First Responder by Jennifer Murphy

Author:Jennifer Murphy [Murphy, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

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Late March, for the first time since I’d become a first responder, I felt acknowledged and respected by the public. Finally, people saw us. They cared. The sirens forced them to see what we were doing out on the street. What we’d been doing all along, for years, invisible and alone. Suddenly people thought we were important. Deserving of respect, gratitude, praise.

What a feeling, to be invisible for so long, and then to suddenly be seen.

13 DIFFICULTY BREATHING

Good news. Our second Rona tour, Robert texted as Nina and I drove to Park Slope and said there were two N95s waiting for us at base. We were overjoyed.

We’d heard a rumor from a few first responders that the FDNY EMS station in our area had heaps of N95s at the time, while we were grateful to get one measly mask each. That was the way it always worked in terms of donations. Because the Fire Department was so pervasively well known, perceived as the gold standard in EMS, the public gave them supplies while the rest of the EMS community—hospital and commercial and volunteer crews—received comparatively little, if anything at all, simply because people didn’t know we existed.

In late March, that started to change. Suddenly friends who knew I was an EMT texted and asked where I worked, where to donate masks and money. I sent them to Park Slope.

As Nina and I climbed on the ambulance and pulled out of base, we gave ourselves a secret mission for the night: acquire more PPE from our first responder pals. All of us looked out for each other on the street. Not just during the pandemic—always.

EMS was a family.

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