(I’m getting caught up on tale telling. This is last weekend’s tale, which I need to set up references in the one I’ll do Monday)
Memorial Day weekend comes around again, and had a rip-roaring start. I took Friday off, burning a vacation day because, well, I love four day weekends and I needed time off because I’m going bug-forking nuts.
I had let my plates expire on the pickup truck, so that was my big plan of the day before ambulance duty that night. VWife wanted me to go with her to the Suffolk Friends of the Library (otherwise known as ‘Old Women Without Lives’) book sale building and haul boxen for her. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t find a way out without starting a nuclear war.
As the saying goes, ‘the Lord will provide…’. As I was walking out the back door to put something in The Family Truckster (unrelated to the pickup truck, BTW), there was a page for a 2 vehicle wreck kind of close to home, so instinctively I looked in that direction.
“Hmmm. Traffic is backing up.”
“From both directions.”
“SONOFABITCH! It’s right there!”
It wasn’t ‘Five miles west of Mayberry’ as the page reported, it was a half mile across the field from my back door, making it about 2 and a half miles from the center of town. I got on the air real quick and corrected the location, then high-tailed it to the scene.
Two vehicles hit head on, winding upnon their sides in a rather substantive ditch on the south side of the road. Nobody was pinned in the classic sense, but nobody was getting out of their cars on their own power through openings created by the manufacturers for that purpose, either. For the moment, I was in charge. Cancel the helicopter, because no one was critical. Call for the equipment truck, because we had to extricate from both vehicles, and get a second ambulance because there were 3 patients.
I wished I could have called for clean shoes, too, because when I jumped the ditch, I sank halfway to my knees in the mud, which then sucked the shoes off my feet when I tried to get out. :grrr:
There’s not much more to this story, except that I also got my first patient management experience. That’s a pucker worthy job, let me tell you. If there’s a way in, you’re supposed to be inside the vehicle with your patients while extrication is underway, and you’re the boss when they come out to go to the ambulance.
Imagine watching a fat guy pushing 50 climbing into an overturned car. I was surprised at how agile I was doing that, and I was with the two teenagers throughout. You don’t know scary until you see a saber saw blade come through the roof, inches from your body, and you have no way to move to get out of the way. That’ll stop up your asshole better than any dose of Imodium.
The kids got out; I don’t know what happened with the lady in the other car as far as getting her out, but she was first. My girl, the sister that was driving, was unhurt. The brother had a broken nose, and possible broken wrists. Head-on at a closing speed of at least 90 MPH, they could have been much worse.
I got home right about 9 AM, and VWife was gone to the OWWL building without me. Kewl. I cleaned off mud, got a shower, and gathered my paperwork, then headed off to Bugtussel for plates. I don’t know if my body could handle again a shock like what happened to me next.
I walked in, said I needed to renew, handed over my paperwork, paid cash for the plates, was handed the new registration and endorsement sticker and turned to leave. Elapsed time was, and I’m not bullshitting you the reader in any way, 30 seconds.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
I had duty that night with Tollie, one of my favorite running partners. We had some administrative BS to take care of at the start of our shift, then headed off to one of the three eating establishments in Cottonfield County for the Firday catfish plate. As we neared the joint on a back road, I slowed down because there was a semi stopped, and it had the required hazard placards out. We rolled up, and asked the old black guy at the back end if he needed assistance. He replied that he had run out of fuel, and was waiting for someone to bring him some.
As we drove on, I glanced at the side of the cab, and broke out into hysterical laughter. Tollie looked at me like I was having a moment of insanity.
“Look at the door, dude.” He did, and saw the name of the company, then turned purple himself. Right there, in big script letters, ‘Buckwheat Trucking’.
Tollie: “Well, he said he was oh-tay!”
We were still laughing when we walked in the door of the restaurant.
There was one call. I’m writing this a week later, so I don’t remember what the exact call was, but we hauled an invalid guy to a hospital to our south we don’t normally run to. It was a routine trip taking him, but not the return leg.
There is a closed prison camp between Mayberry and the rescue building, about a mile and a half from the station. While we were passing, there was a big brown blur followed by a
BANG!
that shook the ambulance. We hit a deer.
I called the dispatcher and reported the wreck, then we got out to look. The driver’s side headlight was not just missing, but more precisely amputated. The bumper was bent, and there was some damage on the passenger side from the torque on the bumper. We were marginally drivable, but out of service.
We found Bambi about 100 yards behind us, twitching in the roadside ditch. We called for a depty or game warden to come shoot it, but the doe didn’t last very long. Then the harassment started. The Hooterville assistant chief asked if we needed a landing zone for the deer via text message, and someone else called on the radio to remind us we needed to run 30 seconds of a cardiac strip and to call the medical director before pronouncing the deer dead on scene.
I had another extra run Saturday night/Sunday morning, but I don’t even remember what that one was. The deer incident blurred that memory for all time…
Oh, and ice cold watermelon for dessert. Hmmm… lots of beerverages and then watermelon. I predict a night of peein’ every hour on the hour.