My partner and I had been running emergency calls back to back for the previous twelve hours. We had just dropped our last patient off at the Emergency Room and knew there was more calls pending.
I still had twelve hours to go on a twenty-four hour shift, but my partner was two hours past the end of his shift. Emergency calls always trump swinging by the ambulance quarters to drop off someone at the end of their shift and pickup a fresh partner.
You get off when you get off. It took my wife a couple of years to get used to this.
My partner radioed dispatch and said he absolutely had to get off duty immediately to rush home because his grandmother, who suffers from pyromania, was having labor pains and had just called him to say that her water had broken. Luckily, it had put out the fire she started in the living room.
He threatened that if he wasn’t relieved immediately, then whatever else happened at his house would be on the shift supervisor’s head.
The dispatcher called his bluff and radioed that she was sending another ambulance and a fire engine to his house to make sure his poor pregnant pyromaniac grandmother was OK.
My partner snarled like a dog at the radio while thinking of something to say into the microphone. The dispatcher broke the silence and said his relief would meet us at the hospital emergency room in a few minutes. We could hear laughing in the background.
My partner was so happy he literally bounced out of the drivers seat just as his relief walked up. Without a word to anyone he just started running.
I was sitting in the passenger seat trying to catch up on paperwork and enjoy a cigarette. I yelled, “Where are you going? You don’t have a car here.” I saw him in the side mirror running away and heard a faint, “I don’t care.”
I didn’t have time to worry about him. I picked up the microphone and radioed, “Two-Eight’s in-service.”
Right on cue the dispatcher came back with, “10-4, respond to a three car MVA, multiple injuries at….”
My new partner was an EMT that I had never worked with before. In fact, I didn’t know anything about him except his name. He heard the call and asked, “Mind if I drive?”
I’m kind of a control freak and prefer to drive to calls unless I’ve worked with a partner for a while, but I was tired and said, “Sure, let’s go.”
He almost whooped with joy and jumped behind the wheel. Somewhere in the bottom of my mind the thought flashed that his reaction should concern me, but I pushed it aside.
We pulled out into traffic and he turned on our lights and siren. He didn’t accelerate at all and we traveled half a block at ten miles an hour.
First of all, this looks stupid and it’s embarrassing when people are walking beside the ambulance staring at you and covering their ears.
I looked at him hard and said, “Let’s fucking go.” With that, he punched the gas and we took off like a shot.
I stared at him for a second. He had the weirdest look on his face; part orgasm and part scared shitless. I also noted his body language. It wasn’t at all like how people who drive emergency vehicles for a living look.
He reminded me of one of those miniature wood manikins that artists use to show different anatomical positions. He looked like someone had bent his body into a stiff and unnatural sitting position with a wire stand sticking up his ass.
My finely honed skill of what EMS workers call “taking in the big picture” kicked in.
It consists of recognizing and absorbing many small bits of information, putting them all together and making an instantaneous deduction about what is happening, or what has happened, and what needs to be done.
My sleep-deprived brain started processing information. I saw his white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel and his foot smashed down on the accelerator like he was having an epileptic grand mal seizure; the intersection filled with cars growing larger through the windshield and the speedometer needle where it shouldn’t be, creeping over to the right side of its arc.
The cars directly in front of us were stopped at a red light and all the lanes were blocked with cars three and four deep. He would have to drive into the oncoming traffic lanes to get through the intersection.
I waited to feel the ambulance begin to drift over to the left hand side of the road but it didn’t. I felt myself shift in my seat with a pang of nervousness.
I like to give my partners the benefit of the doubt that they know their shit and will do things the way I would do things, which is to say, the proper way.
The little voice inside my head that keeps me from getting killed and let’s me know when things just ain’t quite right said, “What the fuck is he doing?”
I agreed with myself and said semi-loud, “You better get over.” He didn’t react so I yelled over the siren, “Get over in the other lane!”
He must have heard me because he jerked the wheel to the left and moved the ambulance into the oncoming traffic lanes.
My body tensed. The little voice spoke up again, “Shouldn’t he be slowing down? Why isn’t he slowing down? Don’t you think he’s going rather fast?”
I couldn’t disagree with myself and I thought, ‘Darn tootin his is.’ I yelled, “Easy man, slow it down.”
I glanced over at my partner and he was staring straight ahead in a trance. This is not the recommended way to safely enter an intersection on the wrong side of the road and against the light.
