Going to Bed Angry...

A dispatch supervisor once evaluated my performance by saying the following: "Charlie, you're the only dispatcher I know that could dispatch their way out of a nuclear explosion. The only problem is that you would piss off everyone that survived."

Back in my younger, dumber, and stupider days in the communications business, that would probably have been a pretty accurate statement. I'm not necessarily alone in that regard, however, most people in my line of work develop a certain callousness that allows them to survive. I call it my armor: the suit of iron that protects me from everything that gets thrown at me. Once upon a time, my armor was highly effective, maybe overly so. I didn't get emotionally involved in any of the calls that I took. That would tend to piss some people off.

Ten or so years later, I'm a different man. Getting married to a woman I love dearly and raisingg four daughters has changed me greatly.  The impenetrable armor now has several holes in it that allows certain calls to have an effect on me.

Several months ago, one of my dispatchers took a 9-1-1 call on a 38 year old male unresponsive. Not only was the patient the same age as me, he lived less than mile and a half away from my house. As the patient lived a good fifteen minutes from the firehouse, my dispatcher kept the caller on the phone for quite awhile. Slowly, the story unfolded as the ambulance rushed to the scene.

The patient on this call was up about 11:00 the night before and apparently had an attack of the munchies. The caller, his wife, apparently was not happy with his plan to fix bacon and eggs and an argument ensued between the two of them. When the husband had had enough, he decided to lay down on the floor in the living room to sleep rather than go to bed. The wife showed that she agreed with the plan by throwing pillows and blankets at him. The next morning, the wife went out to the living room and yelled at the body laying on the floor that he needed to get up. An hour later that the 17 year old son discovered that his father was not breathing and was turning purple. As much as my dispatcher tried to convince the caller to do CPR, she refused. It wouldn't have mattered anyway.

There's an old saying to couples that says, "Never go to bed angry."  Many say that this is a load of crap. What do you think the wife in this story would say? The last words that her husband of eighteen years heard from her before he died were said in anger over whether it was a good idea to cook bacon and eggs in the middle of the night.

Several weeks later, the wound caused by this call was still there. My wife and I had an argument, our first in quite awhile. What was a minor disagreement quickly got out of control and I am man enough to say that it was entirely my fault. I am also man enough to say that when we finally remembered that we loved each other, there was a release of regretful emotion the likes of which has not been seen here in a long time. Doing the job that I do, I have been made aware of the consequences of not reconciling with the one person that you have chosen to spend your entire life with.