Quite a few years ago, I was working in a different Division when we went to a fairly distressing call. We were called out to a 5 or 6 year old female that wasn’t breathing. She had a congenital illness that ultimately would take her life.
The weather that day was bad, pouring rain that had for the most part flooded all of the local streets. With the flooded streets, came a much slower response than normal.
When we are dispatched to calls like this, everyone has a greater sense of urgency. Not that all emergencies aren’t important, but when it involves a kid, you just want to get there sooner. I hate to say it, but many times your anxiety is greatly heightened for these types of calls.
Anyway, we wasted no time in getting out of the station, but with the streets flooded, it slowed us considerably. The ambulance coming with us was slowed a bit too, but since they have a smaller unit, they can go a bit faster. We both arrived on scene at the same time. I usually try to go in last to make sure all of my guys get in and then I can assess the scene a bit better once I know everyone is there. As I walked in, I was confronted by the Dad of the house. First thing he does is get in my face, after he had questioned my crew as they were walking in. My guys referred him to me and he hit me up just as I was walking in the door. He demanded why it took us so long to get there. I went over with him the weather conditions and the fact that their home was right on the edge of two different areas for our division. It was barely in our first in response area. This area was fairly large too. So, with the combo of the weather and where they were located, our response time was a bit slow. I tried explaining to this jerk, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Instead of being concerned about his young daughters condition, he wanted to pick a fight with the very people that came there to try and save her. Even though he was hostile towards my crew, I managed to separate him from them while they were trying to help his daughter.
I basically herded him to another part of the house so we would not bother his wife who was extremely distraught or my guys. We basically had an argument over the response time. I told him that I would check on our response times with dispatch, which I did. I reported back to him the times I was given and he basically called me a liar, at which part I called him an “Ass”. I asked him why he didn’t show much concern about his daughter, when what he was doing at the time could have been handled after the emergency was over. He didn’t like that too much and basically threatened to beat me up. At that time I called for Law Enforcement and then told him to leave his own home. He told me I couldn’t do that and I told him, “Yes, I can”. He then calmed down a bit and moved off to a different area and just leered at us for the rest of the time. Law Enforcement arrived, I informed them of the situation and told them just to hang around. I didn’t want him arrested, just controlled. I know that people react weird when under stress and didn’t want this guy to pay for anything he would be sorry for later.
This time, we were able to get the child back breathing and she did OK for a while, but ended up dying from her condition about a year later.
This however is not the end of the story. A few days later, I get a call from my Boss saying that the people involved with this call wanted to have a sit down with us. He said they just wanted to chat. I told my Boss what had transpired the day it happened and told him it might be better if he came along, but he told me I could handle it. So, we went to their home again at the time we were told.
When we walked in, there were all sorts of people there, not just the Mom and Dad. The pastor of their Church (the Dad was a youth pastor there), and some of the Grandparents and some other people. I can’t remember exactly, but I’d say about 6+ adults and the couples older daughter.
I explained what had happened all over again, and then had to justify what we had done. They threatened my job and couldn’t get off the fact that I had called the Dad an Ass. I basically told them that I call it as I see it and that he was acting like an Ass. I told them again that in my opinion, he should have been more concerned about his daughters condition than excoriating us over a perceived slow response time.
I surprisingly kept my cool for this whole ordeal. My guys told me they couldn’t believe that I was able to hold it together so well. I totally expected to be brought in for disciplinary action over this. I knew they were the type of people that could make up stuff that never happened. Other than me calling him an Ass, I was totally professional in my actions. I guess in the end, they knew that they had no case against me and let it drop.
