Car vs Pole

Pole always wins.

It was towards the end of a day shift, it was becoming dark and we were looking forward to heading home for the night. Dispatch, as usual, had other plans for us.
"We're going to send you down to a MVC, no details at present - unknown patients unknown status".

The Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) flashed with the job and we ran lights and sirens to it. I threw on my fluorescent safety jacket and gloved up - I hate jobs marked 'unknown status'... Even though the descriptions are usually wrong, they put you in the mindset of what to expect. Unknown means you might get there to find a parade of elephants storming through... or maybe not.

We arrived shortly after, a crowd had gathered around a car wedged between a brick wall and a pole - the opposite side of the pole to the road... Now that takes effort. The car was empty, and it took a moment for people to respond when I asked 'Was anyone hurt? Who was in the vehicle?', a young male sheepishly walks forward.

On examination he seemed fine, and although we made numerous offers to take him to hospital he refused - our examinations only go so far, there may have been internal trauma we cannot possibly detect without scanning equipment, found only in hospitals. Still, he was happy enough to make his own way home via his girlfriend - but what really got to me with this job was his attitude.

"Yeah... this'll be the second time I've done this..." he laughs. "No scratches, I'm fine."

A grin on his face, as if he's almost proud of what he's accomplished.

"Lucky there were no pedestrians nearby - this would have killed them. School finished only a little while ago..." My eyes betray my disdain, I care about his welfare but it's obvious it's not about him as a person. People like this who have no regard for others or the impact of their actions make my blood boil. It will take another accident and a life lost before anything will sink into his head.

The smile is wiped off his face, he mumbles something about going to his girlfriend and we head off. It was our last job, and I went home wandering how the story might have unfolded if any one of a million variables were even slightly different and was glad that they weren't.

I doubt he spent the night the same way.

Nothing like a good night jog

We were called to a male pedestrian hit by a car. It's night, so we have our sidelights on as we scan the area for the accident - unsure if the driver has fled the scene or not. Two men flag us down, we assess the scene as we approach. Something about this job seemed odd from the get go, we're not taking any risks.

The men tell us they saw the incident, the car is down the road but the pedestrian - hit by the car at a relatively high speed - ran off down the opposite direction.

My TO looks at me with a look of disbelief on his face, I mirror the look to our flagging-down friends. The MDT flashes with a new notice, that the patient had ran home around the corner and called 000 from there. The look of disbelief stays with us as we head to the given address.

I'm treating officer for the night, so I grab our oxygen and first aid kit and head inside, a woman is waiting at the door and guides me to her husband. He sits in a dining table chair, a red towel pressed against his head. I swear silently to myself and start my assessment - the towel was, but half an hour earlier, white.

He was normotensive and seemed fairly stable, alert and oriented, full recollection of events and denied loss of consciousness - but he had an egg on his head that would serve a family of four. It bled fairly freely and took me a while to get under control, ample time to work out exactly what had happened. The car had hit him as he jogged across the road, and for whatever reason he had thought it was best he head home to call an ambulance... despite hearing the driver of the car call an ambulance. In these situations it's hard to determine if there perhaps is an altered level of consciousness or if the patient is always this silly.

He was, given the mechanism of injury, in fairly good shape, but we took full spinal precautions anyway much to his discomfort - collars are horrible to wear for any length of time. His head would definitely need a scan to check for any internal damage or bleeding, and we sped off into the night.

I'm trying to find out how this one turned out - the bump on the head was quite nasty and I'm curious if they stitched or glued the head wound and how the scans turned out. I'll be sure to let you know!