Friday, October 9, 2009

Nothing is ever what it seems.

This is a story from my very first shift working EMS. I had been riding with a senior member of our group and we had a few good calls that day. A couple traumas, one flown to a Level 1 facility. All in all it had been a good time. It was about 2100 when we recieve a call from dispatch. A man is reporting his girlfriend and her dog missing. This guy is parked in one of the lots near a river that is rather popular for tubers.

When we arrive we see the guy waiting by his car. He looks anxious, and oddly nervous. He is with a few bystanders that had been looking for her in their jeeps. He explains to us that his girlfriend who is in otherwise good health is suffering from an ankle injury she had sustained in a horse riding accident the weekend before. Her dog is a very young boxer puppy. Now the area she got lost in is not that large. We should have been able to hear the dog bark from where we were sitting.

Our guy told us he told her to stay there while he moved the car. Everything the guy said made perfect sense, except the reason he left her down there. He told us he wanted to move his car before closing because he didn't want to get locked behind the gates. When we asked where he moved his car from he pointed 10 parking spaces away in the same lot and said "right there". And there was no gate at this particular lot. After that his story started to fall apart even more. We had another one of our units show up and drive the beach area and look for the victim. A few moments later a cop arrived.

As we continue asking the guy questions we keep in radio contact with our other rescue unit. At this point we told him to start looking under bushes and similiar places where a body would be stashed. First rule of working in the field is; sometimes things aren't what they would seem. To make us even more nervous he kept getting in and out of his car looking for something. It wasn't long before the cop put a stop to that. He was quickly moving from the realm of "victim" and into that of "suspect".

At this point we were about an hour into the search. They decided to call the helicopter and see if they could pick up anything on their FLIR. They flew the river a few times and found her. She was about 3 miles from where we estimated her to be. We couldn't get a jeep to her where she was because of the rock faces. The helicopter was able to set down and pick her up. We told the guy to get in his car and meet us at the station where the helicopter was going to land and drop her off.

When we get there the helicopters rotors had just stopped. Our patient gets out of the helicopter with her dog. The guy we were with ran up to her to give her a hug. She turns around, looks at the nearest cop, and says "Get him the f*&% away from me". "That a#&hole left and told me he was coming back, he left me down there for 3 hours." As it turns out, they were enjoying a romantic, semi-moonlit evening down on the beach by the river. They get into an argument, and the guy tells his girlfriend that he is going to move the car, and never comes back. An hour or so later, Mr. Douche Bag feels guilty and comes back and says she got lost. She decided that she was on her own, and was going to hike the river to find someone to help her. We check her out, she signs a refusal and drives home. In her car.... he was left to walk 10 miles back into town at midnight.

A-hole.