I’ll never forget the call we got one Friday evening after candlelighting

The Background

I met Shuey, a paramedic who told me this story at the MDY shabbaton in Stamford earlier this year.

The Unexpected Patient

As a longtime paramedic in a large New York neighborhood, I have found myself on many calls to homes of all sorts of people. I’ll never forget the call we got one Friday evening after candlelighting. When we arrived at the address, the family members guided us to the patient’s bedroom, where we found an elderly man, clearly at the end of his life, lying in bed — with a very large cross hanging on the wall above him.

We have to take every call that comes in. But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about a gigantic cross hanging over the patient’s bed. When the other paramedic met my eyes, I pulled a face expressing my frustration.

He looked back at me in a way that said, What can you do? and we turned our attention back to our patient.

“Don’t worry, Pop,” said a son, “these guys are going to take care of you.”