I Just Need to Shut Up on the Way to Calls

This kind of thing happens way too often.

There I was, sitting in an ambulance with my partner, minding my own business, when a call came in:

“Ambulance Four, 321 Main Street, Code 10.”

Code 10 means emergency, with lights and sirens.  I repeat back the address to which I am responding: “321 Main, ten.”

“Twenty-five female, full term labor.”

"Kay," I replied.

The rant was kicked off.

“Dammit, I hate OB calls! Especially full term labor calls! It isn’t an emergency! Millions and millions of women have been having babies without my help since the human species evolved! There is nothing that has changed in the last 20 years that now requires an ambulance! This woman had nine months to save up cab fare and failed! And she is apparently so unpleasant that there isn’t a single person with a running vehicle in her life that likes her enough to give her a ride to the hospital! What about normal, full-term birthin' is an emergency?!?”

My partner rolled his eyes and didn't answer the rhetorical question.

“She probably isn’t even close to delivering! [Switching to a poor female imitation voice] ‘Ooh, I feel a cramp… I need to call 911’  [Back to my voice, shouted] She is probably twelve hours away from delivery! We’re running ten in order to give her more time pacing the L&D hallways! Childbirth isn’t an emergency!”

My partner, I’m sure, tried to block out the rant coming from his right. He had probably heard it before, after all.

Me, while enroute to EMS calls.

By Visitor7 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

We arrived on scene of a nice little cottage to find a nice lady on the floor in a frighteningly large puddle of blood. Like, way more blood than you see in a run of the mill childbirth. Disconcertingly large expanding puddle of blood. There was one tiny little infant foot protruding from her vagina. Just one, though. Where's the other foot?!? 

The firefighters on scene looked like they wanted to run away. I am positive that I felt the same way as I tried to look unperturbed and in-control.

Shit. It is. Indeed. An emergency. Shitshitshitshit.

I am glad my patients don’t see me on the way to calls.