Lincoln County is served by King’s Daughters Medical Center’s 31 Emergency Medical Service personnel, including 20-year veteran Jimmy Martin.

“I’ve lived in Lincoln County most of my life,” Martin said. “My daddy was in the Army, and when he finally returned we moved back to Mississippi. Everybody that I know and loved lived in Lincoln County.”

Martin began his career helping others as a volunteer firefighter. It was his brother, himself an EMT, that inspired Martin to become a paramedic. From there, Martin said he’d found his calling.

“I tell people that I’m where the Lord wants me to be,” he said. “I’ve tried to do different things, and I’ve always wound up back here.”

Martin objects to the term “ambulance driver.” He and his crew are all emergency medical technicians with medical training. When the call comes, they have to get to the scene quickly, something that requires skill on the road, especially now as fewer and fewer people react appropriately on the road to emergency personnel.

“I don’t know when they stopped teaching this — to move to the right — but people will go left, right,” Martin said. “They’ll come to a dead stop in the middle of the road. There’s just really no rhyme or reason. So you’re worried about them wrecking — I do anyway — and generating another scene.”

Martin works 12-hour shifts, starting at 7 a.m. and ending at 7 p.m. They wait for the call to come in a small office just a short walk north of the hospital. Martin said these days, they don’t have to wait long.

“We do on average probably 17 to 18 calls in a 24-hour period,” he said.

It can be a hard to work in EMS. It isn’t just the long hours — Martin has had to see human suffering up close, time and time again.

“Death — that’s the hardest part, obviously,” Martin said. “You go to wrecks and see people busted up. That’s never easy, whether you know them or not.”

Despite long hours and hardships on the road and on scene, it’s the chance to help others and the friendships he’s developed that have kept him on the job.

“I work with a bunch of good people,” he said. “We’ve got a good crew.”