“Rebecca,” he shouted. Or was it ‘Erica’? Old Johnny was in a grumpy mood.
The ambulance crossed the West Mall and Queensway intersection and turned north, picking up speed.
“Is that my girl over there? Tell her to get over here. Whom is she talking to?” he shouted again. There were occasional bursts of conversation on the ambulance walkie-talkie, above the hum of the engine and a distant sound of road traffic.
“Ah, we are on the Agawa Canyon Train,” Johnny mumbled. “This is a fun ride. We used to ride on this train. Yes, more than 60 years ago. We cuddled and kissed, and I became as hard as the granite of the King Mountain in the Algoma Highlands. Do you remember that, Rebecca, eh? Awesome, awesome! Are you listening?”
The paramedic who was driving the ambulance laughed. “Listen,” he told his partner. “Old Johnny is horny, as usual.”
“Can’t hear him clearly… What’s his story?” his partner, who had only recently joined the service, asked.
“It sounds like a disjointed jumble of words, but he is clear about things. We once recorded his murmurings and played it back slow. It was fascinating, I must say. Gave all of us an idea of his younger days. We are all very fond of the old-timer. He is quite harmless.”
“Oh, I could see that in the hospital,” his partner said, looking back at the stretcher through the glass divider. “Nurses and doctors all seemed to know him well and were so solicitous.”
“Yes mate, you will come across many such people now that you are in the service. Oh, this traffic… And people just don’t give way to emergency vehicles. It’s a real problem. Look at this guy cutting in front of us.” He hooted his horn once and switched on a short burst of the siren.
“Heh, heh, heh, there goes the train whistle,” Old Johnny called out. “Whoo, hoo!”
Potholes on the road made the ride a bit bumpy. Old Johnny chuckled, as he bounced up and down. “Oh, Rebecca, oh Rebecca, oh. And in the Agawa River, do you remember, Rebecca? We waddled in and saw otters making love, twisting and turning and you wanted to do the same?”
His words were now coming out in a rush. “And we sure did. Yes, we sure did, down by the bank of the stream, on the grass, under the hot sun,” Old Johnny was ecstatic. “We saw two children watching from behind a bush and we shouted at them, ‘Shoo, shoo, go away’. Like this, like this.” Johnny wiggled his fingers.
The ambulance driver laughed. “We have heard this before. Here it comes, his romantic interludes. Incoherent, but he tells a great story. It’s sad, really. Nobody has the time to listen to him.”
He got the ambulance into the middle lane as the traffic crawled. “We can’t use the siren unless we are rushing to a hospital or trauma centre. Here, we are taking Johnny to his group home. So there is no hurry, anyway.”
Old Johnny’s voice had now gone up a notch to compensate for the road noise. “We walked along the Chapleau Trail, and oh my god, it had so many ancient trees. Maple and oak and aspen. The beams of sunlight were poking through the foliage, making the leaves all gold and green and creating cool shadows on the edges. Then you wanted to walk barefoot and then tried to ride on my back. Have you forgotten?” His voice trailed away with a deep sigh.
Old Johnny was now silent.
“Should we stop and check up on him?” the rookie paramedic asked, looking back again through the window behind him. “Why has he stopped talking?”
“It’s okay,” said the driver. “He is reliving, trying to remember things. We have seen this before. Then comes a jumble of words.”
“Your eyes are beautiful, Rebecca. Remember how I kissed them?” Old Johnny puckered his lips, blowing wet kisses into the air. “Squirrels? Oh yes, there were hundreds of them around. And chipmunks. You laughed when I chased those squirrels, running after them like this.” Old Johnny was now flailing his legs about. Running, running. “The squirrels scampered up the trees, like this, like this.”
The vehicle was now on Highway 427 and sped northward. The driver sounded the horn again as he crossed lanes along with a blare of the siren. The disconnected, but pulsating female voice of a 911 dispatcher asking for an ambulance to reach an accident site in Caledon floated through the vehicle.
“Where are you, Rebecca? I can hear you talking. Whom are you talking to?” Johnny’s voice was high-pitched. “Who is that man over there with you? Are you wearing your yellow floral skirt?”
There were orange curtains across the side windows, and Johnny couldn’t look out. He craned his neck, trying to see the driver’s cab. He couldn’t see anything, and his neck ached.
Old Johnny was angry now. His hands had become fists, and he was trembling. “Get over here, Rebecca, get over here. I want you here. Are you flirting with someone?” He wheezed as he tried to regain his breath.
“Rebecca, you did this to me on Moonlight Beach at Ramsey Lake, remember? On the paddle boat, you ignored me…And I kept asking you for a kiss. I begged and pleaded. I said come close, come to me and you didn’t. You were there on the boat, weren’t you? No? Heh, heh, heh, no, it wasn’t you… Maybe it was Sandy.”
The driver changed four lanes as he prepared to take the exit ramp. He said, “Old Johnny is upset because he can’t see us. He always wants to see people and have people around him…”
“Yeah, I thought so, judging by his non-stop chatter.”
‘You know we have to restrain people like Johnny; he hates that. He is fond of pushing and pulling things… And you know the kind of sensitive equipment we have on board. There are many residents at the home who demand vehicles like TransHelp, but we can’t help them there. They have to be transported in an ambulance, that is the rule. Of course, we can push open the bulkhead partition—this panel behind you—if the need arises or if we want to attend to them. You know about it…”
“How is his interaction with other residents and staff?”
