“You better get used to it. This winter is supposed to be brutal. Doesn’t mean lives won’t need saving in that frigid Jersey landscape.” Judy tips her chin at me. “I did put a kettle on, so there will be warm tea soon enough.”
Judy has been my boss here since I started about a year and a half ago. I took the EMT courses and got licensed shortly after turning sixteen, not only because it would look great for medical school, but because I am genuinely interested. Working a job that allows me to gain medical training, check out some pretty gnarly injuries, and pays? Yeah, sign me up.
Awaiting our tea, Judy sits on a stool next to me, listening to the scanner whistling and humming with different frequencies and talking on it. She’s both motherly and stern, the perfect combination for this job. Judy is also a whiz when it comes to assessing a situation, triaging it, and getting the patient safely to a hospital in as little time as possible. She’s been doing this for over twenty years, and I admire the crap out of her.
She’s also got a sarcastic sense of humor, so she’s my kind of people.
“Did you watch the new Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?” I ask, knowing she’s just as much of a reality TV addict as I am.
“Yes! Can you believe that Erika spent thirty thousand dollars on a bag? What must it be like to have that kind of money?” she muses.
I chuckle. “You and I will never know.”
“Don’t sound so much like a bitter old maid, that’s my job. But you’re right.” Judy grins and nods at me. “I just can’t believe that new one pushed what’s her name’s dog in the pool.”
“They totally need to recast her. She and her husband are the worst. If I have to hear that fake British accent one more time—”
I’m cut off by the whistling of the tea kettle, and about three seconds after that, a call comes in through the radio.
“Reporting a twenty-nine-D-one about a mile north of Dellan Drive. Code one, with a twenty-two-D-one. Four victims in total, a priority two, two priority threes and a thirty-B-two priority one. All units dispatch.”
In seconds flat, Judy and I, plus the two other men on shift tonight, begin zipping up our uniforms, grabbing our go-bags, and loading into the ambulance. The call that came in is for an urgent, all sirens needed, major motor vehicle accident with victims trapped inside one or more vehicles. Two of the victims are not seriously injured, another is in serious condition, but possibly not life threatening, and the last victim has a serious hemorrhage and remains either unconscious, or was dead on arrival.
None of us talk to each other, the rhythm of our team a natural, practiced thing. We’ve all done this before, have worked in tandem, and know what needs to get put into that ambulance before we can go assess the damage. I grab my bag, a couple of IV bags that are meant to be refrigerated until use, a cooler full of blood bags, and then help James, one of the other EMTs, roll the traveling sonogram into the back of the vehicle. Having done my duties, I hop into the passenger seat and buckle up.
The adrenaline begins pumping through my chest, but I inhale slowly through my nose as Judy hops into the driver’s seat beside me and cranks the lights and sirens on. Peeling out of the rescue squad building, we’re on the road and headed to the crash scene.
No matter how many times I do this, there is always that initial moment of fear. I remember my first call, having Judy talk me through the gore and devastation I was about to see. She told me that as EMTs, we get one breath. One breath to inhale and exhale all the fear, nerves, doubts and jitters that would get in the way of our focus. Because once we’re on the scene, dealing with people’s lives, we don’t get the luxury of hesitating. That advice has always stayed with me, and so I give myself one breath, and then plunge into the protocol of it all.
Judy’s voice is forceful, direct. “I’ll deal with the hemorrhage. James, I’ll need you with me. Nicholas, you take the priority threes, and make sure they get blankets, water, just keep them calm and comfortable because this will be a long night with the police for them. Kennedy, you’ll take the priority two.”
Both James and Nicholas are older than me, have been doing this for longer. But Judy doesn’t believe in that kind of structure, in giving us easy training. I’ve had a couple of patients code under my hands, I’ve plugged an artery, I’ve held the neck of a toddler stable while waiting for a back brace. The number of life altering procedures or moments of intense decision making I’ve experienced on this job have only made me stronger, and proven that this is what I want to do with my life.
We get to the scene in five minutes flat, the perks of being able to cut off anyone on the roads at this hour. From my vantage in the passenger seat. I can make out a car sitting on the side of the road with its flashers on, the guardrail next to it completely shredded to bits. I can’t see the front, but I’ll bet anything the entire hood is crunched in like a soda can.
“Keep your heads. Do your jobs,” Judy instructs, and we all jump out, hauling medical supplies and our emergency bags.
The police are already there, and they fill us in using codes and shorthand speech. Two passengers sit on the ground near one of the three cop cars, and when Nicholas makes his way over to them, I know they’re the priority threes. They wear shock and confusion on their faces, but neither looks injured beyond bumps and scrapes.
I can’t tell what happened, how the crash occurred, but I know that my victim is somewhere down the ravine, trapped in the car. I’m going to have to get down there, but the police will have to consult me on how they’re planning to make that happen. In this kind of situation, we want to get to the injured person as soon as possible, but it does no good to rush and risk injury to ourselves or someone else.
It’s then that my eyes follow the direction everyone else seems to be looking.
A body lays haphazardly on the ground, probably thrown from the vehicle that went through the guardrail. The limbs are arranged in an unnatural fashion, broken in positions that couldn’t possibly allow for a human being to be so quiet. Whoever this is, they lie face down on the dark gravel, and I can make out the pool of blood trickling from their abdomen.
Slowly, calmly, Judy walks toward her patient, the code one with a possible hemorrhage. She bends down, presses two fingers to the victim’s neck, and then removes them.
“DOA,” Judy announces, her expression one of practiced professionalism tinged with solemnness.
I blow out a breath, trying to tighten every muscle in my abdomen against the flood of nausea that sweeps through my stomach. There is one part of this job that will never become old hat, that my heart will never become accustomed to.
Seeing life leave another person’s body, watching them die or bleed out, unable to save them … it steals a piece of my soul each time I watch it happen. I have no idea how Judy and my coworkers go back to normal life after this, as if it’s just a job requirement to watch a human being expire.
Whenever I work a shift at the rescue squad, I know it will be a challenging, long night. But these are the kind that extinguish one of the finite rays of hope inside me.
7
Everett
Jesus Christ, someone rewound my life and dropped me right back into high school.