Adventures of a Medic #2: Sweat Stain Pt. I At this time I’d been working for about 8 years as an EMT, so I was familiar with as much as one could be. I’d been pulling 12 hour shifts, and it was my Friday, so I was ready to get the week over with, and enjoy my days off. On this day I was heading in at 3 am so there was hardly anyone around, which is nice since I live in California, and traffic is insane when you live in the city like I do.  I left earlier than usual as to ride around a bit on my motorcycle, wake myself up, get myself in the zone for the day. Usually I go jogging, but I rarely get to go riding this early in the morning with no one around, so I took advantage of it. After I drove around awhile, I started in towards work. The station is  in the middle of the city, so there is a McBeetus every block, and a StarBeetus next to it, so there are always cars around this area.  Now I’ve learned a lot of people here in California are pretty good at look for motorcycles. Sometimes you’ll get those who will moved over in their lane so you can split in between, which is legal here. But other times, you’ll get those who don’t watch, at all, for us. This was one of those times.  About 2 blocks from the station is one of the particular McBeetus. I was alert as you have to be when riding around, and pulling through the drive through, which is next to the exit to the street. Even though its natural to assume they’d stop before pulling out into the street, bikers can’t afford that luxury.  About the time I spotted them, I moved over into the left hand lane, since it’s a two way street, which I am glad I did since the car who pulled out of the drive through drove straight through the stop sign of the exit and onto the road. They made a wide turn which took up one and a half lanes of the road, half being the one I was in. Luckily I had been watching and was prepared, and moved over. However this still pissed me off, and as they got back over into the right lane after driving at least 30 feet in between lanes, I moved up next to them. And what did I see? A woman, applying her makeup, wrist on the wheel, all while chowing down on her beetus in a bag she’d just grabbed. As we reached the stop light, she nearly slammed on her breaks as she was not paying attention, her front wheels actually crossing the line. Pulling up next to her, I knocked on her window several times before she put it down just enough.  “Did you not see me? You pulled right out without and almost hit me!” She looked at me with this dumbfounded look, but then the red filled her face. The smeared makeup mixed with sweat highlighted her balloon head. “Maybe if you drove a car like a normal person you wouldn’t have that problem, asshole!” Just about that time the light turned green and she took off.  This wasn’t the first time I’ve had someone almost run me over while riding. I’ve learned its just best to leave it be, take a breath, and keep going. I wasn’t about to let bitchbeetus mess up my day. Or at least that’s what I thought.  As I pulled away from the light she stayed over to the right as I did, so I just kept my distance, making sure as further road rage she didn’t  slam on her brakes in front of me, like some have.  So I continued on til I got to my block where you had to turn into the business area where they’d built an unnecessary roundabout. But she still stay in front of me, driving through the first turn off the roundabout. “Okay,” I thought, “her work is probably over here too.” And I was right, and this was a time I wish I wasn’t. We drove deeper into the business area before she finally turned into my turn, right towards the station. “Fuuuuck.” She took the entrance too hard, driving into it too fast, and the entire backend of her car bounced. At the garage is two entry ways, one for the ambulance, and another for public/employee parking. She stopped right in the middle of both, obviously having no idea of where to go. She’d obviously seen me behind her, and took off in her car towards the employee parking, raging as she drove into it. Even from the distance I could see her shaking her head and hitting the steering wheel. I came up to park in the motorcycle parking, and got ready to back in.  “What’re you following me asshole?! Do I need to call the cops?” Since it was pretty silent, I could hear her from across the lot, and so could everyone else inside. Couple of my co-workers in the garage heard her as she shouted similar things to me, waddling at me. Her: 5’4 to 5’6, 210 to 220 lbs, really short hair. She had on a plain, white tee shirt that was wrinkled and yellowed from overuse and sweat. As the shirt was tucked in, it hugged enough to force my eyes to make out ever flap and cuuuuurve. Up close you could even make out the crumbs she hadn’t finished wiping off.  