It's Kinda Funny, but...

Sometimes I really, truly love my job. I wrote this Tuesday night when I was working (Day 4 of a solid 5 day stretch without a break) and sitting in the living room at the station.

I'm looking across the room right now, and I'm struck by the total uniqueness of the interactions between people who work in public safety. There's no way that you can spend 12-24 hours with a group of people without caring about them, and earning an interest in their lives.

Tonight I'm sitting in a chair, watching the people around me, and it's just making me smile. Puddinhead is catching shit from me and the medic for picking the jalapenos off his nachos, the other truck's crew is laughing at the fact that their truck wouldn't shift out of third gear on the way to their last call, putting them in fear for their lives when they had to get on the highway. The TV is blaring (American Idol, of course.) The strange guy riding along with us today is laughing at the way we were all singing along with the "One Hit Wonders" on VH1, and we're all talking various smack about patients, co-workers, family members, and most of all- one another.

The truth is, we're a family, and we know it. We fight like one, laugh like one, cook like one, watch TV like one... there's nothing else like it. We know about each other's families, their friends, their kids, their spouses. We know about each other's medical problems, and money issues. We know who's living where, and who's sleeping with who. It's a network of people that actually care about one another, in some cases more than the individual's real family does.

Last but not least, and this is a little sappy, but so am I-

This is a little spiel that the volunteer coordinator at Cary EMS tends to give whenever we have someone interested in joining the organization. It's paraphrased of course, but it's close enough, and it's very true.

"You see a little bit of everything here. It's not just running a call. It's not sleeping sometimes, not being able to eat sometimes, not being able to go to the bathroom sometimes. It's going out in public and putting on a smile when you feel like total crap. You might be sicker than the patient, but you can't let them see that. You have to be everything to everyone. You've gotta be a psychiatrist, and a friend, and a hug when somebody needs it, and mean when you have to be. You've got to be smart, and confident, and willing to take charge. You have to know when to call the police when you need help, and the fire dept when you need help, and be able to admit that you do need help. It's very supportive, it's a big family, we look out for each other, we live together, we fight and we play together. It's unlike any other job, and there's nothing else I'd rather do."

And that's about it.

Saturday

So I'd thought there hadn't been anything very interesting lately, but that was before I remembered the detective work that I did on Saturday.

I was supposed to work from 9a-9p this past Saturday, but I got a call from the supervisor at 6 o'clock, asking me what I was doing. When I groggily responded that I was supposed to be working the station 4 truck, he told me to just come in early, and that they'd find coverage for that truck later. Never being one to argue, I agree, and jump in the shower two hours ahead of schedule.

When I arrived at EM, I was greeted with a request to turn my supposed 12 hour shift, into 24 hours of punishment. Since it resulted in some overtime hours though, I agreed.

Within the first two hours of being on duty, my partner gets a call from her fiance, who's a Chapel Hill police officer. He'd been involved in a foot chase that morning with a suspect who'd broken into a woman's house, and attempted to steal her car. Over the course of the chase, he'd managed to rip his pants up, and cut his arms, and needed her to bring him so new pants and clean his "wounds".

We bring him some pants, and meet him at station 2, and he asks for some Neosporin. When my partner tells him we don't have any, he can't understand it. "What do you do when someone's shot? Just let it get infected?"

She replied- "Honey, when someone's shot, we got bigger things to worry about than infection."

To his credit, he shut up pretty quick after that.

He changed his pants and got back to work, and we did the same. Later that afternoon though, he managed to get involved in a chase with the same suspect, and lose the guy again. He called her back to tell her this, and then we decided to slip our gumshoes on.

We started cruising through the 'hood in Carrboro, looking for a subject matching the description my partner's beau had given us... and I quote:

"He's a tall nigerian-lookin' dude, with short hair."

As we cruise through the ghetto (note- bad idea. Ghetto residents have an inherent distrust of anyone riding in a vehicle with flashing lights on it) we see a couple of people that my partner believes might be "the bad guy" but I'm able to convince her of their (relative) innocence based on the description we have.

Eventually though, she finds a guy that she is absolutely convinced is our guy, and won't be persuaded otherwise. Her criteria? He looked at the ambulance "suspiciously".

Now here's my problem with her "suspect". The dude weighed 240+ lbs. Now her fiance might not be super-cop, but he's a pretty fit guy, who runs 5 or more miles everyday. He chased this suspect more than a mile in both of the chases today. If the guy she decided was the bad guy had tried to run that distance there would've been an EMS call when the guy collapsed with a heart attack.

Not one to be distracted though, she insists on calling her fiance, and giving him a full description of the dude. When he laughed at her over the phone, she got a little bit angry, and I had to spend the next 15 minutes next to a lover's quarrel via Nextel. Not my idea of a relaxing afternoon.

Sorry since that came out kinda lame, but it was funny to me, and it's the most ridiculous thing that's happened to me lately.

I'll do better next time.

It's been a while... remember me?

On a whim, I checked the hit counter I'd attached to this thing, and realized that people are still actively checking this stupid thing almost a month after I stopped writing anything for it. That punched my ego enough to get me to write something else. An awful lot has happened in the last three weeks, all of which isn't necessarily worthy of getting on here.

The highlights-

Chris got a girlfriend. TheGirlfriend is incredible, to put it very simply. She's probably to blame for the lack of entertainment posted on here recently. Partially because I'm spending late nights with her rather than thinking deep thoughts in the dark, and partially because some of that creative angst that everyone needs was salved a bit when she came along. More on "how to sound homosexual" later.

Chris got a job, that's keeping him busy. Well, this isn't really a new job, but I finally managed to get regular hours with Orange County, and I'm working some serious hours there. Today is Sunday- I worked 9a-9p Thursday, 9a-9p Friday, and 6a Saturday-8a Sunday. Needless to say, I'm a little bit wiped out now, and I work 9a-9p again tomorrow.

The medic class has continud to be mostly boring, with occasional moments of educational greatness.

I've got a few stories that I've collected in recent weeks that I'll probably end up putting on here. Included- The longest code of all time, Jill's party, Chris is a romantic fool, and anything else I manage to remember.

For now, it's good to be back. Less angst now, and I'm sorry if that's what was entertaining you folks, but there might be some writing of merit on here anyway. If anything interesting happens tomorrow, you'll be the first to hear about it.

For now, it's just good to be back.