Ambulance Girl

by Jane Stern

  We get in the car. It is 9 P.M. and I am so exhausted I miss the highway entrance. Liz navigates while I drive. She talks in the all-capable voice of a professional pilot. I love her for this. I can hear her at the controls of a commercial jet that has just flipped over in the air. “Folks, looks like we hit a little turbulence,” she would say. I tell her how much I hate flying, and ask her if she ever becomes a commercial jet pilot to promise that if I am on one of her flights she will land the plane and let me out if I have an anxiety attack.

  When I finally get on the highway we start to go over the questions from the test. Liz thinks she has answered everything differently than we did. This means one of two things. Either Dot and I have failed and she passed, or the opposite. By the end of the two-hour ride home we hit a freak snow squall. I am crawling down the highway and I can’t see two feet in front of the car. We realize that none of us remembers our answers correctly. We now have to wait six weeks until the National Registry of EMTs gives us (again through the mail) a thumbs-up or -down.

  The next six weeks crawl by. I am on the phone almost daily to either Dot or Liz. “Did you get your mail yet?” we ask each other. I find a site on the Internet listing all registered EMTs. I check it every day for my name.

  I wait longingly for the mailman. Like waiting for acceptance letters to college, you want to see that big envelope in your mail. The little one with only a letter in it is bad tidings. The big envelope has your EMT certification, your wallet cards, some patches that you sew onto your clothing, and a bunch of pamphlets from various professional organizations that you can now join.

  Amazingly, Dot, Liz, and I all get our answers the same day. We have all passed. More than passed—we did exceptionally well. Our scores are broken down into categories, and while I have achieved a generally high score, to my chagrin I have gotten a perfect score, 100 percent, on obstetrics. Ugh. I don’t tell Dot because should the occasion arise I still want her to deliver any and all babies in the back of the ambulance.

  8

  We are now EMTs, at least in the eyes of the state and of the nation.

  But we are EMTs without a service to work for. So it is time to join the towns that paid for our training. Liz goes to Westport where she, like the New Canaan people, is given a fancy uniform and a shift with specific hours during which she must stay at the barracks waiting to be called out on the ambulance. Because she is new, she is put to work doing menial jobs like counting Q-Tips.

  Dot and I present ourselves at the Georgetown firehouse on a Monday night. We are to meet Bernice Scherb, an officer on the ambulance and the person who will train us.

  There is nothing Georgetownish about Bernice. She is tall, dark-haired, and chic, a former fashion model whose husband is a wildly successful corporate executive. She drives a new Lexus that has been customized so that at the flick of a button it morphs from being a luxury sedan into a sort of police car: the headlights strobe, blue lights flash on the dashboard, and her GPS tells her exactly where the emergency is. Bernice lives in a huge house in the fanciest part of town.

  Bernice congratulates me and Dot on passing the exam and gives us each a pen she bought at Radio Shack to commemorate the occasion. It flashes the date and the hour in military time, something we will need to know for filling out the ambulance run sheets.

  We are introduced to a few of the firemen and a few other EMTs who are hanging around. Dave Morris, a tall blond man who is both an EMT and fireman, gives us our pagers and shows us how they work. We are to keep them on our person all day and return them to their electrical housing at night, where they will recharge. These pagers will sound our tone and tell us what and where the emergency is if we are needed.

  We are given numbers. I am G-65. Bernice is G-56. I just have to think of myself as Bernice backward: she is tall and slim, I am broad and average in height; she drives a Lexus, I drive a Subaru; she knows what to do in a real emergency, I know what to do on paper, but have not seen anything real yet outside the emergency room. Not a drop of blood, not a car wreck, not a gunshot wound.

  I am beginning to realize that while the class was about taking a test and acting like the Dorothy Hamill girl, here at the firehouse it’s about getting your hands on a really sick person and trying to save that person’s life. Suddenly all my fears come back and I think I am way too claustrophobic to ride in the ambulance, to see anything icky, to get up at 3 A.M. from my warm bed. What am I doing here?

