Monday, June 15, 2009

Brentwood

A place I don’t work at very much, but here I am.

RRA has a transfer base in Brentwood about a mile south of the junction of NH Routes 101 and 125. The primary purpose of this operating location is to support the Exeter Hospital’s transport needs, but we frequently do much more than that. Not uncommon for trucks out of here to be sent to Manchester – one of the trucks based out of here, in fact is semi-permanently in Manchester due to some problems with this facility, in fact – or to back up the town of Candia, where we have a contract to do emergency transport for the Fire Department.

And I am here today. I hadn’t planned on it, but I was working in Goffstown last Tuesday night. We had transported a patient to the Elliot Hospital and while we were there I ran into one of the Manchester supervisors. He asked me if I had any availability for the week, mostly for some overnight coverage they needed. While I was talking with him my cell phone rang. It was a phone number I didn’t recognize, and – silly me – I didn’t ignore it. When I answered, it was the supervisor out of Nashua who handles putting together the schedule.

Between the two of them I got, for lack of a better phrased, tag teamed. That is how I ended up here today.

A word about overnight shifts: I already work three of them. Between the two 24-hour shifts I work in Boston and the overnight I work for the Goffstown Fire Department, I’m already out of my house three nights a week. While I understand that it “comes with the territory”, I don’t like it very much. Because of this, unless the circumstances are extreme, I won’t work overnight shifts for anyone else. The reasons why are pretty simple, but the most important is that I don’t like being away from home even as much as I am, and I really like my own bed and being with Martha when we sleep. Not only that, but if I am committed to working overnight shifts in other places, it can cause problems with my regular jobs in terms of being there on time.

I can’t seem to get anyone to understand that part of why I won’t do overnights outside of what I already work.

And on that note, it is time to do a call. We just got paged, and hopefully we won’t be hosed for the rest of the day.

2 comments:

Rob Walker said...

How funny to read a post and be able to say "I know exactly where that is!" I used to live in Newmarket, worked in both Exeter and Manchester for radio stations I'm sure you've listened to once or twice and volunteered with Newmarket Ambulance. This, or course, was way back when. I left NH in '95, but I'd love to live there again. If my wife's dream of owning a B&B in NH ever comes true I'll be asking your for some names of people to talk to about EMS jobs.

I hope dispatch doesn't beat you up too badly today.

Karen Brook said...

References...they're a funny thing. I hear "Brentwood" and all I can think of is the County House of Corrections there. In Grad school I had to do psychology/psychopathology internships which included field trips + interviews etc. Learned I sure wasn't cut out to be a correctional shrink!