Rule 5: I'm not an Ambulance

 People who request ubers are going all sorts of different places.

To work, to home, to a party, to the airport, to downtown.

This includes a lot of trips to various hospitals.

Mostly this is staff.

Hospitals require a shocking amount of staff.

Doctors and nurses of course,

but also all the cleaning crew people, the facilities guys who keep the lights on,

management and administration.

Hell, just the food department alone has an army of people.

You've got the cafeteria folks who cook the food for the general pop,

you've got the nutritionists who tell you that you can only have food that tastes like cardboard before your heart surgery (if indeed you're allowed to have food at all)

the patient services folks who put together the trays of food for all the patients in the hospital which can be thousands of trays a day,

the people who deliver those trays to the rooms,

as well as the chefs, cooks, porters who do the cooking.

Which doesn't even mention all the managers to keep things on track.

This is all to say that if your destination is listed as a hospital I'm not immediately freaking out.

Because if you're going to the hospital, chances are you're staff, not a patient.

However.

On occassion someone does need to get to the hospital

for pressing medical reasons.

When a young lady climbs into the car on a sunny spring day 

and is a bit brief and weezy in her greeting

I don't think anything of it.

But when she continues to wheez laboriously in the back,

and I see that the destination is the nearest hospital

-specifically the emergency entrance of said hospital-

Now you've got my anxiety up.

I can feel the atmosphere tighten as you silently urge me to catch every green light.

Every second we're stopped in traffic drags on.

Please,

I am not an ambulance.

I do not have any particular medical training.

If you want to get to the hospital,

call 911.

They have a bunch of dudes on standby for just this reason.

With big trucks and flashing lights that let them cut through traffic.

I have a black compact sedan.

I get it,

ambulances are shamefully expensive,

ubers are cheap.

But I can't set a land speed record getting you to the doctors,

I'm just a guy.

And it freaks me out having you pin your hopes of continuing to live

on me and the whims of the traffic gods with no warning.