To be blunt

We’ve all gone out. To the bar, a restaurant, game night with friends and heard someone say, “I had a bad day at work.”

We can all relate. A bad day is just a day where things didn’t go right. That truth doesn’t change no matter the career. The feeling is the same across the board. It’s comforting to realize how normal that is, how universal. My career doesn’t make my bad day worse than anyone else’s. It’s all relative, tied to the same simple experience: the feeling of “bad.”

We found her lying under her car at a warehouse.

Before an ambulance responds, dispatch usually sends over a few notes from the RP or the requesting party. This one just read: “I ran over my mom.” and a checkbox: patient unresponsive. We were close, so it didn’t feel like we got the full picture.

We flipped the switchboard, lights and sirens.
I can’t remember exactly when the adrenaline hits, usually somewhere around here.

A police officer was waiting out front, waving us in. I’ve started to believe when co-responders look uneasy, something’s wrong. We run so many calls that what the public calls an “emergency” isn’t always what it feels like to us. This one… I still don’t know if it was an emergency. Death is so stable in the end.

I thought about other Auto-Ped calls. Sometimes they’re straightforward, not much problem-solving. This wasn’t one of those.

Behind the front driver’s wheel, I saw a gray bush of hair sticking out. A head under the vehicle, maybe a minivan. The body lay perpendicular, torso pinned near the axle.

We got out. My partner checked for a pulse. Nothing. I did the same. Nothing.

I kneeled to look again, looking for anything. I couldn’t even tell if she was on her stomach or her back. Her position was so tangled it was hard to orient her body. Later, I learned both arms were dislocated.

The week before, I’d worked another traumatic arrest. A man crushed when his car dropped on his head. Neither scene had as much blood as you’d expect. People imagine gore, but sometimes there isn’t any.

Fire arrived, then another engine. They started prepping to lift the car safely.

Three thoughts circled in my head:

1. What equipment do I need?
2. How do I create privacy?
3. Blunt Traumatic Arrest protocol.

I pulled the stretcher from the rig, set it on the sidewalk, and unloaded our bags. Medical, airway, monitor. I arranged them in a half-circle to block the growing crowd. Twenty people, maybe more. Then I pulled a blanket from the back, tore off the plastic. Waiting.

Protocols guided my thinking: this was a blunt trauma arrest, greater than a 10-minute delay to a trauma center. Chances were gone before we began.

Fire secured the car and lifted it away. Out she came. She went on the monitor: a rate of 30, but PEA. Electrical activity without a pulse. The heart sending signals but not pumping. Cardiac arrest.

Her body told the rest: torso blue, eyelids swollen to the size of a baseball, open fracture at the ankle, torn pants, pubic hair exposed where her underwear shifted, arms bent wrong. Not bleeding. A ragdoll. I had a passing thought about the indignity of dying indecent. Then another thought: maybe it only matters for the living.

We covered her with the blanket.
The call was over.

It was a bad day at work.

There’s peer support in place here, and I used it. If you want to know more, look up Critical Incident Stress Management.

Later, at a haircut, the stylist told me, “I couldn’t do that job.”
I think most people could. The real challenge isn’t the call. It’s what comes after.

This call sucked. So did the one before it. Writing only captures part of it.

I’m grateful for family, for friends, for the ones who help me move forward.
I don’t know if there’s a reason for any of it.
But writing it out helps.