For each and every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And for each and every good EMT like Pardner who can complete your thoughts before you can verbalize them, drive like Dale Jr., and fashion a traction splint from tongue depressors and three-inch tape, there is an opposite who can get lost in their own back yard, break a bowling ball, and manage to elicit curses and hostility from Mother Theresa – all in the same shift. They are the Anti-Partners, and they are legion. If you haven’t yet worked with one, you will. If you’ve been in EMS more than ten years, and you’ve never worked with one, I have bad news. You are an Anti-Partner.
What follows is but one epic call with an Anti-Partner. You may think I am exaggerating the tale. I only wish that I was.
********
“Good afternoon, ladies!” I offer cheerily as I fling open the Gates of Hell. “How go things in the Dispatch Center this lovely day?” Several of the minor demons smile and say hello, but Satan herself fixes me with a gimlet eye.
“We’ve been paging you for an hour,” she hisses. “Why haven’t you answered your pager?”
“Well, let’s see…perhaps it was because I was in the shower. Perhaps it was because I turn my pager off when I’m not on duty, because certain evil minions insist on sending every page over the “all crews” list, thus waking me up at all hours on my days off for petty bullshit that doesn’t remotely concern me…”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for an out-of-town transfer!”
“…but mainly because I know it pisses you off, and nothing brings me greater pleasure.”
“We’ve been holding this call for an hour, Goddamnit!”
“That, dear Satan, is why you are the Level III System Status Controller. The poor deluded souls who put you in this position expect you to, you know, control your system status, and not hold calls for an hour just so you can punk the oncoming medic. The fact that you didn’t falls under the general category of not my fucking problem.”
“When you two are done with your love fest,” comes Stuporvisor’s dry voice from the doorway, “I need to speak with AD.”
I wink at Satan and blow her a kiss as I check out a portable radio, and she responds by flinging psychic daggers of death from her eyeballs. “Love your new look, by the way,” I ooze insincerely as I follow Stupe out the door. “You waxed your horns and trimmed your hooves! And I barely even smelled the sulfur!”
The chuckles of several of the minor demons waft into the hallway as Stupe leans against the wall and lets out a sigh.
“Why must you antagonize her that way?” he asks me plaintively, already knowing the answer.
“You know why,” I answer. “Because she’s incompetent, can’t think for herself, can’t handle pressure, and she carries out vendettas against any crew who happens to call her on it. Including you,” I remind him.
“Come on into my office,” he replies, motioning me down the hall, away from prying eyes and ears. Once the door is closed, he flops into a chair and massages his eyeballs. “Yes, she is the Write-up Queen, and ninety percent of the time it’s bullshit, but you don’t have to go out of your way to pull her chain. Besides, we have been trying to reach you for over an hour.”
“You have my home and cellular numbers, Stupe,” I point out. “So does the Dispatch Center. They never rang.” He looks at me, shakes his head disbelievingly, and punches the intercom button on the phone.
“Dispatch,” answers Satan’s flat, disinterested voice.
“Tell me something,” Stupe asks evenly, “how did you try to reach AD today?”
“I paged him seven times!” answers Satan defensively. “I can show you the logs!”
“Ever try his home or cellular phones?”
“Well, I think we…I mean somebody should have…”
“Get back to me when you’ve come up with an excuse for not calling, like you were told.” Stupe savagely pokes the END, button, terminating the call.
“She does that shit all the time,” I point out. “It’s too hard to scroll down a list of numbers on the computer, or even move the mouse around and find my pager number. It’s easier for her to just hit PAGE ALL and type in her message. That’s why I turn my pager off when I’m not at work.”
“I’ll deal with her later,” Stupe says tiredly. “Right now, I have good news and bad news for you.”
BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. I have a feeling I’m not going to like this…
“We have an eight-year-old sickle cell patient going to Children’s Hospital in Little Rock,” Stupe explains. “He’s having an occlusive crisis, and he has a priapism. They’re infusing fluids and the kid is pretty well sedated, but we’ve got no hematology or pediatric urology in town this weekend. Since you’re Mr. Peds, you get the call.”
“I can deal with that,” I allow. “What’s the good news?”
“That was the good news,” Stupe says with a wry grin. “You get to do one call that’ll take up the entire shift, a meal allowance, and I don’t have you and Satan at each other’s throats for the next twelve hours. It’s a win-win.”
