A Personal Therapy Session.

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Can I take a moment and be a human really quick with you all?

I’m currently at work, on an ambulance. I’m going to be careful about how I talk about this because I don’t want to violate HIPAA, but I need to talk about it.

Let me set the scene. My partner and myself are headed to a call. It is a routine call, and nothing that requires balls to the wall action. Someone fell, someone hurt their elbow, that’s it.

So, we arrived and the family immediately started to act in a manner that made me think something more severe happened. I ask to see the patient; they finally allow me into the house to check on the patient.

The patient is fine. The patient is awake, alert, holding conversation. The person says their arm hurts from falling, and I say okay let’s go to the hospital. The person agrees and we start to walk out of the hall to my stretcher that is outside.

As we are walking, another family member starts to scream at our patient. They start yelling about wasting money and swearing at them. We ignore it and walk our patient outside. As we are walking towards the stretcher talking to our patient, another family member is screaming about something, then gives the following statement:

“Who’s going up with them to the hospital.”

Now understand that we don’t allow family members and friends to ride in the ambulance with a patient. This is done for a multitude of reasons, including things like our safety and not bringing more people into an ambulance that contains sick people.

Plus, when we are trying to take care of a patient, having the family members standing over our shoulders makes our work next to impossible. So for the safety of the crew, the patient, and bystanders, no one except crew and patient are allowed inside of the ambulance.

Unless it’s a child or someone with severe disabilities requiring a caretaker.

With this information, I look to the family member who said the statement and I say simply: “We don’t allow other people to ride in the ambulance.”

That’s it.

That’s what I said.

Now, I have no problem explaining things further if there are questions. I don’t mind trying to explain the policies and processes we have to the general public. In fact, I think doing so makes our job easier in the long run.

So, had I been asked “Why?” Or “How come?” Then I would have been fine having the conversation and explaining it to them. Except that wasn’t what I was told. That isn’t what was said. The response I got wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“No shit you dumb fuck, I know that. But I also know that you’re a fucking scumbag liar because I been in the ambulance with people lots of times.”

I can handle being yelled at. I can handle being screamed at. What I can’t handle is someone getting in my face and saying something like that to me. I had so many things I wanted to say. So many things that deserved to be said.

Instead, I just nodded and continued to help my patient.

Then another family member came out, and joined in. They decided at that point to say how much I disrespected them. They told me how much of a piece of shit I am. I bit my tongue.

Literally.

It stopped me from spewing back the same type of venom I was getting.

My partner at that time tried to explain that unless it is a child or someone with severe disabilities, that they can’t ride with us. They told him to shut the fuck up.

That is when the original yelling family member walked out of the house. Now all three had decided that my partner and I should be thanked for our service by displaying every single derogatory name they could think of.

We exchanged a look and just tried to get our patient to the ambulance. We both knew that this was a situation that was set up for us to lose. So, when the only option is to leave or lose, we choose to leave. We start moving the stretcher with the patient on it towards the ambulance.

This is when they let me know that if I hate my job so much, I should quit. Then they gave me information that I had never known. Apparently, we were now civil servants and they paid our salary. We work for them. We are told that our job is to do what they want us to do.

Again, I just tried to tunnel vision.

Then the third person made a statement that struck a deep vein of rage inside of me.

“You keep disrespecting my family and I’ll make sure it’s you two that need the ambulance.”

Now understand, he is threatening us while we are actively trying to take care of their family. We are being threatened now, while we are at work, attempting to help someone.

Someone we don’t know.

Someone we’ve never met before.

We arrived at my ambulance, and I had to honestly sit and question if I wanted to do this job anymore. We put the patient inside of the ambulance, and even though the patient was actually kind and nice, I was struggling to figure out if any of this was worth it.

This was my first call of the day. This was the start of my 24-hour shift. When I woke up this morning and got out of my nice comfortable bed next to my loving wife, at no point did the thought “I can’t wait for some piece of shit to threaten me.” While I was driving into work, I never once found myself wishing that “I hope someone reminds me of how much of a piece of shit I am. Especially while getting their spit all over me.”

Let’s be absolutely clear here. I make shit money as a paramedic. There is no medic anywhere that is making anything close to a paycheck that doesn’t require almost an entire shift of overtime just to be able to justify driving to work.

Despite what these people say, I do this job because I care. I do this job because I’m fucking good at it. I do this job because I like to actively make a difference in the world.

I never agreed to be a fucking punching bag for anyone.

Now once we got into the ambulance, things went fine. Things were okay. I knew that my level of stress was dangerously high and at a point that it was going to become a problem. There are only two ambulances today, and I figured I would talk to my boss. He was after all on the other ambulance today.

I sent him a text message about how I was ready to crash out. I let him know the situation and that I wasn’t okay. I told him in no uncertain terms how much this call had gotten to me. I wanted him aware that this managed to get under my skin. Call it an official unofficial cry for help.

His response?

“Nice.”

I told him that his crew had been verbally assaulted and threatened. I told him I was at a breaking point and that in an industry that is notorious for poor mental health care and poor employee retention, he simply said: “Nice.”

-Nicholas J Orcutt

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