"25, OK. En route", lights and sirens lit up as our ambulance headed waaay east which was the informal designation for somewhere that would take more than twenty minutes of driving like a bat out of Hell to get to. More than likely we would be heading to the corner of "Tumbleweed" and "You got pretty lips" if you get my drift.
Dispatch came up again, "25, you're going to a 98 year old female, conscious and breathing, she's out of home oxygen." We had recently had a winter storm that had knocked the power out of most of "out east", but Colorado being Colorado the roads were now dry and the sun was shining. Our patient was likely using an air condenser that no longer had power so we drove the miles and miles of nothing to see road to help her out.
After about fifteen miles of washboard road we located the patients double-wide home sitting in the middle of a cow pasture. We shooed away a couple of cows, walked up to the front door, reached up and knocked. I say we reached up and knocked because the front door did not have a front step. It could have used about four, but it did not have any. A guy swung open the door and looked down at my partner and I like The Wizard looking down at Dorothy and Toto. The guy had monstrous glasses that were held together with bits of wire and electrical shrink tubing. The lenses looked like they had been pilfered from the Hubble telescope and made his eyes look so inordinately huge I worried that if he blinked, I might be blown over.
"Hey, guys (wheeze)", he pushed his glasses back up his nose, "my mom's in (wheeze) her room. Come on (wheeze) in". My partner and I looked at each other both of us looking for some sort of reassurance from the other that this could indeed be done with a straight face. I laced my fingers together and boosted my partner up through the door. As he was pulling me up into the trailer I saw "Eagle Eye" grab a hold of the door jam exiting the little entry way, swing his feet into the air and he was out of sight. My partner and I looked at each other again.
As we walked over to where we could see where the guy had gone, my partner stopped so abruptly, I almost bumped into him and knocked him into the gaping hole in the floor. Now we knew what the acrobatic leap was all about. My partner looked at me, raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders and took the leap over the hole. When he landed, he is a big tall guy, and he made a boom that scared about ten cats from every nook and corner of the kitchen into the hole and presumed safety. I tossed our jump kit to my partner and jumped the hole myself.
As we were led to the back bedroom the man with the glasses continued to wheeze.
"Would you like some oxygen, or a breathing treatment?" my partner asked.
"Nah, (wheeze) I just got the asthma (wheeze). I'm fine." He pushed his glasses back up his nose.
The double wide was a good size inside but it only had one piece of furniture; a couch. On the couch sat a woman with an angry scowl. She was wearing hair curlers, a mu-mu; she was smoking a cigarette, and sporting an eye patch. Not a medical eye patch, but a black pirate style eye patch. She didn't say anything to us. She just scowled.
In the back bedroom we found Mom. She was in sort of a fetal position and looked kinda dead. I took a breath as I thought about how badly this could go out here in the middle of nowhere and reached out to touch her shoulder. Before my hand actually touched her, she spun around in bed and yelled, "whozzat? What're you want!? Get away from me!" I checked my hand just to make sure I still had all my fingers.
"Mom, let (wheeze) them check you out. You've been (wheeze) out of air all day."
"Hmmph" Mom replied and rolled back over and ignored me as I did my assessment.
Finding nothing wrong with Mom we left a spare O2 bottle with Wheezy and headed back out past the angry pirate, the hole, the cows and to our ambulance.
"Medic 25, we're clear on a...um...no medical needed I guess". I looked at my partner. "Drive faster. I hear banjos."
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