Oh, What a night.

Imagine a car turning off the main hi-way and missing the overpass bridge, going down a 30 foot embankment that was between 45 and 50 degrees in steep, and coming to a stop, grill first into a muddy ditch that was next to the train tracks.

"Medic 2, Medic 2, respond to the Horace King Bridge at the corner of Horace King and Lafayette Pwky in regards to Motor Vehicle accident with injuries. Single car fell off the bridge onto the train tracks below. Unknown how many injuries at this time."

Groan; Here we go.

We got in route and got a bird in the air because we didn't know what to expect. Race the the 2 miles to the scene with medic 1, in pursuit, to assist, (everyone and their mother wants to jump in on a "good" trauma call).

We get there and park. I jump out and ran to the bridge railing to assess what may be needed and saw what I described in the first paragraph, with two men crawling around on the outside of the car. One was looking into the driver side window and the other was leaning against the trunk. I recognized the one at the window as LPD and howler down to find out how many patients were there. LPD pointed to the one leaning against the trunk and said, "Him".

A course I had to confirmed it by asking, "That's it?!?"

My partner, Larry, nearly taking a nose dive down the embankment with the jump bag, got to the back of the car where the patient was. I howler down to Larry to find out if the patient was having any back or neck pain so I could send down the packaging material. The patient was just looking around, non-chalant and saying, "Nope, I'm find, no pain nowhere."

I called for the cancellation of the bird and then waited until Fire threw a line down the embankment before I started my decent. I did not want my face meeting the trunk of that car after finding out that neither gravity nor my balance was my friend in going down that hill.

Once at the car, I started an assessment of the patient and found him to be sound despite what he had just been through, and able to answer all of our questions. Fire was sending down a basket to haul the patient back up with and I told them to hold off on it. If the patient could we were going to walk him out. With the help of the Firefighters we were able to walk the patient down to the tracks and then we were able to walk the patient down the tracks to an area about a hundred yards away to where the road and the tracks were level and get him to the ambulance. It was while walking the patient down the tracks that we notice that he was staggering a little so he was under the influence but when I had examined him there was no smell of alcohol on his breath.

When we got him to the ambulance LPD searched him and then read him his rights and asked to receive a blood sample which the patient denied. Then we started to get a second set of vital signs and place an INT in place but he wanted nothing to do with any needles. So while Larry was getting the vital signs and monitoring the patient I drove to the hospital.

At the hospital, when they tried to check him out he was uncooperative, very polite about it but uncooperative so the hospital had to discharge him. And from there it was too the jail.

Don't no one ever try and tell me that God doesn't look after fools. I'm sure that man's guardian angel will have a long talk with him one of these days, ( the talk between me and my guardian angel is long over due) but for now he is safe where anyone else would have been killed.