A colleague asked me about the partners I had when working on the ambulance. She specifically wanted to know what female partners I had and if I had any female partners.

Yes, I did indeed have several female partners. However, they were not as visible in My Ambulance Education as some of the other partners simply because the memorable and colorful calls with the female partners seemed to have not stuck with me. That does not mean that the memories of those partners did not stick with me.

Speaking of drivers’, an ambulance driver is a special kind of skill. The ambulance is bigger than a cop-car but is expected to navigate through the streets like a smaller and nimble police car. It does not have the visibility or presence of a firetruck so it sometimes is not given the respect that a 2.5 tone vehicle should get. Therefore an ambulance driver needs to have the skill of a police officer at speed but handle a heavy weight vehicle sometimes more like a firetruck. This is a unique skill.

Drivers tend to treat their ambulances like a person staking out personal space. We all have personal space where if someone stands too close too us we feel uncomfortable and will tend to move away to a comfortable distance. Drivers do the same thing. We form an invisible bubble around the ambulance where it is safe for other cars or pedestrians to be in it before we feel uncomfortable and try to evade them. Part of the comfort bubble is dictated by special awareness of the driver. Spatial awareness is knowing where the vehicle starts and stops on all sides.

So let’s say that I’m a driver and my comfort bubble is 12 inches on the driver’s side, 24 inches on the passenger side and three feet in front of and behind the ambulance. This might be typical. So I can drive along and parked cars will be about two feet away from the passenger side door. I would stop and have three feet in front of the ambulance and the car in front of me. Most on duty ambulance drivers will also stop at red lights with about 5 or 6 feet between them and the stopped care in front of and in the fast lane such that it is easy to pull into oncoming traffic to turn around or get through the intersection if called to an emergency while waiting at the red light.

One particular partner I distinctly remember working with was a woman by the name of Lucy Krupp. Lucy was without exception the best driver I every worked with. The analytical person in me wants to say that she had the shortest and smallest comfort bubble I had ever seen and this is explained below.

Like an Indianapolis 500 race car driver she would fly into turns or intersections and break at the last minute seemingly too late to stop, but be able to stop in time. She would use the whole turn and intersection to get through stop lights safely and at speed while accelerating out of a turn, long before it seemed like we were done turning. It was an emotional and wild ride when Lucy was driving lights and sirens.

With her very short distances in the comfort bubble we would be passing parked cars with just an inch between us. I would literally be jumping out of my seat and into her lap, figuratively, for fear of crashing on my side of the ambulance. But we never hit anything. Lucy would chuckle knowing what she was doing to me as she calmly made her way through the city streets. I’m leaning away from the door wide eyed, but not wanting to look. I’m also trying to take the radio call and sound somewhat calm despite being scared witless as we race through traffic.

At one intersection, when we were between calls, Lucy was driving and we were stopped at a red light. Lucy pulled in the passing lane and the front bumper must have been about two feet from the car in front of us. I knew better than to comment that if we got a call we were stuck until the light changed because the odds are against that and it was not too big a deal. Well as these things go, we did get a call and needed to turn around, but I thought we were stuck until the light changed. Immediately, Lucy cut the wheel hard and slammed on the gas. In one maximal G force turn I’m slammed against the window of the passenger door as we make a hard U turn. I am amazed we miss the car in front of us and even more shocked to miss the parked cars on the other side of the street. While I’m speechless and breathless, I got on the radio and gave an eta for our arrival on the scene of our next call. All Lucy did was chuckle at my white knuckled posture as I grip the mike of the radio and stutter our response to the call.

To some, Lucy might seem to sound like a bad but lucky driver. She was skilled and if you looked at her when driving she was calm and having fun. Maybe she had fun tormenting her partners or maybe she enjoyed pushing the ambulance. I’m not sure which. But she was quite a person to ride with. Perhaps I was in shock after she drove to calls such that none of her calls were memorable enough to make it into My Ambulance Education, but driving with Lucy was an education nonetheless.