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The Calls That Stay With Us

A publication about the EMS calls we can’t forget — and what they teach us. EMTs, medics, and rescue professionals share the raw, often untold stories from behind the sirens.

Christmas Eve

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It was Christmas Eve, and the call came in as “unresponsive adult female.” Mid-30s. No further information.

I arrived first. The house was large, quiet, and meticulously decorated. A couple met me at the door — polite, composed, maybe in their sixties. They didn’t seem panicked. Concerned, sure, but not in a way that matched the call type. They led me out back — to a separate guest unit.

The apartment was pristine. Minimalist, cozy. No clutter, no chaos. The kind of place that tells you someone once cared deeply about appearances.

She was on the floor, flat on her back, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Motionless. Breathing. Not blinking.

“Is she diabetic? History of seizures? Drugs? Alcohol?”
They shook their heads. “No, nothing like that.”

I called to her — no response. Applied a sternal rub — my go-to pain stimulus. Still nothing. She didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. Just lay there, eyes open, totally unresponsive. AVPU: unresponsive. But with her eyes open like that — it threw me. That kind of stillness doesn’t feel right. It feels rehearsed. Haunted.

I glanced at the parents. They stood off to the side, hands clasped, whispering to each other like we were waiting for a train. Calm. Too calm. I asked again, louder this time, “Any history of this? Is she on any meds? Anything at all?”
“No. Nothing,” the father said, like it was the end of the conversation.

When my partner arrived, I told him I thought it might be a stroke. That’s where my head was at: awake but not present. Locked-in, maybe. She made a small sound as we were preparing to move her — a groan, like her body wanted to say something her mind couldn’t figure out how to shape.

We grabbed a flexible stretcher and got her loaded. I rushed. Didn’t fully strap her in. At the time it felt like triage. Now it feels like a mistake.

Outside, the rest of the team and the medics were just pulling in. As we carried her toward the stretcher, she suddenly screamed “NO!”, bolted upright, and launched herself off the Reeves. Hit the pavement.

For a split second, there was just silence — like time stopped. And then everyone moved. People barking orders, hands grabbing her, repositioning. I felt the hot bloom of embarrassment in my chest. I should have strapped her in. That was my fault. That was on me.

The medic — a provider I’d worked with before and trusted — looked at me and said flatly, “This is an overdose.”

That hadn’t even crossed my mind.

We got her on the ambulance stretcher, and for the next 40 minutes — through back roads and winding hills — we restrained her with our hands and body weight. No soft restraints on board. No sedatives, because we didn’t know what she’d taken. When you don’t know what’s in the system, throwing in ketamine or Versed is just playing pharmacological roulette.

And she fought us. Screamed. She rotated between rage and devotion, cycling in and out of lucidity:

“FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU — ”
“I love you — I love you so much — ”
“Please don’t let them take me.”
Then back to screaming.

It was relentless. I kept checking my watch, hoping time was moving faster than it felt. But it wasn’t. Every minute dragged, weighted down by the effort of keeping her pinned, of keeping her safe. I could feel my shoulders burning, my hands cramping. I could hear my own breathing getting louder in the back of my own head. I could feel the medic’s eyes on me — sharp, questioning, making sure I wasn’t going to slip up again.

When we finally pulled up to the ER, I felt that familiar, exhausted relief of handing over chaos to someone else. The ER was packed. It smelled like antiseptic and peppermint. Christmas decorations hung from the nurses’ station. I remember thinking it felt out of place — like this little slice of festivity had no business being there.

A physician came over, glanced at her, waved his hand near her mouth, and said, “She’s drunk.”

No tests. No curiosity. Just dismissal.

We looked at each other — me and the medic — and said, nearly in unison, “We don’t smell anything.”

Eventually a nurse administered a B52 — Haldol and Benadryl — and the moment it hit, she collapsed into the stretcher and urinated everywhere. It soaked through the sheets, pooling at her sides, dripping down the metal rails.

We waited. Nobody was free to take her. Nobody was ready. It was a holiday, and resources were stretched thin.

Eventually, a small nurse assistant came over and said she needed to get her changed. Technically, she was still our patient, so we helped.

We pulled off her soaked jeans and underwear. That’s when the smell hit — vodka. Strong. Immediate.

The source wasn’t her breath. It was the tampon, saturated. Turns out, some people soak them and insert them for faster absorption and no smell on the breath. Her BAC, we later heard, was in the neighborhood of 0.4.

We transferred care and walked out to the ambulance in silence. No small talk. No post-call recap. Just silence.

I slid into the front passenger seat and closed the door. The cab was quiet, except for the faint hum of the engine. I felt the weight of every minute we’d been in there. My hands were shaking, and I didn’t even notice until I saw them in my lap. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. My legs felt like they were still bracing against the backboard.

My partner climbed in and shut his door. He looked over, raised his eyebrows as if to say something, but didn’t. He just put the rig in drive, and we pulled away.

Takeaway:
It’s not always the call itself that gets to you. It’s the aftermath. That moment when the adrenaline stops pumping and you’re left with everything that just happened — all the things you missed, the things you did right, and the things you should have done better.

What stays with me isn’t the vodka tampon. It’s the way she looked when I walked in — stone still, eyes wide — and how her parents didn’t seem shocked. How normal it all seemed to them. How I missed what was right in front of me.

In EMS, we’re trained to look for patterns. But when something doesn’t fit, we tend to force it into a category anyway — stroke, seizure, psych, overdose. And sometimes we’re wrong.

I’ve come to understand that “unresponsive” doesn’t always mean unconscious. And calm families don’t always mean safe homes. Sometimes the scariest dysfunction is the kind that hides in plain sight.

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The Calls That Stay With Us
The Calls That Stay With Us

Published in The Calls That Stay With Us

A publication about the EMS calls we can’t forget — and what they teach us. EMTs, medics, and rescue professionals share the raw, often untold stories from behind the sirens.

Ari Meisel
Ari Meisel

Written by Ari Meisel

Founder — Less Doing /The Replaceable Founder/ Overwhelmologist/Serial Entrepreneur / Ironman / Author / Inventor

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