Co-worker 1: “Ma’am, what’s going on?” Co-worker 2: “What’s she screaming about?” Two of them at come out to greet me. This stopped Stain from her approaching me and she looked to them. “This guy was stalking me! He yelled at me, even hit my window before flying off!” Both of my coworkers looked at one another before looking at me. By this time I had taken off my helmet. CW 1 came over a fist bumped me, same with number 2.  CW 1: “Moto, what is she talking about?” The blood that’d been in her face suddenly vanished, and she turned ghost white. A look of absolute horror crossed her face as she realized they knew me. I stared at her for the longest time. I knew for a fact she was new. But I also knew we were understaffed, and if she got a bad rep her first day, we might be down a person again, so I took the high road. Me: “I must of not had my headlight on. I knocked on her window to apologize, but bikers are sketchy after all. Must of scared her.” I gave a half hearted laugh that took some moments for my co-workers to join in with.  CW 1: “You’re a scary looking dude. Shouldn’t do that to people.” I saw the blood come back to her face as she realized what I had done. She said nothing, and good thing too.  Fast forward to after everything settled. We were being assigned rigs, briefing on everything that had gone on the night before, etc. Stain came out in her uniform, tucked in sloppily and buttoned wrong. When it comes to our uniform, Meat (our supervisor, 6’2”, ex marine, strong as hell) is strict as could be. He’s scarier looking than he actually is, kind of a softee actually. Has a cat who he still brings into the station every once in awhile. Reminds me of the Mountain from Game of Thrones. Meat: “Rook, fix your uniform. People see that.” She had that same dumbfounded look at she did when she almost side swiped me. She went into the bathroom to fix it as he was giving us the lowdown.  Meat: “Alright people, listen up. Got your line up here. Check it, got any complaints, file it. Otherwise, let’s roll out.” He always said it in his best Optimus Prime impression. Followed it with metal music in the garage to get us pumped in the morning, and to discourage hang overs.  He’d emailed me the night before to tell me I was going to be teamed up with Juice; 22, female, 5’9, maybe 130ish lbs. She lifted with us, sometimes kicked our asses too. Called her Juice since she always had green juice for breakfast in the morning. Also cause she’d beaten anorexia and packed on muscle. It was something she was self conscious about, but proud at the same time.  As you can imagine we often will get different partners to work with, and incompatibility is a big problem. If partners aren’t matching in height/ability/endurance, it can put them at risk for injury or animosity. I had teamed up with Juice several times before, but this time it was to primarily supervise the new trainee, that being Stain I went to check on the rig; tires, doors, gas, equipment, etc. Juice jumped into the drivers seat at the ball of energy she was in the morning. J: “Sup Moto? Hey, I heard something about with the new girl already. What happened?” I waved it off and dismissed it.  “Misunderstanding, that’s all. No worries.” Obviously she could tell I was lying, but she knew why too.  About half an hour later, the rigs started moving out, and we were the last ones to get moving, which I always hated to be. Juice was getting ancy. J: “Wtf is taking her so long?”  She was partially worried, and angry at the same time. She had similar feelings about not wanting to be the last. About 10 minutes later Juice finally came back.  J: “Seriously? Are you kidding me?” Me: “What happened?” J: “She’s chowing down on donuts. Last shift brought in some, hadn’t even broken it open yet. She’s ate 3 already!” To celebrate the weekend since most of us were on the same schedule of days off, we’d bring in something to celebrate. It came from a donut shop about half an hour away that was always busy, but we could put in a special order to pick up. Things like donuts were once a month kind of treat for us, and most of us only had 1. Wasn’t long after that the passenger door opened that Stain heaved herself in. Me: “Where have you been?” S: “I was just having a donut! They were there so I thought you all ate them in the morning to wake up.” Me: “Those are for everyone in the station.” Stain shook her head and just looked away. Juice was completely flabbergasted by it, and looked at me. I just motioned for her to start the rig, and sat in the back.  It was going to be a long day.