One night at EMS we received a call for a "man hit by a train". I was still just a part-time EMT at the time, and was working with a fairly new paramedic. She was "acting Lieutenant" that night, which meant she was filling in for her partner, the real Lieutenant. She was pretty scared, because the Lieutenant has all the responsibility for what happens on any call.

So we got there and found that this guy had laid across the railroad tracks, apparently in an act of suicide. We looked under the train and his torso was still there underneath, but the top of his head was gone from the nose up, and both of his legs were gone. He had been dragged for awhile, and so there were bits and pieces of flesh around him. We found his legs in the ditch, 25 feet apart from each other.

My partner started flippin' out, because one of the assumptions made when you declare somebody dead is that you had checked their pulse. Here's this guy's torso laying under the train, no head to speak of and my partner looks at me and says, "You're going to have to crawl under there and check his pulse!". I said without a pause, "Trust me. He has no pulse". I followed up with, "As for the paper work, I think when we write that he had no head they'll kind of pick up on the fact that an injury like that is usually incompatible with life".

Back to the station we went, and to this day, I still wonder if, when we left, that guy didn't grab his legs, find his head, hitch a ride with a passerby and call it a night.

The kind of common sense shown by my partner that night isn't uncommon in the medical field. But don't get me started on that...