Took a ham sized fist to the jaw. Easily the friendliest patient I've had all week.

Tl;dr at the bottom.

Just got off this one. Big fella had too much to drink and his girlfriend (sober, miraculously) thought he stopped breathing. Still up in the air what the hell she was talking about, my dude was breathing fine. Irrelevant as he was just too big and too spectacularly shit-housed for her to babysit as such.

Anyway, it ends up being an involuntary transport to the ER literally a quarter mile away. That's just the law where I work. If you're deemed too inebriated to be able to safely take care of yourself you get a ride to the ER to sober up. It's a considerable portion of our calls. We have a whole crew of regulars who enjoy this service on an almost nightly basis.

So my large friend gets on the stretcher happily enough. Sure, there's a bit of difficulty, what with him effectively being unable to stand. Nothing that a completely spontaneous bear hug (purely for purposes of stability, I'm sure) couldn't fix. He's a big teddy bear, afraid of needles that I'm not going to give him, afraid that the 'rona is gonna snatch him up in the ER, gives strangely comforting hugs, the works. He even told me that I'm a superhero and that I have pretty eyes and a nice voice.

I won't lie. I'm not ashamed. I blushed like a 15 year old girl. I'm (allegedly) man enough to admit that.

So we get the stretcher up to about half height and all of a sudden he decides "Ah hell nah, I ain't about this shit." He starts undoing his seatbelts and trying to get off the stretcher at the worst possible time. I start talking him out of that decision and putting his belts back on so he doesn't pull off a 10 point swan dive into shitty apartment building concrete that's covered by 2 microns of something that someone may have called carpet once. Gravity is this dude's arch-nemesis, and I wasn't about to let my new friend lose his fight against it in such a sorry state.

The seatbelts evidently upset him greatly. He doesn't get violent, but instead rails against this cruel fate he's been subjected to. He responds almost exactly like a 2 year old that had his favorite toy taken away. He balls up both his fists and starts flailing them around with all of the coordination afforded him by 15 shots of bourbon.

Distinctly unlike a 2 year old, however, is that my new buddy is 6 feet 2 inches tall and pushing (if not completely surpassing) 275 lbs. Surely he didn't mean to. He wasn't fighting me. My comrade would never intentionally harm me. No, surely what happened next was an unfortunate act of friendly fire in the midst of my new brother's righteous combat against an uncaring and unforgiving universe.

Whatever the case may be, I proceed to receive a boulder that's been cleverly disguised as a human fist directly in the side of my stupid fucking jaw. You know the spot, right under the ear? Try not to get punched there, intentionally or otherwise. I find it to be a wholely unpleasant experience. If you must take a hit there for some nebulous reason, I implore you to take it from someone who wouldn't pass as a club bouncer just by donning a black t-shirt.

I composed myself rather quickly with an aching jaw and a rapidly emerging headache of biblical (old testament) proportions. I reassured my new BFF that the stretcher was infinitely better for laying on than the ground. He hadn't even noticed he hit me. Heads like mine weren't engineered to get in the way of titanic appendages such as his.

We managed to get him out of the building with only 5 or 6 more attempts made to fall off my stretcher. It made for an interesting and wildly claustrophobic elevator ride 9 floors down. The whole 45 seconds it took to get to the ER were equally interesting. I regret to inform you that my heterosexual life partner forgot my name no less than 8 times prior to transferring care.

The hospital deemed it prudent to use leather restraints in order to avoid any further incidents. I don't blame them a bit, but I couldn't help but feel a little sad for him. He's a gentle soul trapped in a powerful shell. The nurses graciously gifted me with an ice pack and looks of genocidal hatred for the mess I dropped in their laps. Par for the course.

Pretty good shift, all in all.

Tl;dr I caught some friendly fingies to my manlet little face from my new soulmate.

Edit: Thanks for all the awards and kind words. Also CJ's approval is the highest honor I've ever received, and I'll have you know that I got an A+ on my spelling test when I was 8.