Without Pride Or Prejudice

One of the (many) reasons firemen like being firemen and not cops is that for the most part people are glad to see you when you show up and you get to help them when they need it most. Not that cops don’t help people too - they do - but even the innocent feel uneasy around cops and the guilty can be outrageous pricks to them. We get our share of abuse too, but it’s nothing like the cops get.



The flip side of our role as nice-guy-helper is the fact that all of our patients must be treated equally, with the utmost professionalism, sensitivity, skill and caring. Unlike cops who have a little more leeway when it comes to dealing with the unsavory element, I can’t tell a dirtbag he’s a dirtbag and deserves what he got whether I think it’s true or not.



My job is to care for the sick and injured, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, without pride or prejudice. Training and professionalism can make this easier but sometimes it can be hard to stomach.

I had this experience recently.

We responded to the recovery center for an assault victim. Inside we found a woman in her thirties who told a tale of being abused by her boyfriend. According to her, he didn’t want her to go to work because he wanted her to stay home and get high with him. They argued and he proceeded to beat her up and throw her into the shower and then onto a pile of power tools. She was very shaken and upset, obviously. She didn’t look like your usual strung out drug user either and, bad choices aside, we definitely felt for her. The ambulance arrived and took her off to the hospital.

The police then called us over to the adjoining parking lot where they had apprehended the “alleged” abuser. He had cut himself with a box cutter and his arm was bleeding. He, on the other hand, looked like a strung out drug addict dirtbag. Having just heard the woman’s story, I now had to turn around and tend to this guy and his wounds with the same level of care and compassion as I had treated her. Truthfully, it is always counter-productive to treat patients rudely because they respond in kind and it makes the job so much harder when patients are uncooperative, but at times like this it gets hard to play the caring helper role.

Maintaining composure and professionalism does pay off in the long run though. It turns out I had treated this guy before when he broke into someones house believing it to be the abandoned flop house these guys shoot up in. That house was next door, the one with the peeling paint and plywood on the windows - can’t miss it. I asked if he remembered me and he did. Because I had treated him reasonably before he was cooperative and respectful to me while simultaneously being a jerk to the cops. I cleaned and bandaged his wounds and sent him off to the hospital in a second ambulance (a different hospital than the first patient of course). And I’m sure it’s not the last I’ll see of him.

Hopefully it is the last I’ll see of the ‘girlfriend’.