last night's rescue shift

Shifts at the Rescue Squad are 12 hours, 0600-1800 and 1800-0600. I work the night shift, which is easiest for me since I work my paying job weekdays. Anything can happen overnight, which is why I like it, you never know what's going to happen. Last night was not one of those nights, it was fairly routine. The only part that wasn't routine was Apollon and I had a trainee, for the first time in probably 6 months. We've become accustomed to working just the two of us, so it's taking some effort to get back in the habit of having a trainee, and a full 3 person crew on the truck.

The first call of the night I mentioned in a previous post. We were dispatched to the west side of the county shortly after 1800 for a 3 car wreck. We were cancelled by the fire department who was on the scene, nobody was hurt or trapped. Just the standard rush-hour bullshit, people playing bumper-cars.

The second call came in just a few minutes before midnight, after all of us had gone to sleep. A medical call, an 60 year old male who had fallen, according to dispatch. We arrived at the same time as the ambulance. When we went inside the patient was on a couch, and a couple of family members with him. He had shoulder pain, so my crew assisted the ambulance crew in helping the patient to the stretcher, and loading him in the ambulance. When I talked to dispatch later, they said we were sent because the caller told them the patient was a larger man, so the dispatcher though the ambulance crew might need some extra help moving the patient. This wasn't the case, however. The patient was a little old man, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet. We helped out since we were there, but we weren't needed. There were 5 EMTs/paramedics for one little old man.

The last call of the night was at 0200, a single car wreck with someone possibly trapped. We were on our way when dispatch advised us and the ambulance we could cancel, the patient had fled the scene on foot according to the police units on the scene. I'm willing to bet there was alcohol involved in that wreck, if the driver felt the need to flee. So we went back to the station and went to bed.

It's the most we've done on a shift in a while, we really haven't done anything since the airplane crash. That's how it goes on the rescue truck, especially since I'm only working one shift a week right now. We either run our butts off, or we're bored to tears. There's pretty much nothing in between it seems.