Emergency At Inglewood

Their patient couldn’t speak. Clearly in agonising pain, he clutched his chest and shook his head as he moaned incoherently.

Kathryn moved closer. ‘I’m just going to put a mask on your face, sir,’ she said. ‘Is that OK?’

Patient consent was not forthcoming but Kathryn found her nervousness vanishing as she touched the man. She could do this. Without being told, she picked up the blood-pressure cuff and wrapped it round the man’s arm. She listened with a stethoscope as she let the pressure in the cuff down but could hear nothing. Frowning, she caught Tim’s gaze as he reached into the kit for a tourniquet.

‘Unrecordable?’ Tim mirrored Kathryn’s quick nod. ‘I’m not surprised. I couldn’t get a radial pulse.’

That meant the man’s systolic blood pressure was less than 80. Kathryn looked at the screen of the life pack and felt a chill of premonition. The trace looked far from normal with the spike of the QRS bizarrely wide.

‘Complete heart block,’ Tim said quietly. ‘Draw me up a flush, would you, please, Kathryn? And give him an aspirin.’

Kathryn found her brain was moving far more quickly than her hands. Her fingers shook as she followed Tim’s calm directions but she managed to draw up the morphine and other drugs he requested. There was no time to do anything more than absorb the impression of urgency after that as bakery staff helped get the man onto the stretcher and load him and the gear into the ambulance. Within a matter of minutes Kathryn found herself driving the ambulance towards the hospital with Tim in the back, caring for a very sick cardiac patient.

Driving such a large, heavy vehicle had been a challenge in itself during her training and it would be months before Kathryn would be allowed to drive under lights and sirens, but she was confident enough at road speed and far happier leaving Tim to care for the patient this time.

By the time they got back to the main road she was almost enjoying herself. Her first job with Tim had gone well, all things considered. Maybe she had been a bit slow drawing up the morphine and adding the saline, but she just wasn’t used to doing things under such pressure of time. She’d get used to it soon enough. Pulling out the wrong oxygen mask had wasted valuable seconds, though. She’d have to—

‘Pull over!’ The shout from the back cut through any satisfaction enveloping Kathryn.

She checked the side mirrors and indicated that she was pulling onto the shoulder of the road.

‘Now, Kat!’

She jammed on the brakes and heard a curse from Tim as he had to catch his balance.

‘Get in the back,’ Tim said tersely, as he reached for the radio microphone. ‘Get the gel pads and charge up the defib. He’s in VF.’

Oh…God! This was her worst nightmare. Her first job and she was expected to defibrillate someone. Kathryn could feel the prickle of perspiration break out down the entire length of her spine as she ripped open the foil packet and slapped two rectangles of spongy orange material onto the patient’s chest.

‘Charge it,’ Tim snapped as a response to his radio signal came through. ‘We need back-up,’ he told the control room. ‘VF arrest.’ He was watching Kathryn as he spoke.

She held a paddle in each hand. The crescendo of sound that depressing the charge button had elicited stopped with a loud beep. The paddles were charged.

‘Do it,’ Tim commanded.

Kathryn pressed the paddles onto the gel pads. She remembered to move so that her legs were not touching the metal sides of the stretcher. A flash of some horror story of an ambulance officer giving himself a nasty shock surfaced.

‘I’m clear,’ she said shakily. ‘Are you?’

‘Just do it, Kat!’

She pressed her thumbs down hard on the buttons. The man jerked and his arm flopped over the side of the stretcher to hit her leg. Kathryn lifted the paddles hurriedly, too horrified to look at the screen behind her.

‘Charge again,’ Tim ordered.

The sound started to crescendo again. Kathryn’s clutch on the paddle handles felt slippery so she tightened her grip. Two shocks at 200 joules, she reminded herself. Then one at 360. Then CPR. She pressed the paddles into position.

‘Wait!’ Tim shouted. ‘Look at the screen.’

Kathryn’s head jerked up. A rapid but normal cardiac rhythm was evident. And here she was with charged-up paddles pressed onto the patient’s chest. She lifted them and her jaw dropped. The only thing she could remember was how dangerous it was to discharge a shock into the air. She couldn’t catch Tim’s eye, though, as he was leaning past her. Hitting a button on the centre of the menu control dial…emptying the charge safely from the paddles.

He was talking into the microphone at the same time. ‘Cancel the back-up,’ he told Control. ‘My partner has just saved our patient.’

Kathryn’s jaw dropped even further. Was he serious?

