Invisible

Woke to a snowstorm this morning. I had no idea it was going to snow. Very slippery coming in to work. Around nine we went out for an MVA on the town line. It was very minor. No injuries. The police officer suggested we let the driver of the damaged car warm up in our ambulance while he did the accident paper work. The man said he lived just up the road and we were volunteered to take him home. Well, then it turned out the accident actually happened across the town line so we had to wait for the other town to send an officer. He finally showed up and took a long time doing up the paperwork. In the meantime the passenger of the other car said his supervisor wanted him to get checked out at the hospital since the accident happened in a company vehicle. The officers debated whether they needed to call for the ambulance from the other town to come. It's in the other town, but we're an ambulance and we are already there, and its icy out so why not have us transport. The driver who wanted to get checked out said he'd just go with us and he could wait till the paperwork was done for the other guy, who I thought lived just up the road, on the way in fact to the hospital. Finally the paperwork is done, and the driver who wanted to get checked out walks back over to the ambulance (He's done doing his company paperwork with his supervisor)and I ask him again if he is okay and he says he just has a headache. Then once I get him on the stretcher, he says, oh yah, and my neck hurts now. So we c-spine him.

We start to the hospital, and well, the other guy lives a little further away than I thought. The passenger starts asking "are we there yet?" and I look out and we are on Main Street in the next town over. We are in fact farther away than when we started. Now at the same time the road is bumpy and icy and we are using the chains and the guy on the board is uncomfortable. "My head hurts," he says. "Are we there yet?"

I'm thinking "How did I get in this situation? I'm doing a call in another town and instead of transporting a patient to a hospital we're taking someone home while we have a patient on our stretcher who is now telling me his head is killing him.

Anyway, the one driver got home, we finally got to the hospital with the other guy who turned out to be okay. But what could have been a quick "no injuries, no paperwork" got very complex due to one tiny little good deed after the other.

***

Again accidents all over town, but none with injuries.

***

Late in the day we get called to an elderly housing for a patient unresponsive possible overdose. This is a different complex than the one we went to yesterday. This one has several buildings located around a single entrance drive. The resident all have outside entrances. Again the apartments are all the same. Kitchen living room and bedroom with bath off of it. These apartments are all dim with poor natural lighting.

The woman lies in bed, snoring. Her sister says she tried all day to call her with no luck, so she came over. She hands me the empty bottle of Ativan. Filled just a few days ago. 60 .5 mg tablets. Empty.

I give the woman a good sternal rub and she opens her eyes and mumbles. Her airway is patent, her vitals are good. We load her up and go. The sister says she has been despondent for weeks about her grandson, and has said she doesn't want to live. I never find out why happened to the grandson. I try to question the woman, but the best I get is mumbles. And I never find out when she took the pills or how many she really took. I did get the feeling that she did really want to die.

***

At the hospital I am walking through the ER when I see a black man maybe sixty standing naked in the middle of the bustle holding his catheter bag with fruit punch colored urine. The sight doesn't register on me until I am well past him. It was like he was invisible. Nobody was paying attention. I guess like a homeless man in Grand Central station, a naked man holding a foley in the middle of ER is not too out of the ordinary. When I walk back out of the EMS room to see if the man is still there or if he had just been a figment of my imagination, I find my partner escorting him back to his room.