I play this game when I get into my car that I like to call: "where the fuck is everything in this vehicle?! I don't know how to drive this." It's a game I invented in September of last year, just about when I started driving an ambulance multiple days a week. Driving an ambulance, it turns out, seriously changes your life. And, I don't mean the patients and the calls and the cases change your life. I mean I truly no longer know where the gear shift, the overhead light, the windshield wipers, the emergency break, or the headlights are in my personal vehicle. You know, the one without the lights, sirens, or giant box on the backside for patients and paras. When I get into my car and drive away, I really don't know where I am.
I play the game the most after I've been running emergent on a rainy day. I go to shut off windshield wipers and lose my headlights. This is probably the most common mistake I make. Another popular favorite, though, is trying to shift from drive to park and finding myself simply turning my wipers from high to low. Every time I reach for the wrong thing and grasp air--or reach for the headlights and slam my hand into the dashboard--I kind of feel...dumb.
But, nothing makes me feel quite as stupid as when I am driving on the highway and actually wondering if I left the lights on. No, bitch, you're in your own freaking car! I do the lights check on the ambulance all the time. At night, it's really a dumb thing to feel you have to do--it's like a severe anxiety, OCD-like fear that if I don't check, I will undoubtedly be driving 25 to the hospital half-way hot--because, at night you can see the lights, bouncing off the hood of the truck and reflected in pretty much every surface ever for miles. And yet...I still check. Because I am CRAZY. And then to think I could possibly be running with lights on in my personal vehicle... some days I think I should be committed. In which case, I would need medical clearance and then would have to be transferred via ambulance to my place of commitment and I am sure during the course of that trip, I would request the EMT be sure they aren't currently accidentally running with those stupid-fucking-lights on.
My lights are never on, but you'd better believe every time I set something down on that console, I check to make sure I didn't just flip them on with the butt of my radio or the corner of my cell phone. Pretty, flashing lights will probably be the ruin of me.
The siren is another matter. The first time you switch it on and drive emergent as a brand new EMT, it is basically the coolest thing ever. The first time I did it, I wasn't insanely nervous or over-excited. It kind of felt like the most normal thing ever, even though it is kind of a strange thing to do. (I mean, let's face it, I have a weird job.) But the siren has this sound of which we're all so highly familiar, that the first time you're in control, those first few calls you get to hear it up close, it's kind of amazing. And then about a week later, it is the most annoying sound in the world. You start it up, you play around with it, you switch between pier and wail and woop the thing until your fingers bleed, and it really just doesn't get any better. When you're running emergent to Sand Springs from the BA and Mingo, there really isn't any way to make it less irritating. By the time you hit 412, you are seriously on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That's about the time I start praying for a neighborhood or a backstreet on which it is inappropriate to blast a siren into the homes of the good people of whatever.
The thing that gets me the most, though--and, thank the gods this has pretty much become a thing of the past--is that at the end of the day I can lie in bed, clear my head, and all I will hear is the siren song. Like a melody you can't shake. Over and over while I wait for sleep. When I first started, this phenomenon plagued my moments before repose, and sounded to me in my mind so realistic that I honestly didn't know if I was imagining it, or if hell was breaking loose on the streets outside. It went on for weeks, and some nights it still occurs, leaving me to wonder if my brain has been burned with the sound of the siren.
In the end, I think the biggest change is actually more an emphasis on a quality I already kind of possessed. Not speeding (but I am awaiting the day I get pulled into the sup office for a lecture on speed protocols. I really do try not to go so fast, some days it's just harder to rein it in than others). No, I have an issue with road rage. I like to talk to my fellow drivers. I like to tell them exactly how stupid I think they are. I truly believe every person in Tulsa failed the written exam to receive their license and is currently driving illegally. People, if I have to pass you on your right while I'm running with lights on and sirens blaring, you are doing it wrong. So don't get all uppity with me when I honk my horn and throw on my howler. Oh, and, by the way, flying through the intersection right in front of the hot ambulance and THEN pulling over thirty feet down the road I am not turning onto--it's just too little, too late. Don't freak out, it isn't your emergency. In fact, it's rarely even an emergency. But, when it is, and you stop dead in front of us because you panicked, you aren't helping. Calm down, pull to your right, and wait two freaking seconds for us to pass. It isn't hard and it seriously makes our jobs easier. Hey people, c'mon.
I know one thing: after this job I will never look or react to an ambulance the same. I always catch myself just before a wave when I pass by one, realizing that I'm in my own, tiny vehicle and the people in the cab probably don't even know who I am. Of course, when I am working, I wave like they are my oldest friend. And when we pass by emergent, I always give 'em a little woop of the siren. It's a funny little club we're a part of, and no matter how annoying it is or how crazy it's driving me, I really do enjoy driving an ambulance. But, don't call me an "ambulance driver," that's only part of the job.
The main part of it.
"Got Warrants in Every City Except Houston"
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