‘You can put those down now,’ Tim said. Then he grinned. ‘So, how does it feel to save a life, then?’

‘I…ah…’ Kathryn was totally lost for words. She looked at the patient who was actually moving his head and groaning. She looked at the life-pack screen, which still showed a rapid, steady sinus rhythm. Then she looked at Tim and couldn’t help the grin that broke out.

‘Now, let’s see how fast you can get us into hospital,’ Tim said. ‘Use the lights and siren.’

‘But I’m not allowed—’

‘Just do it, Kat. This man’s not exactly stable yet. Or would you rather stay in the back with him?’

Kathryn drove. She could see the reflection of the flashing beacons on the windows of vehicles she shot past. She found the wail of the siren became just a background as she concentrated hard on getting through the traffic. She even remembered to use the yelp switch at intersections. And she backed up to the loading ramp at the emergency department and managed to stop with only a gentle bump against the edge.

The resus team staff were waiting. Kathryn leapt out, opened the back doors and unhooked the foot end of the stretcher. Their patient was still hooked up to the life pack and oxygen as they wheeled him inside. He was sitting up now, though, and Kathryn couldn’t believe it when he smiled at her.

‘Thanks, love,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling a hell of a lot better now.’

So was Kathryn. The worst had happened and she had coped. Her first job and she had saved a life. They had saved a life. Kathryn’s smile when Tim came out to help her clean up the truck was wide enough to let him know just how incredible the experience had been. She had been so right in fighting for the chance to do this job, and right now she was so happy it was all she could do not to throw herself into Tim’s arms and dance along the loading ramp of the ambulance bay.

She was positively beaming at him. Tim had taken a few minutes to complete the paperwork inside so Kathryn had gone out to start the clean-up alone. And here she was, lit up like the happiest Christmas tree ever. Tim could understand how she felt. He could remember the first time he successfully defibrillated someone and the amazing satisfaction in getting them back. It didn’t happen nearly often enough, and Kathryn was looking at him as though he’d arranged all this as a special gift to mark her first day at work.

Good grief. She looked as though she might actually give him a hug or a kiss or something. Tim stepped back hurriedly. Fantasy was much safer. He’d never factored in that electric current that Kathryn seemed to generate around herself. He had remembered her looks well enough—the colour and curl of her blond hair, the cute upturned nose, the wide blue eyes with that hint of anxiety. He hadn’t seen her smile during that first encounter, however, and that seemed to be what was generating the current.

‘All done?’

‘Almost.’ Kathryn bit her lip, clearly trying to control her smile. ‘He thanked me, Tim, can you believe that? He looked dead only a few minutes ago and there he was sitting up and saying thank you.’

‘You did a great job,’ Tim said warmly. ‘Well done.’

‘We saved someone, didn’t we, Tim?’ Kathryn gave a tiny wriggle, like an overjoyed puppy. ‘We really saved someone.’

‘Yeah.’ Tim couldn’t prevent his own grin. ‘Don’t expect me to lay on a case like that every day, though. Consider it a ‘‘welcome to Inglewood’’ job.’ Grabbing the pile of dirty linen from the floor, he turned away. What was he saying? He didn’t want to welcome Kathryn to Inglewood.

What he really wanted was to ring the ambulance training manager and request a transfer of his probationary assistant. Yeah…right. Tim snorted as he shoved the linen into the bag inside the emergency department doors. Kathryn was lacking in confidence quite enough. He could never be so cruel as to let her think she wasn’t up to scratch as far as he was concerned.

What could he say, anyway? Sorry, but I really fancy this chick and she’s married to someone else so it’s kind of like letting a starving man look at a roast dinner in a glass box?

Besides, whatever else it had stirred up, the case had broken the ice. They were given a transfer job next, to take a patient from the emergency department to a convalescent ward in a small rural hospital well north of Wellington. It was over an hour’s drive and Kathryn sat in the back with the elderly female patient on the way there. Tim could hear her chatting happily to the woman, who was remarkably fit, considering her age was well into her nineties, and he smiled more than once as he indulged in a spot of shameless eavesdropping. Having a partner who could establish an easy rapport with a patient was a real bonus. There was nothing worse than a long trip with a totally silent set of passengers. The turn of the conversation in the back as they neared their destination made him listen even more carefully.

‘So Bill was your third husband?’

‘They say it’s third time lucky, dear, and in my case it was absolutely right.’

‘So what happened to your other husbands?’