Waiting for the Bell to Toll

It's all about the bells.

The Rescue Squad spends a lot of time waiting. Sitting around their Watterson Street headquarters, members socialize, catch up on work or partake in a recreational activity. There are bunks set up for sleeping in one room, a pool table in another. A fully stocked kitchen stands at the ready, along with quiet areas where members can catch up on their day jobs. Members and recruits are told it can be boring sometimes, just waiting, just sitting around the headquarters.

"When it is your duty period, you are here," squad captain Lynn Feldman said.

Then the bell rings, the boredom stops and the action begins.

When a call is referred to the squad from the town's emergency dispatch center at the police department, members know they have to be ready to go even before the squad dispatcher answers the phone. A bell goes off, piercing the air in the building, enough to wake any member from their slumber or interrupt someone doing work while listening to their iPod.

Taking the information from the squad dispatcher, the squad members know only the bare bones information before heading out the door. Headed to a complaint of an elderly woman with severe back pain on the north side squad members didn't know more than that. All they knew is the pain could be a back problem or it could be more severe, the sign of a heart attack. They had to be prepared for anything.

Squad members come from all walks of life, and from towns across New Jersey. Dedicated to the volunteer emergency medical nature of the job, squad members are keeping Westfield's emergency services in a nature that is separate from surrounding towns. While Cranford has moved to a daytime staffed emergency medical service and Scotch Plains and Fanwood stick to the pager system – summoning members from home or work with a page – Westfield continues to utilize a live-in squad.

Feldman said the squad wants to remain with the live-in model due to the ease at which members can leave for any call. With the fire department providing back up when a crew is on a call. The same time as the back pain call, a fire department crew responds to the call of a possible stroke.

The squad is not a town agency, it is an independent non-profit. The town does not contribute funds. Funds are raised through grants and the annual fundraising campaign. Members are not paid but can have training costs covered.

Feldman said the squad wants to avoid the paid model in order to help the residents.

"It is not your first choice," she said of the paid model. "Our services are free and we want to keep it that way."

Arriving at the apartment of the woman with back pain, Feldman and her partner, deputy captain Jonathan Delano, work with a probationary member to quickly assess the woman's condition. Ruling out cardiac issues, the next issue is how to get her out the door and to Rahway Hospital. Moving her with care on a portable stretcher, trying to keep her as pain free as possible, the group moves the patient gingerly down the stairs to a waiting ambulance.

Driving to Rahway, the back of the ambulance shakes, every bump is felt. You could not help to wonder how many people have developed nausea from the back. Driving slowly over the speed humps of Rahway Avenue, Feldman cannot help it; the humps will cause people to bounce around the back. While Feldman eases her way over the humps and deals with Clark Township traffic that refuses to obey the ambulances sirens and yield, Delano works on the patient in the back. He takes her blood pressure, administers oxygen and gets all the information ready for the emergency room staff.

Breathing issues dominate the call sheet for the squad. Between asthma and emphysema, it is the call that squad members, including Feldman, a respiratory therapist by profession, respond to the most.

"There is a large elderly population in Westfield," she said. "There are many reasons why people have difficulty breathing, it could be cardiac related."

While the squad's recruiting material touts Feldman delivering a baby, she said the calls are rare. During her time on the squad, she's delivered two babies, one of the higher totals for a Westfield squad member.

"It is one of those things where you just do," she said. "It is absolutely thrilling."

In one of the cases where she delivered a baby, Feldman responded to a call where the woman was on the kitchen floor. Helping the woman outside to the ambulance – she insisted on walking – they saw her drop to the ground again. It was too late, the baby's head was crowning, and Feldman would need to deliver the baby right there, on the front lawn in January in the rain.

"It happened so fast," she said. "Your training kicks in. It is buried in your brain and you what to do. It was cold and you know you need to cover the baby. It is thrilling. You are so happy when the baby is out and the baby screams."

At the same time that births are a small amount of the jobs, so are deaths. Meaning losing a patient that was alive when they first responded. Feldman and Delano remember a time when they responded to a driver who pulled over with chest pains, they talked to him, helping him to the hospital. With a ruptured valve, there was little they could do and the patient slipped away as they got him to the hospital.

"It does not happen that often that I arrive at the scene where the patient has a pulse and then goes pulse less," Feldman said. "Usually they are pulse less when I get there. You become sort of immune; you do everything you have to. You don't feel good and you wish you could have done more."

Feldman notes that child deaths are the worst to handle for any squad member.

"I had a child who drowned and it was horrorific," she said. "Anything involving a child is 100 times worse than an adult. It is not supposed to be."

There are also the unusual and the return callers. The squad has dealt with construction accidents, people falling off roofs and people who have nailed themselves to their homes. They also deal with people who call back with the same minor illnesses, taking the crew out of commission for upwards of an hour, including transport time.

The morning shift looking almost complete as afternoon settles over Westfield, Feldman disappears to her office to review medical reports from the week's calls and Delano prepares to hand over the reigns to another duty crew for the afternoon. Just then, the bells ring again.

One car rear-ended another on New Street at the intersection with Central Avenue. Someone's injured. An extraction is likely, a trip up the mountain to Overlook Hospital in Summit guaranteed. Hoping to avoid deer on Summit Road in Mountainside, all but certain.

"This is a real commitment," Delano said of the squad, before he rushes off to treat another patient.

Editor's Note: This is the first in a five part series on the Westfield Rescue Squad. All information was gathered during a day long reporting period on July 24, 2010.