Jul 02 2005
Tales from the Ambulance
When you call 911 in or near my sister’s little town, you’ll get her (and sometimes my brother) if she’s on duty. She, on the other hand, has no idea what she’s going to get. A couple of recent examples:
- Arrive at scene to find a man wildly attacking his couch with a machete. Back away slowly, call Sheriff’s Office, and make a run for it. Discuss how call could have been made. Find out later that Machete Man’s friend saw the beginning stages of furniture murder and called 911, then had the wisdom to beat it (though he definitely seems to have bad taste in friends).
- Arrive at tiny hillbilly shack (cue “Deliverance” theme here) after long and gruelling drive in the pitch dark, with trees and shrubbery scraping the sides of the ambulance as you drive slowly down a dirt track. Wonder if there really is a shack anywhere in the vicinity. See light shining out of open door of shack. Go in, calling out, “Hello? Ambulance! Hellloooo!” No response. Start looking through shack, reasoning that if the lights are on and the door is open and someone has called 911, there should be someone on the premises.
There is, but it’s an old dead guy, clad only in diapers with his dentures beside him.
Now, dead men not only don’t tell tales, they don’t make phone calls, either. The mystery of who called is solved by the arrival of the deceased’s extremely drunk niece, whose breath is so horrifyingly flammable that EMT’s and paramedics alike immediately move to the other side of the room in self defense. (A little-known skill of emergency personnel is knowing exactly what form of booze is causing the bad breath in question. My sis tells me she always knows if it’s beer, wine, whiskey, etc.) Call the morgue (ambulances don’t pick up those who are already dead) and get away as fast as possible.