The emergency radio erupted in a garble of static and a few spare details: possible stroke victim, 14 Grange Avenue.
The dispatcher didn’t mention the patient’s name, and Bob VanCoughnett didn’t need it.
The address told him everything.
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“That’s Kevin,” VanCoughnett said to three junior emergency medical technicians standing beside him in an ambulance garage in Adams, a small town in upstate New York. “I’ve known Kevin 30 years. This will be a fun call.”
Anyone who has spent time in an ambulance with VanCoughnett knows that 14 Grange Avenue is never a fun call. Kevin was Kevin Fuller, a 65-year-old man who would be the first to admit that some days he drinks a few too many beers. He lives with his wife, Valarie, in a second-floor apartment around the corner from the ambulance squad headquarters, and together they call 911 several times a month for a constellation of health concerns.
VanCoughnett and the other medical workers climbed into the ambulance, drove for a minute and parked in front of a tattered gray house that stands on a crab-grass hill. It was 3 p.m. on a hot Sunday in July, and VanCoughnett’s face turned red the moment he left the air-conditioned ambulance.