bad day

I cried my first big bad cry after a call last night.

We got up from dinner to "assist EMS at birthing center". I thought that place just did la maz, maybe some fertility dances, but apparently they deliver there. And, assisting EMS usually entails lifting some fat ass off the ground. Not this time. We pull up and see the back doors of the ambulance open with one medic, one EMT, and one provisional EMT. But you can't see the patient. She was tiny, a just born little girl getting two-finger compressions onto her tiny chest with a teeny tube down her throat laying on a big yellow stretcher.
Bill told Mel and I to go do our thing, he got in the driver seat of the ambulance and we hauled ass to the ER. Mel was awesome, for still being relatively new she really holds her shit together, she got right in there to do compressions while I sat at the foot of the stretcher getting out supplies. The medic radioed into the ER, didn't even wait for a response: "coming in hot, with neo-natal code, any one who copies standby..." Together we put a tiny pulse oximeter wrapped around her foot to measure oxygen in her blood stream, the medic put a tiny tube down her throat to suction merconium out of her lungs, and the EMT drilled a tiny drill into her shin marrow to deliver meds. We pulled into the ER, that trip was the fastest and longest 3 minutes of my life. I felt like I couldn't do enough, it wasn't my job true, but I just hated not being able to help more. Every once in a while I would hear something, I suppose it was the suction pulling crude from her lungs, but I would get my hopes that she was just going to cough and start crying right there in the ambulance. She never did. At the ER there must have been twenty people-doctors, nurses, neo-natal team, volunteers, UNC air care- waiting for us. They wanted information on the baby, we didn't have any. Its not like we were going to stop and ask mom what they decided to name her. Mom and Dad were still back at the birthing center, crying about their new baby getting whisked off by the ambulance.
My crew was mad about the call, I just couldn't be though. They were mad at the birthing center; saying they should have their licenses revoked and why are parents so stupid to deliver there. This isn't this crew's first trip there. Apparently Mel has seen two or three like this. She cried in the truck on the way back to the station, Bill and Jim were quiet until they were mad, I cried downstairs before going back up to dinner. Charlie was coming by for a plate and he let me bury my head on his shoulder-he has seen it all too many times himself. Boone called after a while to make sure we were ok, that man has a heart as big as, well, him.
The doctors and nurses did their thing, the baby is alive in the NICU this morning. No telling how much damage was done but pray she will be healthy.

I've been really lucky when it comes to this stuff, I think that someone is protecting me from seeing and dealing with more than I can handle. But this was my first call that got to me, the one where I had to shake my head in the middle of it and tell myself to stay calm: it wasn't Wiley, or Archer, or Cash, or Bobby or Cooper.