After a relatively busy night riding on the ambulance (a call at around 11:30 and another at 4:44), I got a taste of what it’s like to run in what may be quite frankly the other side of the firehouse spectrum. Whereas firefighting is ‘putting the wet stuff on the red stuff’, gungho brutal and obtuse, EMS is much trickier, a lot less forceful, and requires much in the way of intellectual acuity in order to get things correctly. Firefighters messing up can mean injury, structural damage, or at worst (and least likely) death, but EMTs and crew chiefs have much more to lose if they happen to do something wrong, or so I believe.

There’s so much to learn though, even if I’m just a mere attendant. Somewhere inside of me there’s a feeling of me wanting to take EMT classes next semester, but another side of my brain is trying to convince me that it would be suicidal to do so…