  Now equipped with a pager, I am on call—two long tones followed by five short beeps means get up and go. It is exciting because I love nifty new gadgets and things like patches and badges, and being an EMT is a bonanza of stuff. Here is a short list of the stuff that I have acquired since I passed the test. Some of it was given to me by Georgetown, the rest bought with my own money from catalogs and police supply stores:

  A two-way radio with a long antenna for my car

  Flashing blue lights installed on the rear windshield ledge and on the front dashboard

  Stickers that say EMT stuck on every side of my vehicle

  Patches that say EMT sewn onto my clothing

  An EMT jacket that says GEORGETOWN on the back

  A jumpsuit that says EMT in reflective letters on the back

  Two big flashlights

  A “jump kit”—a medical supply kit that goes with me in my car to a scene, should I get there before the ambulance

  A portable oxygen tank

  A fireman’s jacket and pants and a real fire helmet of the old school with a big leather patch on the front

  A modern EMT helmet, sort of like a motorcycle helmet to wear on scene in automobile crashes

  A box of nonlatex gloves

  A handful of protective breathing masks to wear over my nose and mouth

  Plastic eye goggles to keep blood and debris out of my eyes

  A fabulous switchblade knife with a serrated blade

  Scissors to cut clothing off people

  A bright orange reflective vest to wear for directing traffic

  A huge star of life emblem that signifies EMT and covers nearly the whole hood of my car

  A front license plate for the car that says GEORGETOWN FIREHOUSE and EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN

  A new, more expensive blood pressure cuff and stethoscope than the ones we were given in class

  A silver badge for my wallet that identifies me as a member of the Georgetown Fire Department

  There is a line between enough stuff and too much stuff. The big star of life sticker that goes on the hood of my car was my idea, not issued to me by the firehouse. With it I have crossed that line and gone over the edge, from a humble probationary member into the dreaded category known as a “spanker” (as in spanking new): an EMT who flaunts his position by having too much stuff.

  Of course, if anyone had asked me, I could have given a good reason for applying the two-foot sticker to the hood of my car. Unlike the good old boys and Bernice, who are known to all the cops in town, I want everyone to know that I belong there when I arrive at an accident scene. My sticker (which I purchased from Galls, a phonebook-thick catalog of stuff for cops and EMTs) looked discreet on the printed page, but when it arrives even I am aghast to see that it is in fact larger than the one on the ambulance—though not so aghast that it stops me from applying it to the hood of my car.

  The sticker becomes a firehouse joke: not just at my firehouse, but at the two other firehouses in the neighboring towns. I am the New Girl with the BIG Sticker. And, to my chagrin, the huge sticker is visible to every person in the world but the cops, who still refuse to recognize my legitimate presence at an accident.

  “Nice sticker on your car,” guffaws Bob Withall, a Wilton town cop. “It looks like the landing pad for the Life Star helicopter.”

  I am in love with my sticker and leave it on despite the razzing. Like the owner of an American Express Platinum Card, I am convinced that it commands “worldwide respect.”

  I walk around the town and go g
rocery-shopping in my fireman’s coat. It is as spanking new as its owner. I wear it to a meeting of a women’s group that I belong to. I hear hushed whispering. I think people are in awe of my new affiliation, the fact that I am now officially a member of a fire department. I swell with pride. When I get home there is a message on my phone machine from a good friend. “Jane, if we didn’t like you so much we wouldn’t say anything, but we are afraid that someone sold you a fireman’s jacket as a winter coat.”

  Sooner or later it had to happen, and it happens sooner: my tone goes off and I am on my way to a real accident. Two things go wrong straightaway. First I get on the two-way police radio and give Bernice’s call number instead of mine. She has already signed on the call, and so the dispatcher is surprised when someone else identifying herself as G-56 signs on a minute later. My mistake dawns on me and I correct myself. “I mean G-65,” I say, and then commit the worst possible breach of police radio etiquette, which is to start apologizing and chattering away.

