At a point earlier in my life, I was engaged to a man who, among other things, was a volunteer emergency medical technician. More than one date was interrupted by someone needing medical help. And there were occasionally some really good stories, with happy endings.

One day he came home with a really wonderful tale. He hadn't gone on the call involved, but some of his friends on the squad had responded to a call from a very distraught father regarding a baby.

In case you don't already know this: when EMTs get pediatric calls, they tend to go into an overdrive. Many of them are parents themselves, and they all know that kids can't answer a lot of questions, so they're all very aware that extra attention is needed.

Well, an ambulance chock full of EMTs went flying to the home, to find the father almost as upset as the baby. It seems that the dad was at home alone with the baby for the first time. His wife had gone to work (for her first day back) several hours earlier. This was their first baby.

The problem was that the dad could not get the baby to stop crying. He had tried to reach his wife, but apparently she had gone to lunch. So he did the next thing that popped into his mind; he called 911.

The chief of the squad happened to be on the call. Chief and his wife were veteran parents, by the way. Based on seniority and the parent thing, Chief took the lead. He did a quick assessment of the baby, and started asking questions of the father. Question one was what time did the child start to cry. Question two was what the dad had done to try to ease the baby. The answer to that one led to question three: when had the baby last been fed?