We arrived at Shelby Farms and walked around the lake, which is slightly over 1 mile, without incident. As we were deciding to walk a 2nd lap around a blonde woman dressed in yellow came running past us yelling about CPR and a man dying over by the pier. We looked toward the pier and saw nothing. Then we saw other people begin to run towards her to find out what was going on. She ran to the road as a Memphis police cruiser drove past. She tried to wave him down, but he didn't see her. I tried to wave to him, too, but he didn't see me either.
We weren't sure if we had heard the woman correctly and she was now too far away to shout to. So My Wife and I walked towards the pier to see if someone was there who needed help. She had CPR training and I have had a little, too. But we saw nothing. People were fishing and paying no attention. So we walked on.
After we had walked about 100 yards more, around a bend and a hill, we saw a group of people far up ahead all circled around what appeared to be a man lying on the grass. We began to head towards them when a firetruck came up behind us, pulled onto the trail and raced by.
By the time we reached the man an ambulance and a Memphis police cruiser had passed us on the grass and the firemen were already hard at work pumping the man's chest.
The paramedics got out some of their equipment and began to work on the man while one of the firemen continued trying to pump the man's heart. The man was dead.
The woman who had been trying to flag down a cop came running past us, very upset. She had waved to the cop and he had driven past her. She complained to anyone who would listen that she had been on the phone with 911 and they kept asking her the address for Shelby Farms. There is no street address for Shelby Farms that I know of and apparently she didn't know of one either. Everyone who has lived in Memphis for more than a week knows where Shelby Farms is. A dispatcher should certainly know, too.
She said she had told them the man was on the side of the park nearest Walnut Grove Road and that he was dying. But the dispatcher kept playing dumb, asking for the address of Shelby Farms, saying nothing about any help being on its' way.
The woman was still very upset and clearly needed someone to talk to. I couldn't tell if she was talking to me or the man next to me and I wasn't sure how to react. She was just talking. "I should have done more. I don't even know CPR. I couldn't do anything," she said nearly in tears.
The man next to me said, "You did all you could. You called for help."
She talked on about the police officer being rude when she spoke to him and the dispatcher being dumb. She cried about feeling so helpless and not being able to do something more. People began talking about a man who died playing pool just a few months ago because the dispatcher took over 30 minutes to send anyone to help, repeatedly asking for the address and repeatedly being given it.
I watched for at least 15 minutes as they pumped the man's chest, observing how CPR is done in a real world situation as compared to what I learned in class. The paramedics began trying to siphon the man's throat in case he had a blockage, but it seemed to do no good. Finally they loaded him into the ambulance. He was not breathing and they were still trying unsuccessfully to start his heart.
The woman said, "he was jogging and then he just started to walk. His eyes were rolled all the way back in his head and he stumbled up towards the hill before he collapsed. It's been a good 15 minutes from the time I saw him until they got here. I don't know what I could have done. That stupid dispatcher acted like she didn't even know where Shelby Farms is! I've only lived here a month and even I know where it is. How could she not know?!"
I wondered who the man was. He was taken away in the ambulance, but did anyone know his name? If he is anything like me then he carried no I.D. on him while he was running. How would his family even know what happened to him? How would anyone know to tell them? How long would they have to wonder why he never came home?
We finished our walk and got in the car to head home. As we were leaving I noticed an odd looking person walking around the lake in our direction. We passed them by on our way out. It was a woman. Sort of. She had a hateful sneer on her face and when she saw me looking at her she turned to glare viciously at me. It was Lesbian Elvis.
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