“Okay, so what’s the bad news?” I ask suspiciously.
“You’ve got Moses for your partner,” Stupe grins, raising his hands as if to ward off a blow.
Fuck. Me.
“God, why me?” I moan. “What did I ever do to you, Stupe? Wasn’t I a good instructor? Didn’t I mentor you through your tender years as a medic? Why punk me with Moses, of all people, for God’s sake?”
“Because you can work with anybody,” Stupe points out, “no matter how bad they suck. Plus, everyone else refuses to work with him.”
“Add me to the list,” I say quickly. “I absolutely refuse to wander in the desert with Moses for another forty years. Find somebody else. How about Marlboro Man? I’m senior to him. Make him do it.”
“I need you to do it, without bitching,” Stupe answers. “Consider it a personal favor to me.”
“He gets lost in his own fucking neighborhood, Stupe. We don’t have a sack big enough to hold all the breadcrumbs we’ll need.”
Stupe says nothing, just raises an eyebrow.
“Okay damn it,” I relent. “I’ll take the call. But don’t expect us back for at least eighteen hours. A lot can happen in a 700 mile round trip. He’ll run us out of gas, or find a rip in the space-time continuum, or something. He always does.”
“He should already be out there checking the rig,” Stupe dismisses me as he checks his watch. “You need to be at St. Matthew’s PICU in twenty minutes.”
Outside, I find Moses checking the oil level in the rig, with the engine running. As I watch, he turns the engine off, gets back out of the rig, and checks the transmission fluid level.
If I correct him, then I’ll have to explain why. And the end result will be that Moses is just as ignorant as he was before, and I’ll have wasted three minutes that I’ll never get back. Hopefully I can get through the shift without saying anything more to him than is necessary.
I manage to stow my gear bag between the seats and my laptop case in the patient compartment before Moses notices my presence. He greets me with a cheerful grin.
“Wassup, AD?”
“Moses.”
“Truck’s a little low on fluids. Think we should get into another one?”
“Nah, it’ll be okay. I was in this rig yesterday and the fluids were fine.”
“Well, I’m just saying, because the engine oil is about a quart low, and I think somebody overfilled the transmission fluid…”
“Let’s just get in the truck and go, Moses. Okay?”
Moses looks a bit disappointed, but lowers the hood and climbs into the rig. He pulls out of the bullpen and turns left out of the parking lot. I let him travel a couple of blocks before I say anything.
“Uh, Moses? Where you going, man?”
He blinks stupidly a couple of times, then ventures a guess. “I, uh, thought we were supposed to pick up at Big City Regional, in the PICU…”
“Big City Regional doesn’t have a PICU, Moses. Hasn’t had one for two years now. And this isn’t the way to Big City Regional, either.”
“So where we going?”
“St. Matthews, PICU Room Six,” I sigh. I watch Moses as he mentally shuffles the map in his head, the one drawn in crayon, with directions like left, right, up, down. Presently, he switches lanes and turns right at the next intersection.
Lord, grant me strength.
“Moses? This ain’t the way, either.”
“Huh?”
“It’s all one-way streets down here, and they all go the wrong way. Make the block and turn around. We need to go back the way we came.”
“Oh, my bad!” Moses grins sheepishly. “I always get that mixed up!”
Yeah, they’re only the major thoroughfares right in the fucking middle of your own damned fire district. How in the hell do you work for five years at the same fire station and NOT know the streets?
Back on the main drag, Moses drives blithely onward, toward the river and West Podunk. He doesn’t have his turn signal on, and he’s in the right lane.
“Moses, you need to turn left here…left turn…left turn…LEFT TURN…FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, WILL YOU CRANK THE FUCKING WHEEL TO THE LEFT AND TURN? GODDAMNIT!”
Shocked, Moses makes the turn on two wheels and pulls over in a bank parking lot. He throws the rig into park and turns to me angrily.
“Look here asshole, I’ve lived in this town all my life, and I’ve worked at this ambulance service longer than you have. I think I know my way arou – ”
“Shut up and drive, Moses. Shut up and drive. Turn where I tell you to, apply the brakes and accelerator when I tell you to. You are hereby forbidden from exercising independent thought for the rest of this trip.”
