firetender
Community Leader Emeritus
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Here it is; a place where you can share your more bizarre, and TRUE stories that thrust you into the territory between spirit and flesh. (I encourage you to enjoy the telling. In Hawaii, we call them "Chicken-Skin" stories!)
I'll kick it off with one who's facts are accurate but its form is buffed a little for presentation (and privacy) purposes.
ROGUE CLOUD
I was in between calls in an ER near Daytona Beach Florida (1970’s) and the ambulance backed into the bay. I knew a full code was coming, but was not prepared for what I saw. While the staff got ready, I moved to assist to bring the patient in.
When I opened the rear doors of the rig, the medic (EMT) was doing CPR furiously on an incredibly tan and unavoidably and noticeably curvaceous and bikini-clad young woman. Until that moment (still a rookie) I had no idea how much I’d immediately get disoriented by seeing CPR being done on an otherwise vibrantly healthy-appearing young body. It didn’t make sense, her color was too good.
But that was only the first hit. As the driver took his place opposite me on the gurney (the old FW) and we began to pull it out of the ambulance, I could not help but notice a patch of charred skin just above her right foot. Then, the medic doing CPR, in frenzy, almost crashed down on my head in an attempt not to miss one single compression. I looked up at his face and saw it grimacing in what could only be described as sheer terror.
Like a junkyard dog, he stuck with his patient, continuing compressions and pushing me along at the same time. After a couple of shoves, I just pulled back to give him the room he needed to do CPR while pushing the gurney and her down the hall. When I did, I noticed another, even uglier and more severe patch of charred skin on her left shoulder, by her neck.
Still, and you know how weird stuff like this comes up; I couldn’t help but note the girl’s beauty. I noted it, as I stood in the hallway, frankly a little stunned at the moments that had just passed.
Then, the wailing started. Into the Emergency Room reception area came a young girl, clad in a bikini, knock-kneed hysterical and being held barely upright by a young man. She had the exact same face as the girl on the gurney in full arrest.
No other staff was present, so I knew there was a gap that I needed to fill. You could call it gathering information about the circumstances of the call, but at the time, all I could think was “What the Hell?”
And here’s what I learned. The girls were twin Sisters. They had been jogging side-by-side on an empty beach. The sky was cloudless. The surviving sister sobbed that she noticed a single black cloud moving above them and the next thing she knew, there was a flash and she got thrown to the sand. When she looked up she saw her sister beside her, immobile. Once she realized something was wrong, she ran for a phone, about a quarter mile away.
I’ve seen what’s called a “rogue cloud” myself once. Cloudless sky, an ominously dark, tight and compact ball of cloud comes moving across the sky, seemingly in a windstream all its own, and BOOM! A lightning bolt! Had I not experienced that before, known that the rig was dispatched for a “woman down on the beach” and just observed a young woman in cardiac arrest with the signs of having been hit by lightning, I probably would have been as terrified as the medic.
You see, all he knew was he was called to the scene of an emergency on the beach only to find the body of a young woman, unconscious on the sand, with nobody else around. The response time was less than a minute, they had been quite close to the incident.
A BLS crew, they started CPR and loaded her into the rig. Then, as his partner clambered out of the side door, at the rear appeared the very girl the attendant was doing CPR on, looking up at him, begging for help. And then his partner closed the door and they were gone.
I'll kick it off with one who's facts are accurate but its form is buffed a little for presentation (and privacy) purposes.
ROGUE CLOUD
I was in between calls in an ER near Daytona Beach Florida (1970’s) and the ambulance backed into the bay. I knew a full code was coming, but was not prepared for what I saw. While the staff got ready, I moved to assist to bring the patient in.
When I opened the rear doors of the rig, the medic (EMT) was doing CPR furiously on an incredibly tan and unavoidably and noticeably curvaceous and bikini-clad young woman. Until that moment (still a rookie) I had no idea how much I’d immediately get disoriented by seeing CPR being done on an otherwise vibrantly healthy-appearing young body. It didn’t make sense, her color was too good.
But that was only the first hit. As the driver took his place opposite me on the gurney (the old FW) and we began to pull it out of the ambulance, I could not help but notice a patch of charred skin just above her right foot. Then, the medic doing CPR, in frenzy, almost crashed down on my head in an attempt not to miss one single compression. I looked up at his face and saw it grimacing in what could only be described as sheer terror.
Like a junkyard dog, he stuck with his patient, continuing compressions and pushing me along at the same time. After a couple of shoves, I just pulled back to give him the room he needed to do CPR while pushing the gurney and her down the hall. When I did, I noticed another, even uglier and more severe patch of charred skin on her left shoulder, by her neck.
Still, and you know how weird stuff like this comes up; I couldn’t help but note the girl’s beauty. I noted it, as I stood in the hallway, frankly a little stunned at the moments that had just passed.
Then, the wailing started. Into the Emergency Room reception area came a young girl, clad in a bikini, knock-kneed hysterical and being held barely upright by a young man. She had the exact same face as the girl on the gurney in full arrest.
No other staff was present, so I knew there was a gap that I needed to fill. You could call it gathering information about the circumstances of the call, but at the time, all I could think was “What the Hell?”
And here’s what I learned. The girls were twin Sisters. They had been jogging side-by-side on an empty beach. The sky was cloudless. The surviving sister sobbed that she noticed a single black cloud moving above them and the next thing she knew, there was a flash and she got thrown to the sand. When she looked up she saw her sister beside her, immobile. Once she realized something was wrong, she ran for a phone, about a quarter mile away.
I’ve seen what’s called a “rogue cloud” myself once. Cloudless sky, an ominously dark, tight and compact ball of cloud comes moving across the sky, seemingly in a windstream all its own, and BOOM! A lightning bolt! Had I not experienced that before, known that the rig was dispatched for a “woman down on the beach” and just observed a young woman in cardiac arrest with the signs of having been hit by lightning, I probably would have been as terrified as the medic.
You see, all he knew was he was called to the scene of an emergency on the beach only to find the body of a young woman, unconscious on the sand, with nobody else around. The response time was less than a minute, they had been quite close to the incident.
A BLS crew, they started CPR and loaded her into the rig. Then, as his partner clambered out of the side door, at the rear appeared the very girl the attendant was doing CPR on, looking up at him, begging for help. And then his partner closed the door and they were gone.