Ambulance Driver Files A Day in the Life | Kelly Grayson
“Hi, I’m Bitchy Partner,” she introduced herself. “I’m sure everyone here has already told you more than you want to know about me. I’m the burnt-out, backstabbing bitch who hates her job and can’t work and play well with others.”
“Yeah, that was pretty much the consensus,” I grinned. “And I’m likewise sure that some people have told you about me. I’m either an arrogant Paragod who thinks he knows everything, or the most skilled paramedic who ever lived, and you should count yourself blessed to even ride the same truck with me. Depending on who you talked to, of course.”
“Yep, that’s about it,” she chuckled. “So which one is it?”
“Neither,” I answered, “and now that we’ve established that neither of us should believe everything we hear from everyone else, we can talk about what you should expect from me.”
“And what is that?”
“I’m a pretty easy guy to work with,” I continued. “I only have a couple of hard and fast rules, and I consider them inviolable. Rule #1 is, what happens on the truck stays on the truck.”
“Good,” she agreed, “I have the same rule.”
“This isn’t some Code of Silence I’m talking about, BP,” I explained. “I’m talking about personal stuff. You’re going to be spending more time with me than you do with your kids and your boyfriend. Anything going on in your personal life that I happen to overhear, I’m not going to repeat. I expect the same from you. What happens with company business and patient care is another story, which brings me to Rule #2…”
“Which is?”
“Partners back each other up. I’m not starry-eyed enough to believe that you follow every company policy to the letter. Nobody does. And I’m not going to run to the supervisor bearing tales every time you violate a company policy. I am telling you that if you do something that I think compromises patient care or our safety, or negatively reflects on me or The Borg in the public eye, you’re going to hear about it. But you’re going to hear about it from me first. If I have a problem with you, I’m going to take it up with you first. If you don’t fix it, then I’ll get other people involved. That’s all I ask of you in return.”
“That’s fair enough,” she nodded. “I feel the same way.”
“It would help if you adopted the same approach with everybody,” I suggested. “I fucking hate company drama and politics, and being drawn into write-up wars. If you have a problem with another crew, take it up with them first, and politely. If they don’t fix it, then I’ll back you to the hilt when you take it to the supervisor. Likewise, if somebody comes to me bearing tales about you, or if I catch them talking behind your back, I’m going to back you up. I’m your partner. That’s what partners do.”
“I feel exactly the same way,”” she assured me, “despite what you may have heard otherwise.”
“I don’t care what I’ve heard otherwise,” I answered. “I’m going to judge you by your actions, not what someone else says about you.”
“Fair enough.”
I’ll only go so far as to say that integrity is how you behave when no one is looking, and as far as I’m concerned, BP has none.
We hadn’t worked together two weeks before she violated Rule #2. Rule #1 she pretty much followed, although that had more to do with her own self-absorption than with her scruples. She was too caught up in her own personal drama to pay much attention to anyone else’s.
It didn’t take me long to realize I’d been paired with a Toxic Partner.
She’s not the first one I’ve had. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. Dealing with dumb partners, annoying partners, lying partners, shit magnets, clumsy partners, know-it-all partners, lazy partners, ass-kissers and wallflowers is part of the job.
And the first step in dealing with it is to not be those things yourself. Over the years, I’ve developed a bit of a reputation as a rehabilitator of problem children. Put the green newbie or company fuckup with AD, and he’ll either straighten them out quickly, or convince them to seek a rewarding career in the fast food service industry.
Either way, problem solved.
And it’s really not all that hard. It’s the EMS version of The Golden Rule: Treat your partners as you’d like to be treated yourself. Treat your patients like you’d want someone to treat your family members. Demand excellence from yourself, and pretty soon your partners will try to step up their games. Peer pressure can be a good thing.
But occasionally, you find one of those partners that simply cannot be rehabilitated. For whatever reason, they’re not going to change their behavior, and they’re too wrapped up in their own personal drama and professional misery to see how fucked up they are. As far as they’re concerned, they’re normal. It’s everyone else who is skewed.
At some point, you have to come to the realization that such a person is a great big, smelly turd.
And you just can’t polish a turd, folks. All it does is smear feces all over you and everyone else. The only thing you can do with a turd is flush it.
The Borg has a reputation in some circles as a monolithic, impersonal bureaucracy with no regard for the personal well-being of its drones. If anything, BP’s situation demonstrates otherwise. Rather than flushing her, they kept her around long after her stench had permeated everything around her. They tried to polish her, with predictable results.
Of course, they’re partly to blame for making her what she was. When she was a young, impressionable EMT, they partnered her with another turd that should have been flushed long before.
BP is the best argument I can offer against that vastly overrated EMS magical talisman called experience.
Experience is only beneficial if it’s good experience, folks. Just as likely, you’ll get all the wrong experience from a partner whose personal dissatisfaction and career burnout colors everything they do.
