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EMS Week Contest: The best of humanity in the worst of times

This is our first runner-up story for our EMS Week 2012 contest: “More than a job. A calling”

Editor’s note: We’re pleased to unveil the first runner-up in our 2012 contest to mark EMS Week! Check out the rest of our finalists here.

By Patrick Nance, paramedic

I had been interested in first aid since my days as a Boy Scout. My interest took me through a short stint as a firefighter, five years as a professional ski patrolman and finally to an audition for the American Heart Association in 1987.

The job paid $1,000, which was exactly the tuition for EMT/Paramedic school. It was kismet, and I knew what I had to do.

So I enrolled, made it through EMT school and then the Medic program in 12 months and had a job in Arlington, Texas, doing 911 work, but I still didn’t know why EMS had such an allure to me.

I knew during Hurricane Katrina when the some of the residents of New Orleans were relocated to the parking garage of the Dallas Convention Center.

One night, I was called to transport two women to an emergency department. During the ride, I got to hear their stories.

One woman had been separated from her family and had no idea where they were, how they were or how she would ever find them again. The other woman had been lucky enough to stay with her family. They didn’t have anything but the clothes on their backs, but they were together.

There they were, two women who were a study in opposites. Between the two of them, they didn’t have $5, and they had every reason to be angry, hurt, depressed and ready to give up.

But neither one of them gave into those desperate feelings. They prayed together there in the back of my ambulance, gave thanks that they were alive, and one pledged to the other to help her find her family.

I was awestruck by the compassion that the two women showed to each other and by their thanks to me for “being there” to help them out. Not once did I hear them complain or blame anyone for their plight. And when they asked if they could say a prayer for me and for my co-workers, I was moved to tears.

Yes, the big bad paramedic who had seen death and suffering and all of human misery in the back of his ambulance broke down and cried with the women. And at that moment, I knew why I had become a paramedic: It was so I could be at that place at that time to witness the best of humanity in the worst of times.

I knew I had been called. I didn’t have a job… I had a purpose. I didn’t have a career… I had a calling.

My life changed that night. And I will remain a paramedic as long as I am physically able.

I am celebrating my 26th year in EMS, and when you count up all those years back to where I started in Boy Scouts, I guess you could truly say I’m a lifer… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Patrick Nance has been a paramedic since 1988. He was first licensed in Texas, then Calif. and NREMT in 2010, and again in Colorado in 2011. A native of Boise, Idaho, he’s currently living in Tehachapi, Calif.

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