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As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year old's. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app, and it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years. With millions of users and 25 languages offered. Spanish, French, Ital, Korean. I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off@Rosetta Stone.com moth today.
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Welcome to the Moth Podcast, Dan I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the Moth Podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org the story you're about to hear by John Levin was recorded live at the Moth Mainstage.
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When I was young, I was a bright, happy, enthusiastic kid. So some people may have been a little surprised when, years later, I'd become an angry, sullen, disaffected high school dropout was perfectly logical to me. But life as a high school dropout quickly proved even more depressing than life as a high school student. So I sort of. I kind of tested my way into Boston University and then dropped out of that. If I could have signed a form to officially drop out of American society or the human race, that would have been next. So believe me when I tell you that when I was 21 in 1990 and I applied for a job working the night shift in the Orange at Massachusetts General Hospital, it was not out of a great desire to help my fellow man. I was only doing it because the job paid really well, $9 an hour, which was $3 an hour more than the job I had been doing working in a supermarket, pushing carts of meat around. The fact that the hospital hired me to do that job at that time in my life should be sufficient to scare everyone in this room into taking excellent care of yourselves from now on. But hire me. They did. And my actual job title was or nursing assistant, night shift. I was basically an orderly with a few additional responsibilities. But the most fundamental part of the job was transporting patients to surgery, which I was trained to do during the day shift for two weeks, when, you know, everything is regularly scheduled and the patients are all in stable condition and they're usually awake but mildly sedated. And it's pretty simple. On the night shift, nothing is scheduled. Of course, it's the middle of the night. Patients are usually kind of bloody. Maybe they're highly agitated and need to be restrained. But for the most part, they were either heavily sedated or completely unconscious. Not too much interaction with me. So transporting them to surgery felt eerily reminiscent of my previous job pushing carts of meat around. I didn't see them so much as human beings at a time of great need, but more like, you know, packages that needed to be delivered to a specific room as efficiently as possible. You know, I don't know, burst appendix to OR 22, coked up scumbag with multiple stab wounds to OR 27, pregnant woman hit by a drunk driver to OR 24, guy who shot his face off to OR 33. I mean, all manner of human suffering. But to me, it was all the same. Well, all right, every once in a while there would be a patient who would be awake and wanted to chat. And in those circumstances, I was encouraged to sort of talk in a soothing manner as I wheeled them through the halls, because it's been clinically proven that a freaked out patient won't do as well under the knife like this one guy, Alexander. He was a high school teacher who'd fallen a great distance in a rock climbing accident and injured his spine. He was really afraid that he was going to be paralyzed and would he be able to teach and what would his students do? He was really worried about his students. And so I said to him, well, look, anyone who's only concerned about his students at a time like this is probably so dedicated to teaching that nothing will stand in his way. And then for effect, I added, I only wish I had had a teacher like you when I was in school. Maybe I would have graduated. Which, okay, I admit it was laying out a little thick, but, you know, he seemed to genuinely appreciate that. All right, he was sedated, but he responded by saying, well, you really helped me, so I'm going to help you. I want you to promise me that you're going to go back to school and finish your education. So I immediately think, well, that's not going to happen. But, you know, what am I going to say to this man? No. So I try not to roll my eyes as I make him this promise. I got him to surgery and I never saw him again. Because, you know, you deliver a package, you don't stand around waiting to see what the guy does with the box. It was not my job to care or to follow up. Anyway, maybe three months later, it's like three in the morning and there's a call from an ICU. They have a patient named Mr. Williams who had had surgery the previous day and apparently had sprung a little leak, needed to come back down. So I go up to get him and the nurses are disconnecting him from his respirator and his EKG and attaching a portable heart monitor to the rolling ICU bed and an airbag to his breathing tube, which I'm going to have to squeeze to breathe for him during the trip, which means that someone is going to have to come with me because