Right off the bat, the day started out with some excitement. At a little after 7:30a, as I'm right in the middle of doing the morning check of the fire engine (I was driving it for the first part of the day), we get a call for a working code (someone who is not breathing and has no pulse). We get to the scene and discover an elderly man, face down in his bed, dead. He and his wife slept in separate beds, and apparently when she woke up and went to check on him, she found him. She was crying hysterically, as most people would be in her situation. He had died several hours ago in his sleep, so there was nothing we could do. At this point in my career, I'm somewhat used to encountering dead people while responding to calls, but seeing reactions like this man's wife had reminds me of all that goes along with someone dying suddenly...the pain, the agony, the emotional trauma, the questioning, the preparations...as of late it hits especially close to home, because of Dan Coverston's murder. While death may be another part of life, it remains one of the most painful parts for those left behind to deal with it.
About an hour or two later, we got another call for a working code. The medic unit got on-scene first and discovered the man was conscious and breathing, but he still wasn't looking too good. He got taken to the hospital, and I hope he managed to recover.
In the afternoon, we were going to take our most recent rookie (who's last name is also Miles, by the way, but there's no relation) out to practice pulling some hose lines off the engine, but we had a slight interruption. Our previous rookie, DW, missed about a month's worth of work because he contracted a case of MRSA (click here for more info about MRSA). Well, it turned out that another guy from our shift cought MRSA too. So we spent the first part of the afternoon totally decontaminating the firehouse...we took all the mattresses outside, sprayed them with bleach and let them air dry, we cleaned off every surface that most people in the firehouse put their hands on, we sprayed bleach everywhere...we CLEANED this firehouse! We cleaned so much, we had to open up all the windows and doors we could, because a bleach haze was forming in the firehouse. We were sure we'd all wake up high on cleaning fumes, if we woke up at all!
After 5p, DF, who's the usual fire engine driver, came in to work (he had taken the first part of the day off). That bumped me off the engine put me on the ambulance with DW riding with me. I had no problem with that...until a few hours later when the engine and truck went to a 2-alarm (2 alarm = pretty significant) fire in neighboring P.G. County. Story of my fire department life...ah well, God must be keeping me from fire for some reason.
While the engine and truck were gone, we ran a couple calls...one for an elderly lady with abdominal pains and another for a little girl who fell and cut her wrist. On the first call, the lady's grandson came with us to the hospital. When we got there and as we waited to be assigned a hospital bed, he asked me if I was saved. I said I was and we had a nice conversation about faith. Turned out he was a minister at his church (he was a fairly young guy). He asked if DW was saved, and I told him he wasn't too interested in religion. He said that's why God had us working together. Sure enough, God revealed how he was working in DW's life: As he and I left the hospital, DW reminded me of a book I had brought up to him last shift (More Than A Carpenter...I had suggested it to him, but he said he wasn't much of a reader, nor much of a religious person). He said if I still had it, he'd like to read it. Woohoo! I told him I'd bring it on Sunday. Talk about God working!
At around 9:45p, DW and I got called to stand by at a police substation in Burtonsville. We had no idea what was going on as we made our way up there, but as we approached the substation, we knew something BIG was going down...MCPD had all of Castle Blvd. blocked off, and about 50 police cars were in the substation parking lot. We pulled up, parked the ambo and asked what was going on. Here's what we were told: Apparently, a cop had made a routine traffic stop on Castle Blvd. He had asked the driver of the car to get out so he could talk to him, leaving a man still inside the car, sitting in the front passenger seat. As the cop and driver were talking, the passenger jumped into the driver seat and started to drive away! As he did, he dragged the cop a little bit. The cop shot at the driver, striking and wounding him, but the driver got away. The cop was shaken loose and the original driver ran away. When the cop called for backup, he must have called for every available cop in Montgomery County to come help, because that's who was there. Cops were in the substation parking lot, putting on tactical gear and pulling out large guns from their trunks. A police command bus even showed up! DW commented that we would be there for awhile, and sure enough, we stayed at that substation until about 1:45am. We didn't do anything; we were just standing by in case something big happened. Well, nothing did. I don't think they ended up finding him that night.
After getting back to the firehouse and crawling into bed, it was about 2am. I prayed we wouldn't get any more calls that night, and we didn't. I promptly went home and went back to sleep, trying to process the craziness of the shift. That's why I love coming to work...you never know what's gonna happen.
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