EPTAt about 19:00 the paper work is done, the rig is checked and ready to go. Minutes tick past like hours, the night is quiet. Slowly the two other day crews sign off and all that is left is the graveyard shift, appropriately named at times. Nothing is heard on the radio, its quiet.. not the kind of quiet that makes you think that something is going to happen, or gets you on edge, the kind of quiet that provides no insight into the night. Tired bodys rest on the ouch and with the fuzz of the radio, quietly drift off to sleep.
03:45 the silence is broken, dispatch is radioing in, pagers are beeping. Code 1, 20 year old male, intentional overdose, patient is not violent, police en route. Waking up to your pager going off is something that I can only relate to possibly being hit in the face with ice water while you're sleeping. It's stunning, you're disoriented at first and it takes awhile to get your bearings. The garage door goes up, lights flash and the wail of the siren breaks into the night. Eight minutes later, we arrived at scene. The night was quiet, it was a weird feeling.
Walking through the door, a young man is seen sitting on a chair speaking to dispatch on the phone. Sweat is pouring off of him, I go to check his pulse. 180 irregular, reminded me of a train chugging along the tracks with skips in between. Pupils are dilated, airway is patent and lungs are clear and equal bilaterally.. As my partner is asking the young man what he took, he informs he that the bottles are down stairs and he can't remember the name. With a look and a nod, I hand over the vitals to my partner and set off down into the basement. I open the first door on the right, its dark, I can't find the light switch. I turn on my flashlight.. the beam cuts through the haze of weed that is left filling the air. On the bed, two knives, I take note and make my way to the young mans desk. I see a note, the empty pill bottles, and everything that he considered valuable to him assorted on the desk.
We now have the man on our stretcher, in the back of the truck.. monitor is showing sinus tach, blood pressure is 196/116. I hop out and into the drivers seat of the rig, we start rolling to the hospital code 1. Again, that quietness is there. We've been rolling towards the hospital for five minutes now, the patient lets out a scream, I could sense the terror in his voice from the driver seat. He goes unresponsive, an OPA is inserted and my partner begins to breath for him with a BVM. Minutes and hours that rolled by while laying on the couch are slowing down again, the drive is seeming to take longer than usual, a familiar marker is seen, we're two minutes from the hospital now..
), this is a really gripping story. You have successfully infuriated me with your cliff hanger, and I love the analytic, scientific style with which you wrote this.
