Spending Sunday Night Riding With Middlebury Ambulance

Author: Lindsey Whitton

I was just sitting down to my computer at 8 p.m. Sunday when the ambulance beeper went off. The sound was piercing — loud enough to wake even the deepest sleeper. As I threw on my coat and ran down the hall a few people opened their doors, wondering if the fire alarm was going off.

I met up with Kevin Dougherty '03.5 in the faculty parking lot closest to our dorms.

"We're going to Burlington," he said, slightly out of breath. "You in?"

"Yup," I said, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt. "Is it really bad then?"

He explained that he didn't know anything about the call but that trips from Porter Medical Center in Middlebury to Fletcher-Allen Health Care Center in Burlington were very common. Porter isn't big enough to handle many of the more seriously ill patients so the Middlebury Volunteer Ambulance Association (MVAA) often transports patients to the larger facility.

There are eight Middlebury College students who are currently members of the MVAA. They are all Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), and they are on call a minimum of 60 hours a month. They are a modest group, who never brag about their work, even when their walkie-talkies go off in the middle of a study group or crowded lecture hall. They are masters at quickly slipping away and running to their car, which is always accessible since all members are granted extended parking privileges.

When I was interviewing Dougherty, who is the College liaison for the MVAA, on Sunday night, he invited me to go on call with him that evening so I could see what it was like. He was on duty from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., and a call could come in at anytime during the night. I quickly agreed and he set me up with a MVAA beeper.

We arrived at Porter within minutes and since the roads were free of traffic he hadn't even needed to turn on his lights or siren. We jumped out of the car and went into the hospital so that Dougherty could start talking to the staff at Porter and reading the patient's charts while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. I was really afraid that we might be given a mangled car accident victim or a critically ill child, but he was completely calm. I was amazed at how routine dramatic situations had become for him.

When the ambulance arrived the driver, Hugh Marlow, '57, Executive Secretary of the Alumni Association, the Crew Chief, Scott Fucett '01.5, and Dougherty helped the patient onto the stretcher and wheeled her out to the ambulance. We waited a few minutes for the patient's husband to get back from getting gas and all three members of the ambulance made sure that they were completely briefed on her situation.

Fucett told me to sit in a seat at the head of the stretcher with my back to the driver. We all buckled our seatbelts and Marlow pulled out of the Porter garage. The flashing lights were on as we sped up Route 7, but the siren was only turned on when we went through red lights or a car neglected to pull over. Dougherty and Fucett were busy monitoring the patient's vital signs and filling out paper work for both ambulance records and the staff at Burlington.

The inside of the brand new $150,000 ambulance was meticulously neat. There were many compartments full of equipment along the ambulance walls, but everything had a very specific place. There was never any clutter and every instrument could be located immediately. Both EMTs worked efficiently, usually in silence, accomplishing a lot in a short amount of time and recording everything.

I looked out the side windows as we drove north, transfixed by the trees, fence posts and barns that seemed to zip by in the alternating red, blue and white glow. Inside the ambulance the lighting was effective but unobtrusive and could be adjusted to fit both the EMTs' and the patient's needs. Soft, classical music played in the background and Fucett and Dougherty spoke gently to their patient.

There are currently 46 members of the MVAA, ranging in skill from the specially trained drivers to the two Paramedics, a career that involves one year of professional school. Two of the Middlebury students are intermediate EMTs and the rest are basic EMTs. The current student members, William Bender, '02, Britton Keeshan, '04.5, Andrea Klayman, '03.5, Benjamin Morris, '03, Ditty Steele, '03.5, Spenser Taylor, '04.5 and Dougherty, are all very close.

Klayman said that one of the most incredible aspects of the job is the camaraderie between all the students on the squad. These are some of my best friends," she said. "We are definitely a team; we would do anything for one other. It is a very, very unique relationship to have with a group of people that I know I will never have again, and I will treasure it for the rest of my life."

