The Accident, continued ...

This month, I did NOT help the 90-pound laundress down the stairs when she came to collect our bag of laundry, which was about the size and weight (and, I daresay, smell) of a mature rhinosceros. I learned a very valuable lesson the last time she came to pick up the laundry - a lesson that a more astute New Yorker might have learned from many years of watching sitcoms. That lesson, of course, is: helping other people can only end badly.

So, Paul's accident. I don't think I ever told the whole story, but be forewarned - it involves a lot of references to both Saturday morning cartoons and sitcoms, which some people may find troubling. I know I do. Believe me, if you're ever rushed to the hospital, you don't want to say to your spouse, "remember that episode where Homer gets dropped out of the ambulance and down the cliff?"

Let's rewind to the moment where I finally got into the apartment after ringing the buzzer with what was, in retrospect, perhaps excessive vigor for about five straight minutes, not realizing that Paul was lying on the floor with his arm broken in 3 places after slipping on the wood floors while running out of the shower to get the door. (Diagram that sentence, kids ...). Fast forward over 15 very long minutes to the point where an ambulance was blocking Humvee owners on their way down to Wall Street to buy more XOM stock, horns blowing with outrage at the thought of anyone having a medical emergency during rush hour.

The EMT team consisted of a burly, yet very jovial guy named Rafael, and a small, humorless woman with a Scandinavian (or possibly Eastern European) accent, who mumbled that her name was something that sounded like 'Vulva'.

Later, while writhing in pain in the emergency room, Paul would look at me in a morphine-induced haze and ask, "Did she say her name was Vulva?

"Not sure - but I think so."

"Wasn't this a Seinfeld episode?"

And that's when it occured to me - our lives are really just a shadowy series of references to moments in syndicated TV shows. Like the "Cave Analogy" from the Platonic dialogues. Or was that from The Flintstones?

The EMTs struck me as a pairing of characters from two different shows, like in one of those ill-concieved "crossover" episodes that sometimes happened in the 80s, wherein one of the kids from "Fat Albert" would show up, in character, on "Knots Landing." The female EMT (or, She-MT) was Natasha from Bullwinkle, dry, humorless and possibly diabolical. Meanwhile, her male counterpart was from one of those UPN shows where the fun-loving bachelor is suddenly saddled with 6 kids when his distant cousin dies.

Raphael and Vulva seemed to have a whole schtick worked out; it was as if someone had written it all out beforehand. He was the funny one, she was the straight man. As if some imaginary director was yelling out, "play up the laughs about the sponge baths!" and then, "you, Vulva, you really diapprove - give him the evil eye. Come on - give me some anger ...".

Raphael had clearly been an EMT for a while, and didn't seem at all phazed by the site of a half-naked, wet, seriously injured guy lying in the foyer of an apartment. He probalby encountered this sort of situation all the time, responding to calls where someone forgot the "safety word."

"Nice place," he said, as if he were an old buddy who just stopped by for a beer, in a world where wet naked broken-limbed dudes were a normal part of the decor in any apartment. "Are these oak floors?"

Vulva, meanwhile, looked worried and pale, studying Paul's arm as if it were the most gruesome and terrifying thing she'd ever seen. It was she who decided that Paul absolutely must be put onto a contraption they called a "surfboard" - an orange gurney intended to immoblilze the spine. There was absolutely no indication that Paul had hurt his back, but EMTs are trained to take this precaution just in case the patient might have the number of a particularly crafty attorney.

This presented a bit of a problem. You see, men strapped onto surfboards are notoriously hard to get over a bannister and down a flight of stairs in a New York apartment building. A "boogey board," maybe, but a full surf board presents a serious logistical challenge. We encountered similar difficulties getting our 500-pound couch in and out of the apartment, an operation which took several hours and the combined mental and physical strenth of four strapping Ukrainian men who looked like they should have been fighting Rocky in the final days of the cold war. Rafael seemed up to the task, although Vulva looked like she might get a hernia if she picked up a bigger-than-average hamster.

When the time came, Raphael picked up the head end of the board as if there weren't even a 175+ pound injured man lying on it. The waifish Vulva was assigned to the foot-end. She grunted and groaned, as if she were trying to pick up a Volkswagen van. It didn't budge.

Granted, she was a very thin, small woman, but not nearly as small or thin as the laundry woman I'd felt so badly for, who had thrown the 100 pound bag over her shoulder like the Jolly Green Giant After much discussion, it was decided that they would just drag him over to the top of the stairs, and, well ... push.

Push him down the stairs? I said, as Paul turned a distinct shade of green. Now, I don't have any training as a medical professional, but pushing a man with a broken arm down a flight of stairs strikes me as a questionable idea. A whole discussion ensued between Raphael and Vulva, who sounded more like two movers trying to haul a sleeper sofa out of the apartment, not realizing that the sleeper sofa was in fact listening to the conversation while he turned a deeper shade of green.

"Maybe use the bannister as a (gesturing) - how do you say.."

"A see-saw?" Rafael suggested. "No, a lever!"

"Or is it fulcrum?" I heard myself adding to this very warped version of "Pictionary."

"Yeah, but how do we get him up onto the bannister?" Raphael countered. "Maybe I could just prop him up and ..."

At this point, our next door neighbor, an elderly Russian lady named Mrs. Kimble, came out to find out what was going on. It was the first of several hundred times we would tell the story. There was originally a longer version, now I just say, "shower, doorbell, wood floor, ouch!"

"Ach," said Mrs. Kimble. "This exact same same thing happens to my friend Ruth, only last month." Meanwhile, the EMTs were trying unsuccessfully to get Paul out the door. "Ruth - just like your husband! - she is in the bathtub, and then she is falling down and broke her hip. They say she may not walk anymore afterwards."

Being compared to a 90-year-old lady might not have been the most comforting thing for Paul, but Mrs. Kimble didn't notice. "My friend she must go to Beth Israel for hip replacement, where they take an artificial hip and ..."

Vulva interrupted. "Madam, we must get him to Ambulance." I gave Mrs. Kimble a look intended to convey, "if she hadn't so rudely interrupted, I'd have loved to learn more about the pros and cons of hip replacement surgery ...."

Fortunately, we only live on the second floor of a brownstone, which has a somewhat wider staircase that your average Manhattan apartment. Still, much maneuvering was required to get Paul out the door and over the bannister, in position to go down the stairs. Unfortunately, this was happening at the time of morning when most people in New York are leaving for work. I hate to admit it, but I had to wonder what the neighbors would think.

At this point, Paul was also wearing a precautionary neck and head brace, to protect against possible law suits. Strapped onto the gurney, he looked like he had been pulled from the bottom car in a flaming Interstate pile-up caused by a driver who did not appropriately signal, a disgruntled man with a cop moustache inevitably explains as you watch the cautionary video in Driver's Ed class. I imagined the neighbors wondering what anyone could possibly have done, short of not signaling on the highway, to end up in a plastic body cast, unclothed, and strapped onto a stretcher. Fortunately, we don't own any gerbils. It would have just made the whole thing look a lot worse.

To be continued ...