Last Day

Today was my old partner's last day. I was glad we were working together, but I admit by the end of the day I was depressed. He will be transfering to one of our company's divisions in Florida. The reason this all came about was he moved to this state 15 years ago because of his wife, and now that he is divorced he says he has no reason to stay. This week has been sort of a farewell tour. People who see him and know he is going, give him hugs or handshakes and wish him well. He says he has no reason to stay, but he is an institution around here. Everyone knows him -- in the hospitals, the ambulance companies, police and fire. He has a large extended family here, even if it is only a family when he is at work.

"I'll be losing a lot of great friends," he said yesterday.

"We'll all be here," I said. "You know you can come back anytime."

"I hope I'm doing the right thing."

"You'll do fine."

He loves Florida and the sun, and will be taking full advantage of it at his campground where he will hook his trailer. The monthy park fee is reasonable and clothes are optional. Even though he will be making four or five dollars less an hour, his expenses shouldn't be too bad, he thinks.

I do worry about him. He is very set in his ways, and it may be hard at sixty to fit in with a different way. He will be the new kid at the ambulance company down there and have to be on best behaviour.

Last night we were driving down a dark street. A car was parked to the side of the road and a man leaned into the window. He was hard to see, and while my partner didn't come close to hitting him, he was a little startled, so he jammed on the air horn and swore at the man. As we continued down the street, I prayed a bullet wouldn't zip through the ambulance and go through my back, then out my chest, leaving me a few moments to realize I had been shot and was about to die because he my partner had finally pissed off the wrong pedestrian. But the bullet did not come.

After work, he brought all his uniforms in to operations and handed them to the guy who checks the run forms to see if we have filled out the billing properly and gotten all the signatures. That guy was on the road for years himself, until he hurt his hip too badly to work. They shook hands and wished each other well. My partner also handed in his fob and ID. There was no supervisor there to say goodbye. We shook hands and I wished him well, and we said what a great time it had been, and what a good man you are. We held the handshake a little longer than you normally might. Then he punched out and left.

***

We did five calls. A woman who had a syncopal episode while talking to her husband on the phone and becoming upset about the whereabouts of her child, a woman from a nursing home with a fever, a girl who passed out on a treadmill at the gymn, a man with high blood pressure trying to sign in to detox, and a guy who sliced off the tip of his thumb while working in a deli.

***

There was a young EMT at one of the hospitals -- a cute girl maybe 21, who had heard about my partner and I, but had never meet us. When she heard my partner had been working in the city fifteen years, she told him she was in kindergarten when he started.

Later outside in the ambulance, one of my partner's first partners saw him and came over. He is a cop now -- ten years on the force and now a detective. They commiserated about ex-wives, then the cop said he had remarried, had two kids, owned his home outright along with both his cars. amd was looking forward to retiring with a big pension in ten years when he is 47.

Waiting in triage, my partner and I were fooling around with the automatic blood pressure cuffs. My reading was 114/74. My partner's was 177/98. He was bothered by that. Later back at the same hospital, we took our pressures again. I was 112/70. He was down to 138/92. I could see the relief in his face.

Every morning we worked together, my partner would insist on checking the oil, then grumble about how many quarts the car was down. "Guess what?" he said this morning. "It's my last day. I'm not checking the fucking oil."