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!
