Slimm has been gone for something like 6 weeks. Something about having a baby, a family emergency, a surgical procedure, blah, blah, blah.
I really want him to come back.
It’s tough working with different people every day.
Slimm and I have gotten into a groove the past two years. I estimate we have worked well over 350 days together, twelve hours at a time.
We can run calls without saying a word to each other. We each know what needs to be done, and we just do it. Plus, he drives like butter. Seriously. He has the ability to make the imperceptible stops and starts, which helps when I’m in the back.
“What do you want me to do?” asks each and every partner-of-the-day I work with. I understand they just want to be helpful, and don’t know how I like to run calls. I don’t mind working with newbies, or other seasoned vets at all, it’s just taxing.
I really miss my partner.
Now you know what my life is like. When you work part-time, and especially when you work for an organization that doesn’t actually require people to come to work, you get caught having to work with many different partners.
Some partners are what I call “tolerable.” This means that is is not particularly fun working with them but one can get through the day. They hold up their end – pretty much. Usually, they are not any more than average in knowledge, skills and abilities. Some of them talk incessantly – and that’s not hyperbole – I mean incessantly. I have one that starts talking about his son’s sports abilities – and complaining about why other people don’t recognize and appreciate those stellar abilities – and it begins as soon as he gets in the truck and continues all day.
There are those who are wed to their phones. These are mostly women. As soon as the doors close, they get on their cellphones and talk and text all day to various other women. Or they harass their boyfriends or girlfriends all day. These are merely annoying but it becomes particularly an issue when you have a non-emergency call and they will wander around outside the ambulance for 15 minutes after the call comes in still talking to whomever about whatever since they don’t want you to hear whatever it is they’re saying.
There are the intolerables and they come in different forms. There are the ones that don’t want to be at work. They don’t want to interact at all. They don’t want to and won’t do anything that constitutes work. They won’t speak much even if spoken to. Often, the cellphone is involved in this group as well. These are the guys whose main interest is in getting laid. They’re on the phone with various women all day and may disappear at hospitals because they head up to a floor to flirt with a nurse they’re trying to get in bed with. These may even abandon you in the ER (disappear) as soon as you arrive while you’re waiting for a bed. They just go. When you find a room, you have to enlist help to move the patient because your partner is gone – either somewhere else in the hospital or outside and on the phone.
Another form of intolerable includes those who have inadequate medical knowledge and want to argue with you over patient care, diagnosis and everything else. They think they are right about everything. This will include the EMT’s these days who have emerged from school with all knowledge, and some new paramedics as well. Thirty years of experience – they believe that I just don’t approach medicine right since it’s not their cookbook approach. Think clinically? You’ve got to be kidding.
There are those who spend their day asserting their sociopolitical opinions. Almost all of these are what one might call “liberal.” If you are not a knee-jerk liberal – which I am not – they seem to be fishing for you to make some kind of statement that they might be able to latch on to and use to file a complaint about your intolerance. This seems particularly true of one particular sub-sociological group. I’m never quite sure what to do with these except say nothing.
There are those – most all of my partners – who deem it their right to commandeer the radio and turn on all sorts of music, some even with patients on board, that is loud and “techno” or “rap” or even “ghetto.” But if I try to put on the music I like (or even a CD) they’ll just switch it back to theirs, as if I’m required to be subject to their music whether or not I want to be. If I were in charge of an ambulance service, the first thing I’d do is remove all the radios and CD players. There are those who even will turn down the unit radio and turn up the music radio so call traffic won’t disturb their enjoyment of the music. A side-effect of this is that even during high-traffic times, they will never put on the traffic radio so we get caught in all sorts of backups that we could avoid.
And then there are my favorites.
I guess I could call my current favorite Spiderman. Young, like Peter Parker, tall, slim, strong as an ox. He’s not perfect but he listens,learns, offers suggestions – almost always right – on patient care, remembers things that my old brain might forget and just does them without criticizing or being superior. He takes the lead in basic patient care, leaving me to prep the advanced care where it is needed. He takes the lead in the physical manipulation of patients, relieving the old man of the things that are harder for me at my age. We are truly a team when we work together. He keeps me young, especially since he’s considerably younger than my youngest son. He’s the only partner I have that I truly consider a friend and in the three years we’ve worked together on and off I’ve grown to love him.
There’s the young, new-EMT girl who, when she finds out she’s working with me, pumps her fist and says, “Yessss.” Makes an old man feel good.
And there are the really good paramedics that I get to partner with from time to time, the ones who, young or old, know their stuff and with whom I can really partner in providing high-level care where it is appropriate.
Those of you who have good partners, people that you like and can work with and talk to and rely upon, consider yourselves fortunate, and enjoy it as long as you have it.