“Okay smartass, how do you get to St. Matthew’s?”
I lean carefully forward and place both hands on the dash. I count to ten, then twenty. I envision cute puppies and Karen Carpenter singing Close To You.
None of it works.
“Well, there are a number of ways to get there. Personally, I find it easiest to turn right out of the parking lot and follow the street to the end, toward that huge fucking tower south of here with the three-story sculpture of Jesus on the side and the words ‘St. Matthew’ on the side in letters so large you can see it FROM OUTER SPACE!”
That last line delivered from Yours Truly in a bug-eyed, spittle flying fit of pure apoplexy. If I had psychic powers, he would burst into flames and burn into a big greasy puddle of ashes right there in the driver’s seat, identifiable only by the EMT pin and the Maltese cross pinned to his collar points. And the ashes would disperse in all directions, in direct defiance of the prevailing winds and the laws of physics.
Instead, it just hurts Moses’ feelings. His lower lip pooches out, his shoulders slump, and his brow furrows…but he puts the rig back in gear and drives down the street to St. Matthew’s.
In the ER ambulance bay, I unload the stretcher and pile the IV pump, cardiac monitor and my clipboard on it, all accompanied by the put-upon sighs of a pouting, directionally-challenged partner.
At St. Matthew’s, we usually enter through the ER, exit through the security doors at the rear of the department, and catch the elevators to the upper floors. However, the PICU is in a separate pavilion, a recent multi-million dollar addition. At the elevator bank, Moses pulls up short, jerking me to a halt. I look back at him quizzically.
“Fourth floor, right?” he asks, nodding toward the elevators.
“Yep,” I agree, “Except it’s the fourth floor in a different wing. You know, the pediatrics wing?” I tug on the stretcher, and Moses reluctantly follows.
“Coulda sworn all the ICUs were on the fourth floor…” I can hear him muttering under his breath.
“You’re absolutely right,” I say graciously, shepherding him onto an elevator further down the main corridor. “All the adult ICUs are on the fourth floor of the main hospital. For some strange reason, the planners decided to put the pediatric ICU way over here in this building called, oddly enough, the Women and Children’s Pavilion. I can’t imagine why.”
He just stares dumbly at me as the elevator doors close behind me. I wait for perhaps twenty seconds, and then politely say, “Push the pretty button marked ‘4’ now, Moses.”
On the fourth floor, the doors open to reveal a large sign. An arrow points left, with the caption Labor and Delivery, Newborn Nursery, NICU. Beneath it, another arrow points right, with the caption PICU.
Naturally, Moses turns left.
I say nothing and just bodily drag the stretcher down the hallway to the right. It takes a few seconds of tug-o-war, but Moses eventually gives up and follows me to the PICU.
Inside the unit, I park Moses in a chair at the nurse’s station and set him to filling out the billing forms and patient demographics on my patient care report. The last thing I want is to put him in a position where he could actually do some harm, like interacting with patients, family or other health care providers, for instance.
“Howdy,” I greet the nurse cheerfully. “Someone call for a bumbolance?”
“Yeah, about an hour ago,” the nurse answered, looking pointedly at the clock on the wall.”
“Haven’t you heard that all good things come to those who wait?” I say innocently, winking. “It was at shift change, Robin. They held it so I could take it when I came on duty.”
“They should have sent me an ambulance when I asked for one,” she insists, bent on griping.
“Then you should have called it in as a STAT transfer,” I point out. “This will be an eleven-hour round trip. Would you like it if they gave you a non-critical patient an hour before shift change, and then informed you that you were responsible for him for another twelve hours?”
Robin sticks out her tongue in reply. “Well, this is Damian,” she reports, handing me a thick manila folder full of paperwork. “We’ve got him pretty much gorked on pain meds, but he still wakes up with some breakthrough pain every couple of hours. He’s got fluids running, cardiac monitor, nasal cannula oxygen, the usual. I’ve already called report to Children’s Hospital. You’ll be taking him to the ER.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say agreeably. “He’s going for…what, exactly? Hematology? Urology?”
“Both,” she sighs. “Pick one. We have neither for the next three days. The ER doc will evaluate him, and call in the specialists.”