There are more student EMTs at Middlebury then there are members of the MVAA, creating a competitivesystem. With approximately eight qualified applicants in the beginning of the fall semester and four in the beginning of the spring semester, usually only two students are accepted each fall and one each spring. When I asked why acceptance was more competitive for students than for local EMTs Dougherty explained that "we want to keep it a town based service. Also, due to the transient nature of College students we need to maintain community within the MVAA by not accepting too many students."

The focus on the town and the community also benefits the MVAA student members. Klayman remarked that "I think the thing that I like best about [the MVAA] is that I really feel like I'm part of the community. I love driving down the street and knowing cops and fireman and lots of town people."

Steele, a joint English/music major who plans on finishing pre-med in a postgraduate program, agreed. "The best part of working on the ambulance was how it got me out of the Middlebury bubble and into the communit," she said. It is such an evasive job in some ways. You are going into people's houses and seeing them on their worst days but now I feel a responsibility beyond being a student here. I feel like I live in this town. My whole perception of the place changed. It's my reality check."

Many of the student workers are pre-med., Dougherty, a pre-med bio-chem major, talked about medical school admissions on the way home from Burlington with Fucett, who is currently waiting for his admissions decisions. Sometimes MVAA members find it very difficult to balance the heavy time commitment of the ambulance work with the rigors of the academic program.

"I'm pre-med, a biology major and I have a lot of work and time commitments related to school," Klayman said, "but when there's a call and they need people I just sort of drop everything and do that. I feel that it's a really important responsibility that comes before a lot of my other priorities."

Steele said that for her, the difficulty lies in perspective. After she attended to fatal car accident earlier this fall she was unable to do homework for a week. "It's so hard to sit down and do work when you know that people are dying out there," she said.

We arrived in Burlington and dropped the patient off in Fletcher-Allen Health Care, wheeling the stretcher through the long hallways and helping her into a bed in the emergency room. Porter Hospital had already called and filled the staff in on her medical history so Dougherty and Fucett just added a few details and passed over the paperwork. They dumped the sheets into a washing bin and neatly remade the stretcher as they chatted with all of the nurses, doctors and attendants who they knew.

When we got back to Porter around 11 pm. there was another call that involved taking an elderly man back to the Nursing Home. This was a simple, routine call that involved a 60 second drive across the parking lot, but just as they were about to lift the man onto the stretcher, another, more urgent call came in.

We rushed back into the
ambulance and headed through campus towards Shoreham where an elderly woman had a rapid pulse and shortness of breath. This time both the lights and the siren were on as we drove down Old Chapel Road. The First Responders radioed the ambulance with updates on the condition of the woman and the winter roads. When Hugh pulled onto the snow-covered back roads, he pushed a button to instantly release On-Spot-Chains that covered the tires.

The house was filled with a small crowd of First Responders and other helpers by the time we arrived. The patient was already breathing through an oxygen mask, which was later changed to humidified oxygen on the way to the hospital. She was lifted onto the stretcher and loaded onto the ambulance.

This ride to Porter was a little more urgent. A heart monitor was attached to the patient and an IV access was established. She seemed to be improving slightly which was encouraging.

At this point, I knew where some things were, so I helped retrieve a few instruments and put them back in their place. I was also in charge of the heat, which seemed to need constant adjustment.

When we got back to the hospital, we took the elderly man back to the nursing home, and then Kevin and I drove back to the College. It was 1 a.m., and we had been gone for five hours. Neither of us had been able to do any homework. Later that night, around 3 a.m. there was another call that Kevin, Scott and Hugh had to respond to. I had turned in my beeper, a luxury that MVAA members never have.

But they don't mind, and they very rarely even complain about their lack of sleep or free time. "I think it's an honor to be part of the squad," Klayman said. "I take it really seriously. Being able to help somebody out and possibly make someone's life a little bit healthier and happier is a pretty incredible thing to be able do."