Brice had only gotten “According to Roberts’ Rules of Order......” out of his mouth when Johnny Gage glazed over. It was too early in the day to have to put up with Craig Brice and a Paramedics Meeting, particularly on what was supposed to be a day off. Not that there was ever a good time to deal with the persnickety Brice. They were in a small meeting room at Rampart General. There were 9 other guys and Brice. Brice had the floor, as usual. He was going on and on about parliamentary procedure, as usual. There was no coffee in the room, as usual. Brice found it counter productive. If anyone had been paying attention when he’d made that rule, they would have objected. But no one could really tune in on Brice when he was in “meeting mode”. The guy was a complete and absolute bore. He made these meetings a waste of time, as far as Johnny was concerned. He’d liked it better in the old days when Brackett ran these meetings. Even Morton wasn’t boring. A little brisk maybe, but not boring.

Johnny tried to stretch as unobtrusively as possible. There was probably some sort of rule against it and if Brice got off on a rule reciting tangent, they’d never get out of there. He had to admit that he was tired but it was worth it. He couldn’t help but smile as he remembered how he’d gotten this tired and the lovely Lorraine with whom he’d spent most of the evening. The evening, the night and well into the morning, he remembered pleasantly.

“I hardly think you’re in any position to smile, Gage,” Brice’s surly voice burst his bubble. “You are the worst offender on the list.”

“Wha? What list?” Johnny looked helplessly at Roy, who offered him no clue as to what Brice was talking about.

“Haven’t you been paying attention?!” Brice asked with disgust.

“Of course. Well, mostly. I missed that last part, though. What list?” Johnny fumbled.

“Gage, we are discussing the travesty of paramedics getting injured in the line of duty. The travesty being, how foolish and preventable most of these injuries are. The problem is carelessness on the part of the paramedic. I have here a list of all the Code-I’s incurred by paramedics since the program began. You top the list, Gage, and do you know why? Because of what you are doing right this minute -- gazing off into space and not paying any attention to your surroundings,” Brice concluded smugly.

“Now wait a darned minute here. That’s not true. Is it, Roy?” Johnny objected.

“Ah, um not always,” Roy managed to muster in his partner’s defense, earning himself an angry glare from Johnny.

“Let’s let the assemblage be the judge, shall we?” Brice scoffed. He walked over to the far wall and pulled down the movie screen. He lined a small cart up with the screen and tuned on a slide projector. “Get the lights will you, Bellingham?” he commanded.

His partner got up and turned off the lights. Bellingham looked bored also.

“I have prepared a graphic to demonstrate my point. You see here that over the last five years, Gage has incurred no fewer than 67 on-the-job injuries. Quite frankly, I’m surprised that Liability Management hasn’t stepped in on this one.”

“Wait a darned minute here. That’s not right. I have NOT been on Code-I 67 times!” Johnny insisted.

“Technically Gage is correct but this list is off all injuries received even if they were not severe enough to force a work stoppage,” Brice explained.

“If they didn’t interfere with work, who cares?” Johnny demanded.

“I never said they didn't interfere with work. Even minor injuries take up time and supplies better spent on the public we are supposed to serve, than on each other, don’t you think?” Brice’s voice dripped sarcasm as he flashed the graphic up onto the screen.

Johnny halfway rose from his seat in anger but Roy pushed him back down as their attention shifted to the screen.

“Take this incident for instance,” Brice began, “falling into a thorn bush on a call after an ill fated attempt to ride a skateboard down a driveway.”

Johnny groaned while the rest of the medics had a good laugh at his expense. He had thought that embarrassing event was behind him. How had Brice found out about that? Whatever happened to Doctor/Patient confidentiality?

“Well, maybe that was a slight error in judgment,” Johnny had to admit, as he read down the list that was flashed up on the screen. “But what about that one -- getting hit by a car on a night run. That wasn’t my fault!”

“Had you looked before you walked into the street ---”

“No way! That car came blasting out of nowhere. If you don’t believe me, read the police report!” Johnny was furious.

“I would be more inclined to be on your side if this was not such a well established pattern with you, Gage,” Brice stated. “Look at this one. A snake bite.”

“How the heck is that my fault?!” Johnny demanded.

“If you had been observant, you would have seen the snake and avoided the bite,” Brice declared.

A few other medics joined the argument on Johnny’s side but Brice was not budging from his position. He continued down the long list of Johnny’s injuries and insisted that if Johnny had been paying more attention to his surroundings he could have avoided injury.

Johnny stood up. He leaned over the table in Brice’s direction. “My attention is usually on the victim,” he insisted angrily. “I’m funny that way.”

“Johnny’s right,” Dwyer pointed out. “We’re on scene to do a job. That job is to take care of the victim. That should be our top priority.”

“Indeed it should,” Brice agreed, pacing around the table to emphasis his point. “But it is also our duty to not become victims ourselves -- especially when it can be avoided -- which it can, 99% of the time. Equipment failure or forces of nature can sometimes undermine even the most careful among us, but those instances are very rare. Most injuries are completely unnecessary and the blame for them rests squarely on the shoulders of the injured paramedic himself. Is it so much for the department to ask for us to simply open our eyes and avoid---------”

A sudden crash interrupted him. The room suddenly became pitch dark. Several of the paramedics who were on duty pulled their penlights out their pockets to investigate the noise. Bellingham used his to guide himself back to the light switch and turn on the lights.

Brice lay flat on his back on the floor. He had evidently tripped over the cord to the heavy old slide projector. He had fallen and the projector had fallen on his ankle. A grimace of severe pain was on his face.

Bellingham lifted the projector off of his partner. Dwyer, who was on duty, knelt down and examined his ankle. Brice yelped when he touched it. “This looks fractured. We’d better get him down to X-ray,” Dwyer said.

“I’ll go find a wheel chair,” Bellingham volunteered.

“Wait...” Brice gasped. “This...meeting has not..been.. adjourned.”

“It has now, Brice,” Johnny said. “Now it’s a medical emergency. Looks like we have another of those careless paramedic accidents to add to your list. You were right, if you had just been more observant, this could have been avoided.” Johnny tried not to grin but he failed miserably.

“It...was...dark,” Brice argued.

“Then you should have been more careful,” Johnny said firmly.

“All right, Johnny,” Roy cautioned. Even if it was Brice, Roy just couldn’t kick a guy when he was down.

Bellingham arrived with a wheelchair and they got Brice into it. “Gotta admit it, Partner, you do go out of your way to demonstrate your point,” he told him.

“Sometimes...it takes extreme measures....to get Gage’s attention,” Brice stated through clenched teeth.

“My attention?! Why don’t you just admit it, Brice. Sometimes accidents just happen,” Johnny declared.

“No. They are nearly always caused by inattention on the part of the victim,” Brice insisted.

“Ya know what, Brice?” Johnny started to yell then caught himself. “You’re right. People do tend to do stupid things and as long as they do, they’ll need someone to be there to help them. And us paramedics are gonna keep right on being there to help, right guys? Even if it’s a preventable accident and even if the victim is one of us,” he laughed. "Meeting adjourned. All in favor say 'aye'!"

A chorus of 'ayes' followed Brice all the way down to the ER where he was turned over to a doctor. A meeting on preventable accidents had been cut short by one. Brice wondered where he'd gone wrong.

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