You better have your head on a swivel and be looking in all directions at once. That ‘Oh shit’ feeling pushed its way up to the front of my consciousness. Suddenly the sound of our accelerating engine sucking air and gas into a wide-open four-barrel carburetor made me think either this guy has a very sick sense of humor or he was going to kill us.
My right foot started pumping the passenger side brake pedal and I screamed, “Slow the fuck down!”
I still had twelve hours to go on a twenty-four hour shift, but my partner was two hours past the end of his shift. Emergency calls always trump swinging by the ambulance quarters to drop off someone at the end of their shift and pickup a fresh partner.
You get off when you get off. It took my wife a couple of years to get used to this.
My partner radioed dispatch and said he absolutely had to get off duty immediately to rush home because his grandmother, who suffers from pyromania, was having labor pains and had just called him to say that her water had broken. Luckily, it had put out the fire she started in the living room.
He threatened that if he wasn’t relieved immediately, then whatever else happened at his house would be on the shift supervisor’s head.
The dispatcher called his bluff and radioed that she was sending another ambulance and a fire engine to his house to make sure his poor pregnant pyromaniac grandmother was OK.
My partner snarled like a dog at the radio while thinking of something to say into the microphone. The dispatcher broke the silence and said his relief would meet us at the hospital emergency room in a few minutes. We could hear laughing in the background.
My partner was so happy he literally bounced out of the drivers seat just as his relief walked up. Without a word to anyone he just started running.
I was sitting in the passenger seat trying to catch up on paperwork and enjoy a cigarette. I yelled, “Where are you going? You don’t have a car here.” I saw him in the side mirror running away and heard a faint, “I don’t care.”
I didn’t have time to worry about him. I picked up the microphone and radioed, “Two-Eight’s in-service.”
Right on cue the dispatcher came back with, “10-4, respond to a three car MVA, multiple injuries at….”
My new partner was an EMT that I had never worked with before. In fact, I didn’t know anything about him except his name. He heard the call and asked, “Mind if I drive?”
I’m kind of a control freak and prefer to drive to calls unless I’ve worked with a partner for a while, but I was tired and said, “Sure, let’s go.”
He almost whooped with joy and jumped behind the wheel. Somewhere in the bottom of my mind the thought flashed that his reaction should concern me, but I pushed it aside.
We pulled out into traffic and he turned on our lights and siren. He didn’t accelerate at all and we traveled half a block at ten miles an hour.
First of all, this looks stupid and it’s embarrassing when people are walking beside the ambulance staring at you and covering their ears.
I looked at him hard and said, “Let’s fucking go.” With that, he punched the gas and we took off like a shot.
I stared at him for a second. He had the weirdest look on his face; part orgasm and part scared shitless. I also noted his body language. It wasn’t at all like how people who drive emergency vehicles for a living look.
He reminded me of one of those miniature wood manikins that artists use to show different anatomical positions. He looked like someone had bent his body into a stiff and unnatural sitting position with a wire stand sticking up his ass.
My finely honed skill of what EMS workers call “taking in the big picture” kicked in.
It consists of recognizing and absorbing many small bits of information, putting them all together and making an instantaneous deduction about what is happening, or what has happened, and what needs to be done.
My sleep-deprived brain started processing information. I saw his white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel and his foot smashed down on the accelerator like he was having an epileptic grand mal seizure; the intersection filled with cars growing larger through the windshield and the speedometer needle where it shouldn’t be, creeping over to the right side of its arc.
The cars directly in front of us were stopped at a red light and all the lanes were blocked with cars three and four deep. He would have to drive into the oncoming traffic lanes to get through the intersection.
I waited to feel the ambulance begin to drift over to the left hand side of the road but it didn’t. I felt myself shift in my seat with a pang of nervousness.
I like to give my partners the benefit of the doubt that they know their shit and will do things the way I would do things, which is to say, the proper way.
The little voice inside my head that keeps me from getting killed and let’s me know when things just ain’t quite right said, “What the fuck is he doing?”
I agreed with myself and said semi-loud, “You better get over.” He didn’t react so I yelled over the siren, “Get over in the other lane!”
He must have heard me because he jerked the wheel to the left and moved the ambulance into the oncoming traffic lanes.
My body tensed. The little voice spoke up again, “Shouldn’t he be slowing down? Why isn’t he slowing down? Don’t you think he’s going rather fast?”
I couldn’t disagree with myself and I thought, ‘Darn tootin his is.’ I yelled, “Easy man, slow it down.”