you can't steer an ICU bed and squeeze an airbag at the same time. Unfortunately, the nurses in the ICU were already over taxed and couldn't spare anyone except for a young woman named Melissa, who I believe was a nursing student. She was very nervous about this because she'd never been anywhere else in the hospital before and had never really been given too much responsibility. But the nurses assured us that despite appearances, Mr. Williams was pretty much okay and this would be totally routine. And I added, yeah, you know, I've done this dozens of times, it'll be a piece of cake. So I'm pushing from the back and squeezing the airbag with my free hand, and I have Melissa steering from the front as I direct her on the shortest route to go to the or. The entire trip would only take a few minutes, most of which would be spent waiting for an old crappy elevator. So we're waiting for this elevator and I briefly consider maybe going out of our way to another building connected by a ramp where there's like a faster, more modern elevator place. But I figured it's actually pretty far and by the time we get there, the time savings will be nullified. So we just stood there and then the elevator arrived. So we get in, the door is closed, push the button, and nothing happens. And then the lights go out. And so I'm about to say what the fuck? When we start to move, but it's not right and we're kind of moving too Fast. And the elevator is not making its normal sound, and my stomach is in my throat, and we're falling, and we're falling. And if I had had time for a thought process, it probably would have been like, what the fuck? I'm not ready to die. I didn't sign up for this. And then I would have shit myself. But before any of that could take place, the elevator's emergency brakes kicked in and slammed us to a stop so violently that I was thrown to my knees and Melissa was thrown to the floor. And Mr. Williams is, like, bouncing in his bed, and there's, like, his equipment is, like, all jostled around. And so now we're stopped somewhere, and we're in this tiny, dark box, and there's three sounds. I can hear the elevator's emergency signal buzzing and melissa screaming, and Mr. Williams heart monitor indicating that, like our elevator, his heart has stopped. So I get to my feet, and for a brief moment, I think, no, no, no, no. But, you know, denial and anger quickly gave way to, in this case, bargaining. Well, Melissa's got some actual medical education, so maybe she should be in charge. But then, you know, reality set in, and it's like, okay, Melissa's in a bad way right now. She's still sort of. I don't know, probably cowering in the corner, wondering if we're still all gonna die, but if we don't do anything right away, one of us is definitely gonna die. So I then hit resignation and begrudgingly admitted to myself that I had to kind of get in the game here. Fortunately, in a sense, our situation didn't really leave us with many options. And also fortunately, the hospital had trained me to do CPR when they hired me. So I had Melissa stand up, and by the dim lights of the LEDs on the heart monitor, I could just sort of see her hand. And I grabbed it and I put it on the airbag, and I say, okay, you do the airbagging. I'm going to do chest compressions. So I moved around to the side, but. But Mr. Williams was a big guy, and I couldn't get good leverage. And unfortunately, it was too dark to see the controls of the ICU bed underneath it to lower it, if it even got any lower. So in desperation, I did something I'd seen one of the emergency ward doctors do one time, which is I went to the foot of the bed and I climbed up on the bed, sort of mounting Mr. Williams and sort of kneeling over him. I did chest compressions from above, and it seemed to Work okay, as far as I could tell. So we were like this in the dark for, I mean, I have no idea how long, but it felt like hours until the lights flickered and came back on and the buzzing emergency thing stopped. And then a garbled voice came over the intercom saying something like, standby. And I was like, fuck you. And then we were moving again, only this time in, like, a controlled, mod manner, which still wasn't comforting at all. Until finally we arrived at the third floor, the OR floor, and the doors opened. And Melissa was so overjoyed and so eager to get us out of there that she, you know, just started pushing us forward. And that's when something really bad happened. The wheels on the front of the ICU bed swiveled around halfway right as they were situated over the gap between the elevator and the floor and slid down into the gap like, you know, slices of bread going into a toaster. I was nearly thrown off of the bed by our sudden change in momentum and had to grab onto the side rails just to stay in place. And then, of course, the elevator doors started slamming on us over and over again. So I thought Melissa was gonna cry. She stopped airbagging and ran to the front and was, like, battling the elevator doors as she's trying to lift us out of the gap. And of course, it was no use, so she stopped and went back to airbagging. And of course, I'm still doing chest compressions now, slightly more difficult due to the incline. So, you know, I make eye contact with her, and without