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People choke to death in restaurants because they don’t want to make a scene. I thought of this as the elderly friend sitting across the booth from me stopped talking and set down his fork. His eyes opened wide and one hand went to his throat and he suppressed a cough. When I started to get up, he looked at me and waved me off. He didn’t want to cause a scene, no doubt. He said he was okay, but something was stuck in his throat and he couldn’t swallow. I settled back into my seat. I didn’t want to cause a scene, either. But I didn’t relax. He was talking, so he was breathing. No immediate danger, I thought. He tried to cough quietly into his napkin, to dislodge what felt like a bone from his boneless chicken breast, perhaps a fragment of rib. I became more concerned when he couldn’t seem to either cough it up or swallow it down. People seated nearby began to notice, so I led him to the restroom where he could cough and gag unrestrained by embarrassment and consideration for other diners. He finally coughed up a chunk of chicken and thought that was the culprit. We returned to our booth and sat down, but he still couldn’t swallow. Something was still stuck. That was it. I got up and stepped to the bar and asked the waitress to call an aid car. I said the man was not choking, but that he had something stuck in his throat and couldn’t swallow. While she picked up the phone, my friend was trying to tell me it wasn’t necessary. I told him he may be right, but we were getting help anyway. A fire truck pulled up and double-parked in front of the restaurant. I left my friend sitting on the running board while firemen talked with him and began getting out oxygen. I went back into the restaurant and settled the bill. When I came back outside, he was feeling better. He was certain he’d swallowed the bone. He stood and began thanking the firemen. He was embarrassed by the whole episode. He wanted to leave. People were watching. I told him we were staying right there until the aid car came. The orange-and-white car, with two young Emergency Medical Technicians, pulled up a few minutes later. The firemen repacked their unused medical equipment and drove away. We sat on the bench in the back of the aid car and we explained what had happened as the EMTs began getting out equipment and pulling on latex gloves. While the young man got out the blood pressure cuff, the woman asked my friend if he had any medical problems. “Oh, I have everything!” he said cheerfully. It seemed to startle her, but he was simply giddy with delight that he’d survived yet another medical crisis in his long life. He started rattling off a list of ailments — stroke, heart attack, cancer, cataracts. I noted the latex gloves and said, “He doesn’t have AIDS, but he’s had pretty much everything else that can go wrong.” The EMTs wanted to take him to the hospital. He didn’t want to go. I told the EMTs I’d be with him for the rest of the evening to be absolutely certain he was okay. He signed a waiver and we stepped down out of the back of the aid car. As with the firemen, he was profuse with his thanks for their care and concern. In his exuberance, he planted a light kiss on the EMT’s cheek. She accepted it with a smile. He apologized to me for spoiling dinner and wanted to go get a beer. It seemed like a good idea. I wanted to watch him for a time before I went back to my hotel, and if he could drink a beer without difficulty, I’d feel better about leaving him alone at his home. As we drank our beers at a nearby bar, he recalled the scene in the restaurant with all those people turning to see what was going on. “It was very embarrassing,” he said. “Just remember what that fireman told you,” I said. “He said you’d be a lot more embarrassed if you had died.” |