Memory is funny. You say, well, I’ll
never forget that, but then you have less and less recollections as the years
run by. I find that it’s not necessarily
intense experiences you remember best, but those which were so odd that you “knew”
that God (however you understand Deity) to have planned it.
Tonight, I’m remembering an ambulance call 48 years ago. Sure, it was intense, but that was what we
did. We were trained for it and, I must
say, pretty decent at it. On this call, God
set us up to save a life that - absent His efforts - would have been lost.
Let me add that ALL we did was do what we were trained to do. We didn’t run any extraordinary risks (unlike
the occasionally stupid stuff we did on other calls.) But that we were placed exactly where we
needed to be was and still is a wonder.
Several things had to happen in an exact order to put us where we were
needed on that Saturday, December 18, 1976.
1 – The Station was tired, the paint was peeling, the walls needed scrubbed - and it needed a GI party.
I was out of school for the year and had
time to dress grungy and work with a dozen others starting early Saturday
morning.
Now, by “the station was tired,” I’m not kidding. Let me, how can I illustrate it? OK, the station wasn’t air-conditioned nor
well-heated. When the bunk room got hot
in the summer, what could so was just raise the garage door. (It faced a busy street, so we had to wear
shorts to bed – No commando allowed.) Oh,
and the station was rat infested. For
fun, people would bring in pistols for a little rat hunt. The neighbors upstairs often called the police,
but for some reason the police would always find everyone peaceful when they came. No, they never looked in anybody’s car. That's where the pistols were. And yes, it was that kind of place and that
kind of crew.
2 – We always, always, always had at least one “duty crew” at the station. They weren’t
much involved in the GI party because they were in neat, neat uniforms. For
things to work out, the duty crew had to leave on a call. I have no idea what the call was.
3 – Then, another call had to come in.
No, it wasn’t the MVA where the magic happened, it was a psychiatric emergency on the northeast side of the county, in the
direction of WVU Hospital in Morgantown.
As Dickens said somewhere, nothing wonderful could have happened
otherwise.
4 – We – Lee, John & I – had to be the ones who took the backup bus
to the call. Lee was the state fire
training director at the time. (He died
relatively recently after years as the fire chief for the Tennessee Valley Authority.) John worked for him and probably was the best
rescue person available. I was a 23 year
old renegade law student with time on my hands. Everybody seemed to enjoy having a renegade
law student around. I would study on the
kitchen table, take a call, and everyone would leave my books and notes alone
so I could go back to it when we returned.
Lee, John and I had to be the ones who responded to the call because we
really didn’t care about following the rules. There was a rule that you took the patient to
the nearest hospital. That was Fairmont General, in the other direction
from WVU Hospital. However, Fairmont General
did not do psychiatric emergencies. Had
we taken the patient there, they would have futzed around for an hour and then
sent us to WVU. Well, screw that. We took the patient to WVU.
5 – A dear friend, Ann, was working charge nurse at the WVU ER that
day. She was a member of our company. Oh, the charge nurse is the person absolutely
in charge of the ER. The ER wasn’t busy,
so – for something wonderful to happen – we had to hang around for half an hour, drink coffee
and shoot the breeze with Ann.
From there on, God sat back and watched while His plan unfolded. He made those five things happen and could
relax while we followed the plan.
We left WVU and got back on the Interstate toward Fairmont. As we
passed Goshen Road, a car coming north on the other side blinked their lights
at us. Well, we figured, it’s Christmas
and Lee – who was driving – gave the other driver about 5 cents of the red
lights. That’s the festive thing to
do. Then, another car blinked lights at
us. Hmm. Well, it’s Christmas. Time for
10 cents of red lights. And then, a
third. OK, something might be going on. Why
would you blink lights at an ambulance tooling down the road?
I was
sitting in the officer’s seat and felt Lee accelerating hard. John, in the back, was reaching for the
trauma pack and other gear. At Warp One,
Lee switched on the lights. Warp Two, the siren. As we topped
the ridge before the county line, we could see, most of a mile away, a car on
its top. A State Police cruiser was pulling
up. When we hit Warp Three, I picked up
the mike and called our dispatcher. “Have you had a call about an MVA at the
county line?” Closer, closer. “Negative.”
“Well, you do now, send everything.”
Oh, that’s called a “Y’all come” radio call, really frowned upon
usually. In this case, we were
forgiven. We had another three rigs in
the station plus a rescue, and they all started out.
As we pulled up, we could see at least four patients, all out of the
cars, perhaps from being ejected. (Three
of them were actually ejected.) The Trooper
was covering one of the patients. (He
turned out to be an old ambulance guy, and became a good friend. When years later, I was assigned to represent
a cop-killer, the first thing I did was call Mike, meet him at McDonald’s and
told him that I was going to represent the guy accused of killing a brother
officer. We still talk about that
meeting, and he appreciated the heads-up.) Well, since we were a crew of three and there
were at least four patients, we took Mike’s word that one was already deceased. John went to the nearest patient, a 20 +/-
year old lady who was very, very injured.
I went to a baby, who was crying. (Hey, that’s good; when a baby doesn’t cry,
that often means that something is very wrong.)
John needed my help. Just then a
lady came forward, said she was an RN. Don’t
you know, the Lord LOVES a volunteer. “Take
the baby. Lee put her in the back of the truck. Ma’am if the baby quits crying, tell us.”
We quickly checked, packaged, and got the injured lady into the
truck. Sometime in the past few months,
we had an in-service training in evaluating trauma patients. That patient was withdrawing to pain. Now, we were EMT’s, we didn’t know WHY, but
we had learned that was really bad and the only real treatment we had was to
beat feet for WVU.
(In the meantime, Lee had checked the fourth patient. He was an older gentleman, was from another car and was having some chest pain
from the excitement. As we were leaving,
the fire department and our second unit was pulling up, and we left that person
to them.)
Off we went, Warp Four, to WVU.
Mike was doing the escort. There
was a WVU basketball game starting and we had to crack the chaotic intersection
at the Coliseum.
We just did our job. We
delivered the patients to WVU and they did their jobs. It was a close thing, but later we heard that
the lady - the mother of the baby – left the hospital in good shape after a
rough recovery.
We did nothing special or extraordinary. But God set it up. I still remember and thank Him for that.
Mizpah!