Two Paramedics
Prompt: Two paramedics have a patient in the back of the ambulance. The patient has only about 30 minutes to live. It could take 20 minutes or more to get to the hospital. What’s going on in the ambulance?
Ambulances are smaller than you’d think. In movies you’ve always got the patient, a couple of EMTs, the driver up front, maybe a friend or family member accompanying their dying loved one to the hospital where they will wake up one commercial break later. Maybe two.
Sitting in an actual ambulance, things are being moved around and hooked up to the person lying in the middle of the truck. Stuff is hanging from the ceiling and you’re wondering if any of it will be used on you. Some of it looks cool, the rest looks insanely scary.
“I don’t think I really have to go to the ER, right?” More people than you’d think have asked this. Admittedly, the ER is boring usually unless you’re dying of an unknown illness or maybe your ulna is sitting in between your toes. It’s expensive, too. American healthcare is no friend to the accident prone.
EMTs continue to do their thing. “Is it alright if I lift your shirt to connect these? Would you rather my partner does it?”
The dying patient either agrees or is dying too fast that EMTs don’t even ask.
“We’re going to draw some blood for the ER doctor.”
If it were me, I’d look away from the needle. For some reason if I see a needle going into my arm, my brain shuts down and says, it’s ok, you don’t need to be awake for this.
Blood is weirdly warm. It’s not boiling water hot but it isn’t hour old coffee either. It’s a heavy warm, one that feels like it’s still there after you’ve passed the little tubes of blood off. That weight will sit in your hand until the next time you fill four vials with someone else’s blood.
Most recently you’ve heard about the gas explosion in the east side of town. Who hasn’t? It’s been on every news channel and special alert for the past two hours. You know they’re still looking for people. You know you aren’t getting back to bed tonight. You know you’ll be pulling a long and tiring shift the next 18 hours (at least). You are the ambulance driver and while everyone knows lives depend on paramedics doing their thing in the back of a truck, no one realizes that traffic, shortcuts, downed trees, weather, and so much more puts the pressure on you to save them, too. If you go just a bit too slow or take the wrong turn, a death or loss in brain function or maybe even a limb that couldn’t be saved is on you.
There’s no hospital in the east side and when the hospital in the next town over is full, you drive to the far side of town and hope for the best. You’re a good driver, that’s why you got called in for this, right? They could have called someone else and had you driving around old people that tripped in their kitchen or slipped getting out of the tub, non-emergencies that you could sit at a red light during and still be fine.
When there’s a gas explosion in the late evening and it took police two hours to find your patient, you know red lights aren’t a luxury you get to enjoy. Just a moment to catch your breath or look ahead and see if you should take that left or this. You’re deciding on the fly. You worry it’s the wrong decision and the other way could have been faster.
Two hours lost in a gas filled, crumbling building. You don’t know exactly what happened to this person but one of the EMTs told you to hurry, that you’ve got maybe thirty minutes. Crossing town to get to the other hospital takes 20 minutes and on a night like this, where everyone is driving around trying to get pictures of the explosion or trying to get to the hospital they think their brother or sister might be at, the chance of an accident is higher and navigating the roads becomes harder than a game of Temple Run when you’re stumble-to-the-couch wine drunk on a Wednesday night.
You hear a phone ringing in the back. Someone’s put it on speaker so they don’t have to hold it up to their bleeding ear or sliced cheek.
“Hey,” you hear. Later the EMTs tell you she covered the phone to cough blood and readjust herself so she didn’t sound like she was lying on what would probably be her deathbed. “Did you put the meatballs in the crockpot this morning after I left?” A pause. “Ha, alright, well, put them in now and we can have them for dinner tomorrow.” Another pause. “No, I’ll probably be back late. Are you still driving home? Ok, well, put them in when you get home.” A short laugh. “Ok, bye. I’ll see you later.”
It’s a casual conversation. No “I love you,” no “I’m sorry,” no “I’m heading to the hospital, please be there when I wake up.” It was a goodbye, I guess, but not the soppy movie goodbyes. It reminds you of that phrase, “remember me how I was.” I guess that’s what she was giving whoever was on the other end of that phone. Girlfriend, boyfriend, child. You think, do they have any pets? What will happen to them?
You turn onto a long road but it’s usually the quickest, no traffic lights or stop signs, rarely will other cars drive it. It’s a boring dirt road but it’s probably the best decision.
You didn’t think about the weather. Yeah, it was hurricane season but it didn’t start getting windy and rain didn’t start pouring until a few minutes after you picked up the sob story talking on their phone in the back of your ambulance.
You know it doesn’t matter now. A huge evergreen is blocking the road. You can’t even go around it. The road is dirt, the sides of the road are dirt, underneath the grass is dirt that will give way under all this rain.
You’ve messed up.
A quick whip around and you know you’ve already lost 7 minutes.
It’s good she made that call.
As you race back down the dirt road, trying to avoid deep ditches full of water that you can barely see because who puts streetlights on a dirt road, you begin to smell the gas on her clothing and hear the woman struggle to breathe. She coughs, you wince, a paramedic grabs something to try to help her, you wonder if it worked.
14 minutes have been wasted going up the dirt road and back again. Had you been able to drive that whole dirt road, you would have made it in exactly 20 minutes to the hospital. Now you don’t know how long it will take. You hope there are no other trees blocking your new path.