Brrrrinng, brrrrinng, brrrrinng. The incessant ringing of the phone jarred me out of my sleep. Three in the morning is not my favorite time for the phone to ring, but that is normal here at work. Not that I like it. Dispatch tells us there is an assault victim at a house on Hwy 18 East that needs to be checked out. Assault. I don’t like the sound of that. But it’s quite common here on the reservation. So far most of the time the victims are just a little bruised, but you never know. So off we go, with lights and sirens going strong. We find the right driveway, just a dirt trail that reminds of roads in Papua New Guinea. Partway up the drive, it branches into three trails. We take the middle one. We arrive at a house, but it is completely dark inside. My partner goes to the door only to find out that we are at the wrong house. So now where to? We don’t see any other houses anywhere nearby. We call dispatch again and they tell us that there is a light blinking to the west of where we are. That is where we need to go. I can barely see the light they are referring to, but it is there. We go back out to where the road branched. This time we take the branch to the left.
But now we are really confused. There really isn’t a house out in these parts. We pass a shack, but it’s completely dark. We continue down the road, but a fence not too much farther on blocks it off. So the shack must be it. It doesn’t look like much. It’s pretty small, maybe 15’ by 8’. There is a semblance of windows, but no glass; just old rags covering the holes. Again my partner goes up to the door and this time, we are in the right place. I join my partner and enter the hovel. There is a single bed on the far end of the shack that barely fits width wise. A propane bottle in the corner feeds the little one burner stove used for cooking. The inside of the shack is just as cold as outside, which in mid-March is none to warm in South Dakota. A man is lying on the bed, wrapped in blankets. He says he got beat up a bit. We check him over and find only minor bruising. He doesn’t want to go in to the hospital. His wife wants him to, but we can’t force him. So we ask him to sign a refusal of services form, and then we leave. I wonder how long it will be before we are again called out to this residence.
Many of the people we transport are well known by the ambulance staff. We transport them almost every week. Mostly their complaints are for minor issues, or ones that completely made up. They just want attention, and this is the best way to get it. So many are living with no happiness or joy. They just subsist from day to day. They don’t know any different. They don’t know that life could be different. I only hope and pray that in the short time that I spend with them in the back of the ambulance, they will see something different. I pray that God will give me opportunities to tell of His love for these people.
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