Many ambos complained about their shifts with Ted. But I liked the station manager and found his quiet way of doing things restful.
In a city that never slept, doing a job that never ended, sometimes slow and steady was a relief and not an irritation. Most people worked at Pitt Street because they liked the action; the speed. Load and go. Job done. Onto the next.
Ted didn’t have the best bedside manner, but he was good at what he did, never missed a beat, and carried it all out with an unrelentingly calm persona.
I felt safe with Ted in the hot seat.
I knew one day, I’d have to consider sitting my paramedic’s exam. But for now, being the second officer on a truck suited me. Being second to Ted was an easy shift, and I had found myself wanting easier shifts now I’d been doing this for over a year.
Pitt Street was exciting, but it was also very tiring. My four days off were spent more and more doing nothing but recovering. Unless Cathy had a party on, or Neal and Jody had us over for drinks, or Sean wasn’t working.
“Overdose,” Ted said from the passenger seat, reading the job details off his pager. “Suspected GHB.”
Gamma hydroxybutyrate was a recreational mood-altering drug we’d been seeing more and more on the streets. It was often consumed in liquid form from a soft sided plastic strip-like baggie like one of those frozen juice bars you found in the supermarket’s frozen goods section. They even made the plastic sleeves the drug was sold in colourful like they really were as innocuous as a juicy.
I started the ambulance and flicked on the beacons, then merged with traffic using the attention grabbing siren. Once we were on our way, I switched back to the droning siren and used the bullhorn to spread the cars before me.
It wasn’t raining, but the threat was there. Heavy clouds hiding the moon, making the suburban streets dark and uninviting. I was hanging out for summer.
The address we’d been sent to was in Grey Lynn. One of the houses that had yet to have a yuppy makeover. I counted the cars lining the street. I stopped at sixteen when it was obvious some were double parked and some were hiding. The street itself seemed to be partying like the end of the world was near and they had to get one last hoorah in before Armageddon hit.
We parked in the middle of the road; there was nowhere else to park. The street was lined with souped-up Subarus and low riding Toyota Supras. I could sense a theme happening.
Climbing down from the truck, we were at least greeted and directed to where the patient was waiting.
Once we got there, though, we realised there were two overdoses and not one.
I looked down at the oxygen tank in my hand, at the one bag-mask we carried, at the two patients lying unconscious and non-breathing. For a second, I didn’t know what to do.
“Call in for an R50,” Ted instructed, moving to first one patient and then the other.
I pulled the mobile radio off my belt and radioed in for backup. Backup was busy. We were on our own until someone was freed from another life threatening job.
“Never rains but it pours,” Ted said matter of factly.
I glanced up at the heavens and noted the clouds looked like they were about to burst. Then I was helping Ted move one of the patients so his head was almost bumping into the head of the other patient.
Head to head, supine, unconscious. Non-breathing.
“Bag one and then the other,” Ted told me. “Alternate between them.”
I’d never done anything like this before. I’d never been faced with anything like this before. My hands shook slightly as I bag-masked one unconscious kid and then moved the bag-mask over to the other and squeezed the bulb.
Little things tagged in my mind and rooted themselves there. Like the fact that the bag-mask face-piece was upside down for the second patient and I had to take the few seconds needed to turn it so his nose and mouth was covered correctly. And then do it all over again for the first patient when it was his turn.
Life giving oxygen filled first one patient’s lungs and then was stolen to fill the other’s.
Ted inserted IVs. Administered drugs. Took first one ECG strip and then switched the defibrillator’s electrodes over to the other. He took vitals, recording them in a notebook he kept in his shirt’s breast pocket.
People milled around us; drinking, some talking, some heckling and laughing as if this was a joke and they were still partying.
The bag-mask squeezed. Oxygen filtered through the line from the tank. First one chest rose and then fell, and then the other.
The sound of an ambulance approaching, lights and siren on, didn’t calm me.
Didn’t these people know how close to death these two boys had come?
What if there’d been more than two? What if we’d had to place them all in a circle, centred around their heads, like a drug riddled star on the wet grass as the clouds finally released their load and rain poured down all around us?
I blinked through the water as the backup crew came racing over with stretchers and another O2 bottle. A second bag-mask. My hands shook. My knees were caked in mud. An ache had started up between my shoulder blades and we hadn’t even had to do CPR.
“I’ve got this one, Ky,” Simon said. He was crewing the e-car tonight. I was on the LSU—life support unit—with Ted.
“OK,” I said, and shifted my attention to the patient who was now Ted’s and my sole focus.
I counted the squeezes of the bag-mask, trying to keep them slow and steady like my partner was slow and steady no matter what. Ted checked the lines, checked both patients one last time, and then directed our stretcher back to the LSU with unequalled calm.
Nothing was said as we raced towards the hospital. Nothing was said as we handed over a still unconscious teenager and Simon handed over his matching patient in Resus. Nothing was said as we headed out of ED and restocked the truck.
Nothing was said as the LSU got a second callout.
Nothing was said.
By the time the next job was over, nothing needed to be said.
The heavens rained down all round us. Bucket loads of water that washed the streets clean. The air smelled better. Auckland City shook itself and preened.
And it wasn't until much later that I realised the rain looked slightly red. Not brake-lights red. Rubies. A dark ruby red.
It wasn’t until much later after that, that realised the ruby red looked a lot like blood.
6
I Didn’t Know It Was Coming
“Twelve jobs in one night,” I told Sean over a Turkish dinner in Newmarket.
The restaurant was one of our favourites. The movie theatre just across the carpark outside.
“That’s not bad for a Saturday,” he said. “Silverdale was busy, too.”
“What’s it like up there?” Silverdale was considered a rural station. Even if the shifts were still twelve hours long; four-on, four-off like the rest of us. Silverdale was a single crewed station, relying on volunteer officers to second crew the truck, so it was deemed rural for that alone if not for its rural location.
“You usually get some shut-eye at night,” he said, sipping his wine carefully. He was driving tonight. I was the one guzzling the Cabernet as if it was life giving blood.
I checked the sky outside the restaurant’s window, but there were no clouds. No stars, either. But no clouds.