Like a Rose

Minor motor vehicle to start the day. But the woman was moaning like she was dying. She said she couldn't bend her knee, but I couldn't find any deformity. On the way to the hospital, her cellphone rang, and she answered it. I tried to imagine what the person on the other line was thinking, listening to her moan as she explained she was on the way to the hospital. "Ooooh, they talking me to the hospital, Oooohhh, I don't know if I'm gooing to make it. Oooooh..."

She ended up in the waiting room. I always feel like a villian with the whole waiting room watching as we lower our stretcher, they try to help this dying woman into a wheelchair as she moans and pseudofaints. But maybe they are thinking, "Suck it up, lady, and take a number like the rest of us."

***

An old woman falls and hits her side on the bathtub. Her ribs hurt, but she doesn't say much for awhile, but then they start hurting more so she tells her daughter who calls 911. When we get there the old woman does not want to go to the hospital, but she does admit to the pain. She is stable, but possibly has cracked or maybe just bruised a rib. Extricating her from the room is very difficult because the room is cluttered with furniture, as is the hallway and the living room, and for that matter the driveway was nearly impassable with the four parked cars and the poorly shoveled walk. Five family members are there. Besides the husband and daughter, there are three grown grandchildren. The grandmother says she can walk to the door, she's been walking since she fell so she can't walk now and she don't need any cane, thank you very much.

It is slow going, but with our help, she makes it out to the living room where her family members sit on the couches. "You going to take her out like that!" We try to explain we have blankets. "Look at her, she in pain!" I look at my partner. I say, "Maybe if we sit her here, and we move these two couches, we can get the stretcher in."

On the wall I notice a plaque that says, "Grandmother's Love is Like a Rose: Always Blooming, Always Caring, Always Sharing."

We get her seated, and then lift the couches, trying to make room for the stretcher. "Now I can't get out," the daughter says. She has gone into the bathroom for the grandmother's teeth, and we have placed the couch where it blocks the hallway.

So we move some more furniture. None of the family attempts to get up from the other couches. They are all sitting slouched back like the couches are quicksand. We get the grandmother on the stretcher. The daughter hands her grandmother her teeth, which she slurps into her mouth. My partner opens the door and tries to put the latch on the slider to keep it iopen, but it won't catch.

"That won't work," comes the chorus from the couch. "That won't work. It's broken. It never work!"

So we have to take her out the door, balancing the stretcher and trying to keep the door from closing on us. Then down the stairs, around the obstacle course of cars and ice patches. Then the family comes trooping out, and one by one, gives their grandmother a kiss and tells her that they love her. Then we put her in back and take her to the hospital.

***

We get another call at that same Doctor's office that calls all the time. Only this time, oddly the phone rang at our headquarters where a nurse from the doctor's office asked if this was the number to call for an ambulance transport to the hospital. I asked if it was an emergency, she said no, so I gave her the number of the comercial service, then I called our dispatcher and told him what had happened. Five minutes later the commercial service passed the call to our 911 dispatcher as a severe abdominal pain. He told them that it was not an emergency, they said, it EMDed as a high priority so they had to pass it. So we went and it was just an elderly woman who had been having diarrhea and vomiting and the doctor wanted her examined at the ER and possibly IV rehydrated. She was very stable, even got up and walked to the bathroom because she had to go again. We brought her in non-priority.