far wall while medical equipment and a reception desk took up most of the rest of the room. It was the kind of place were no one could really move without running in to someone else.

Alonzo was immediately hooked up to some monitors and approached by numerous people who asked him the same questions: "Are you on any medications?" "Do you have a history of asthma or respiratory illness?" "What did you eat today?" He was finally more responsive than he had been either at the Fieldhouse or in the ambulance, but he was still fairly non compos mentis. Aides and nurses had to lean in to make sense of his replies. They soon turned to me for more information.

"You're the teacher, right? You saw what happened?"

"Well, I didn't see it exactly...I know he complained of shortness of breath. He didn't collapse, we were able to get him to a bench and sit him down."

"Does he have asthma?"

"No, we're required to know if our students need an inhaler or other regular medication. As far as I know he's never had this happen before."

Thankfully, Aurelius showed up before I made a total ass of myself. The two of us made sure that we gave the doctors every piece of information we had, but we were really clueless about Alonzo's medical history. For that we needed his mother, who was en route from the Bronx. It was almost 5 PM before she made it to the hospital. It had been more than two and a half hours of frantic phone calls, uncertainty and trauma. But at least by the time his mother was at his side, Alonzo looked more like himself. He could sit up, stand, and move around, albeit gingerly. We left him and his mother to deal with the battery of tests which awaited them.

Aurelius correctly assumed that I would go for a drink after this ordeal. Of course, it was raining as we exited the hospital. We walked to Union Square while I called the administration one last time to tell them that all had been handed over to the parent and that our patient was doing fine. We found a place, sat down, and had a couple drinks before going our separate ways. All in a day's work, I suppose.

So Alonzo looks like he'll be turning his homework in late for years to come, and I'm thankful to be able to sit here and breathe, in and out, in the effortless way that I've been doing for the vast majority of my days on this Earth. I can't imagine what it must be like to suddenly find your lungs to be failing you. I don't know what caused this to happen to him, and it doesn't really matter in the end. It's so easy to forget how frail we are. It's so easy to miss our weakness and our vulnerability in our never-ending quest to maintain our pseudo-badassery.

I trust that when I sleep I will breathe till tomorrow. But tomorrow I'll have a little more perspective on the importance of each breath.