Run Forms? Run Forms?

Busy day, five calls all in a row, three transports and two refusals. My ambulance is down for service so I'm working in another one. The medic who works in that one reguarly has the cabinets locked with pull ties so he doesn't have to check the shelves unless they're broken. I check my gear -- everything looks in order.

We always keep a couple refusals in the house bag so if the call turns out to be a refusal we don't have to go traiping back out to the ambulance to get the run box.

The call is for a woman who has fallen and hurt her hip. She is in her nineties and has no family members. She describes her pain as terrible and winces when I palpate her hips. I give morphine before we move her, and she is now, as she says, quite calm.

We get her out to the ambulance no problem, then I can't find the run box. No where to be found at all. I open up the house bag to get one of the backups we keep in there. Used them both up on the refusals. I break open a tab on the cabinet where extra paperwork is usually kept. There is no paperwork there. Not a run form on the ambulance.

I look at my partner. There is no family going with us, no one following. The patient is resting quite comfortably, eyes closed, feeling no pain. What do say, you swing by the bay on the way out of here. It's not but a couple minutes out of the way. No one else is back at the bay. The place is empty. My partner knows where the run forms are. There's a big box under the desk in the office.

When we arrive at the hospital, my paperwork is done. No one the wiser.

***

Get sent for a difficulty breathing. Find a huge barbecue going on, about eighty people, all ages. The complaintaint is an elderly woman feeling dixxy and a little nauseous. She is alert, skin warm and dry, and not complaining or pain. With about ten people gathering all around us, and others milling past and a giant screen TV blaring The Matrix, I decide to just get her on a stretcher and do everything in the ambulance.

She pukes up three emeisis basins worth of food on the ride in. I want to give her some phernergan, but when I ask her about allergies, she goes into the long winded answer in a deep southern accent all I catch is the words, "my daddy, sweet potato pie, get me some ribs, the strong stuff." In the meantime the woman in the front, her daughter is yelling at my partner because he said he wouldn't give her a ride back to the party. She turns and yells at me, "How are we getting back to the party? I ain't had my ribs yet."

I just shake my head, and grab another emesis basin as the patient is puking again.

At the hospital we find the run box we left earlier in the day.