She Digs Me, I Can Tell

I was paying a visit to Rocky Mountain Medic’s blog yesterday, reading about the ultimate EMS Nirvana experience – the Strip Club Call. You know, law enforcement has its badge bunnies, firefighters are the object of both male and female adulation, but medics just don’t have that many groupies. The ones we do have are not named Candy or Porsche or Jasmine. We have seventy year old groupies named Mabel, Gladys or Ethel, and they all trail fifty feet of oxygen tubing behind them all day.

But I did run one call where I might have been the object of a Sweet Young Thang’s admiration, however fleeting. Enjoy…

“Dispatch to Unit One,” the radio crackles, “Priority One call at the Lake Podunk Spillway, on the Hooterville side. Unconscious person.” Satan’s Minion never fails to interrupt our meals.

Rob sighs, stuffs his mouth with the last of his French fries, and looks at me.

“Unit One responding,” I grunt in acknowledgment, extricating myself from the cramped booth at McDonald’s.

“That’s a twenty-minute drive!” Rob splutters angrily, his mouth still full. “We’ll have to go all the way around the lake!”

“Maybe not,” I reply. I’ve got an idea forming in my head, so I key the radio mike once again. “Dispatch, is the patient at the spillway itself?”

“10-4, Unit One. The caller advised that a fisherman had collapsed at the spillway.”

“It’s only six minutes to the Podunk side of the spillway,” I suggest to Rob. “We could push the stretcher and the gear across.”

“I like it,” he grins, warming to the idea. “We’ll have the guy back across the spillway to the rig before the Hooterville volunteers even get there.” With that, we take a hard left turn onto Highway 21 for the brief run to the spillway access road. In less than five minutes, we’re there.

Damn, I’m a genius! We’d still be fifteen minutes out if we’d gone the long way around.

We pile the medic bag, oxygen and cardiac monitor onto the stretcher and duck under the chain stretched across the walkway at the top of the spillway. In the summer months, the walkway is packed with fishermen, shoulder-to-shoulder with their beer coolers and bait buckets. One hundred yards down the walkway, the flaw in my brilliant plan becomes apparent.

The walkway is only four feet wide, and our stretcher takes up two feet of it. We apologize repeatedly, pushing our way past pissed-off fishermen, knocking over bait buckets and coolers, tangling lines and generally making asses of ourselves. I look back and the sea has closed behind us, with most of them still directing angry looks our way as they untangle themselves.

We’re going to have to bring the patient back through that gauntlet, too. We’re screwed.

“Ohhhhhh shit,” Rob mutters softly, and I look up to see what has him so spooked.

There she is, about thirty yards ahead, The Immovable Object set to collide soon with our Unstoppable Force. A huge black woman is perched on top of a five-gallon bucket. She is so large, she has two smaller women in a satellite orbit around her. I would say they’re small, but only in comparison; each of her two satellites would weigh maybe two-fifty, but she’s much bigger. The walkway at the top of the spillway is only four feet wide, and her ass easily takes up three feet of that. She looks like a grotesque toadstool, perched there on her bucket. To make matters worse, she’s giving us the evil eye, and she doesn’t show any sign of getting up to make room.

“I don’t like this,” Rob whispers out of the side of his mouth. “You and your brilliant ideas…”

“It was your idea, too!” I whisper back. “Just relax. Maybe she’s friendly. Just reach out your hand and let her sniff it…”

“Fuck you!” Rob retorts, edging warily closer.

This is like a scene out of a bad western. ‘This walkway ain’t big enough for the both of us, sister.’

“You don’t still have the smell of food on your hands, do you?” I warn. “And be brave. They can smell fear.”

“Why don’t we just back away and call it a day?”

“Too late, partner. We’re already in her gravitational field.”

Rob turns his head and shoots me a dirty look as we approach the woman. “Uh, excuse me ma’am…” he begins hesitantly.

“What you want?” The woman demands, a hostile gleam in her eye. Her satellites take up flanking positions, forming a virtual wall of cellulite.

“We need to squeeze past you nice ladies,” Rob blurts.

Great choice of words, partner.

“We have an emergency on the other side of the spillway,” I explain politely. “If you ladies could just step aside, we’ll be on our way.”

At that, all three of them glare at me and turn their attention back to their fishing bobbers floating in the current thirty feet below us. If anything, their asses stick out even further.

Dropping our cot to its lowest position, Rob and I reluctantly prepare to run the Gauntlet of Goo. Picking our way past the acres of ass in front of us, we manage to lift our stretcher over our heads as we side step through the narrow gap between them and the railing. It’s a tight fit, but we aren’t forced to lubricate with KY to slip through, and we even manage to negotiate the passage without knocking a single floppy straw hat into the water.

The walkway is mercifully clear on the other side, so we are able to set down our burden after fifteen feet or so. Apparently, their combined gravitational pull sucked in any fishermen within fifty yards. We cross the rest of the walkway at a brisk trot, still looking for our patient, who is supposedly just on the other side.

“Awww, Goddamnit!” Rob whines pitifully, pointing. I look to see what he’s pointing at, and immediately feel like crying myself. Our patient is not at the spillway. He is well downstream, at the end of a 400-yard hike through pea gravel six inches deep. With big rocks. And gullies. And driftwood.

Did I mention the fucking pea gravel?

He’s lying supine amidst a crowd of onlookers, all of them flashing the gang sign of the International Bystander Society; one finger pointing at the ground, the other arm waving overhead, beckoning frantically. Some of them are even shouting the IBS secret code phrase, “Hurry the fuck up!”

