“Have Fun in Jail, Bitch”: A Love story.

Being a paramedic requires a lot of patience. You continually find yourself listening to fifteen minute diatribes that begin with “Well, when I was in World War 2…” after asking questions like “What’s bothering you today” These are everyday exercises in patience. Sometimes you have to exercise patience on a level most people reserve for dealing with bureaucrats or telephone answering systems. You have to patiently listen to a drunk driver slur remorsefully about the truck he’s just wrecked while the person he hit lies next to him in the ambulance, bleeding and unmentioned. You have to listen to child abusers lie to you over their broken offspring. You need patience. Good paramedics wade patiently through these ordeals day after day. It’s part of the job. Ours is not to judge, we just pick up the pieces. Once in a while though, things get too emotional, and even a good paramedic will just lose it. This is the story of me…losing it.

It was a dark and stormy night…really…and I got a call on the interstate for a rollover. We were the second unit to respond. That usually means a quick in and out. The first ambulance on the scene is usually dealing with the life and death stuff, and your job is to get the not so life and death people packed up and out of the way. As second unit, we were typically on scene for less than 5 minutes. Tonight things wouldn’t be so quick.

Before we arrived we’d heard there had already been a fatality, a kid, and that the driver was drunk, and had been interfering with the medics as they tried to care for the two other badly injured kids. This was getting more fun by the second, I thought.

We pulled up to find a large car resting edge long on its passenger side doors. Fire-Rescue and the other ambulance crew were just getting ready to leave with the critical patients. Our patient, the driver, was sitting on the ground arguing with the sole fire fighter whose task was to keep her out of the way. I approached and asked him about her condition. He said she’d denied any injuries, and that she’d been a bit belligerent. At that point, feeling neglected I suppose, she joined the conversation. “Fuck you, you mother fucker…I ain’t ligerent.” She slurred up at us. I psudo-politely asked her to be quiet while I finished talking to the fire fighter. She responded with another string of vileness, punctuated by spittle and alcohol fumes. I’d had a horrible week, and a worse night, and she was dancing the cha-cha on my last nerve. “Ma’am” I said. “I will talk to you in a second. I am speaking to this gentleman now.” This is, of course, the official “I wasn’t doing anything wrong” way of starting a fight with a drunk patient, and it worked quite well. She wavered to her feet and pushed her sweaty face into my chest, grabbing my shirt for support with her bloodied hands. “Sssir, I do not appreciate you speaking to me in that manner” she said to my shirt. She looked up and her eyes close as she tries to regain her balance, and then she finishes with…”you mother fucker.” I closed my eyes briefly, but for a different reason, to squelch my anger. “Let go of me, or you’re going to jail” I answer. She didn’t. After I extricated her from my shirt, my next job was to find out what she wanted to do with the rest of her evening. Did she want to go to the hospital and be looked at, or did she want to be left alone. My new friend’s answer was a resounding, “I’m not going to answer your question.” which I found to be even more frustrating than my previous least favorite answer, which was “I don’t know”. Fortunately, I was about to get a little help from the Highway Patrol. As we were discussing our little dilemma, two troopers, having just come from seeing the mutilated corpse of my friend’s nephew, walked over to give us some guidance. They addressed her and she returned her now standard salutation, which involved an invitation to the gentlemen to engage in unbiblical relations with their mothers. They acknowledged her invitation gracefully and then told her that they were going to need a bit of her blood for a blood-alcohol test. Her response to their request was a resounding, “Fuck you”. The troopers both smiled thinly. “Actually, ma’am, we weren’t asking, we were telling you. Under Florida law, if you kill someone, we can take your blood without your permission.” She stood staring blankly at the officers for a second as though some small bell of clarity had chimed deep in her alcohol soaked brain. The words hung in the air, and reflected in her thick-lidded eyes. “…killed somebody…” she said flatly. For a second I thought she finally got it. Then, suddenly, her alcohol soaked evil twin re-emerged with a vengeance. “I ain’t killed no body you mother fucker…you settin’ me up. Ya’ll are tryin to kill meee.” She grabbed at the officer, who side stepped her, and she crumpled to the ground, crying, cursing and screaming. The troopers looked from her crumpled form up to me. “I’m going to need a specimen,” he said.