actually exchanging words, we both just start screaming for help. It was kind of a busy moment in the OR right then, and no one responded for a while until finally the first person who did respond was a wonderful older gentleman named Mr. Selwyn, who was one of the night cleaning crew guys. And so he comes running in, and in his sort of thick island accent, he says, what's all the commotion? And then he sees us, and it's like, oh, my God. And he tries to, like, you know, pull us free. And it didn't work, even though he's kind of a strong older guy. And so he's like, okay, you just keep doing what you're doing. I go get more help. And he runs out. And within a few moments, he comes back with reinforcements in the person of Mr. Guppy, who sees us and says, oh, shit, Jonathan, what you do this for? And the two of them now are trying to lift us free, and they're struggling and struggling, and finally, with, like, a horrible metal scraping sound, they wrench us free, and now we're off. And suddenly all the panic and confusion is like forward motion, and we're, you know, getting somewhere anyway. And so they say, okay, where you going? And I say, or 29. And they're like, fine, okay. And then the double doors just open, and we're whipping around the corners, and everything's very effortless. And we're flying now. And Melissa is, like, running as she's trying to keep up with and still doing the airbag. And, of course, I'm still on top of Mr. Williams, still pumping away at his chest. And there's, like, a breeze in my face from our newfound velocity. And I have to say, it was absolutely, you know, exhilarating to the point where I had to actively stifle the urge to laugh out loud. And so, you know, I screw my face up into a mask of seriousness because, you know, it would be a tad unseemly to appear to be enjoying riding a patient down the hall. And we get to or 29, and the entire surgical team is there, of course, waiting for us, like, where the hell have you been? But as soon as they see us, they know the situation's not normal, so they fly into action, and they sort of seamlessly take over for everybody, and they, you know, draw us. They draw us into the operating room. And I can now hop off because obviously, Mr. Williams is in far more capable hands. And so I grab the paperwork that was at the foot of the bed that I have to process for him, and they get to work on him, and they save him, and he lives, Right? So in this case, I did follow up, and I found out that not only did he live through the night, but he recovered and left the hospital. After that, I lost track of him. But. So I processed the paperwork and find Melissa in the hall, and we breathe this collective sigh of relief. Then I escort her back up to the icu, taking a different route so that she wouldn't have to take the bad elevators. And she gives me a hug, and I never see her again. I come back down to the or, and there's my boss behind the main desk, and he says, hey, John, I heard what you did. Nice job. And so part of me was really hoping that that would be the extent of the praise that I would receive. But another part of me was disappointed that that was the extent of the praise I received. And, you know, of course, in that setting, nothing special, but the thing that surprised me was that I cared. Like, since when do I give a shit about receiving recognition for anything, but specifically job performance. So then my boss asked me a few questions about the particulars of what happened and I told him and he was like, oh yeah, I hate those elevators. Don't take those, take the ones in the white building. It's dead. Thanks. Try to keep that in mind. So the exhilarating feeling didn't go away, and it stayed with me for the rest of my shift, all the way home, and it actually prevented me from getting to sleep that morning. It seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but at the time I was so unaccustomed to feeling anything positive, especially related to work, that it took me a really long time to recognize that I enjoyed what I did and enjoyed caring about it. I enjoyed caring about Mr. Williams myself. But you know, about maybe six months later, I found myself mentioning the incident in a personal essay that I was including with an application to get back into college.
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John Levin is currently working on a satirical memoir while making a living in the television industry. He lives in New York City. The Moth is a non profit organization. Consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a moth member@themoth.org this holiday season. Give the gift of the Moth. We have T shirts, CD compilations of favorite Moth stories including today's story which is featured on Audience Favorites Volume 4. Visit our website themoth.org where you can learn more about the Moth's upcoming shows and our corporate events and training program. And please tell us what you thought of today's episode. Tell us what you think of the Moth podcast in general. What do you love? What do you hate? What would you like to hear more of or less of? Email us@podcastthemoth.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you'll have a story worthy week Podcast audio production by Paul Ruwest at the Argo Network.