I ride on a Tuesday morning crew, it's my favorite group to ride with. We eat breakfast all together. Last week we were just served our food when the pager went off. The call was for a man down, having fallen at the intersection of streets x and y, injuries unknown.
The victim was fine, was going to catch a ride with a neighbor and maybe go to the hospital on their own. We returned to the diner.
The food was put in front of us and we began to dig in. We were paged again to a fall victim at the intersection of x and z, one block from the first call. Rolling our eyes at our patient's change of mind, we quickly ate our food. Perhaps shoveled it down is a better description. That happens on occasion. The diner folks gave me a paper cup for my chocolate milk and one member of the crew got his sandwich wrapped in foil. We paid and left, not quite in the same hurry as the first time.
Upon arrival our patient was on the ground surrounded by a large "mob" of old folks. We made some jokes about the mob and the scene not being safe. The patient was loaded into the rig and I began to bandage some bloody parts and then took vitals. While in the middle of the BP, the conversation between my partner and the patient caught my ear - which is really annoying since I'm supposed to be listening to the heart beat.
This was not the original patient. The first person fell, we were dispatched, cancelled and the potential patient left. The older folks walking group then progressed another block when another man went down. What are the odds?
We looked for patient number one at the hospital but didn't find them. Today we got word that they were WAY more injured than patient number 2 - broken stuff that I can't believe they walked with.
And really crazy - patient number 1 (whom we never saw) was a patient that went into cardiac arrest in the rig on a Tuesday several months ago and we (and medics) successfully revived.
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