  To say one word more than necessary on air is to be at the very bottom rung of spankerhood, a fool. One is supposed to act like Joe Friday of Dragnet on the radio, not some yenta on her home telephone.

  After I have screwed up my first radio transmission, I realize I am out of the driveway, blue lights flashing, driving eighty miles an hour, and I have no idea where I am going. I have lived in this town for more then twenty years and have not once noticed the name of any street other than the one I live on. Like most people who live in a fairly rural place, I know the roads but not any of their names, and I know who lives where but not their formal addresses. Now I have to find the road by its official name, the house by its “numeric,” then figure out how to park near enough to the house to drag all my stuff inside but not so near that I block the space where the ambulance will pull in.

  I am a symphony of missteps. I am trying to put on my rubber gloves as I drive, look at the map issued to me by the department, and drive faster. I am a worse accident waiting to happen than the one I’m going to. It is ten at night with no moon. I can’t read the map because I have forgotten my reading glasses, I am swerving all over the road, I keep clicking the transmission button on the radio, to the palpable irritation of the dispatcher, and asking for directions—another cardinal sin. One is expected to know the roads of the town by heart.

  I find the house. I throw on my EMT jacket, grab my jump kit, and run to the front door. Bernice and the rest of the crew have gone to the firehouse to pick up the ambulance. I am the first one on the scene.

  The call is for a seventy-four-year-old lady who has fallen. I arrive at the front door on this chilly winter night in a sweat. I must look frantic. Personally I wouldn’t allow me in the door. The lady’s son ushers me in. “My mother tripped,” he says. “She caught her foot on the bed frame and fell. I think she has broken her hip.” I am shown the way upstairs to the tidy bedroom. A large crucifix hangs over the bed. In the room there is a knitting project under way, what looks like an Irish fisherman’s sweater. The room is clean and sparse, with a few framed photos of young children and an old-fashioned vanity set with a silver-backed brush and mirror on a table. The patient is lying next to the bed. She is pale and damp and obviously in extreme pain.

  “Hello,” I stammer, “I am Jane with the Georgetown ambulance.”

  I have already forgotten her name, although her son gave it to me at the door. I can’t remember if I am supposed to examine her first or fill out the information pad. I call her “Mrs.,” like a cleaning lady might do. “Mrs., tell me what happened,” I say. I already know what happened. Her son told me, she tripped on the bed leg and fell. I am wasting time because I am scared to touch her. She is able to speak and tells me what I already know.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” I ask, “how bad is the pain?” We were taught to do this, so I am on the right track.

  “Ten,” she answers.

  I know that’s a bad sign, but now what do I do?

  She is fully dressed. I attempt to see what she has done to herself. “I’m going to take a quick look,” I say, as if I have been doing this all my life. I try to find a place on the carpet that is not covered by the medical junk I have brought in and strewn about.

  I do what I was taught not to do: I step over the patient. I step in such a way that my foot kicks her hip. She screams in pain. I am paralyzed with fear that I have now made her injury worse. Perhaps she will sue me, or maybe she will die because I did this. I am sweating like a pig. I throw my jacket to the floor.

  “Let me take a look at your hip,” I say. I remember I am supposed to check for deformations, contusions, bones out of alignment. I give the gentlest tug on her polyester pants. “Mrs.,” I say, “I will try to be as gentle as I can be.” (Why would she believe me, as I have already kicked her?)

  “My mother has osteoporosis,” the son says. This old lady is brittle end to end. “She has already broken her leg and her arm this year.”

  I ease her pants down below her hips. She is wearing a full girdle, and something puffy pouches out at the bottom of it.

  “My mother is incontinent,” the son says. I now see she is wearing an adult diaper.

  I would have to cut the girdle off to see her hip. So I leave that alone, afraid to make things worse.

  “Mrs., I am going to take your blood pressure,” I say. I reach into my jump kit and pull out the cuff and stethoscope. I try and gently pull her sleeve up.

  “My mother has had a double mastectomy, both sides,” the son tells me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, remembering that you do not take a blood pressure reading on the side that has had the surgery. What about surgery on both sides?

