Short on bathrooms but long on drunks and bloody noses

Kim Smith

Monday, Jan. 3, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

As the last hours of the 20th century wound down Friday night, people on the Las Vegas Strip seemed to have just one question on their minds.

"Do you know where the nearest Port-a-Potty is?"

Whether they were dressed in sequined gowns or ratty jeans, scores of revelers waded through the crowds at Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard to seek out Malcolm Brown and Clint Nowery, sheepish looks on their faces.

"It's a medical emergency," one young woman grinned, shifting from foot to foot.

"Can we borrow a urinal?" a 20-something man asked before giving up, plopping down and pulling 64-ounce plastic bottles out of his backpack and mixing up yet another concoction of vodka, cranberry juice and orange juice.

Another young lady's eyes bugged out when she heard her walk was far from over.

"Seriously, I have got to go to the bathroom!" she said, crossing her legs. "I'm gonna get a ticket for public urination!"

Brown, a paramedic, and Nowery, an intermediate emergency medical technician, were part of American Medical Response's contingent of medical personnel manning the Strip on New Year's Eve.

Their job was to wait for Clark County firefighters to bring patients to them so they could be taken to one of five treatment centers or a hospital. It was Brown's third New Year's Eve shift and Nowery's first.

At their assigned spot on Flamingo Road, they were ready to deal with any emergency that came up -- heart attack, assault, life-threatening inebriation.

People needing to go to the bathroom, however, were on their own except for getting pointed in the direction of the Bellagio.

"New Year's Eve is a no-holds-barred collection of lunatics in one large spot, and our job is to clean up the mess. It can be fun," Brown said with a grin.

The pair shook hands with a person in a Santa outfit and with dozens of other well-wishers. They shook their heads at the scantily-clad women and mooning men. They posed for photos with locals and tourists.

At 10:05, however, Brown and Nowery were all business when a man in a full-length wool coat stumbled up, clutching his stomach.

"Do you have any Pepto Bismal, man? Geez, that Mexican food," he said, moaning.

"The Mexican food or the beer?" Nowery asked, smiling wisely.

Twenty minutes later the pair were whipping out their Latex gloves and dodging the crowds to get to a vomiting patient. By the time they got there, he had disappeared, stumbling into the crowd.

At 10:50 Nowery and Brown had just shown off their wedding rings to an attractive, flirty and drunken blonde when a young man asked for gauze for his friend's bloody nose. They asked to see his friend in person.

"Some girl just slapped me in the face, basically for no reason," slurred the young man as he licked his blood-drenched hands, grossing out his friends, who reminded him that he had grabbed the bare-breasted girl.

After assuring that his nose wasn't broken, Nowery and Brown sent the young man on his way with a fistful of gauze.

Five minutes later the two jumped in front of two men dragging a limp young woman by the elbows down the Strip. The dark-haired woman managed to raise her head enough to mutter that she was OK and she knew the men she was with.

At 11:30 things took a decidedly nasty turn. A dozen Clark County firefighters and Metro Police officers burst through the crowd, riot helmets on. Between them, lying on a bright orange flexible stretcher, was a 16-year-old girl. Accompanying her was her brother, who said she had been drinking vodka.

The girl was loaded into an ambulance, placed on an IV and taken to the Fashion Show mall, where one of five treatment areas were set up.

Nowery and Brown didn't get back to the Strip until 12:05 a.m., just in time to hear on their radios about 26-year-old Todd Surmon, who died after falling from a 30-foot light pole.

At 12:37 they tended an assault patient with a cut nose. At 12:40 they checked on a passed-out man in a car who, it ended up, was just napping.

At 12:49, as a man relieved himself on the corner of an overhead walkway connecting the Bellagio and Caesars Palace, Nowery and Brown were tending to a 30-something drunken man who couldn't recall if he was pushed or fell off a 3-foot wall.

He also couldn't remember his last name. For some reason, he kept insisting it was "El Pollo Loco." He also insisted he was 63 years old.

Nowery and Brown had just returned from taking "Mr. Loco" to University Medical Center's trauma unit when they got their biggest job of the night. A 300-pound bald man had become dangerously drunk.

As the pair attempted to transfer him from a Southern Nevada Volunteer First Aid and Rescue ambulance to their own, the man vomited. Six paramedics frantically struggled to flip the man on his side so he wouldn't choke.

Inside the ambulance the vomit-soaked, bearded man struggled violently and cussed as Nowery and Brown tried to stick an IV into his arm. The pair were successful on their second attempt. Before finally being able to restrain him with the help of a sober friend of his, both paramedics have had their crotches grabbed and their arms bruised.

"It's not fair, it's not fair, three against one," the 29-year-old man mumbled. His curses and mutterings continued all the way to UMC, where Brown and Nowery deposited him into the hands of weary nurses.

At 2:32 Brown and Nowery were on "yuk detail" at AMR -- hosing down the inside of the ambulance and their gurney.

"Oh, yummy," Nowery said, holding out his gloved hand. "I found a tomato."

At 3:25, as the crowds became thinner, the pair were writing reports in front of Caesars and sharing the warmth of their ambulance with a handful of Metro Police officers. The officers, who were 10 hours into their shift, were anxiously waiting for the street sweepers so they could go home.

At 4:11 Brown's light snores were interrupted by AMR's announcement that the treatment units were officially closed and the ambulance crews were cleared to go home.

After filling up their tank and returning to their Martin Luther King Boulevard headquarters, Brown was more than ready to end his third New Year's Eve shift.

"I was expecting more," Brown said, yawning. "It was pretty tame."