Ho Boy! I'm in trouble...!

Responding to a call of a "head injury" today, I was driving the ambulance to the scene and proceeding blinkies and woowoos down a narrow side street intersecting Broadway. The time is about 11:45 AM. Traveling about 10 miles per hour, there was a backhoe off the right hand side of the street. Just as we're passing the construction crew: Pop! and a jolt. I glance in the mirror and don't notice anything out of the ordinary so we continue on our way to the scene, just the next block over.

My partner is teching the call, so I take a quick look at my rear axle. Verdict? Slashed tire. Still drivable, but definitely not pretty. I pop into the lobby of the building, where the patient is sitting on a bench. A small cut to his forehead, and he's not complaining of any other ailments. We RMA and now the fun can begin. I need to place a call to the Director (Lucy McGillicuddy), and the Operations officer. They ain't happy. Not one small bit.

I call us out of service, and the cogs start turning to get the vehicle serviced. It's too far for us to drive to the truck shop, so they have to come to us. I usually meet another Crew Chief at 3:00 and she covers me for a couple hours as I attend to some business about this time every Wednesday. I'm informed by her that she would be keeping the keys and radio until shift change today.

"Huh?" I think. Another crew chief (we're just having a big ole party today!) walks up.

"Nice job on the rig, polarbear," she quips.

"Yeah, great. That backhoe just walked into me, I swear! There was nothing I could do!"

Next thing I know the Director walks up to the three of us.

"So, I guess you suspended me for the rest of the day, huh?"

"What? No. Where'd you get that idea?" he says.

"Well, you took me off call. That's a pretty good indicator."

"You're off call. You just got into an accident, common sense would say that you can't be on call for the remainder of this shift. There's just too many liability issues. There'll also be an Accident Review Board soon."

"You realize I'm scheduled for two shifts this weekend," I remind him.

"Oh, yes. I know."


Ooops. How bad did I screw up!?