When They Are Us

By Danny, Ambulance Driver

Yadira Arroyo was a 14-year veteran EMT with the New York City Fire Dept. Last Thursday night around 7:00 pm EST, as Yadi and her partner were on their way to a medical call in the Bronx, a passerby flagged them down to assist with a person having an apparent psych issue.

My partner and I had just handled a patient with a similar behavioral issue requiring physical and chemical restraints.

The man Yadira stopped to help overpowered her, jumped in the ambulance, and – with her partner in the vehicle – backed over her, then accelerated, dragging her beneath the rig, killing her. Yes: the very person she stopped to help killed her.

I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my own ambulance when this story started to flood social media.

Not that long ago, we would have heard about this story later that night – maybe the next day – and would’ve imagined how horrible it had been. We would have felt sorrow for the victim, her partner, her family (she has five young children), other crews. We would have shuddered and thought, even silently, how that could easily have been us on that last call. We would’ve reminded our partner that we had to be extra careful on the next one; to clear the rooms a little better next time, that that last one had been too close.

We don’t get to imagine things anymore.

Cameras are everywhere. Things come to us now – if not in real time – then very shortly after. Everything now is in your face, repeated again and again – as though the images weren’t burned in deep enough the first time. We’ve become the spectators of our own trauma, our own unraveling.

That footage should never have been shown. I, certainly, should never have watched it. But I did. WE did. As we watched – as we watched what happened to “them” – we realized that They are Us.

And we broke a little more.

Control to 82-Nora…..Control to 82-Nora…..Control to 82-Nora…..

This is the last call for EMT Yadira Arroyo.

82-Nora, your Tour of Duty has ended; you’ve gone home.

Rest easy, sister. We got it from here.