Tough crowd in waterfront restaurant
The Urban Paramdedic is back with a vengeance with his recounting of various floaters he's helped recover (and yes, a floater is just what you think it might be if you were talking to a guy who responds to emergency medical calls). CSI fans in particular will enjoy the bulk of the post; but everybody can appreciate his last two paragraphs, which deal with a guy who jumped over the railing at a waterfront restaurant into the ocean after telling everybody he was going to kill himself - only to climb right out when he realized how cold the water was:
... The customers at the restaurant were not impressed. In fact, they barely looked up from their meals when we arrived. Nobody approached us; nobody told us what had happened. Finally, after I asked somewhat loudly whether anyone had seen a man in the water, one diner pointed up the street and said, "He went that way. I think he changed his mind."
I don't like to get involved when I see emergency workers around
I could be interfering with their jobs.
I can understand why no one said anything, to them, there wasn't an emergency with the guy who walked away.
Whomever called the rescue squad probably should have been there to direct the emergency floater workers.
Buoyantly Bad Memories
When I was in college, I rowed crew on the Charles. Our practices were often early in the morning, starting in the boathouse as dawn broke.
One morning, while we were rowing in the basin by the Museum of Science, the coxswain (facing down river) started screaming.
Us rowers, facing the other way, didn't know why she started screaming, but we all instinctively dropped our oars and skidded the boat to a stop without any direction .
Bump!
We hit a floater just as we stopped. She popped under, to one side of the rudder, and back out beside me. I was the bowman rowing to port, and was closest to her. She was face down, green-blue hospital johnnie, dark hair. I popped my oar out of the oarlock, and used it to flip her over just in case she was still alive (but mostly out of denial and the need to "do something").
I'll never forget her porcelain face ... no lines ... totally slack and peaceful - like resusci-annie almost - and probably not too much older than any of us were (I was 19 years old at the time)and very dead judging by her stillness and bluish cast.
Meanwhile, Coach in the launch was on the horn to the state police. She pulled up and told us to head back into the MIT Boathouse and get to the weights, while she stayed with the body. I kept my oar in my lap as the rest of my eight backed up, so I wouldn't whack the unfortunate waterlogged lost one, then popped in to help the turn once we were clear.
We found out later that she had wandered off from MGH in the night. Not sure if anybody ever knew why.
Mystery river corpse
Perhaps she ate at Villa Mexico, a burrito stand built into Grampy's Gas Station on Cambridge Street, across from MGH.