Crates & Blood

Being that I'm the most junior person in the ambulance crew, I always sit in the back of the bus, even if we have no patient on the stretcher. The driver is in the front (obviously) and the crew chief is riding shotgun. There is a short, narrow "hallway" between the back of the ambulance and the two front seats. It is stuffed with radios, but most of the space is taken up by a milk crate turned upside down.

"Hey," the driver said, "why don't you come up here and sit on the milk crate so we can hear you better when we talk."
"Is that....safe.....?" I hesitated.
"Yeah yeah, come on up!"

Ok then. I leaned my hand against the oxygen-tank closet on one side and with my other hand I grabbed the back of the driver's seat. I stretched my left leg over the milk crate and then my right, and sat down. I immediately felt like a little kid. Why am I on a milk crate? My knees are almost touching my chin, there's no way I look professional like this. I want to look professional!! What if people can see me??

And then we got dispatched. The call was for a "heavy bleeder."

I crawled back to my original place, sirens wailing, ambulance speeding past red lights. Crawling was difficult. It was kind of scary. My adrenaline spiked. How stupid of me to have sat up there. I need to focus, quickly.

We arrived. Police officers hovered around a female lying on her back, blood gushing out from the side of her head, a dark pool of blood on the street, getting larger. I put the c-collar around her neck while a FDNY EMT from a second ambulance controlled the bleeding. Right there, in the midst of adrenaline surges and team work, I felt like a professional again. I just need to get a different size uniform shirt that fits me better. And maybe a new name tag too.