This reminded me of something that happened last year. Bit of a long story to get to the point. Let me set the scene. I was working as an EMT with my fire department in Southeast Texas during Hurricane Harvey last year. This is day 2 or 3 of the hurricane, when the rain wasn't too bad, but the flooding was pretty awful. I had barely been able to take a short nap during the nighttime hours when we were temporarily suspending water rescues. We were dispatched to an evacuation of a group home with multiple physically disabled people who needed evacuation. The entire street was a mess, flooded knee high, dozens of people scrambling around for who knows what reason, sirens blaring from our ambulance, and rain still pouring hard over me and my lousy ineffective rain coat. We parked in the shallowest area that would accommodate our truck, and my partner and I trudged over to the point 100m away where a coast guard boat just pulled up with a patient and his caretaker. The patient wasn't able to walk or communicate, so we had to rely on the caretaker to figure out what was going on. He was worried that the patient got wet and wouldn't tolerate it well. Well, everyone's getting wet, and I'm not tolerating it too well either. But, we ere on the side of taking care of someone with questionable health status, so we decided to take him in to the hospital. We strapped him down to a backboard, and my partner, who is a good 2 feet shorter than me, and I slowly make our way to our ambulance through the knee deep (for me at least. must have been awful for my partner) water. We get to our ambulance, load the patient on the stretcher, and get in. The caretaker brought a bag full of the patient's meds and food solutions, but neglected to bring any of his documentation.
"It'll be right here on the next boat. Let's just wait a little longer."
Well, we didn't have time to wait.
We're in the middle of a disaster zone that we need to get back to asap.
"Oh no. well. I don't know anything else about the patient except for his first name. We will have to wait for the next boat."
We're not waiting for the next boat. We have to go NOW. This is where I started to get a bit annoyed, but I calm myself and we get moving. Turns out he could call his supervisor who has the info offsite. Great, but she's not answering her phone. So I'm trying to ask the caretaker questions while I do my assessment and try to get a set of vital signs. He doesn't answer me, so I look up and see him fisting handfuls of funyuns from one of those family sized bags into his face while laughing at some facebook video. I mean, a little bit of decorum when I'm trying to take care of the person someone's family entrusted to you. I don't like to have patients' family/friends/caretakers in the back with me unless it will help me care for the patient. So I kind of expected him to help me out in this pretty bad situation. After a god awful amount of time, we got to the hospital (maybe 12 hours before it decided to suspend services). Supervisor ended up calling back with some patient demographics, and nothing else. We unload the patient and the caretaker steps out, still munching on the funyuns. He tosses the patient's food solutions into the garbage can near the ER entrance, saying that he wouldn't need them.
We transfer the patient to the facility, and get back to our ambulance to clean up and get back to rescue efforts. I expected the caretaker yo stay and provide additional info abouy the patient to the staff that i couldnt obtain. Which seemed like the right thing to do, to me. We're nearly through cleaning when the caretaker comes out to the bay and comes up to me, still with the bag of funyuns. He says, "Hey thanks for everything. Can you do me a favor? Can you drop me off over at [nearby address] ?"
No, we can't. We need to get back to the rescue efforts. it is a disaster zone, you know.
"It's not too far. It's just a few miles away."
Well, it doesn't matter how far it is. We need to get back to work, and we don't give rides. We're not a taxi service.
"Ok. ok. I understand. What about over at [a slightly closer location]? It's not too far."
Like I said. We're not a taxi. I'm sorry about that, but we really do need get back to work. A lot of people need help. Like your patient.
This goes on for a while while I'm putting away equipment and cleaning off surfaces. All the while, he's standing outside the ambulance snacking on his bag of funyuns, trying to wear me down. My patience wore thin, and I told him that if he really wanted a ride, he could hop in. But we wouldn't be stopping the truck, and if he wanted to jump out as we went down the road at 60 mph into dirty flood waters, he could be my guest. He badgers us for a few more minutes and then gives up, and meanders off somewhere.
His nonchalant snacking on funyuns during this whole ordeal really was the cherry on top of the sundae in making lose my mind during that ordeal.