Twenty Minutes Early

So I worked the high performance transfer car. There was no medic gear in it, so I asked if I could have some just in case they needed us for an emergency. You are only going to be doing transfers. You won't do any emergencies.

The deal again with the so called HP car is you do 8 transfers, you go home and get paid for eight hours. They promise to feed you calls -- all of short transport -- and if you are kept waiting or a call is cancelled when you get there, it still counts. If you do more than eight calls, you start getting paid overtime as soon as you've finished your eighth call. The car often is done with eight calls after six to six and a half hours.

My old partner's Arthur's favorite line whenever we were kept waiting was "That's okay, we get paid by the hour." By when you are paid by the call, well, its another thing. You hump. We had four calls banged out in the first three hours. No breaks, no lunch, just charging ahead with the stretcher. We were on our way to a fifth when we were sent on, you guessed it, an emergency. They were out of cars and someone was having trouble breathing. We pull up in front of the house and the fire department is there, and I just know they are thinking I am a slacker, when I only pull the stretcher and come in with a makeshift in-bag. No monitor or big house bag. The bad news is the lady has an MI history and is a diabetic. The good news is she has been having diarrhea and vomiting. My assessment is she is dehydrated. My partner asks me if I want to call a medic.

At the hospital I have to explain why I have no Blood sugar or 12 lead.

My partner tells me we should get credit for two calls, the cancelled call and the emergency, but since they never sent us the tag for the first call, it only counted as one.

So three calls to go and instead of short trips, it's from one side of town to the other, picking up someone and taking them out of town. To make matters worse, the staff at the places we go are slow. Talk about standing there, tapping your feet. Com'on, already.

We do our eight calls and punch out all of twenty minutes early.

It will be awhile before I work the HP car again.