My first ambulance call

Saturday evening from 7pm to 7am I rode ambulances for the first time. I guess that EMTs here get a lot of volunteers because, the fellas were not inviting at all. I felt like a worthless fly on the wall unworthy of even being recognized or introduced to the other EMTs. I was beginning to regret having come when the first call came in. We had a motor vehicle accident on a road 20 kilometers outside of Grahamstown. Upon entering the scene there was a man laying face in the grass prostrate unconcious. I first thought he was dead, then heard groaning. We put him on a spinal board (I think that is what it is called) then took him to the hospital to get xrays and determine if he had anything broken. While waiting for x-rays the scene at the hospital was just as crazy. There was a line of stab victims waiting to be sticthed up. One patient refused to be patched up. He was highly under the influence of something. After he had lost a lot of blood he passed out, and the nurses put an I.V. in him and started sewing him up. When the patient awoke he again refused to be stitched up. We told the nurses to stop trying, because, the risk of being poked while stitching up a unwilling patient with a good chance of having AIDS is not safe. There were head wound victims and a woman with bloody feet and hands. In between vehicle accidents I sat and listened to drivers talk about the nurses they "liked". The second vehicle accident came at about 6:45 a.m. in the last 15 minutes of my shift. Again about 20 kilometers out of town the opposite direction. The drunk driver hit a semi truck head on. Upon arrival there were two passengers concious and sitting outside of the car. One had his collar bone sticking through where his shoulder should have been and was bleeding profusely. All this to say I had a horrible uncomfortably awkward time in between ambulance calls, but learned a lot and grew in my confidence when dealing with medical emergencies. The shocking thing to me about the victims was that both drivers were drunk. One of the drivers was the principal of a school, and the other an off duty police officer.....