Jul 02 2005

Tales from the Ambulance

Published by at 3:26 pm under Bullshit,Country Life

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:


  1. 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).

  2. 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.

Even when they’re off-duty, they’re on duty. A couple of my sister’s co-workers spotted a couple of overly optimistic tourists getting ready to set out on the Pacific in an inflatable raft. They pointed out to these hopeful folks that the wind and waves were so high that the commercial fishermen wouldn’t venture out. But they went out anyway, resulting in a cliff rescue, courtesy of my brother and his fellow volunteer firemen. Incredibly, they went out again the next day, and even more incredibly, nothing happened. And I was going to bet on them for the Darwin Award this year.

4 responses so far

4 Responses to “Tales from the Ambulance”

  1. # Pascale Soleilon 29 Jun 2005 at 8:33 pm

    Examples missing?

  2. # Suzyon 02 Jul 2005 at 11:08 am

    Hee. It was a case of premature publication. Wonder if there’s a pill for that?

  3. # Alisonon 03 Jul 2005 at 3:06 am

    Oooh. Great stories!

  4. # nariduon 04 Jul 2005 at 4:21 pm

    phew, I guess they can count themselves lucky not to meet the Darwin award requirements.