The young lady rushed up to me and said a man was having a seizure in a public bathroom. I called 911 and gave directions and headed over to see what I could do. The man was on his back in a small pool of blood coming from a gash on his eyebrow.
I guess that he fell down onto the toilet lid face first, hit it with his eyebrow and probably smacked the back of his head on the floor as he continued down in the opposite trajectory. It didn’t look like he was breathing, and I couldn’t feel any air with my hand or with my ear to his mouth and nose. I checked for a pulse at the wrist and did not find one. Was he dead? I checked for a pulse at his throat, and it felt like atomic bombs were going off. He was alive.
Until EMT arrived, I heard him once emit something that wasn’t completely unlike a groan or a struggle for air. The girl who was with him was frantic. I asked her what drugs had he taken because medical personnel would need to know. She wouldn't say. I pressed her, and she said, “Heroin.”
As the local Fire Department arrived the girlfriend and another friend took off to “have a smoke.” They would not be back.
EMT found an orange plastic needle cap underneath the man, and when told that it was a suspected heroin overdose, the technician said, “He’s not going to be happy with me in a minute.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time.
The EMT pulled a syringe-like device out, plugged up the young man’s nose with one end of it, and then shot a chemical into his respiratory system through the nostril (or nostrils, I couldn’t make out if it covered both nostrils or just one). The stuff is called Narcan.
Within a minute, he was breathing audibly. Within two, he was answering questions. EMT had just started carrying this magic remedy about a week ago. There were about 20 deaths per month just in our county. I only have this to say: