Just Another Shift with a Moron

The shift started out as any other Saturday shift would, filled with raucous laughter, some shenanigans from us and the other ambulance crew out of our station, and of course, my partner S. S had come froma doing another marathon of hours prior to arriving to work with me, so of course he was beyond tired.

The day turned into night, and the tones went off and alerted us to respond to a call for a possible miscarriage. Right off the bat I cringed, I hate these calls, for no more reasons than I simply cannot stomach seeing partially born fetuses, and honestly can't do or say anything that could comfort the mothers involved, not for lack of trying.

When we arrived, the fire department had just pulled up and was running into the house, (was the patient on fire?), and I proceeded to prod S into wakefullness to get out of the ambulance. In the bathroom we found a fairly young female, seated on the toilet, who matter of factly said, "I think the baby came out". One quick glance and she was correct, the stillborn fetus, not quite four months old was in the toilet, and I knew that there would be no attempt at resuscitation. I asked my partner to call our medical control to ask if they wanted us to sever the umbilical cord, or not. When he came back in, he said "they said leave it intact". We asked mom to stand, and then noticed that it had allready been severed on it's own.

Now comes the bad part. I detest scooping the fetus out of a toilet, quite frankly, it's gross, and kind of makes me sad. At this point, the mothers outside the bathroom, getting on the stretcher, and I say to my partner, "hey, can you take care of the fetus for me? "Sure", he said, and promply reached over and flushed the toilet. You know that feeling when you realize you have lost your wallet? Magnify it times a million.

You could hear us yelling at each other four houses down. Granted, the deceased fetus was unviable, but still needed to be transported for pathology, and for comfort for mom, and ding a ling had just flushed it like Mr. Clean. A firefighter poked his head in, "is everything allright?" No, everything was not allright, S had flushed her child down the toilet, but I feigned professionalism. "Yup, be out in a minute".

In the end, and after S explained to the doctors what had happened, it was cleared, but he no longer does marathon shifts.