Ah criteria based dispatch, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
THE EMERGENCY
Caller states a man with a heart condition is unable to get out of bed.
THE ACTION
Somewhere, somehow this was coded as an emergent seizure. How, you ask? Because the public knows all the code words.
I have told you all many times that you could not make this stuff up, yet when I think back on this run, even later in the day, I can't believe it wasn't on a TV show.
Rent is past due, almost a full month. Our "patient" is convinced that if he tells his landlord he can't get out of bed that he won't have to pay rent.
Landlord decides that if deadbeat can't get out of bed he must need an ambulance (moving crew) to get his tenant moving.
As we arrive the engine company is in the hallway of the third floor apartment barely holding in their laughter. We see the engine paramedic trying to interject herself into the discussion the tenant and landlord are having.
We present ourselves and send them along when we see this is a battle of the stubborn stoics. Tenant tells us he shouldn't have to pay rent because he is on disability and can't work. (Later described as a foot injury, seems data entry was far too below his abilities.) Landlord tells us that he can't have a tenant who won't pay rent just laying around all day long.
I had to do my signature look around the room. I looked behind a dresser, moved the landlord to take a peek in the closet, asked the patient if I could look under his pillow.
Finally they asked what I was doing.
*I think I have a bite, let's reel it in*
"I could have sworn someone called 911 because someone was having a seizure but darn it, they lied."
"Well he told me he has seizures and I can't be waiting here all day." Says the landlord with a stance that says this statement is not negotiable.
"Actually, you can and you will." I turn to the man in the bed,"Can you stand up? If you stand up we can let you go about your day, Sir."
He looks from me to the landlord and back. "I better go and get checked out."
I wonder, what do folks expect the hospital to find when they get "checked out?" Mister Johnson, you have a troll in your ear, no wait, you just have the sniffles, go home.
So down the stairs we go, man unable to get out of bed walking beside us, all the while yelling to the landlord that his disability entitles him to free rent. For all the talk of disability he was quite nimble on both feet I must say.
At the hospital he thanked us, not for giving him a ride to a physician, but for getting him out of a "tough spot with the landlord, I owe you one."
He now owes the taxpayers about 650.
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