The driver said, “They all like him. But he reserves his attention only for female clients and staff. You can see the welcome Johnny will get once we reach his long-term care home in North York. He has been in hospital with bronchitis for three weeks now, and everybody misses him.”
“You like this run, do you? I mean, it’s not active duty—this ferrying of people to and from long-term care homes.”
The driver nodded. “I have been working for over 26 years, buddy. Sick of rushing to road crashes and picking up squashed and smashed victims and body parts from cars and from the asphalt. It gets to you bad. I have told the dispatchers to mark me for this type of job. There is no tension and I know residents of these homes.”
He slowed down, took a turn to the right at the 427 and Major Mackenzie Drive intersection and crept eastward.
Old Johnny muttered something about being in a nickel mine elevator in Sudbury. Cool darkness, all around, with only the dim yellow lights throwing shadows on the cavern walls. “Slow, slow, Rebecca…slow slow,” his tone was relaxed as the words floated away. “Ozo, Ozo.” he shouted.
“Whenever a new nurse or staff member joins the home, they think he is uttering gibberish the whole day,” the driver said. “Now, listen carefully, he is mumbling ‘Osha, Osha or Ozo, Ozo’. What he is saying is ‘Awesome, awesome’.”
“Has he no family? What about his wife, children?”
“Yes, Janet, that was his wife’s name. She has passed on…Gone about eight years ago, I think. He had a daughter, Grace, who used to visit him once a month, although Johnny couldn’t recognize her. She died about a year ago. Cancer, pancreatic. They have little chance, you know. Grace was only about fifty-six or so.”
“This is really interesting and a little sad. Tell me more.”
“Yes, it was Grace who brought him to the home six years ago—he was losing his memory by then and she couldn’t manage him. She was a frail and sickly woman who had not married and had nobody to help her. Apparently, Old Johnny had a tendency to wander off and required police intervention when he went missing. They would find him in another part of the town, sitting on some mall bench or loitering in shops selling women’s clothes and lingerie. Funny guy, I have heard that he loved standing in front of mannequins that are dressed in skirts or undergarments.”
“Real horny guy, right?”
The driver said, “Old Johnny doesn’t remember much. He is about eighty-five, and is taken to Sherway Hospital every three months or so. He has this chronic lung problem, besides other ailments like osteoarthritis and some kidney issues.”
“Lung problems are the worst in the long-term care homes, I have heard,” his partner said. “I am sure residents with personalities like Johnny can lighten up the atmosphere. In fact, Johnny’s story should be part of our curriculum—shows us how to deal with frail people with various behavioral issues, not just emergency care alone.”
“He still has behavioural issues. He did try to get away from the home on two occasions after throwing tantrums. The first one, staff found him on a bus headed to North York; nobody knew from where he got the money for the fare. The second time, he reached the gate and had to be carried forcibly into the home.”
“Oh, that’s terrible. From what I hear, I think he is the type of person who attracts compassion, especially from the maternal types.”
“I agree,” said the driver. “You know, Johnny is quite a star at the group home. If he hears a woman’s voice, he thinks it’s some woman he knew a long time ago. That sets off his imagination. It’s like a spark plug that flickers and flashes through old memories. On some days, it could be Maria. On other days it’s Sandra or June, or Alice and he calls out to them. Today it’s Rebecca’s day. He gets all aroused and then has to be strapped onto his bed. He keeps on making passes at the female staff and then squirms in delight.”
The driver laughed out aloud. “One evening, Old Johnny grabbed the titties of Alicia Jones, the home administrator. She has big boobs, by the way. It took about 15 minutes to wrest his hands away from an embarrassed Mrs. Jones. She had to first sit and then lie down on his bed to stop him from hurting her. And all the while, Johnny was oohing and ahhing in delight.”
The driver could not stop laughing. “And another day, we had a visiting nurse called Angela something. She was a new immigrant from the Philippines, and Johnny put his hand up her skirt, held on to her panties and just wouldn’t let go. That was quite a struggle…Oh…and Angela refused to come to the home again.”
“He must have been a real wolf in his days,” the rookie said, looking back at Old Johnny through the window.
“He is still a good-looking man, Old Johnny,” the driver nodded. “Word was that some of the female residents in the home were asking each other why Johnny didn’t grab them by their titties! You know, after the Mrs. Jones incident…”
The Global Positioning System (GPS) mounted on the dashboard of the ambulance droned again. The recorded female voice was seductive and suggestive. “Take a turn to the left, ten metres, then turn right after twenty metres. Your destination will be on the left. You have arrived.”
Lying on his stretcher, his arms secured by leather straps, Old Johnny wriggled like a worm on a hook and giggled. “Oh, Rebecca, I can hear youuuuu…oh Rebecca, ooh…” His voice then dropped to a whisper. “But didn’t I strangle and drown you in Ramsey Lake that evening when the mist rose around us and I was hot and you were cold? Ooh, Rebecca, ooh…”
This story is from the book “Tiddley Trail Stories” by Bala Menon, published in January this year, by Tamarind Tree Books of Toronto. Bala is the recipient of :• Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pin and Certificate from the House ofCommons• Peel Regional Police Media Award• Rotary Club of Streetsville Certificate for Community Service.Bala is a member of the Courtneypark Writers’ Group, the Writers and Editors Network (WEN) and the Mississauga Arts Council.
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