Naked

Cold, snowy, rainy day.

We started off with an MVA, which was a refusal, then just like yesterday as soon as we got back to the base, we were called back to the scene for the patient who, ticketed, now wanted to go to the hospital with a headache.

Did a seizure -- a young girl with a history of seizures who had stopped taking her medicine.

Then we did a repeat nursing home patient(3X for me in last month) with congestion, who said she felt the same as she always did and was walking around in the hallway when we got there. She asked us if she could have a cigarette.

Then we did a call for an old lady feeling woozy, whose neighbor called concerned about her. The neighbor said she had seen her yesterday raking her neighbor's yard instead of her own, and that when she came over today she seemed a little spacy and had been coughing up some blood.

The old lady I remembered from a call several years ago. We were called to her house because no one would answer the phone and she hadn't been seen for awhile. We pounded on the door. No answer. We finally broke in and walked quickly through the rooms of her old farmhouse looking for someone on the ground with a broken hip, stroked out, or maybe cold rigored and stiff. The cop and I walked right through the bedroom and into the large bathroom, then turned around and there she was sitting in a big velvet backed chair by her bed, completely naked, watching us without saying a word, off in her own world, a cup of hot tea beside her. She was in her eighties, but she had a chest that would have put Raquel Welch to shame. Tonight she was sitting in the same chair, except she had a bathrobe on and her skin was a little jaundiced, and she looked much older. She still had her tea and we let her finish drinking it before we carried her down in the stair chair.

***

A few minutes before time to leave we got a call for a man shoveling snow, who had collapsed suddenly. I thought for certain it would be a code, but no sooner had we tossed our coats on, then the hot line rang again and the dispatcher said, "Cancelled."