I glanced over at my partner and he was staring straight ahead in a trance. This is not the recommended way to safely enter an intersection on the wrong side of the road and against the light.
You better have your head on a swivel and be looking in all directions at once. That ‘Oh shit’ feeling pushed its way up to the front of my consciousness. Suddenly the sound of our accelerating engine sucking air and gas into a wide-open four-barrel carburetor made me think either this guy has a very sick sense of humor or he was going to kill us.
My right foot started pumping the passenger side brake pedal and I screamed, “Slow the fuck down!”
He seemed to come out of his trance for a second, said, “huh?” and took his foot off the accelerator.
My peripheral vision instantly notified my brain that it wasn’t seeing his foot move over to the brake pedal. My brain, multi-tasking its ass off screamed, “What?” Then scrambled a message to my vocal cords and my make-a-wish department. It screamed, “The other pedal, put your foot on the other pedal. Step on the brake you lame-ass sick son-of-bitch mother fucker!”
I scanned the intersection and saw cars speeding in both directions in front of us. It looked like a stampede.
When the cars that were stopped at the red light started flashing past us on my right, my legs went stiff as I pressed both my feet into the imaginary brake pedal.
I started yelling like a Drill Sergeant, “Slow down! Slow fucking down! Slow down now!”
My partner snapped out of it and finally jumped on the brakes. But it was too little, too late. I put my hands on the ceiling and my body went rigid as I stood on my useless brake pedal.
All I could do was brace for impact and scream like a soprano drill sergeant, “Stop, stop, stoooooop!”
My screams of terror were drowned out as we skidded to a tire screaming siren blaring stop. I heard other car tires screeching and waited for the inevitable crash of metal but none came.
I couldn’t see how close we had come to hitting anything because the ambulance was enveloped in a huge cloud of blue smoke from our tires. For 1.8 seconds I felt almost, free of anxiety hiding in the smoke, I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me and it was good.
Then our blue cloud floated away we were left looking at a motionless intersection. I immediately went into damage control mode. I reached over and turned off the siren with the idiotic hope that we would suddenly be less noticeable.
Every person in every car was looking at us. I could feel their stares boring into me. I was embarrassed beyond words.
I quickly decided that as long as no one had been hurt and no damage had been done, the best course of action was to feign control of the situation, tuck tail and get the hell out of Dodge.
Through clenched teeth I hissed at the psychotic EMT next to me, “Start the fucking engine, put it in fucking gear and slowly fucking drive forward.” Without a word my ex-partner inched the ambulance through the intersection.
As we slowly passed two cars that had slid to a stop sideways, I ignored the driver’s angry stares and pointed at them, mouthing, “Are you OK?” and making a big OK sign with my fingers.
I knew everyone was ok, at least that’s what I told myself, but I thought I should make a show of concern anyway. However lame it was.
Just to show everybody that we were still on official emergency business, I pushed a button and blasted two or three short “whoop-whoops” on the siren as we left.
As soon as we were a block away I spat, “Pull over.” I was so pissed I couldn’t talk. I blurted, “What, wha, wha, what the, what? Have you ever driven an ambulance before?”
He smiled broadly and beamed with pride, “No, that was my first time.” My head almost exploded when I thought of how close he came to killing me.
I couldn’t think of a bloody thing to say to him except, “We gotta go!” He actually turned in his seat like he was going to drive until I quietly growled, “Get out.” He seemed surprised but pleasantly chirped, “OH, OK.”
My ass had puckered up so far into my abdomen that I had a hard time walking around the front of the ambulance to the driver side.
I stuffed my pucker behind the wheel and sped off toward the three-car accident that actually happened.
We didn’t chitchat much for the rest of the shift. All I knew was that was the closest I ever wanted to come to wrecking an ambulance, killing a bunch of people and not being able to poop for a month.
Having experienced an out of control incident where the only thing I had control of was jack-shit, my control-freak freakishness went pathological. So I’ve been told.
I didn’t see Mario Ass Puckerer for about six months. He turned out to be a really good EMT who didn’t scare his partners.
For those who haven’t done it, running a red light driving on the wrong side of the road is extremely dangerous. It takes teamwork, communication and a partner you trust to do it with style and ease.
You have to trust that when your partner yells, “Clear right!” there won’t be anything to hit or run over when you punch the gas.
Getting in an accident in an ambulance running hot (with lights and siren going) is considered ‘poor form’ and is unimaginably embarrassing.