Getting a blood sample from someone involves taking a very skinny needle and jabbing it through some skin, and into a very tiny vein and then holding it in just the right place for a minute or so as you fill the sample tubes. Under normal conditions this is not easy. If the stickee is uncooperative, it’s damn near impossible. It’s a bit like trying to pierce an earthworm’s ears from the back of a moving pick-up truck while someone beats you with a stick. My new friend and I were about to fight.

After some coercion and a bit of heavy lifting we managed to get her inside the ambulance. By this time she was beginning to realize that she was in some trouble, so her behavior began to change. She would intermittently cooperate for a minute before returning to rabid dog mode. As we were attempting to get her arm in a good position so I could get a good stick she calmed and insisted that we needn’t manhandle her, as she was perfectly willing to cooperate. She stuck out her arm and I explained what I needed to do. She was fine with all of that, she said. Relieved, but weary, I began smearing iodine on the proposed site of insertion. She suddenly snatched the swab stick from my hand and slung iodine all over me and the other three people in the ambulance, screaming “…ya’ll ain’t puttin’ none ‘a dat shit on me.” whereupon we restrained her again. Properly restrained, she returned to her casual self, again insisting that she could be still. “Not this time.” I said. She threw another fit, thrashing uncontrollably until the four of us could barely contain her without breaking something of hers or ours. We got her calmed down again, and she promised to be good this time. I swabbed again, and having found a nice vein, I went for it. The second the needle hit the vein she went ballistic again. This burst the vein, and I found myself on top of a raving lunatic with a bloody needle in my hand while the other three tried to get her under control yet again. The fray ended a few seconds later. The vein was blown, which meant it would be unusable for days or weeks, and blood now decorated the clothing and faces of all of us. I sat at her side, sweaty and frustrated. All I have to do, I thought, is hit one vein, and this bitch is out of my life forever. Four more times we tried, and four more times we failed. I failed. Twice more during our half hour encounter she grabbed me by the shirt and screamed slurred filth into my, and a dozen times more I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to keep from strangling her.

After the battle of “you ain’t stickin’ me” concluded in a draw, the Troopers asked us to take her to the hospital where they’d try again. On our arrival at the emergency department the charge nurse was so impressed with our patient’s behavior that he tried to throw her out of the department before she’d been there five minutes. I politely interrupted him and told him that we needed blood from her because she’d caused a fatality. This sent her through the roof again. “I ain’t caused no fatality… you mother…” I stepped between the security guards holding her down. I’d had it. I leaned my face close to hers. “Yes ma’am. You did. You got drunk tonight, and you wrecked your car, and you killed someone, and you can’t take it back, ever.” I smiled thinly. “And you’re going to jail for a very long time.” She looked at me wide eyed, almost began to cry, and them curled her lip at me. “I ain’t drunk, you stupid som bitch. I din’t do nuthin’.” I looked at her again, inches from her face. “Have a real nice time in jail, bitch.” I smiled again, withdrew and turned to leave. The guards, cops and nurses looked at me in disbelief as I left. I didn’t care.

“That was cool” my partner said when he joined me in the hallway. “Very smooth.” “Thanks” I said. “I’ve been taking classes to improve my bedside manor. I’m thinking of asking for a refund.” He smiled at me, his face still splattered with blood and iodine. “I don’t know. I’d say your bedside manner was okay. I’d hate to think about what it would have been like without the classes, though.” “Yeah”, I said, “me to.”

They got the sample they needed and our friend did go to jail, where she stayed for quite some time. Her sister buried her son, and I’m sure grieves his loss still. Six months later I got a new job, far from the spittle filled world of the streets. Somewhere tonight a dozen paramedics are enduring similar ordeals. They are patient and kind souls, and they deserve every kind thought you can give them.