After the Ambulance Stops

"Unit Five, County, emergency traffic." My heart raced. I don't remember the details of my first call on the ambulance. I do remember the excitement as the alarm in our station rang. Someone needed me and I was equipped to handle their emergency.

Fifty-one years earlier I wasn't equipped to handle the emergency that exploded around me, that killed the little sister I couldn't save. I vowed then I would never let Death take the one I was caring for, He would have to take me first.

If I don't beat Death on this call, my patient dies. I cannot allow that to happen. Ever.

I had been trying to save lives for almost sixty years. Here I was about to climb into an ambulance for the first time as an EMT, part of a two-person team whose sole purpose was to beat death. To get patients from whereever we found them to an emergency room, and to get them there alive.

In one way or another, every EMT thought of death as the enemy. I could see death as a physical shadow; a shadow I could feel, that would raise goosebumps on my arms and the back of my neck. I named it Death.

Experience for yourself what it's like to be a crew member on an ambulance whose only role was to respond to 911 emergencies.

You can probably imagine what it feels like when we beat Death. What happens to us when we don't?

When you ride with me in the pages of this little book, you'll be riding along with a recipient of the Public Safety Administration's Coin of Excellence, awarded for "extraordinary efforts in Public Safety.

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