Fuck, I don’t even know for sure.

I think it was for a patient back in the early to mid nineties. I’m dubious on which patient, and whether or not that was the first time or just the first I remember.

If it’s the one I think, the guy had a stroke, and I knew pretty much right away what was going on, so I was dialing before I got to him (this was pre-cell phone ubiquity, so it was a cordless phone via landline). It’s kinda muddy in memory now, what with about two decades of other patients in similar situations, but I recall thinking “fuck, fuck, fuck” a lot while I was moving to him, and my heart pounding with the adrenaline of it.

Dude survived, and even partially recovered before another took him out.

However, it’s possible he wasn’t the first, and I’m mixing things up. But I’m mostly confident that I had never needed to use the service until I was working home health. Those early years blur really hard nowadays. I used to remember most of the patient’s names, stories they told, etc, but there’s rarely been opportunity to call on those memories, so they’ve faded.

Until I started having health issues of my own in my late thirties, I had never called 911 for anyone but a patient that I can recall. Even when I would witness something like a car wreck, someone else was already calling by the time I’d have been able to.

Generally though, since it was on the job, I was mostly focused on giving clear, concise information to expedite a fast and appropriate response. You default to training and let things go on autopilot so you can handle both the call and whatever help you’re providing. Like, you can’t think through CPR while also giving info to a dispatcher, monitoring the patient, and stuffing the emotional side of things down. There’s no room for thinking in any appreciable way.

I did have the fucking Beegees running through my head at one point though lol. Caught myself almost singing underneath the panting I was doing while trying to keep the pace up because all the instructors back then would use “staying alive” as the perfect rhythm for chest compressions.

That was still better than the first time I ever had to do CPR, but that’s a different subject.

Anyway, yeah, that’s what it was like that time, and I think it was the first.

I also remember the dispatcher having to ask me to repeat things because CPR is hard fucking exercise lol.

Thing is, most of the times i had to call 911 on the job were kinda dull? Heart attacks, falls, strokes, when you’re following procedures and are providing the kind of care you trained for, it doesn’t hit the same as when something is outside your training. Something like a plane crash, I’d have no clue what to do, so I expect I’d be wound up like a stolen watch. But basic first aid, CPR, that kind of thing, there’s not usually a reason to get worked up. It’s one of those things where the knowledge and familiarity really do make something that’s a major event on one hand just another day at work. You do the job, you do CPR and get EMS on the way, and then you go home.

There’s stuff that happened on the job that I never even mentioned when I’d get home because why would I? It was “just” another bad thing that got handled and was over. My best friend, it was only a few weeks ago that I mentioned having had human flesh fly in my mouth and get swallowed. You’d think I’d have had a story to tell when I got home, but nope. It happened, it was over, and I just wanted to chill and watch some tv, or play some d&d.

It’s fucking weird how my brain compartmentalized/s stuff like that. There’s this section that got labeled “weird work shit” that would only get pulled out when story time happened, and that wasn’t very common by that point.

It took really heavy shit for me to get home and want to talk about it. And by the time I was doing home health I had burnt out once or twice already in the nursing homes, so my threshold for heavy had shifted. You see enough death and misery, you don’t really get het up over a heart attack or stroke. So I don’t have many clear recollections of the 911 calls on the job.

Now, some of the other ones? Like when my parents had their heart attacks, or when I thought I was, those hit different. Mind you, I still compartmentalized the fuck out of it during the event, but I broke down hard once things were out of my hands. The 911 calls though, I was icy as fuck.

Tangential, but in the ER when a nurse was taking me back to my dad, she said that I seemed to be handling it really well because I cracked a joke of some kind. I didn’t even think, and said I was faking it until I could fall apart, which was the truth. I had crammed all the fear and worry down into a box in the corner so I could handle shit. And handle shit I did.