And no matter what, the accident will be your fault. The only possible exception I can think of is if someone who is whacked out on drugs and alcohol blows a red light driving the car from the back seat while engaged in a sexual act. And it’s all on high definition videotape.
When you’re approaching an intersection you only have so many options and the traffic will always dictate how you get through the intersection.
If you have a green light, hopefully everyone pulls to the right and you carry on your merry way. If the light is red and all the lanes are full of cars, then you simply move into the oncoming lanes and hope nobody is blasting Metallica on their stereo and looking on the floor for a CD, or in my day, a cassette tape.
As loud as our horns and sirens seem, there is always someone who will try and screw your world up if you’re not exercising acute situational awareness.
Danger lurks everywhere. People who smoke cigarettes with all the windows up and the music blasting away are one example. Folks who are turning left are notoriously dangerous.
Then we have the goofball who stops his car like everyone else, but then wonders why everyone is stopped and suddenly decides to pull out in front of you. Crash boom bang, day ruined.
How about the Mommies and Daddies who are busy smacking their kids in the backseat, or the person who is still half way down the street doing seventy and wants to get through the yellow light.
Personally speaking, old people who are deaf as golf balls and can’t see past the hood of their car have always ranked high on my obstacle list.
You may have seen the jogger on the corner sidewalk that can’t stop his legs from running while waiting for the light to turn. His legs jump the gun and jog him right into the intersection.
Of course he doesn’t hear our siren because his joggy music is blaring through the headphones on his head. Headphones are great for exercising but bad for loud things that run you over.
Teenagers for the most part just don’t have a clue along with a large population of adults who shouldn’t drive a toothbrush.
Last and by no means least is the fairer sex. The women, who put on makeup, talk on the phone, have lunch and attempt to drive a huge SUV.
The list goes on and on and on. And our job is to weave our way through all this, get to someone who may be dying and do it as fast and as safely as we can.
Of course all this sniveling is just that. Without all those sightless geriatric pot-smoking deaf female phone talking music blasting left turning jogger SUV drivers, there wouldn’t be anything to keep us on our toes, or keep our adrenal glands pumping out its addictive high-octane sweetness, and there wouldn’t be anything to put a pucker in our pooper.
I think everyone should, at least once in their life, jump out of a plane (with a parachute) and drive an emergency vehicle running hot.
Copyright Mike Cyra 2010This story was sent to me from Mike Cyra. It is copyright material and used with his permission. It is a story from his book Emergency Laughter. Thanks Mike!
My peripheral vision instantly notified my brain that it wasn’t seeing his foot move over to the brake pedal. My brain, multi-tasking its ass off screamed, “What?” Then scrambled a message to my vocal cords and my make-a-wish department. It screamed, “The other pedal, put your foot on the other pedal. Step on the brake you lame-ass sick son-of-bitch mother fucker!”
I scanned the intersection and saw cars speeding in both directions in front of us. It looked like a stampede.
When the cars that were stopped at the red light started flashing past us on my right, my legs went stiff as I pressed both my feet into the imaginary brake pedal.
I started yelling like a Drill Sergeant, “Slow down! Slow fucking down! Slow down now!”
My partner snapped out of it and finally jumped on the brakes. But it was too little, too late. I put my hands on the ceiling and my body went rigid as I stood on my useless brake pedal.
All I could do was brace for impact and scream like a soprano drill sergeant, “Stop, stop, stoooooop!”
My screams of terror were drowned out as we skidded to a tire screaming siren blaring stop. I heard other car tires screeching and waited for the inevitable crash of metal but none came.
I couldn’t see how close we had come to hitting anything because the ambulance was enveloped in a huge cloud of blue smoke from our tires. For 1.8 seconds I felt almost, free of anxiety hiding in the smoke, I couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see me and it was good.
Then our blue cloud floated away we were left looking at a motionless intersection. I immediately went into damage control mode. I reached over and turned off the siren with the idiotic hope that we would suddenly be less noticeable.
Every person in every car was looking at us. I could feel their stares boring into me. I was embarrassed beyond words.
I quickly decided that as long as no one had been hurt and no damage had been done, the best course of action was to feign control of the situation, tuck tail and get the hell out of Dodge.
Through clenched teeth I hissed at the psychotic EMT next to me, “Start the fucking engine, put it in fucking gear and slowly fucking drive forward.” Without a word my ex-partner inched the ambulance through the intersection.