“How long has he had it?” I ask, pulling back the sheet. Robin has taped a Styrofoam cup over the kid’s erect penis to protect it from the sheet. Priapisms can be quite painful.
“He’s been here ten hours,” she answers as I gently remove the cup, “and the mother said he’d had it a couple hours before she brought him in.”
“They didn’t try transfusing him?” I ask, clucking at the kid’s inflamed, angry-looking penis. It looks painful, and I inadvertently brush the Foley urinary catheter as I put the cup back in place. Damian moans and stirs.
Sorry, kid.
“Nope,” Robin shakes her head. “Dr. Nunez never said why.”
“Where’s his family?”
“Right about now,” Robin checks her watch, “they’ve probably finished packing and are headed to Little Rock. They may beat you there.”
No doubt about that. We’ll probably be taking the scenic tour of Arkansas anyway.
I say nothing else, and Robin and I gently transfer Damian to my stretcher. We have a small table that clips to the frame at the foot of the stretcher, handy for toting equipment and patient belongings. I fit a short IV pole into the fitting on the table hang his IV fluids on that, and strap the pump to the table. I grab his balloon bouquet from the wall alcove and a small duffle bag of his clothes and pile them on it. The cardiac monitor hangs on the stretcher rail. The whole thing looks as overloaded as the Beverly Hillbillies’ jalopy, but I know from experience that we can also fit another couple of IV pumps and a transport ventilator in the remaining space. In two minutes, Damian is fully packaged, and barely stirred from his narcotic-induced slumber. I motion to Moses that we’re ready to go.
We wheel Damian down the corridor, and Moses stops at the first bank of elevators. I gently bump the stretcher against his legs.
“What?” he asks peevishly.
“These are the public elevators, Moses. Staff elevator is further down the hall.”
“So? What’s the difference?”
“The difference,” I explain patiently, “is that these elevators are not designed to take a stretcher without breaking it down. I’d rather not do that.”
“What’s the damned difference?” Moses persists. “He’s out like a light.”
“I don’t want to take our eight-year-old patient downstairs in a public elevator where people can gawk at the tepee he makes in the sheets, even if he is too sedated to know the difference,” I explain tiredly. “Now let’s board the staff elevator that we rode upstairs, without any further pointless debate.”
I punctuate the last sentence by pushing the stretcher firmly against his legs. With a mighty, put-upon sigh, Moses stomps down the corridor and angrily presses the button for the staff elevator.
Outside, Moses and I load the stretcher without speaking. He’s still petulantly banging stuff around and being unnecessarily rough, and I shoot him a warning glance as he whacks the cardiac monitor against my knees as he locks the stretcher into its mount. He glares back at me unapologetically.
“See if you can get the rig pointed vaguely north, Moses,” I order, handing him my clipboard. “There’s a map and printed directions in the top compartment.” Moses slams the rear doors in reply.
I wrap the blood pressure cuff around Damian’s left arm as we pull out of the ER, and Moses cuts the turn a little too close, bumping the rear wheels over the curb. The rig sways ponderously, and Damian stirs. He opens his eyes and blinks groggily.
“Howdy chief,” I grin. “They call me Ambulance Driver. I’ll be taking you to the hospital in Little Rock.”
“Where’s Robin?” he asks, his voice weak and scratchy.
“She’s back at the hospital, Damian,” I explain gently. “I’m bringing you to another hospital in Arkansas that has the kind of doctors you need. Did they explain all that to you?”
He nods weakly in reply and tries to clear his throat. “Thirsty,” he rasps.
“You want us to get you a soda or something? It’s going to be a long trip.”
“Mountain Dew?” he asks hopefully.
“I don’t see why not,” I chuckle. “We’ll pull over in a little bit and grab something. You hurting at all?”
“Not really,” he mutters sleepily. “Just tired of being in bed.”
“Tell ya what,” I offer. “I have a laptop computer in my bag, and Shrek II on DVD. Why don’t I set it up for you? It’ll make the trip go faster.”
“Cool,” he yawns sleepily.
If you stay awake through the first thirty minutes, I’ll be surprised. But it does make the trip more tolerable.
I stow Damian’s bag and the balloon bouquet in the curbside door well, strap my laptop atop the table, plug the power cord into the inverter, and boot it up. By the time we reach the interstate, Damian is enrapt in the adventures of Shrek, Donkey and Fiona, my headphones perched over his ears, insulating him from the beeping of the cardiac monitor and the road noise.
