Deja Vu

I ran a call yesterday--a priority black cardiac arrest. There really wasn't much to do by the time we arrived on scene. The medic unit was already placed in service, and we ran a strip just to confirm asystole; not a surprise really, given that we had a 15 minute ETA to the scene and the estimated down time was close to 30 minutes or more by the time we arrived.

But what threw me on that call more than anything else was a missed turn on the ride back to the building. Lost in conversation about the call, we missed the road for the most direct route back to the building, so we continued on down to find the nearest driveway to turn around in.

It was pure luck that I looked out my window as we pulled out away from the driveway to head back down the road, and I gasped at what I saw. An eerie feeling made its way down my spine. There was a black fence at the end of the driveway, with horizontal three slats, and the house number running down the corner post.

The last time I saw that fence and house number, there had been a body wrapped around the corner post, and a motorcycle in the ditch. And I had proceeded to work another code, with similar results: priority black.

Deja vu, no?

And as we rode back to the building, I couldn't help but notice only that they had repainted the house number, but left the crack in the fence.