As we slowly passed two cars that had slid to a stop sideways, I ignored the driver’s angry stares and pointed at them, mouthing, “Are you OK?” and making a big OK sign with my fingers.
I knew everyone was ok, at least that’s what I told myself, but I thought I should make a show of concern anyway. However lame it was.
Just to show everybody that we were still on official emergency business, I pushed a button and blasted two or three short “whoop-whoops” on the siren as we left.
As soon as we were a block away I spat, “Pull over.” I was so pissed I couldn’t talk. I blurted, “What, wha, wha, what the, what? Have you ever driven an ambulance before?”
He smiled broadly and beamed with pride, “No, that was my first time.” My head almost exploded when I thought of how close he came to killing me.
I couldn’t think of a bloody thing to say to him except, “We gotta go!” He actually turned in his seat like he was going to drive until I quietly growled, “Get out.” He seemed surprised but pleasantly chirped, “OH, OK.”
My ass had puckered up so far into my abdomen that I had a hard time walking around the front of the ambulance to the driver side.
I stuffed my pucker behind the wheel and sped off toward the three-car accident that actually happened.
We didn’t chitchat much for the rest of the shift. All I knew was that was the closest I ever wanted to come to wrecking an ambulance, killing a bunch of people and not being able to poop for a month.
Having experienced an out of control incident where the only thing I had control of was jack-shit, my control-freak freakishness went pathological. So I’ve been told.
I didn’t see Mario Ass Puckerer for about six months. He turned out to be a really good EMT who didn’t scare his partners.
For those who haven’t done it, running a red light driving on the wrong side of the road is extremely dangerous. It takes teamwork, communication and a partner you trust to do it with style and ease.
You have to trust that when your partner yells, “Clear right!” there won’t be anything to hit or run over when you punch the gas.
Getting in an accident in an ambulance running hot (with lights and siren going) is considered ‘poor form’ and is unimaginably embarrassing.
And no matter what, the accident will be your fault. The only possible exception I can think of is if someone who is whacked out on drugs and alcohol blows a red light driving the car from the back seat while engaged in a sexual act. And it’s all on high definition videotape.
When you’re approaching an intersection you only have so many options and the traffic will always dictate how you get through the intersection.
If you have a green light, hopefully everyone pulls to the right and you carry on your merry way. If the light is red and all the lanes are full of cars, then you simply move into the oncoming lanes and hope nobody is blasting Metallica on their stereo and looking on the floor for a CD, or in my day, a cassette tape.
As loud as our horns and sirens seem, there is always someone who will try and screw your world up if you’re not exercising acute situational awareness.
Danger lurks everywhere. People who smoke cigarettes with all the windows up and the music blasting away are one example. Folks who are turning left are notoriously dangerous.
Then we have the goofball who stops his car like everyone else, but then wonders why everyone is stopped and suddenly decides to pull out in front of you. Crash boom bang, day ruined.
How about the Mommies and Daddies who are busy smacking their kids in the backseat, or the person who is still half way down the street doing seventy and wants to get through the yellow light.
Personally speaking, old people who are deaf as golf balls and can’t see past the hood of their car have always ranked high on my obstacle list.
You may have seen the jogger on the corner sidewalk that can’t stop his legs from running while waiting for the light to turn. His legs jump the gun and jog him right into the intersection.
Of course he doesn’t hear our siren because his joggy music is blaring through the headphones on his head. Headphones are great for exercising but bad for loud things that run you over.
Teenagers for the most part just don’t have a clue along with a large population of adults who shouldn’t drive a toothbrush.
Last and by no means least is the fairer sex. The women, who put on makeup, talk on the phone, have lunch and attempt to drive a huge SUV.
The list goes on and on and on. And our job is to weave our way through all this, get to someone who may be dying and do it as fast and as safely as we can.
Of course all this sniveling is just that. Without all those sightless geriatric pot-smoking deaf female phone talking music blasting left turning jogger SUV drivers, there wouldn’t be anything to keep us on our toes, or keep our adrenal glands pumping out its addictive high-octane sweetness, and there wouldn’t be anything to put a pucker in our pooper.
I think everyone should, at least once in their life, jump out of a plane (with a parachute) and drive an emergency vehicle running hot.
Copyright Mike Cyra 2010This story was sent to me from Mike Cyra. It is copyright material and used with his permission. It is a story from his book Emergency Laughter. Thanks Mike!
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