A paramedic friend of mine was traveling through the
American southwest this week, a long road trip across a straight ribbon of
asphalt. I picture reddish rock mesas, creosote, and sagebrush. As he crested a
hill, he found a police cruiser blocking the road. The highway ahead was
closed.
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| It probably wasn't so picturesque a location as this. Image by Moritz Zimmermann (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons |
My buddy got out of the car to chat with the cop and discovered the highway was closed because of an accident ahead. The medic
mentioned that he was a high-powered, experienced medic in a big city EMS system.
Did the officer think that he should go ahead to offer whatever help he could provide? The policeman didn’t have to think
about it at all. He said something vaguely disparaging about the state of the
volunteer firefighters in the area and sent my friend through the roadblock. He
told my friend that the crash was about a mile up the road.
So my friend was through the roadblock. But now he had a new
problem, about a mile ahead.
He took a deep breath and rolled up to the accident slowly, evaluating the scene as
he coasted through. He tells me that he was looking for a convenient place to
park his truck, but I’m not sure I believe him. The accident didn’t actually
look especially severe. Mild to moderate mechanism. Everyone involved in the
grinder was upright and walking around while wearing c-collars.
Meh. Things looked fine. Flatten hand, fingers together,
attach thumb to temple.
Yep. My buddy kept going through the accident and onward to
his destination.
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