Then I went home and fell apart lol.

i was just chilling at home and my roommate came home from work. he had some weed which we promptly smoked. while hanging out he mentioned that on his walk home, some kids had yelled out some obscenities at him as they drove by and that he gave them the finger as they drove off. this was a normal occurance for him, he was a tall skinny goth guy covered in tattoos who always wore NIN shirts and combat boots.

a few minutes after saying that, there was a loud knocking on the front door. he answers it and it was the same kids. when i say kids i mean high school age, between 16 and 20 years old approximately. there were 4 of them. they immediately push him and move inside, then start attacking him. me, stoned and in a sudden panic, grab my phone and run, dialing 911. i put the phone up to my ear and hear ‘we’re sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service’. i look and i saw i typed the right number. i tried again. still nothing. the service must have been out or i had a bad connection or something, i don’t know.

i knew my roommate wasn’t going to be doing well since it was 4 on 1 and he was a lover, not a fighter. i looked around for a weapon and saw a golf club. i don’t know why we had a golf club in our kitchen. neither of us golfed. i charged back into the room and sure enough, the roommate was not doing very well. he was on the ground and bleeding heavily from a cut on his forehead, trying to sheild himself from the kids as they all rained their fists down onto him.

i started swinging the club, catching 2 of them with it and dropping them. one of them i know i broke their collarbone, i felt it snap. the second i hit hard enough to lose my grip on the golf club. i turned to the third one and gave him a couple snap kicks to the stomach then head, then did a beautiful, unbelievable axe kick, dropping it right onto the top of his head. the fourth kid ran and the rest of them all scurried out afterwards, some with assistance from me picking them up off the ground and throwing them towards the door.

once they were all gone, i tried calling 911 again. this time, it actually worked. i still don’t know why it didn’t the first time. the police showed up and we gave them our reports of what happened. while giving the reports they got called on the radio and we learned that 2 of the kids checked into the hospital. one was 19 and the other was 17. the cops asked if we wanted to press charges against the 19 year old. we said no, just wanted the whole ordeal to be over.

the roommate was fine, just needed a bandaid and didn’t bother going to the hospital despite the cops suggestion. over the next few months he told everyone he encountered about how i was a ninja and how he’s never seen anyone kick ass like i did that day. many people didn’t believe it, as i am usually a very calm and peaceful person. adrenaline had just taken over i suppose. never heard from or saw the kids ever again.

Glad you were there to help him, OP. That’s crazy you never heard anything about him after that.

First time I remember calling 911 was after I’d dumped a girlfriend and she threatened to overdose on some prescription meds I’d left at her place. I was in another country and immediately called emergency services in her city. They promised me they were on their way to her and we ended the call. I was feeling more exasperated than anything, because I knew she was doing it to get my attention, but if someone threatens to overdose then you get them help.

A couple days later she left me a very angry voicemail. They’d come to her parents’ place and taken her against her will to a psychiatric ward where she was forced to spend 24 hours without her phone or any possessions. After she was released she was ordered to attend counseling for some months. She was so upset and embarrassed. But the system worked as it should, she learned a valuable lesson and last I heard she’s doing fine.

Aged like 21, working in a gas station convenience store register, man walks in, seems homeless and wasted, asked me to call 911 for him, says they’ll know him. Obviously not covered in the manual, but I figure that if someone asks you to call, you call.

I call, talking to the operator trying to explain… The dude just goes down like a sack of potatoes, whacks the top of his head on the counter, knocks over a couple of displays, and starts twitching on the floor. The operator got ALOT more compliant, EMTs picked the guy up (he was a frequent flier), he had a like 3in bump on his forehead that looked like a horn.

I cleaned up the store, trashed the food he damaged, bleached all the other stuff. Weird day.

Stayed the night at my cousin’s apartment, woke up to my car towed. Had to call 911 (since that’s the only way to find where it went) and had to tell them it was a non emergency, which you need to inform them of. A few minutes of confirming the vehicle and location we were off the phone and on the way to the tow yard.

911 was great, tow yard fucking sucked though.

deleted by creator

Thankfully boring. Empty wrecked SUV blocking some side street at like 4:00 am. It was a Saturday with a bunch of shootings and fights, so it took them like 20 minutes to send someone out to check on it.

I do wish I had asked to be updated with info about it. Was it stolen? Is the driver OK? No idea

Car engine fire in parking lot near house where I was living. Guy asked me to call it in so I did. He managed to put out the fire himself before the cops got there.

deleted by creator

Never had to because, well, doesn’t work here. I’m in one of those many other countries that exist who still have emergency services but use other numbers. 😉