It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a..... blowdryer?

"BEEEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEP! UNIT 88, EIGHT-EIGHT ON COMMAND 4, 3RD ATTEMPT!"
Oops.. I awake groggily from the bench seat in the back of the rig and wriggle up to the front, grabbing the radio. "This is 88, go ahead.."
"88, please landline dispatch."
"88, copy. Standby for landline."
I grab the phone and dread calling in.
"Dispatch, this is Jess."
"Hey Jess, it's 88, what's up?"
"Hey, where have you guys been?! I've been calling you on the rad for like 10 minutes!"
"Sorry, we fell asleep, I didn't hear it."
"Ok, well I have a call for you guys. 5150, female attendant required. Coming out of a residence in Crackside, going to Gotham City Medical."
"Alrighty, show us enroute."
We arrive on scene to a small apartment complex in a not-so-nice part of town. We start walking down a small sidewalk through the complex, and as we approach the door to the apartment we're looking for, a county health worker runs out, covering her head and screeches past us and down the street.
Uh-oh.
Just then, out of the same door, a table lamp flies out and crashes against the wall opposite the apartment. I notice there's already a dining room chair lying against the same wall.
Hmmm.....
We back down the sidewalk and out to the street, find the county health worker cowering near the corner of the building and ask her what's going on.
"She just went ballistic! We told her she needed to go to the hospital and she went crazy on us. She punched my partner!"
"Have you called the police for backup?"
"Over an hour ago! They still haven't responded."
Now, I'm not trying to diss the police, they are amazing and have certainly saved my ass several times in situations similar to this one. You have to understand, they often recieve these calls the same way we do-with minimal information, and are told it's no emergency. (Because in reality, it isn't.) They are probably across town, stuck in traffic, with no idea what's going on here.
We coax the county health worker and her partner back to the apartment. We approach it with caution, and I peek my head in. The woman spots me immediately, and I duck just as a blowdryer whizzes past my head. Surprisingly, the woman is probably in her 70s, maybe 5 ft. on a good day, and probably about 100 lbs. soaking wet. She's screaming at us now, "You're not taking me anywhere you filthy bastards! I can't believe this!" We back out again, my partner looks at me and says, "F**k this.. I'm out."
"No, no wait, we can handle this."
"No way! I'm not a cop, they can handle this, let's get out of here."
"No, no. The cops are gonna take too long, let's at least try."
The county people step slowly inside the apartment and try to reason with her. She's run out of ammo, the rest of the stuff in the room is too big for her to throw. One of the county ladies comes out and says, "I think she's small enough for us to pick her up and put her on the gurney ourselves, but we need your help..."
My partner fights it, insisting that we aren't allowed to do that, bla bla.. Truth is, I know we can't use excessive force, but if this lady is getting violent, we gotta get her out of here somehow. I can lead the patient out of the apartment, but I can't really wrestle with her unless she starts getting aggressive with me. We all go in, county health workers each grab an arm, my partner and I each have a leg and we literally DRAG her kicking and screaming out the door. We plop her on the gurney, start to strap her down, when I get a lovely view of the woman's...er...crotch. She was wearing a nice flowery moo-moo and (apparently) no panties. I got flashed quite a few more times until we got her feet restrained.
Then, the cops pull up.. Lucky, they got to just take some names and leave since we already had it under control. Nice timing, guys.
The woman continues to scream, ramble, etc. We load her in the back, and she suddenly stops, turns to me and asks very calmly "Did you bring my purse?"
"Errmm.. Yea, it's right here." I pick it up and wave it in front of her, just in case she didn't believe me.
"Oh, ok thanks."
She then settles back, and proceeds to have a normal, calm conversation with me. Turns out, she has a pretty long psych history, and has run out of her meds. County health workers were called when a neighbor saw her wandering around the apartment complex in her undies. We delivered to Gotham City Medical, a calm, collected, seemingly sweet old lady.. Little did they know..
I will forever have burned in my brain, the image of random pieces of furniture/appliances flying out the door of that woman's apartment.
And I will always laugh hysterically about it.

Over and out-
the PSYCH wrangler