the inauthentic voice

Remember the Harley shirt guy after 9/11?

"...come out of nowhere and just ream right into the side of the twin tower, exploding through the other side...and then I witnessed both towers collapse, one first then the second. Mostly due to structural failure because the fire was just too intense."

I thought of him as I read this account: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/012609.html

I was notified by dispatch that there were several shots fired and potentially several victims. The scene was not safe so we were instructed to "stage" close to the scene. While staging I was approached by a police officer that their was an "officer down!"...I told him I had not gotten a "code 4", our code that the scene was safe for emergency responders to enter the scene. The officer left and came back again to me to tell me again there was an officer down and needed EMS NOW!

He assured me the scene was safe so we proceeded into the scene. Several bystanders were around and Ft Hood fire dept was already on scene. My partner went to a pt lying on the ground on her side of the ambulance and I approached the officer who had been shot; her gun shot wound was exposed which appeared to be potentially fatal due to the location, a tourniquet was applied prior to my arrival which probably saved her life; she was conscious but appeared very pale and probably in compensated shock at this point due to the massive amount of blood loss I witnessed around her.

I was then summoned to other patients calling for EMS; the next pt I approached was shot in the neck with a arterial bleed...I instructed bystanders to continue to hold pressure to the wound and gave them bandaging material. I triaged several pt's with potentially life threatening wounds, each worse than the next.

A young man walked up to me and asked if I could help him, I asked him, "where are you shot?", he told me in the chest...I directed him to go sit in my ambulance and an army medic sat with him and started oxygen and bandaging on him; in the mist of the madness I was trying to determine who would be the first to be transported still waiting on the helicopters to land so I could fly out the worst.

While getting more bandaging material off my ambulance several bystanders carried a soldier to my truck that had been shot in the head, he was conscious and breathing, he kept asking me "am I gonna die?", I told him I was doing the best I could, [o_O] knowing from experience his situation appeared bleak.

Behind my ambulance several bystanders were doing CPR on a lady [Do most women routinely refer to other women as ladies? - ed.] that had obviously been fatally shot, in a mas-cal situation you do "the most good for the most people"...that means save the ones you can and black tag the un-salvageable...it's a harsh truth but effective in this type of situation.

Since the helicopter was still not there I made the decision to take off and transport these two critical patients to Darnell Army Hosp which was about 4 mi away. I quickly dropped off those patients and headed back to the scene with an ER nurse as well to help. In the meantime, several other ambulances had showed up and others had been transported leaving me with one soldier shot in the shoulder, and deservedly last, the shooter was the last to leave the scene and was flown to a hosp approx 30 mil away since the local hosp's were overwhelmed at this point.

I consider myself and seasoned and experienced medic but no one can prepare you for a war zone, which is exactly what this was...I felt so helpless trying to help so many with such limited resources. Thank God for all the bystanders, fire dept and community EMS services that came to our aide. [???? ...said a paramedic called to the scene presumably from the surrounding community????] Thank you officer Kimberly Munley for being so brave and fearlessly doing your job....

That's the voice of a female paramedic. In her own words.

blink blink blink

It's funny but she talks just like a highly trained military officer. Cold and calculating, able to triage, and then in the last paragraph gushing about feeling so helpless and thanking God and all the heroes.

Who am I to doubt it? Who am I to say that this story sounds totally inauthentic to my ear, drawn up in a military PR office somewhere?