By the time Rob and I get to the patient, I want to get on the stretcher myself. Our patient is an old man of maybe seventy, lying on his back with his head propped on his soft-sided tackle box. A bystander is helpfully giving him a big sip of water. He’s pale, but still sweating. From the number of empty Coors cans lying around his fishing spot, it’s pretty obvious what happened to him.

“What happened, sir?” I ask him, kneeling beside him and checking his radial pulse.

“Got plumb dizzy,” he answers, “then I woke up with all these people standing over me.” His pulse is rapid but strong.

“How long have you been out here?” Rob asks as he wraps a blo
od pressure cuff around the man’s arm.

“All morning,” the man replies. “Caught a few good catfish, too. It’s hotter’n Hell, but I been drinking plenty of fluids.”

I hold up one of the empty Coors cans. “These fluids?” I ask, grinning. He grins back.

“Hell yeah, son! That’s the real reason I fish. Gives me an excuse to drink beer!” This earns a chuckle from the crowd.

“That’s as good a reason as any,” I laugh, “but the problem is, alcohol dehydrates you faster. Plus, it’s 94 degrees out here, and you’ve been out here for five hours and drunk what…a six pack? That isn’t enough to keep you hydrated, even if you were drinking water.”

“I was about to go on a beer run in a few minutes,” the old man explains. “I ran out, but the fishin‘ was too good to leave.”

The crowd chuckles collectively. I’m pretty certain this a garden-variety case of heat exhaustion, but I ask him all the standard history questions anyway. He’s a reasonably healthy old man, his only medical history an enlarged prostate and an allergy to, as he puts it, “bitchy wimmen.” He’s an entertaining old codger, but we’ve got to get him out of the heat soon, so we cut the comedy routine short and ease him into a sitting position.

Immediately, he turns a pasty white and nearly passes out. His head lolls around drunkenly, and his eyes lose focus. When he comes around, he’s looking into the faces of two concerned EMTs, one of whom has noticed that his pulse rate jumped over twenty points when we sat him up.

“He’s orthostatic, Rob,” I observe. “Let’s get some fluids started and get him on the stretcher. Cardiac monitor, too.” I look back up at the spillway in dread. If anything, it’s packed with even more fishermen now, and the Cellulite Sisters are still perched there on the rail like gargoyles looking for a meal.

“Hey folks,” I say to the crowd in general, “why don’t y’all try to flag down a boat for us?”

Immediately, they hustle en masse to the shoreline and start flashing their IBS gang signs at the boats anchored below the spillway. I’d flag one down myself, or have Rob do it, but neither of us has the knack. It’s a lot like a tourist vainly trying to hail a taxi in New York City. Only the locals really know how.

Presently, an expensive bass boat pulls up to the shore. The captain jumps to the ground and swaggers over. He’s a fifty-ish man in an advanced stage of midlife crisis. He’s got all the signs – expensive boat, hair graying at the temples, beer gut, bottle tan, mirrored sunglasses and enough gold chains to make up a Mister T Starter Kit.

His first mate looks all of twenty-five, and she has some rather spectacular pectoral ornamentation, no doubt paid for by our new friend.

I’ll bet that if she fell out of the boat, there’s no way she’d drown. But I’d damned sure try to help her.

“Y’all need some help?” Pimp Daddy asks brusquely.

“Yes sir,” I nod seriously. “We have a very sick man here, and we’d like to use your boat to take him back across the spillway. Could you do that for us?”

“All three of you, plus your gear?” he asks dubiously. “I suppose I could carry that much weight. Better still, why don’t I just stay ashore and let my fiancé drive you across?”

The girl flashes a winning smile. I smile. The clouds part and a shaft of heavenly light bathes us in a comforting glow. Angels sing.

Thank you, Lord. Your blessings never cease.

“Would you?” I gush. “Thank you so much!”

Without further ado, Rob and I load our patient onto the casting deck of the boat and pile our gear aboard, and the girl slowly backs us out into the current. I was just about to start an IV on the old man when our savior arrived, so I take the opportunity to finish my task as we bounce across the waves. The girl smiles appreciatively at my obvious skill.

She digs me. I can tell.

All too soon, the trip is over and the boat is beached on the opposite shore, a bare fifty feet from our rig. We unload our patient and our gear, and I shake the girl’s hand before she leaves.

“Thanks for the assistance,” I tell her. “We’re grateful.”

“My pleasure,” she breathes seductively, winking at me as she backs the boat off the beach. Her voice is every bit as sexy as the rest of her.

Come back, gorgeous! I never even got your name! We’ll take Pimp Daddy’s money and run away together!

On the way to the hospital, I give our patient nearly a liter of Ringer’s Lactate solution. His pulse and blood pressure remain unchanged, but he’s talkative and alert. He tells me his name is Grady, and we chat about the best places to fish along Bayou Podunk. He knows a few good spots I haven’t tried, and even better, they’re all easily accessible by ambulance, and within our coverage zone.

“That gal drivin‘ the boat sure was a looker,” he observes, his eyes twinkling. “She’d be worth taking a Viagra for!”

“Yeah, she was pretty hot,” I agree. “She’s too young for you, though.”

“You see the way she was lookin‘ at me? She’s partial to older men,” Grady winks. “I can tell.”

I chuckle and shake my head, disconnecting the cardiac monitor leads and oxygen as Rob pulls into the ambulance bay at Podunk General Hospital, Nail Salon and Crawfish Hut. Later, after we’ve given report and handed Grady off to the ER staff, Rob looks smugly at me as we head back to the station.

“You see the way that girl winked at me before she left?” he smirks. “She dug me. I could tell.”

Until next time…