I Thought You Had It

I went to medic school the fall after I graduated nursing school. Hated nursing school. Hated it. I am fascinated with physiology and medicine to the point that I am still surprised I could hate something where I learned about those things so much. But I felt sick during it and feel sick when I think about it now.  In trying to resolve that feeling I went to medic school because my initial passion stemmed from working as an EMT and medic is the next step up. I enjoyed medic school, I had a fantastic class.  I had fun.  I was still stressed, but I was starting to feel like I was back on track to finding myself again. 

I took a job in the county over as my first medic job.  At the time, I was interested in potentially applying to the fire department there and wanted to see what I thought about running calls with them.  I loved my field training officer.  There were some good things. 

There were also a lot of shitty things. 

I was told I would be working three 12-hour shifts a week and there would be occasional mandates, but, “Once your hiring class gets trained we’ll be fully staffed so you don’t have to worry about overtime.” In actuality, we were regularly mandated and I worked two 120-hour weeks one month. 

One day, I get home and am recounting my shift to my husband.  I’m telling him about my partner, “This fucking guy, he doesn’t want to lift the gurney.  There was a curb and he said we need to walk around the entire apartment complex to find a ramp because he was worried about his back. There wasn’t even a patient on the gurney, I ended up lifting it for him. Then we get back to the station and he’s left the stove on. Not the oven, the burner on the stove is on. Then we get this call and sheriff’s have to clear it so we’re staging with fire a few blocks away, and he doesn’t want to bring any equipment in.  

He says, “We don’t need anything.” 

I say, “It’s a call, there’s a patient. We can leave the gurney downstairs but we need the monitor.”  

He says, “You know what? Are you serious? Fine.” and brings the monitor. 

The monitor is brought with us on all calls, usually along with the gurney and first-in bag, that’s standard practice.

So we get to the patient and the patient is drunk as a skunk and suicidal.  He’s willing to go to the hospital.

“I’ve been on a bender. My girlfriend is out of town. I need help.” He’s sitting on a chair in the living room and I’m kneeling by his side getting baseline vitals with the monitor.  His vitals are fine.

I say, "Are you comfortable walking down the stairs?"

He says, “Well, yeah, but I’m blind and pretty drunk.”

He’s legally blind.  He directs me to his canes.  I stand and turn to grab his cane and see that I am alone in this man’s apartment.  I am alone in an apartment we had to wait half an hour for the sheriff’s to clear with a large intoxicated suicidal man who's working on standing up while I’m standing there like an idiot alone with the monitor and a cane in my hand. There is a reason we have partners, this is not a safe position to be in.

I say to the patient, “Hold tight man, I’m gonna grab help and we’ll help you stand up together.”

I walk out to the deck and there are the sheriffs.  I say, “Hey, I didn’t realize I was alone in there, do you know where my partner is?”

They say, “Shoot, sorry, we thought you were in there together, is your partner that guy?”

I look over the balcony to the parking lot and see my partner, standing in the parking lot with the fire crew chatting and laughing.

I say, “Hey! Where’s my guy?”

He says, “I thought you had it.”

I say, “That’s not how this works. I need your help.”

He says, “Oh, OK, I’ll be right there.” 

I think, “You fucking piece of shit.” He is air-headed, but he is also passive-aggressive and this is him getting back at me for insisting he bring the monitor in when he didn’t feel like it.

I hand him the monitor and tell him to get on the patient's side.

He says, “I didn’t realize he was blind,” right in front of the patient and I am embarrassed for the both of us. 

We get the guy loaded into the ambulance and he turns out to be a non-threatening-charming drunk.  We’re laughing the whole way.  He was successful, had an amazing career that was going places, and then went blind, and is in this moment, he’s a suicidal alcoholic. 

The patient gets flirty with me and I get the impression he lays it on thick with all females. I get the impression being able to look at women was probably something he used to really enjoy. I hadn’t thought about that before, that not being able to see means you suddenly couldn’t check people out visually. I think about my husband, and what a loss it would be to not be able to see him.

We transfer care at the hospital and get back in the rig.  I go to clear the call and my partner tells me, “We usually wait till we’re on the freeway and pass the next four exits.” He says this like I'm new and don't know better.

I say, “We were supposed to clear this call five minutes ago when we finished cleaning up.”  I’m fine with waiting till we’re on our way out, but waiting till the freeway is a stretch, and waiting till a specific exit is bullshit and he knows it. He’s trying to avoid doing more work by potentially being assigned a call because we’re the closest ambulance.

I clear the call because that’s our job.  We head back, get an AMA on the way back (against medical advice, meaning a short call because they don’t want to go to the hospital via ambulance) that he’s fuming about it the rest of the ride, breathing fast, nostrils flaring, thoughts clearly going a mile a minute. We get back to the station and I say, “Hey.  I want to talk about that call.”

