The local EMT class lets its students sign up to ride with us after they have made it through a certain part of the course. Over the years I have to say most of the students who ride with us don’t last. The course has a poor passing rate, and many of the students who…
Cigarettes and Tasers
We get sent to a nursing home for a “violent” patient in the lobby. Cops have been notified. We arrive to find a big muscular man about fifty with no legs in a motorized wheelchair waving his fist at a nurse, who stands back about ten feet, shaking her head at him. There are three…
"You're Going to Need a Bigger Ambulance"
“You’re going to need a bigger ambulance,” the police officer says when we pull up in our van. “I don’t like the sound of that,” my partner says. Niether do I. Already I can feel my back tightening up. Inside the small dirty apartment we find a tiny older woman, who points us down a…
“For the Unconscious”
Calls run in random, almost crazy patterns that sometimes give you cluster days where you are bombarded with all similar calls. Some days its psychs, other days its carry-downs. (What really sucks is when a carry-down cluster intersects with a humongous patient cluster.) Other days it is asthmas or strokes or MVAs. I once had…
One of the First
Last call of the day is a nursing home transfer. Guy has one leg and sores all over his body. He says he is a former EMT in the city – one of the first.
Power Outage
Several hours earlier a car wiped out a telephone pole, bisecting it, and blowing out the powerlines exploding transformers all the way down the street, leaving half the town without power. It is still dark when we get called for a lift assist. An old man in a wheelchair meets us at the door with…
I’ll Be at Your Side
What I like best about this job are the moments you observe between people, moments that show the bonds that life creates, that show the love in people’s hearts, particuarly the love of a parent for a child. *** We are sent for a two year old who has fallen through a glass table and…
Company Man Union Man
One of my partners used to call me a company man because I used to clear as soon as possible from calls. We’d be in the EMS writing up the run report and the dispatcher would scream. Can anyone clear? I’m holding two calls. Priority One. I’d clear, then she’d bang us with a transfer…
Company Man-Union Man
Farewell Tour
My old partner has finally gotten his transfer to Florida. He moved to this area from New York fifteen years ago when he first met the woman who would become his wife. Now that they have divorced, he says he has no reason to stay up here. He loves Florida and the sun – he…
My Patch
Nothing for eight hours, then we get a call for an unresponsive. When we arrive, a man meets us at the door and he says, “They are not certain if she is breathing.” We enter the house and I see an officer standing in a bedroom doorway. I can hear the mechanical voice, “No shock…
My Boy
We get called for a drunk. We find a fifty seven year old man holding the fence in front of a house. An old woman comes out and says it’s her son and she wants us to take him to the hospital. She won’t let him in the house drunk as he is. He doesn’t…
Mississippi — What’s Important
I arrived home last night after eight days in Gulfport, Mississippi. As Hurricane Katrina hit, our ambulance company, which has a local base in Mississippi had already sent out a call to its divisions across the country for help. Ambulances and crews from California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Florida, Georgia and New England were sent to…
Hurricane Wind
I stopped at the State armory and unloaded five bags of clothes for the hurricane victims. I was ruthless going through my closet. Every Christmas I get a sweater from my father and his wife. They sit in my closet because I rarely wear anything besides my work clothes and then jeans or workout clothes…
Sore Throat
We get sent for a choking downtown. We find the fire department standing around a guy on a low cement wall that is part of the landscaping. A tree looms over him. Even in the dusk I can see the man is purple. He looks dead. I am about to say, check for a pulse…
Roommates
A woman in a nursing home is in severe respiratory distress. History of COPD. Her lungs are decreased with an expiratory wheeze. Her SATs are in the 80’s. The nurse’s aide who gives me her paperwork says she is a DNR, but the papers haven’t been signed by her doctor yet. I give the patient…
Variance
I’ve been playing poker seriously for over five years. When I say seriously, I don’t mean I play for big money, I mean that I am a student of the game. I read books about it, discuss the game with friends, run simulations, constantly try out new strategies. I started out playing in the local…
Honey, I Love You
I come in at six and find the night crew is out on a call. A few minutes later they clear their scene with a refusal, but then are dispatched to a possible dead body/overdose at a local business. They ask me to respond in the second ambulance to meet them there in case it…
Homer Jones
We get sent for a premature baby difficulty breathing. Lights and sirens response. A minute later we get the update we want to hear, “Baby breathing normally.” We arrive to find a twenty-three-day-old baby sleeping comfortably on his mother’s knee. She tells us he was born seven weeks prematurely. For about a minute his head…
It is Unethical
230 lb guy slips in the shower, lands on his shoulder. When we get there he is in extreme pain and has an obviously deformed shoulder. It is either fractured, dislocated or both. What do you do for pain? Morphine. Okay, now here’s the catch. The location is a drug and alcohol rehab clinic, the…