Well....... we got a call for an "eye injury" at Target. I was doing ride-alongs with other crews at the Corps to get hours for my ALS class. It was the first time I was riding with Stu* and Joe* (*names have been changed to protect the innocent).
On the way to Target I'm running through all of the things I know about eye injuries in my head... if there's an impalement, leave it there, cover both eyes, etc etc. I figure something fell off a shelf and hit someone in the head. Boy was I wrong.
We get to Target and are shown into the security office. There are cops there, and there's a guy who's all red in the face pacing the cage. It looked like he was wearing a hula skirt. I stop in my tracks and ask the cop "what's going on". They tell me there was a shoplifter and some mace... I assume the guy is the shoplifter so I make the cop come with me. Turns out, he was undercover store security. He saw a woman come in whose "rap sheet" he had seen earlier in the week - a faxed security alert from another store. So he followed her and watched her put a couple prepaid cellphones in her coat pockets. He approached her, and she maced him. So then he lunged at her, and she bit him on the neck (and no, we're not in Transylvania), and somehow managed to rip his pants to shreds (getting a little somethin' somethin' while he tackles her to the ground I guess). So here's this 20 year old security guard, his mouth, nose, and eyes covered in mace, bleeding from a bite wound to the neck, pants ripped to shreds, laying on top of this lady. Other security guards came and apprehended her, and he was taken into the security office where they called us.
So he wouldn't go anywhere until the store brought him new pants (go figure) so he changed in front of me (yay! wait, no, TOTALLY not my type). We walk him to the rig and get him settled into the stretcher. We start pulling away and one of the store managers rips open the back door and says "wait, I need some pictures" and proceeds to mug shot the kid with a polaroid for "insurance and workers comp purposes".
On the way to the hospital, Joe and I decide to treat his wounds (gee, y'think?). I had a brain fart and didn't even consider spiking a bag and using the tubing to hose off his eyes... instead, we stick a bedpan under his chin and attempt to pour a bottle of NS down his eyes into the pan. Meanwhile, Stu is pretending he's never driven an ambulance before and bouncing us all over the place - one of the cabinets even opened up and I had to bat a box of gloves out of the way so it wouldn't hit the pt. While pouring the NS. Ooops.... need a couple towels. Then we ended up soaking some gauze and covering both eyes with them, then wrapping them in place with roller gauze. The guy looked like a war hero, but he said it was making him feel better. While he told us other harrowing security guard tales (no offense to the SG's out there), and how he'd get a meritorious transfer with one more capture, and how his dad is a police detective and was going to be so proud of him, we bandaged his neck, and I made Joe check his legs for additional bites/wounds. We put him on O2 for good measure (mace in the airway = not good). It was all we could do to not laugh hysterically, looking at this kid with his neck and eyes wrapped up, and a non-rebreather on his face. Only the tip of his nose and some hairs on top of his head were sticking out.
When we transferred him into the bed at the hospital, I told the nurse he was attempting to apprehend a shoplifter... He said "No, no no... I got her! One more and I get transferred to any Target I want!" (Mind you, he's still bandaged and he's waving one finger around in the air to emphasize "one more"!) We walked out to the ambulance bay and I almost peed myself laughing so hard. It's one of those stories that is hard to do it justice with words, but in 5 years it's the only one of it's kind....
h34r:
