In my department staffing the overtime positions are done by the line personnel. This means that every night the crew at that designated station sits down at the computer after dinner and makes phone calls filling vacancies for the next day, two days out, and eight days out. My station has been designated as the backup station for filling overtime so we have been going through training on how to do it all correctly. You need a backup station because if the crew at the designated station gets involved in a lengthy emergency response it can tie things up for hours and then the system collapses.
My crew had spent several nights teaming up with the crew at Station 57 learning the process and now it was our first time to handle the calls on our own at our own station. I made dinner early so we could be cleaned up and have all the vacancies sorted out and be ready to start calling at seven o'clock. We sat down at the computer at 6:40 and the next thing we heard were the very distinctive Water Rescue tones. Of course, only the longest possible type of response for us to run.
The call was for an unspecified mayday distress call in a general area by the airport. This meant a search. We launched our boat and headed out to the given coordinates while the other boat hugged the shore and scouted to the East. The Coast Guard helo was flying around in its' own search pattern as we made ours and I scanned the water with binoculars.
In the end we found nothing and the search was called off. But by the time we got back to shore and returned to the station and washed and serviced the boat we were way behind schedule. Station 57 had gone ahead and started filling spots for us while we were out. They called and told us how far they'd got and faxed us the sheet of vacancies already filled so we could take over.
We pulled up the roster on the computer again and pulled the sheet from the fax machine when the tones went off again, medical response. We threw our hands in the air, dropped the paperwork and headed out to the rig. We were called out for a difficulty breathing call and on arrival we were met by the patients wife who said, "It's too late, he's gone." Wait, what? We went inside to find an elderly male slumped in a chair. He certainly appeared to be dead (at this point in our careers we know this from across the room). Unfortunately he had just died which means he had no rigor or lividity and was still warm. The wife said she wanted no heroics and I asked if she had any advanced directives and she said yes but she would have to find the paperwork. While she looked we put the monitor on the patient and found he was in a PEA. Pulseless Electrical Activity means the heart is generating an electrical impulse but the muscles are not contracting. For the most part it means the person is dead and the heart is winding down itself. Unfortunately, without any of the other factors present and in the absence of paperwork we had to start rescuscitative efforts. We wound up going full bore on this man, Lucas device, intubation, IO access, four rounds of epiniephrine and one of bicarb before we finally called it and determined time of death. He was still in PEA.
We returned to the station and got our medical gear all restocked and cleaned up and put away on the rig and walked back into the station. Before I could even take off my turnouts the tones went off again. Of course. This time it was a hit and run accident. When we arrived we found four people who were rear ended by a car whose occupants took off and were nowhere to be seen. After evaluating all four family members from the struck vehicle they declined ambulance transport with only complaints of bumped heads. The father went back and forth a bit about whether to have two of the other passengers go by ambulance or sign them out AMA. We told him that if he wanted we were comfortable with them going to the hospital by private vehicle but if anything changed after we left (three minutes, three hours, three days, whatever) that they could call 9-1-1 and we would come back and get them over to the hospital.
By the time we got back to the station, 57 had finished filling all the overtime and there was no work left for us to do. I swear it was as if it was scripted for it all to go wrong in just such a way that we contributed nothing to that nights staffing efforts.
But we weren't done yet. Besides the calls we got later that night at 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., about an hour after the car accident we did indeed get called back to the accident scene for a medical. We wagered on whether they found one of the hit and run vehicle's occupants or if the guy had changed his mind and wanted ambulance transport after all. We all agreed that it would be the latter.
When I pulled up to the scene only the cops remained and they had our patient in the back of the squad car. What do you know? We were all wrong. In a move of sheer genius this punk had bailed from the car after the accident and run approximately fifty feet to hide in the bushes. He was hiding in the bushes right behind us the whole time we were there. But...when the other car and family was gone and the tow truck had hooked up the hit and run car and only the cops remained on scene he suddenly remembered that his phone was still in the car. At this point he ran from the bushes chasing the tow truck and yelling, "Hey wait! My phones is in that car!"
This idiot was thirty seconds away from walking away from this thing with no one the wiser that he was ever there and getting away clean. But I guess he just couldn't live without his phone. Maybe he figured he needed it to call and report his car "stolen". The funny part was that he kept asking the cops if he could go get his phone out of the car. And this after being belligerent with them when they hooked him up.
Well, let's see if we get through staffing tomorrow night.
