Ugh. I was an EMT for a local on-call fire department at the time... got the page at around midnight for a witnessed arrest, ran to the station, jumped in the ambulance, got to the house, son was doing CPR on grandma.

Anyways, the code went smoothly on our parts, if not kind of futile... she was asystole the second we put leads on her and that never changed. So after working her for like 15 minutes, we loaded up in the 'bo-lance and being that I was the newbie, the paramedics ran the code in the back and I jumped up front to drive us all to the hospital.

Problem was, the second I stepped away from the action and was alone up front in the driver's seat, I felt my own anxiety building up... Took off, driving super carefully, watching every intersection, no sudden movements and then: Shoot! I drove straight up to a closed road dead end because the road was being replaced. I would've either had to go off-roading to get through all the construction or pull a 3-point turn on a 2-lane road and head back a full mile to get back on track. The metronome counting of CPR was still echoing up from the back, I knew I had screwed up in front of people I respected, and I just froze. Didn't say anything, I just froze solid. Eventually, after sitting at a stand-still for what felt like an eternity, one of the medics punted me over to the passenger seat, took the wheel and off-roading we went, got to the hospital, patient was pronounced upon arrival and I was in the doghouse for weeks afterwards with my superiors for being a dingle-dong.

In terms of patient care, it's not like things would've turned out different if we had made it to the ER without delay, but still... to this day, one of the most mortifying screw-ups I've ever had on the job. Thankfully, I've never frozen up since but that was one of those indicators that told me that rehab medicine is probably my best career path.