I Get You, Babe

This column should be appearing one day after my second wedding anniversary—that’s right, the anniversary of my second wedding. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it, but it might never have happened if The Lovely Helen hadn’t been so assertive. I’m one of those lucky guys who actually got proposed to instead of the other way around.

I still remember that September morning in 2004 when Helen told me she had something important to discuss and said it would go better if I put down my newspaper. Then she asked, in fluent Flatbush, “You wanna get married, or what?”

Unambiguous and direct—just like in the field, when she’d remind me we’d get to the hospital sooner if we actually moved patients to ambulances.

Helen was my EMS partner for eight years—a prenuptial trial I believe was no less predictive of our marriage’s staying power than living together. Like marriage, EMS promotes either teamwork or conflict, depending on participants’ willingness to subordinate personal wants to mutual interests. If you think that’s a no-brainer, start with a simple workday test of compatibility, like agreeing when and where to break for meals. If I tried to count the times my partners’ cravings conflicted with my own, I’d need lots more fingers and toes than my species is entitled to.

Synergy in the field—shared values, common experiences, trust—can be the basis for a relationship, but I think the odds of bonding improve when partners click on some level other than EMS. For my wife and me, it was a Brooklyn connection and other generation-specific childhood memories. Also movies and music; on the way back from calls, I’d quiz Helen on famous movie lines until she’d tell me to stop and play some music.

A common aspect of all my successful partnerships is that we “got” each other. I suppose that means different things to different people, but for Helen and me it’s about understanding and embracing the particulars of each partner’s personality. Helen knows I’ll probably complain about minor customer service snafus as vigorously as if our hospital gave us the wrong child; I’m not surprised when Helen insists on doing something just because someone told her she can’t. If we suddenly stopped behaving in those ways, it would be a contest to see which of us would be first to send the other for a neurological consult.

“Getting” each other has practical applications in the field, like when danger is imminent. I have a tendency to be skeptical whenever someone tells me to be careful, possibly because I never did fulfill my parents’ you’ll-put-out-your-eye prophecy. However, when Helen is the one doing the warning, I pay attention…well, usually. I trust her threat assessments because I know she and I have similar risk tolerances. I also don’t want to endure after-action analysis that begins with the question, “Are you mental?”

During challenging prehospital scenarios, it helps to have a partner who shares a non-verbal dialect of facial expressions and gestures. Intuitive communication saves steps and, occasionally, embarrassment. For example, there are right ways to express concern about unstable patients, and none of them begin with the word Holy.

Even couples who get each other have issues—like the time I told Helen I’d take her out, then agreed to do one more shift; or the old girlfriend who wanted to meet me for lunch while Helen was working. Fluctuating priorities tested our relationship’s staying power early on, and might have prompted Helen’s cautionary remark, “I don’t know what I’d do without you…at times.” But getting each other makes it less baffling, if not easier, to work through the posture-debate-consider-concede protocol during disagreements. Parties just have to guard against the use of secret knowledge to intensify, rather than curtail, that process.

One sign of a successful union is asking each other “What do you think?” and really meaning it, like when I told Helen I was thinking about writing this column and wondered how she’d characterize our 18 years as friends, partners and spouses. In no more time than it would have taken her to check a pulse, she said, “Tell them you’re a good medic, a good worker, a good father and a halfway-decent husband.”

Did I mention the importance of humor?

Mike Rubin, BS, NREMT-P, is a paramedic in Nashville, TN, and a member of EMS World’s editorial advisory board. Contact him at mgr22@prodigy.net.