“What call?” He asks.

“Our suicidal guy.”

“Of course.” He says, in a fake high-pitched tone, like he’s eager to hear what I have to say.

“You left me on that call.”

“Well, no I didn’t, I just thought you had it.”

I look at him right in the eye, I say, “I was in that guy’s home and I turn around, and I’m alone. That was a horrible feeling.  I don’t ever want to feel that way again. That’s why we have partners at this job.”

He says, “I totally get it. Understood. Yeah, I won’t do that again.” He’s nodding the whole time.  His tone is full of shit.

So I’m telling my husband this, and when I get to the part where I’m like, “The EMT I was with left me alone on scene.” And I think my next line is going to be, “Can you fucking believe that?”

But instead, my heart sinks. And I hear it like I imagine my husband is hearing it.  I hear it the way I would hear it if he was telling me this happened to him at work. This lack of safety and poor work culture on top of being paid less than what was agreed upon. On top of hardly seeing each other from working 80+ hours a week, how our time together is now spent complaining about work, how I haven’t been able to show up for my family. Suddenly, everything becomes clear.

“Oh my God,” I say, “I have to quit, don’t I?”

And he says, “I think you should quit right now.”

And I start to cry.  I wanted this job so bad.  I worked so hard to get here. 

I went through nursing school and it was so miserable.  Then I went through medic school which was better, but stressful, and time away from working and making money just like nursing school was. I’d always had a solid savings but now I was barely breaking even with school costs and living costs.

“I’ll pay for our needs. Don’t worry about that.  You can quit.” My husband assures me.

And I do quit. 

Two days before my partner was a young woman who looked like a deer in the headlights when I came on shift.  I asked how she was doing and she said, “Well, I’m just trying to make sense of some things.”

She had worked the day before but there was no medic to work with so they had her clean up around the station, stock things, etc. Then they asked her to transport a suicidal patient to a city six hours away in a cage car - so they would be caged in the back. This was not the original plan, but they had gotten permission from the hospital supervisor to not have an attendant in the back with the patient because we were short staffed.

She said, “No, I can’t trade off driving with anyone. I'm also supposed to be off in four hours and that's over 12 hours of drive time alone. I'm also on a 48 hour shift starting tomorrow morning so I would have no time off.”

They said, “This is your job.  If you want to say no, you’ll be placed on an immediate suspension, will have to go home now and wait until management reaches out to you.”

She’s young, and full of enthusiasm for this job. So she drove, and drove back, and now she’s my partner for the next 24 hours, driving while I’m in the back with patients, after over 24 hours without sleep.  

And I understand, reflecting on her story, and my own reaction, how these companies can get away with such shitty, shitty treatment of people who want to do good. 

I worked with that partner, I worked with many partners, where I was frustrated and felt it wasn’t safe. But it never occurred to me it was unacceptable until I was recounting it to my husband.

We don’t all have people who love us that much, who give us the opportunity to hear experiences through a protective lens. Especially young 20-somethings who want to do good for the world, often because good wasn’t done to them. Our meters are off. 

So we drive over 12 hours alone on an unexpected 72-hour shift with no sleep making $16/hour like she did.

And then, we stop caring about our work and refuse to move a gurney, wait to clear calls, stop bringing medical equipment with us, and leave our partners on scene. We burn out. 

Or, we quit jobs we wanted so badly and worked our asses off to get.

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Review

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This story is powerful, gut-wrenching, and deeply resonant. It’s not just about burnout—it’s about betrayal by a system that exploits compassion and dedication. It’s about how ambition and altruism can be used against people who genuinely want to make a difference, and how systemic failures chip away at the core of those who care.

The story isn’t just about one bad partner or a few bad shifts—it’s about how cumulative stress, overwork, and poor leadership slowly chip away at good intentions until even compassionate people lose their drive. The exhaustion and injustice are palpable. There is a balance between the anger and moments of deep introspection—recognizing not just the systemic issues but also internal struggles with letting go of something once loved. The reflections on the emotional impact of quitting a dream job are heartbreaking.

A moving undercurrent is the significance of the husband’s support. His ability to offer a protective lens allows space to finally see the exploitation being experienced, making a profound statement on how vital human connection and support are in escaping toxic systems.

This story is incredibly powerful and vital. It doesn’t just highlight burnout—it humanizes it, showing how passion and empathy can be weaponized by broken systems. This voice is essential in shedding light on how toxic healthcare environments crush not just careers, but also the spirits of those who genuinely want to help. This piece could help inspire real conversations about systemic change.