I adjust the alarms on the cardiac monitor, turn the volume down to a low beep, and set it to automatically record vital signs every thirty minutes. I turn it slightly so I can see the screen, give his IV site and pump a final check, and settle with a self-satisfied groan into the captain’s chair behind Damian’s head. I turn off the overhead cabin lights, leaving only a small reading light on the suction shelf for illumination.
All set. He’ll be back to sleep in no time, and if I’m not careful, I won’t be far behind.
I quickly fill out all the pertinent blocks in my report, leaving only the narrative and vital signs section blank. I’ve had too many supposedly routine transfers go unexpectedly bad to feel comfortable writing my patient report in advance, like some of my colleagues. In ten minutes, I’m done.
Ten minutes down, only four hours and fifty minutes to go. God help me, this is going to be a pain. If I fall asleep, I’ll wake up to find that Moses has missed his exit and driven to Missouri. Or Texas. Or the Gulf Coast. There’s no telling. I can’t even amuse myself by writing on my laptop.
I amuse myself instead by making goofy faces at my reflection in the rear windows, inventorying the cabinets, inputting all of Damian’s demographic information into the cardiac monitor’s memory, clearing out old runs, resetting its internal clock to the correct time, and a dozen other things. I find an expired bag of Dopamine and two expired vials of magnesium sulfate in the drug bag. I clean out my briefcase. I replace the antimicrobial diaphragm on my stethoscope. I find a bloody fingerprint on the bottom side of a cabinet facing, and scrub it off. I stare blearily out the windows, and check my watch.
Shit, only thirty minutes passed. I’ll never make it. Scoot over, Damian. Make some room on that stretcher. Someone fetch me a blanky and a pillow.
Damian has dozed off again, so I unplug the headphones from my laptop, and pass another fifteen minutes watching Shrek and Donkey embark on another whirlwind adventure as the road drones steadily under our wheels…
…and I awake with a start to see that another thirty minutes have passed. I sit up and peer out the back windows at what little road I can see in the gathering dusk. It looks familiar. It also looks like interstate, and we should have turned off the interstate fifteen minutes ago.
I pivot around and look through the divider window between the cabin and the cab. Mile marker 116 flashes by us as Moses drives us steadily onward to Texas.
Except we’re supposed to be going to Arkansas. Northern Arkansas.
“Uh, Moses?”
“Yeah?”
“You missed your exit, man.”
“No I didn’t. It’s exit 103. Our exit is ten miles up the road.”
“No, your exit is fifteen miles behind you. “The one marked ‘Exit 103. El Dorado, Arkansas’ in big reflective letters.”
“But we’re going to Little Rock!” he protests.
“When one is in Louisiana, south of Arkansas, one must turn north on a major highway to get to Little Rock. That major highway happens to run through El Dorado. And several other scenic Arkansas cities. Trust me.”
“Lemme check the map.”
“Moses. Turn. The. Rig. Around.”
I don’t append “now” to the order, for fear that he’ll take me literally and get us stuck in a interstate median. As Moses finds an emergency turn-around several miles up the road and turns us back east, I watch carefully through the divider window until he reaches the proper exit.
“Get off here, Moses. Right here. Now stop at the intersection…turn left when you have an opening…gooood…now signal for a lane change and get into the right lane…right lane, Moses…RIGHT LANE! NOW! For pity’s sake can’t you see that this is a fucking turn lane that leads right back to the westbound interstate?”
“Hey, I’m fucking this chicken!” he snarls. “Just shut up and let me drive!”
“The chicken is looking monumentally unsatisfied with your technique, Moses,” I snap. “Hand me the map.”
He wads up the map and thrusts it through the window at me, cursing under his breath. I look at the route and the printed mileage estimates, and stick my head back in the divider window.
“Okay, it’s a straight shot from here to Little Rock. Do not deviate from this highway. It’s roughly 180 miles from here to our next exit onto I-630. I want you to notify me on the intercom when we’ve traveled 170 miles. Understand?”
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a damned child! I know where I’m-“
“Reset the trip odometer now, Moses. Hit the intercom when the mileage reaches 170. And no stops.”
