A lifetime or so ago, I was an EMT. Besides working for an ambulance transport company, I ran with the local rescue squad. Since I didn’t know the area that well, my job was usually to ride in the back with the patient and do the paperwork. The other part of the job when you are riding in the back, is using the radio to call the emergency room to let them know you were inbound and to give them a general idea of what to expect when you got there. I was never good at this. Not knowing what to say, I would tend to ramble. “Squad so and so is inbound to blah blah hospital with an eighteen year old male, complaining of nausea and loss of motor skill. Patient appears to have been drinking alcohol. He is wearing blue sneakers, has a cat named Ezra, and a tattoo of what looks like a goat on his right bicep. Although if you look at it in a setting with softer lighting, it could also look like Lyle Lovett. Anyways, our ETA is, I don’t know, let me look out the window, hmmmm, okay, I’m gonna say about five minutes.”
One particular night my partner decided that he was tired of driving. He wanted to sit in the back and treat the patients. I was okay with this because driving an ambulance with lights and sirens blaring is fun. In fact, it’s probably something everyone should get a chance to do. Around eleven or so that night we got a call to a cardiac emergency. I had no problems navigating to the right location, and I knew which hospital we would be going to, I didn’t think I would have any problems getting there either. We met the paramedics on the scene and got the patient into the ambulance. In this instance the paramedic was going to ride in the back with my partner and the patient. I was feeling good. We were on our way. My lights were flashing as I sped down the main drag toward the hospital. I looked in the rearview and wondered why the other paramedic was following at such a long distance, but didn’t think anything of it. We were approaching a major intersection. Time for the siren, full speed ahead, let’s rock. Okay, Like I said, I didn’t drive much. This intersection had a large hump in the middle. When we hit that thing, I think the back of the ambulance may have actually come off of the ground. “Sorry about that,” I yelled into the back. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I didn’t realize how it felt to everyone in the back until after we dropped the patient off. My partner proceeded to tell me, while he laughed, that I had knocked the paramedic off of the seat and I had almost scared the poor heart patient to death as she slid halfway down the stretcher. Then the medic came out of the E.R. and said, “you know, they teach a class on driving and you should probably take it.” I smiled. She looked at me with her best unhappy face. “No… I’m serious.”
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