And when you’re a young, impressionably green EMT, you don’t realize the simple fact that there are very few paramedics with 20 years of experience, and way too many paramedics with one year of experience, repeated twenty times.
You wind up idolozing some schmuck whose only redeeming value to the EMS profession is to serve as a cautionary tale: Don’t let this happen to you.
And likely as not, that turd didn’t start out that way. They probably started out as a starry-eyed idealist like most of us, enchanted by the adrenaline rush of lights and sirens and the overwhelming urge to Help People In Need.
And I’m
here to tell you, you will not find such a bitter, cynical mofo as as the disillusioned idealist who never learned how to reconcile the reality of his profession with his romanticised expectations.
They become Toxic. Poisonous to anyone who comes into contact with them.
I’ve mentioned Emily Perl Kingsley’s essay Welcome to Holland in this blog before. It has applications to your professional life as well. At its heart, it’s about dealing with disappointment and disillusionment. It’s about seeing beyond your shattered expectations.
EMT instructors, in their zeal to communicate the importance of what it is that we do, often do their students a disservice by magnifying the drama involved. It’s understandable, really. Drama sells. Most everyone who got into this profession did so because of the drama.
But when they discover that EMS is not the Italy they’ve been promised, the place of saving lives and stamping out disease and pestilence, and that most of our patients don’t really need us, and quite a few don’t even want us…
…they find themselves asking, “How in the world did I wind up here?”
And if they’re not careful, they find their toxicity levels rising, and become those medics who wander around Holland with a permanent scowl, muttering things like, “Fucking windmills…why can’t The Borg supply us with new Magnum tactical boots instead of these ridiculous wooden shoes… what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit grows tulips, anyway? And jeez Louise, these fucking Dutch people are all CRAZY…”
That was BP: twenty-six years old, an EMT for less than two years, and burnt to a crisp. My getting-to-know you talk about mutual respect and teamwork was wasted on her. What she needed was an attitude adjustment and a cluebat, the latter of which she got in the form of a termination notice.
Didn’t do much to adjust the former, though. She’s still the same lying, bitter harpy she has always been. She runs her mouth about me to her new co-workers, half of whom I taught to be medics ten years ago. They tell me things.
Not that I’m particularly interested. I’ve just been enjoying the last few months working with a partner with only one face.
Replacement Partner is going to be a good one. Right now, he’s young – not even 21 yet – but he’s got good instincts. He bitches and complains as much as anyone, and the call volume here at Borg Sub-Hive North is kicking his ass, but at least he doesn’t let it show in his patient care. He’s still got a lot to learn, but he already passes the only test that matters in my mind: I’d let him work on me.
Pretty much the only bad thing I can say about him is that he’s a single male under age 25, which is to say that his thought processes are dominated by 1) beer, 2) girls, and 3) whatever comes after beer and girls. He’s maddeningly immature, utterly convinced of his own immortality, and utterly irresponsible when it comes to anything outside of work.
You know, the typical 20-year-old kid.
Our conversations mainly consist of me offering my time-tested hangover remedies or advice on how to avoid getting shot by a jealous husband, and him ignoring everything I say because he’s well, twenty years old, and already knows everything he’s ever gonna need to know.
I’d tell him that I’ve been twenty before, but he’s never been forty, but his eyes start to glaze over whenever I start a sentence with “You may not understand this now, but…”
I’ve spent the last three weeks playing EMT-Basic as I precept him during his conditional paramedic clearance, and as of yesterday he’s been blessed to save lives and stamp out disease and pestilence without direct supervision. Soon he’ll get his new station assignment, and I’ll wind up with yet another partner to break in.
One morning earlier this week we dropped by the EMS academy to turn in some paperwork, and ran into Bitchy Partner. She’s an attractive girl, and Replacement Partner’s natural response was to eye her appreciatively as she walked down the hall. The look she gave in return was considerably frostier.
RP, apparently not used to being scorned by members of the opposite sex, raised one eyebrow as she stalked past, hatred radiating off her in waves. “What’s up her ass?” he wondered aloud.
“AD’s ex-partner,” her paramedic instructor chuckled. “They don’t like each other much.”
“That’s your ex-partner?” he whistled. “Hook me up, bro!”
Paramedic Instructor did a spit take. “I don’t think he hates you that much,” he explained. “Plus, an introduction from AD would probably be the kiss of death with her.”
“Still, she’s hot! I had imagined some dried-up, miserable old bitch who hated life!”
“Well, you were mostly right,” I allowed. “She’s not old, though. Besides, she’s about to get married.”
“We’re taking up a collection,” PI informed us. “We’re all gonna send flowers for the wedding. You want in?”
“If I send anything to BP,” I replied grimly, “it’ll be something that ticks.”
“Not for BP,” he corrects with a chuckle, “for the groom. We had in mind a tasteful funeral wreath.”