  I lean over her, jostling the bad hip again. I decide that I will have to take a reading somehow so I wrap the cuff around one of her arms and pump to inflate the thing. I look at the gauge and realize I do not have my glasses on and cannot see the numbers. I squint, trying to get a reading. I reach down to take her pulse and I am not wearing a watch. I hold her hand: she squeezes my hand hard. She is in a lot of pain but she is a trouper. I admire and like this lady; I want to apologize to her for having gotten me as an EMT.

  I attempt to take a pulse. I find the beating heart echoed in her brittle wrist. I hear the beat but without my watch it is useless. “Never make anything up,” I hear the voice of Frank from the classroom in my head. I want to make up a pulse and a BP number as I hear the siren of the ambulance pulling into the driveway. I am grateful for their arrival and also aghast at what they will think of me. I have been on scene for ten minutes and have done nothing for this woman except kick her in her hip.

  Bernice comes into the room. She has her game face on. She is calm and cool and asks in a soothing tone, “What’s the matter?” She starts doing a trauma workup on the patient smoothly as she crouches next to her.

  “Did you get a pulse and BP?” she asks me in the same calm voice. Clearly I am wearing my stethoscope and have the blood pressure cuff in my hand.

  “No,” I say. Frank would be proud of me: at least I am not a liar. Bernice seems confused. I know she must be wondering what I have been doing with this patient.

  The firemen and other EMTs load the woman on a long board, secure her to it, place her on the cot, cover her with blankets, and take her out to the waiting ambulance.

  “Jane, do you want to ride with us?” Bernice asks me.

  I am hit with the reality that sooner or later I will be expected to actually get in the ambulance with the patient. This is so difficult for me that I have spent a few sessions with Tom Knox trying to figure out if I can simply drive behind the ambulance on the way to the hospital rather than actually getting inside of it. Neither of us can figure out a practical way for me to do this, so instead we have switched gears and talked about what it will be like when I finally step on board. I don’t want it to be like the plane I was stuck on, or the bus I was afraid to ride. I am hoping that I can step outside my own head long enough to think
about the patient and not about me. But I am not there yet.

  My mouth is dry from fear. I shake my head no. “Not now,” I say to Bernice. “I have company at my house.” Frank never said that we couldn’t tell social fibs.

  I just want to go home. I am afraid of climbing into the back of the ambulance. I am afraid my claustrophobia will surface and in addition to my being professionally useless they will have a second patient on their hands, a nutcase who wants to pull over and get out.

  The ambulance pulls out of the driveway.

  The night is dark and quiet. With the noisy ambulance gone, it is just me and the lady’s son, who is locking up the house as he prepares to go to the hospital.

  “I hope she will be fine,” I say, wrapping the blood pressure cuff up and tucking it into my capacious jacket pocket.

  “Yes,” he says gravely. “I want to thank you for all your help.”

  I feel like a thief who has been caught red-handed. I just nod.

  “Thanks,” he says again.

  “Thanks for nothing,” I mutter under my breath as I walk to the car. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill her.”

  It is a day later. I have just drifted off to sleep when the tone goes off. It jars me from the deep sleep that we all fall into when we first lose ourselves in dreams. Two long flat tones, five beeps, then the voice of the dispatcher calling, “Georgetown Ambulance personnel, car versus motorcycle on the corner of Route 107 and Route 57.” I look at the clock. It is 11 P.M. This location is about half a mile from my house, near a local bar. I jump up, suddenly struck by two pressing urges: the urge to pee and the need to get dressed and out the door fast. I choose the latter. I grab my jumpsuit and climb into it, then stick my feet in the first available pair of shoes. I am wildly patting myself down to see if I have my watch, my eyeglasses. I flick on the pulsing blue lights in the car and then the radio. Miraculously I give my correct number, G-65, instead of Bernice’s. My mouth is again parched and dry. I hardly have enough saliva to speak. I drop the microphone on the floor, pick it up, and say my number again. “Roger, 65, heard you the first time,” says the dispatcher.