“What if I gotta piss?”
“We got urinals here in the back. Hit the intercom if you need one.” I slide the divider window shut and buckle myself back into my seat, close my eyes, and mentally envision the gruesome death of a fellow EMT.
The thought brings a smile to my face.
“We lost?” comes Damian’s sleepy voice from the stretcher.
“Nope,” I say cheerfully, “just temporarily misplaced. You doing okay?”
“I’m hurting,” he rasps, grimacing. “and I’m thirsty.”
“Well, I can do something about the first one of those,” I tell him apologetically, “but I can’t stop off and get you a Mountain Dew. If I let my partner turn the steering wheel more than just a few degrees, he might get us misplaced again. Maybe permanently.”
“Got some water?” he asks hopefully.
“That I can do,” I agree, fetching him a small bottle of sterile water from the cabinet. “Small sips, though. I don’t want you getting car sick.” While he sips carefully, I slowly administer another 40 micrograms of Fentanyl in his IV line. In minutes, his eyes are heavy and his head nods. “Still hurting?” I ask.
“Feel…better,” he murmurs groggily. Chuckling, I gently press his head back against he pillow and take the water from his hand.
That oughta hold you for a while, Hoss. No sense in both of us being tortured for the next three hours.
I press the button to record a manual blood pressure, make sure his vital signs are stable, and settle into my seat. The rig sways gently and I find myself lulled by the steady hum of the wheels and the regular beeping of the cardiac monitor…
“Hey, AD…” whispers Anna Nicole Smith huskily.
Mmmmmm.
“Ambulance Driver…” comes the voice again, more insistently this time. Something’s wrong. Anna Nicole is speaking with Moses’ voice.
“Yeah, what is it?” I say, hurriedly wiping the drool from my chin and rubbing my eyes.
“We’ve gone 175 miles,” comes Moses’ tinny voice through the speaker.
“Fine,” I answer, “look for the I-630 West. Take the exit, look for the MLK Drive exit off of that, and follow the hospital signs. Should lead you right to it.”
I scoot over to the squad bench next to Damian, hang the cardiac monitor back on the stretcher rail, shut down my computer and pile his duffle bag and balloon bouquet on the table, and unplug the IV pump from the inverter. For his part, Damian barely stirs.
“Pulling into the ER now,” Moses announces triumphantly, five minutes later.
Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
Moses, flush with success, grins all the way inside. I even let him navigate because I’m not all that familiar with Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and well…it’s kind of hard to miss the ER entrance when your ambulance is parked in front of it. We’re taking baby steps here.
A brief handoff report and a couple of signatures, and we’re back in our rig in five minutes. Moses is so pumped he even helps me make up the stretcher and stow the gear.
“I’ll drive back,” I offer. “You can sack out in the back if you need the rest.”
“Nah, I got it now,” he demurs. “The hard part was finding my way here.”
“Ooookay…” comes my dubious reply. “I’m gonna sit up front and doze. If you have any problems, just wake me up.”
“Sure thing!”
He makes it out of the parking lot okay. On the way out, we pass a construction zone and a sign that says “I-630 traffic: Detour.” I crack one eye and watch carefully as Moses dutifully follows the arrows along the detour route.
Maybe he’s got it after all, I muse as I lean my head against the windows and close my eyes…
“Shit,” Moses mutters under his breath. I open my eyes to find us stopped, facing a chain link fence in a deserted industrial park.
“Uh, Moses? This ain’t I-630.”
“These damned construction detours have me all turned around!” he says defensively.
“Okay, so we go back the way we came,” I yawn, looking out my window to orient myself. Downtown Little Rock is a mystery to me, but certain landmarks are universal. “Look over there,” I point. “See that elevated roadway with all the fast-moving traffic? If that ain’t the interstate, I’ll bet it leads to it. Drive thataway.”
Dutifully, Moses navigates the maze of construction zones until finally we start seeing the familiar shield-shaped road signs indicating a US Interstate. “Got it now,” Moses says confidently as he pulls into a gas station near the Interstate on-ramp. “Let me gas up and get a Coke, and we’ll be on our way home. You want something?”
“Coke and Funyuns,” I yawn as I let my eyes close again. “Thanks.”
