Happy New Year!

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The call came in at 23:50 hours, ten minutes before the New Year. I was baking cookies with my siblings. We had just taken them out of the oven and were waiting for them to cool a little before we ate them.

I was in the middle of washing the trays off when tones dropped. I get halfway down the block before the dispatch information finishes coming over the air. "73-year old Male, Syncope." It was a relatively high-priority call, so I hit the gas and switch on my blue light.

I get to the firehouse in an illegal, record-breaking, 2 and a half minutes. I pull up to the firehouse the same time our driver shows up. I jump onto the ambulance and take off my sweatshirt, so I can be more easily identified as an EMT. A second EMT gets into the back with me, and we're off.

We get to the scene. I grab the oxygen bag and my partner grabs the PCR book. My Captain and a few Chiefs are on-scene already with a patient that is absolutely fine. He is alert and oriented and speaking in full sentences. He is in good health for his age. He does not want to go to the hospital, he says. He doesn't need to, he says. My Captain says he's got to go. His last blood pressure reading was 190/90, dangerously high even for someone who has a history of hypertension. I ask how he's feeling now, if there's any pain, any difficulty breathing. He says there's none. His oxygen sat reading is low, though, so I grab the O2 tank just in case.

I set up the oxygen tank as a precautionary measure and am placing the mask on his face when his family, who have been in the other room until now, come in and yell HAPPY NEW YEARS! Amused and slightly bewildered, myself and the other rescue workers celebrate the new year with these strangers for all of 3 seconds, and then we're back to work.

The crew sets up the stretcher outside and I ask him what he was doing before he fainted. He chuckles and says "I was watching Carrie Underwood! I guess she's better looking then I thought." I let out a giggle and help him stand up. I tell a family member to throw all of the medications our patient takes into a ziploc bag so he can take them to the hospital with him. He grabs a jacket and we position him onto the stretcher.

The ride to the hospital is relatively uneventful. I radio ahead to the ER and we drop our patient off. We leave the hospital and are back in service at 00:23 hours.

2008, it seems, is off to a running start. It should be an interesting year.