Don't ask us about our worst call.
I worked in medical facilities most of my career while I dipped my toes in the world of palliative care for the extra experience. I knew a life of Trauma was in my future and I wanted to be prepared to stare death in the face while I apologized to the family and hugged the ones that would see my face on the worst day of their lives. Death didn't bother me, especially since it was someone I hadn't known for more than a few days at the most, and I planned to keep it that way.
The academy was difficult, to say the least, while we held each other's hair and we puked during drills and learned how to crack jokes during the darker parts of the lecture in preparation for in-the-moment coping mechanisms in the field. We were trained by firefighters and medics with more experience in the darkness of EMS than we could ever imagine and they did their best to prepare us while they were strong enough to share the burden of their demons with us. I think it's safe to say none of us were actually prepared for the demons we were about to inherit.
I had gained a few demons while working in a hospital and only one managed to hang around as the last patient I worked with within palliative care, he affected me more than the others ever had and I stopped doing it after losing him. But while I was precepting on my first truck, my 2nd day on a truck as luck would have it, my demons got their first friend on the truck and she'll forever be the first thing I think of when someone asks me about my worst call. I know she won't be my last or my worst, but she'll always be my first.
She was lovely. I was attached to her the second I saw her short, silver, blood-stained hair and the stories I knew she held behind every wrinkle on her hands. I've always had a soft spot for geriatric patients and that hasn't changed as I become more and more seasoned on the truck. She had fallen trying to do something she did regularly but this time she hit her head and my heart sank as her daughter showed me the bottle of blood thinners she had spent several years taking while I held pressure and the medics checked to see if the glob of red jelly on her chest was another injury or the coagulated blood that should have still been in her body. She was funny and made light of the situation while we giggled about the handsome medics that helped rush her to my truck and sat silently watching her monitor and charting with a look of despair in their eyes that I'll never be able to accurately describe. They knew what was about to happen.
The hospital wasn't far, maybe a few miles from where she lived, and there was a lot to be done while her blood poured from the edges of her C-Collar on and around my boots. She told us a story from her time in her country before she came here in the '80s and made a new life and started a family as her voice started to fade and she became confused and was struggling to hear us asking her questions to confirm her status was declining. My heart started racing when I realized her stats were declining and she continued to soak through the trauma pads I had resorted to in a desperate attempt to preserve her quickly fading life source. I could see the hospital from the side door window, we just had to get her there and the idiot drivers racing each other home in rush hour around us needed to stop trying to pull around our sirens.
The entire truck smelled like sharp copper from the blood and, as my preceptor looked at me, I'm sure my face was sinking as I was fighting back tears knowing we were quickly running out of time while we raced to the hospital. I'll never forget the smell and how hard it turned my stomach. I don't know if it was my nerves or the smell, but I wanted to puke and scream.
I held my breath as we pulled her from the stretcher to the trauma bay bed while a nurse screamed for a crash cart. I ripped off my blood-soaked gloves and made my way to the little sanctuary we have in every hospital full of snacks and drinks to try to catch my breath. I just needed to see my preceptor. She was my safe space and I knew I was safe with her to feel out whatever I needed to feel out.
I had never felt so lost and useless in my life and, while I logically knew there was nothing else that could be done, I ran the call through my head over and over for the next month trying to figure out what else I could have done. We had to have missed something. She shouldn't have died, it was obviously my fault that I couldn't get all of the blood she lost back into her body to fix her. I'd honestly be lying if I said I didn't still almost a year later.
She's the call I go back to any time someone asks me about my worst call. She's the voice in my head when I cry myself to sleep that night. She's why I dread civilians looking for a gross story.
So the next time you want a cool story from a First Responder you care about, please think about your words before they come out of your mouth. Ask them about their favorite call. Ask them about miracles on their truck. Ask them about their partner (we tend to love to talk about our partners, they're like family to us). Or about the coolest thing they've ever seen. We really do see some cool shit!
We know you don't mean any harm and you're just looking for something wild. Most of us won't even say anything to you about how much it hurts to relive that call. But PLEASE do us the justice of not asking us to relive it.