I crack one eye open fifteen minutes later to see a sign that says Highway 167: North Little Rock. I steal a glance at Moses to see him humming merrily along with the stereo, unconcerned.
I watch surreptitiously for a few minutes more until I see more signs indicating towns north of Little Rock. Sighing, I sit up and stretch.
“Moses, you’re going the wrong way,” I tell him flatly.
“Am not! I asked the girl at the gas station just to be sure!”
“These signs do say Highway 167,” I explain patiently. “but more importantly, they all contain the word North. We want to find a road that a) is one we came in on, and b) points South.”
“167 North is the road we came in on,” he says, confused.
“Yeah, but to get home, we need to go the other way. South. The same direction all those people are going!” I snap, gesturing frantically at the traffic in the opposite lanes. “Find an exit and turn the rig around.”
“If we stay on 167 North, it should lead us straight home,” he insists doggedly. “The clerk said so.”
Oh. My. God. Does he not understand the concept of North and South? Is he serious?
“Moses, Louisiana is south of here. South is the opposite of north. You get my drift?”
His only reply is a blank look.
Okay, maybe he is serious. Maybe I should try a different tack.
“Okay,” I say carefully, struggling to maintain an even, friendly tone, “we took a few major highways to get here, right? Nod your head if you understand.”
A nod.
“Great!” I say enthusiastically. “Now all of these highways had a common designator. They all said ‘North.’ Still with me?”
“Of course, that’s why we’re going-“
“There you go trying to think again,” I admonish. “Logic would dictate that to get back home, one would have to travel in the opposite direction, capische? That means you find those same highways, and follow the signs that say south. Keep doing that until you get back to Louisiana.”
“We’re already on the same highway,” he insists. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“Pull over, Moses.”
“Why?”
“Because in ten seconds, I’m going to gouge out your eyeballs with my pen, dump your carcass on the side of the road, and drive myself home.”
Apparently, Moses sees his own funeral in my eyes, because he hurriedly pulls over into the emergency lane, bails out and scoots around the other side of the truck. I slide into the driver’s seat, and waste a few seconds contemplating just leaving him there on the side of the road. Unfortunately, Moses manages to climb into the passenger seat before I can lock the doors. I give him a warning glare, and he wisely keeps his mouth shut as I merge back into traffic.
A little over four hours later, I pull into the fuel stop just across the river from ambulance headquarters. Moses has slept for most of the trip, waking only occasionally to wipe the drool from his chin, cast a fearful glance in my direction, and give me a sheepish grin. I just leer insanely back and casually twirl the pen in my right hand.
Five and a half hour trip on the way back, and I managed to shave an hour off that. Not bad, if I do say so myself. And the odometer has…what? An extra hundred miles on it from his unplanned detours. Damn.
I steal a glance at Moses dozing peacefully as I ease up to the fuel pumps. Grinning evilly, I stomp the brakes and scream, “Aaaaaaagggghh! Look out!”
Moses sits bolt upright, a look of pure terror on his face. He shakes his head in bewilderment, and then glares at me with undisguised hatred. The look quickly fades, and he chuckles halfheartedly, “Hah, good one.”
That didn’t sound very sincere, Moses. But you’re right. It was a good one.
“Go pay for the diesel, Magellan,” I order. “We’re home.” Moses dutifully trudges inside, yawning and stretching. I finish pumping the fuel, wait for him to climb back aboard, and in two minutes, we’re back at headquarters, a mere 12 hours after we left.
I stop the rig next to the office, at the entrance to the ambulance pen. “Let’s unload our stuff here, and I’ll go turn everything in while you park the rig,” I suggest.
Moses nods agreement and slides into the driver’s seat as soon as I step out of the rig. I grab my clipboard, the IV pump and the drug box, and lug them inside. I turn in the radio and cellular phone in the dispatch center, sign the logs, and drop my paperwork in the night shift bin.
If I hurry, I can beat the rush to McDonald’s for breakfast, and still be in bed by six o’clock. And best of all, I won’t have to deal with Moses for another minute.
I’m just pulling out of the parking lot when I realize that I left my briefcase in the rig. I throw the truck into park, trot back to the ambulance bullpen, and look for the ambulance we were in. It takes me a couple of minutes to find it.
Because Moses parked it in the wrong place, of course.
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