A little break in the action, just in time. I’ve been running since 0700 hours. No downtime today, a steady stream of people needing help.
“Without all these people this job would be a piece of cake!” I once joked with a partner. In reality, without all these people there would be no cake at all. It’s “the people” who make it possible to work the long shifts with so little rest. They come and go for me, most forgotten as soon as the folks at the ER take over, but some stay on my mind for hours, even days after they leave. A special bond forms between the sick and injured and the people taking care of them, if you let it, and much can be learned simply from sharing the experiences of those we treat.
My head hits the pillow, and I’m gone, sweet blackness, no dreams, no tossing, no turning, just me and unconsciousness. I call it death sleep. I’ve never actually been dead, but days like this lead me to believe it might be preferable to consciousness.
My body has melted into the bunk, and the mattress, bought after the blizzard of ’78, feels like a priceless feather bed, not the plastic-coated, springy thing it is. It is amazing what 30 hours of constant awareness does to a person’s needs. I could sleep on anything now, and as the minutes of unconsciousness add up, the body begins to recuperate.
Blinding light wakes me. I’m not certain how long I’ve been out, but it must have been a while. I’m refreshed and ready to roll. The tones are far better than the bells that would rattle my bones all those years ago. It seems like yesterday, my bunk directly under the Gamewell Giddyup, lying on top of the bunk, more tense than the spring in the bell, waiting, waiting, waiting…
Some nights it never went off, and I actually would doze off and on till shift change, but it took me years to relax enough to fall asleep under that thing. A veteran firefighter once told me there was nothing we couldn’t handle, so relax and get some rest. It took me years before I believed him and stopped imagining the unimaginable things that could happen on my watch and how best to respond. He was right: Whatever happens, we can handle. We may not always save the day or somebody’s life, but we do what we do with what we have, and go as far as our training allows us, and we do our best.
Twenty years goes by in a blink of the eye, and I rub the sleep from mine. The digital clock on the dash reads 4:23. Little birdies start their chorus early this time of year, and their song escorts us out of the building and into the predawn solitude. Nobody is on the road, not a soul. A few lights burn low in the houses we pass; a stray dog, some rats and a gentle breeze pushing the previous day’s litter away from the curb are our only companions.
It’s Gayle who called. She lives on a folding chair next to an abandoned building. Sometimes her niece lets her stay with her, usually at the beginning of the month, when the disability check makes its monthly appearance. Her niece spends the $700 on men, booze and lottery tickets, according to Gayle, and when the money dries up, she’s out, back to her chair.
She sits there most of the day and into the night, occasionally shuffling into a store for a bite to eat or to get warm for a minute, but she is a large woman, and homely, and wears the aroma of street living. The proprietors of the shops quickly dispose of her, giving her something to keep her quiet, because if they don’t, she will make such a fuss the police will be needed… continue reading http://www.emsworld.com/article/10784365/stories-from-the-streets-gayle-at-0430
Y'know, Cap, sometimes the folks that have the least need us the most. And even if one is "obese, ugly, [and] mean,' she's still alone. And this is where we come in. Sure, we can be burnt out, and cynical, and sarcastic, and talk (or even boast) about "we versus they," but when it comes down to it, we are the ones who are there for those folks. We are the ones who have to care, even if just a little bit. We are the ones who have to offer comfort to the afflicted, relief to the injured, and hope to the hopeless.
We may not admit it when we're out in public, but I doubt most of us went into this field for the money, or the uniforms, or the bennies, or the long off-shift periods, or the right to drive like lunatics. We went into it because we want to help people, we want to make the world better, safer, more pleasant. We want our children, and our society's children, to grow up healthy and strong and confident. We want our communities to be a place where we hear children laughing, not gangbangers shooting. We want to be proud of our nation, our state, our munipality, but most of all, we want to be proud of ourselves, and our brethren.
Sometimes, that's not easy… just today, I saw that three career firefighters resigned because they got caught with hookers in the station. Others have been fired, forced into resignation, or even imprisoned, for stupid things they've done. Those of us who care — and that should be ALL of us — cannot and must not allow the actions of those few to contaminate the rest of us.
I'm not terribly religious (I guess agnostic, at best), but everyone seems to be quoting Scripture these days. Those are who yelling the loudest seem to have missed this little passage: "… whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matthew 25:40, New International Version)
We have to respond, we have to act, we have to CARE.
Otherwise, we are doomed.
Great stuff, Mr618, you should start a blog, people need every positive message they can get, and your heart is definately in the right place.
I gotta tell ya I've dealt with her and I honestly think quite a bit of her baloney is an act. She was nothing but nice to me because she was in the wrong. I really don't have any sympathy for her becasue of the way she goes out of her way to abuse others
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