Part 13: Sending Out Lifelines

As soon as I began to get oriented to Baltimore, I undertook an effort to integrate myself with my adopted hometown, to develop new connections and a new routine to flesh out my existence here. I sifted through the threads of the life I used to have in Memphis to find something that could be picked up in Baltimore.

Maryland didn’t do reciprocity – recognizing certification from other states – so I couldn’t work as an EMT or paramedic until that was straightened out.

The Red Cross had no such problems. I was certified to teach basic, intermediate and advanced first aid, and was an instructor-trainer in CPR, teaching teachers. Back in Memphis I’d taught dozens of classes with hundreds of students over the years. I knew the material inside and out, and without doubt an additional body would be of value to the local Red Cross chapter.

I visited Baltimore’s Red Cross headquarters, then located on North Charles Street near the Hopkins Homewood campus, to introduce myself and let them know of my availability to teach first aid and CPR.

Another area where I had a lot of experience was volunteering at the Suicide and Crisis Intervention Center in Memphis. I was drawn into SCIC through friends at City of Memphis Hospital, where I worked during paramedic school. The hospital had turned part of its 6th floor, a secure unit that also held the county prison hospital ward, into a psychiatric emergency room. A group of students, myself included, were hired as psychiatric technicians. Our job consisted mainly of wrestling violent and deranged people into restraints and helping the doctors and nurses.

At the east end of the 6th floor was another locked door that led to a small inpatient psych unit with about a dozen beds. I spent many nights here playing spades with the clinically and criminally insane, floridly psychotic patients experiencing auditory and visual hallucinations.

At the far end of the inpatient unit was the prison ward, considered an extension of the Shelby County jail. The prison ward was behind two more locked doors and a set of bars, and had a sheriff’s deputy on duty 24 hours a day. Each room was bare cinderblock, with the windows covered by heavy mesh screen. Anybody who had been beaten or shot by the cops was brought to the prison ward, the only hospital lockup in Memphis. The prison ward routinely had killers and rapists and truly frighteningly insane maniacs, as well as guests of the correctional system who thought elective surgery might get them a vacation from the county jail. People who experienced both told me that the hospital prison ward was worse than the county lockup.

A couple of techs who worked with me, psychology students at Christian Brothers College, volunteered at SCIC, which was located near the campus. Dr. Alan Battle, the psych ER’s chief clinical psychologist, was also the clinical director of SCIC. Come on and do the training so you can answer the hotline, they told me. It’s an interesting way to spend a night once in a while.

SCIC was a small but well-organized and well-supported group, with its number advertised all over Memphis. The calls that came in were all over the map: runaways, victims of domestic violence, people facing eviction or in need of help with utility bills. People called because they were having thoughts of suicide, or were depressed, or sometimes just needed to confess something anonymously to a stranger. A handful ended violently, in suicide or homicide. They are never forgotten.

I eventually volunteered at SCIC for more than four years, spending hundreds of hours answering the hotline. I learned how to listen, how to elicit information, how to think through personal and domestic crises, how to talk somebody down, and how to access public and private resources in the community. I ended up training new volunteers with Dr. Battle and working on fundraising events. Volunteering for SCIC was enriching both personally and professionally. The ability to rapidly assess a situation and prioritize tasks are skills that translate to emergency medicine.

That experience could be put to useful work somewhere, and in turn perhaps start creating some connections for me.

I only found one crisis hotline in Baltimore, which was operated out of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, on the northwest corner facing the Washington Monument on Charles Street. I spoke with the center’s director, and he invited me to spend a night answering their phones. Any night I wanted – they don’t have enough volunteers, so sometimes the phone isn’t answered at all, he said.

I signed upcfor a 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. weekend shift. Entering a side door to a darkened hallway, I was led to a dim office with desks and filing cabinets. There’s the phone, there’s the coffee pot, there’s the bathroom. Goodnight.

It was a long and very quiet night. I don’t think the phone rang at all. I spent most of the night reading through their records and materials. There was no academic affiliation, no ongoing in-service training, no fundraising or volunteer recruitment. Their counseling guidelines suggested pastoral advice, relying on the strength of faith, praying together, etc. Totally wrong, in my judgment.

As the night went on, it increasingly felt like a bad date. I couldn’t wait for 7 a.m. to arrive so I could say look, I just don’t think this is going to work out between us.

I stepped into the crepuscular gloom of Mount Vernon Place, shook off the chill, and headed back towards home.