Trending Topics

EMS Poem: D-Shift

“Pray for us just in case;” a paramedic’s thoughts about medics’ calling during a late shift

ambulance

Getty Images

Editor’s note: Do you have a creative work about your experience as a first responder you’d like to share? Email us at editor@ems1.com.



By Jessica Lochbaum, NREMT

It’s quiet here now at Medic Three.
All I hear are the crickets and the wind in the trees.

The sky is dark blue with big white clouds.
The occasional car or motorcycle drives around.

Now the sounds of birds, lizards and frogs.
At night we beg to sleep in our beds like logs.

All day long the ambulance and siren scream,
From 911 calls for our citizens in need.

Here we come those people in navy blue.
“We’re all ambulance drivers,” I thought you knew.

Always in danger saving lives, never on top.
They save that for firefighters and cops.

But we come back day after day.
Overworked and underpaid.

So why do we do it you may ask.
It must be a calling, we were made for the task.

It’s not easy things we see, hear and do.
So much we hold inside, how many we wish we never knew.

At the end of the shift we’ll leave this place.
Safety is our number one rule but pray for us just in case.

— Jessica Lochbaum
2021


“When the ER keeps us from another call, you may frolic while I hug the wall. I am there for you.”

Jessica Lochbaum has been an EMT for nearly 20 years. She began her career in West York, Pennsylvania. She has worked on the truck, in the ED and as the administrative assistant to the EMS chief at York Regional EMS. She moved to Irmo, South Carolina, in 2018 to be close to her family. She currently works for Newberry County EMS. In 2023, her first children’s book was published in London and is available worldwide.