Liar, Liar

The 35-year-old guy in front of you is seated on a bus bench with his hands cuffed behind him. According to the cops, a pair of private citizens disarmed and detained him (by sitting on him) after they witnessed him firing several .22 cal. rifle rounds through the window of a duplex home from a parking lot across the busy main street of a small rural town.

The gunman has no obvious injuries, despite the citizens’ testimony that in their efforts to make him stay put until the cops arrived, they repeatedly banged his head on the sidewalk. He’s complaining of generalized headache, and his nose hurts. But his teeth and tongue are intact, and his ability to vocalize (if not enunciate) is outstanding. So…breathing is fine.

He’s verbally abusive toward you, the cops and the owner of the home (whom he’s never met.) He says he doesn’t know anything about no rifle. He vehemently denies having fired one in the city limits, ‘cause that’s against the law. He’s ataxic, his speech is slurred and he has a strong breath odor like alcohol. He’s physically resisting your efforts to examine him, and he’s talking smack about everybody and their mothers. He says the handcuffs are uncomfortable. And when you try to answer his questions about the reason for his detainment, he calls you a liar.

He vehemently denies having ingested alcohol or anything else. And he punctuates his denials with an unsolicited, unflattering assessment of your cerebral acumen. That’s no fun. But hey, you’re the one who just graduated from P school. He’s the one wearing the fancy jewelry. He should probably leave the cognitive exam to you.

Q. I hate it when people lie to me, like they think I’m stupid. This guy did that at least five times in five consecutive sentences. He obviously had no problem doing it.

A. People lie sometimes, that’s all. All people do. It’s not personal. I think lying is just one of the ways we all handle stress. Some of us resort to it more often than others, but none of us is perfect. And as EMTs, we get lied to for a living. That’s not about us; I think it’s just because we ask people a lot of tough questions about their personal lives. When you consider most of them are having really bad days (or they wouldn’t be seeing us,) it kind of makes sense.

Q. What about this situation makes sense? Two witnesses caught this guy shooting out somebody’s window, which could have killed the resident or a passing motorist. The window is obviously shattered. The witnesses took a rifle away from him, and the rifle is in police custody. He’s not disputing opinions, here. He’s denying facts. He’s not only a drunk, he’s a nasty drunk. And he’s accusing us of lying to him.

A. EMTs get lied to for a living. So does just about everybody whose job it is to deal with people in crisis. Speaking of facts, that’s a fact. And the closer your encounters are to people’s moments of crisis, the more likely they are to lie to you. It’s always been that way, and to expect anything else would be your mistake. I’m just saying, lying is an option all people consider when they’re scared or stressed. An EMT deals with people day after day who are scared and stressed, immediately following the worst events of their lives. It’s just part of the work. Discipline yourself not to take that personally, or it will eat you up.

Q. How do you do that? How do you have somebody look you right in the eye and lie to you, and not feel even a little bit insulted?

A. I think there are several helpful strategies, and discussing them probably exceeds the scope of a small column article in EMS World. For one, discipline yourself to remember you’re the lucky one. They’re the one who’s in a lot of trouble. For another, count your blessings every day. I don’t mean that in a religious sense (although that would probably work just fine.) I mean, think of yourself as a source of good and your work as a valuable thing. (That realization is the core of your daily safety, isn’t it?) And lastly, think of your family. No matter who insults you or how they do that, this important work of yours supports the ones you love.

And in the end, their support enables you to continue doing it.

Thom Dick has been involved in EMS for more than 40 years, 23 of them as a full-time EMT and paramedic in San Diego County. He is the quality care coordinator for Platte Valley Ambulance Service, a community-owned, hospital-based 9-1-1 provider in Brighton, CO.