The tones go off for a call to an older home in an older neighborhood for a lady in distress. The details were non specific and as we responded to the call it seemed like a normal type of call with no unusual expectations. As we arrived on scene the house was quite dark, and there was no light on on the outside. We approached the home and knocked on the door, a faint voice inside said to come in. As we opened the door we were greeted with no one. No one was in the foyer, but there was some piles of papers, and random junk. The house itself was not unkempt, just the entry way.
We called into the home to see where our patient was, and she stated she was upstairs, so I had asked if we needed to come up there or if she would come down to us. Immediately we got an uneasy feeling in the home when she insisted we stay down stairs. As we looked around the home was definitely older and had some unusual statues in it. There was nothing specifically odd about the home, but we had that uneasy feeling. As we patiently waited for our patient, she appeared after some time, crawling from one room across the floor towards another room... Now if you have ever seen the movie The Ring and remember the way the girl crawls out of the well...... Well that's what the patient looked like, crawling across the floor in a choppy almost animated state. The uneasy feeling intensified at this point, but we continued to wait at her request.
When she did finally allow us to come upstairs, we learned that she had an ankle injury and this is why she had been crawling. So we assisted her down the stairs and onto our stretcher, and made our way out to the ambulance. This is where things got weird. As we are assessing the patient and determining her history she looks me dead in the eye, and with the most serious voice I have heard, she says to me, "My sister is a satanist and I think she is trying to kill me!" To which my partner responded by slamming shut our tough book, and literally bolting straight out of the side of the ambulance, leaving me alone with this patient in the back. Now the humor to this story is of course my partners reaction to the patient's words. There was of course nothing to fear, it was just something that the patient needed help with.
When we got to the hospital and had dropped off our patient I had asked my partner, "what was with that reaction?" I was laughing when I asked him, and we both had a good laugh over his reaction. I know some people might read this, and not see the humor the same way I did, but in our career it's little things like this that keep us going. The patient was cared for appropriately and brought to the hospital for the help she needed. I just had to laugh at my partners reaction to her words, and to this day it sticks in my mind as one of the more memorable calls in my career as a Paramedic.
