Sit and Stay a While
I’m a paramedic. A few months ago, we’re coming back from a routine patient transfer when at an intersection about four blocks from the base, I notice a woman sitting on the side of the road with her arms wrapped around herself and her head down. I nudge my partner who’s driving, and we flip on the lights. I see her head come up real fast, and she looks terrified.
I get out and she relaxes when she sees the ambulance. After I approach, my heart sank. I noticed bruising on her wrists and other similar signs of domestic violence. She seems hesitant to get up off the curb and into the ambulance, so I decided that I would at least pull the cot out of the back and give her something a little more comfortable than concrete to sit on.
Now a few important details. All the cots in my service are Stryker-powered cots. You’ve almost certainly seen these before. They’re bright yellow with black handles and side panels. These cots have a motor and battery built in to allow us to raise and lower the cot at the touch of a button instead of throwing out our backs having to physically lift the cot up after loading someone.
They’re usually paired with an automatic loading system built into the ambulance that lifts the cot up to the right height to be pushed inside and also secures the cot when loaded. There’s a little red tab at the end of the track, just inside the doors, that you press down to free the cot and allow it to slide out. When you press this tab, it simply releases the cot and the loading carriage it’s connected to, and it’s up to you to keep it under control until it reaches the unload position and locks into place again.
This can be problematic because these cots weigh about 125 pounds. As soon as I hit the release tab for the cot, I hear lights and sirens behind me. I looked around and was immediately stunned. It’s a city patrol car. This is weird because we had not yet requested any assistance, and we were outside the city, in the sheriff’s department jurisdiction.
We merely informed dispatch that we were stopping to check on a woman at such and such intersection. The woman says something along the lines of “Oh god he’s here,” and moves faster than me seeing free food being distributed at base. She dashes past me and pretty much hurls herself into the ambulance, sitting on the bench seat.
The cop is approaching and he’s angry. I put two and two together real quick. I slam the ambulance doors shut. Let’s call this guy Officer Steve, or OS for short. OS: Is that bi—Is she in there?! Me: Who? OS: You know darn well who I am talking about. Me: You mean my patient? I’m afraid I haven’t gotten a name yet. OS: Open those doors, I need to talk to her.
Me: You’re not using my rig as an interview room. You can talk to her at the hospital. We go back and forth like this for a few minutes. My partner at some point came back to see what the hold-up was, but overhead my stonewalling and went back to the cab to call our chief. I continue my routine of deny and delay until a pair of deputies (likely specifically requested for this by the chief) arrive.
Oh good, now I have witnesses. See, we had stopped on an upwards incline. I had hit the release tab on the cot and it wanted to slide back. I had to close the doors so swiftly, I didn’t bother pushing the cot back against the stops and locking it in place. Emboldened by the presence of two deputies, he gets in my face. “Get out of my way or I’m gonna have you charged with obstruction!” Okay, as you wish.
I step out of his way, and he opens the double doors. Between the cot, the monitor, and the jump bag, I’d say there was probably close to 160 pounds contained by those doors. All of which comes barreling out and hits OS square in the chest. He goes backward and falls on his butt. One of the deputies laughs aloud. The other walks up and kneels down beside the guy.
He says, “Your shift captain is going be here in five, I wouldn’t be here then if I were you.” OS gathers himself up and scowls at me, then stomps off. There is a limited amount that I can say about the aftermath as the trial is not settled yet, but we all know how well charges stick to officers. The woman is now living elsewhere, the officer is still an officer, and I have been getting pulled over at least twice a week ever since then. But the video footage of him getting bodychecked by that cot remains one of the best things I have ever seen.