The Gap Page 13

  ‘I’ve got his key,’ she says. ‘But he’s got something jammed against the door.’

  Matt calls for a rescue truck. As we wait in the corridor Matt says, ‘I saw a poster with your missus on it. She still doing shows?’

  ‘Got one coming up, after New Year’s,’ I reply.

  ‘You helping her out?’

  ‘We’re taking a break.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. You okay?’

  ‘Sure. It’s only short term.’

  ‘John’s taking it hard with Antonio, I hear.’

  ‘Yeah, he is.’

  Police Rescue arrive, carrying tools. They get to work and jimmy the door, but can’t get it open more than a foot. One of the rescue guys makes a wedge with his boot and looks over at me.

  ‘Just enough room for an ambo your size,’ says the cop.

  He must be joking. I turn to Matt and say, ‘Junior officers first, right?’

  ‘They don’t call you Snake Hips for nothing!’ Matt says with a laugh.

  Bastard. The rescue guy chuckles. ‘Snake Hips, eh? Well come on then, in ya go.’

  Fussing about any longer would frustrate me more than the dirty work. When I crouch down it’s easy to see there’s no way my whole body will make it through the door, so I squeeze my head in for a little look around. Once my eyes adjust to the gloom, it appears the place is empty. But then, as I twist my head to the right, I see the legs of a man behind the door. My heart skips a beat. Has the sneaky bugger been quietly standing there while we’ve all been knocking? Why would he play such a game? Then I notice his feet aren’t touching the ground.

  I pull my head back into the hall.

  ‘One for you, gentlemen,’ I say to the cops. ‘He’s hanging behind the door.’

  As we leave the building I contemplate the lives that have ended here. The building is a repository of worn-out men and women with deeply tragic stories: lives spoiled by drugs and alcohol, marriage breakups and mental illness. I was at the same building with John just last month, when he told me he’d rather kill himself than end up living in a dark, mouldy room as small as a jail cell.

  Before I leave work I call John’s number. Again it goes to voicemail. I leave him a message, wishing him ‘as happy a Christmas as can be expected’, ending with the offer of a Christmas cake delivery. There’s also a hamper of condiments, figs, chocolate and European biscuits that the producers of Bondi Rescue have sent the ambulance station. I could always drop some to John in the morning.

  I spend Christmas Eve at my parents’ house. Our family Christmas celebrations follow my German mother’s tradition of Weihnachten. We help prepare a feast, light candles and sing carols. Before gifts are exchanged my father reads the story of the birth of Jesus from a leather-bound Bible, and says a prayer for the year ahead. My parents tell tales from our youth, and my brothers and sister and their partners laugh and clink their wine glasses. It’s all very merry.

  I try to act jovial, but I’m not convincing anyone. It’s the first Christmas I can remember that Kaspia and I haven’t been together, and it hurts. I’ve been stoic until tonight. I feel Kaspia’s absence in every moment, and it’s an absence that no one wants to talk about. In spirit I’m not present, either. I understand, just a little, how Christmas for some can exacerbate loneliness, depression and intrusive thoughts of suicide.

  The streets are always quiet on Christmas morning. People’s relentless rushing has finally been stilled. Scores have left on their holidays up or down the coast, others are overseas and the rest are at home with their families. But the paramedic roster, like the wheel of life, keeps rotating.

  Matt and I spend Christmas Day driving past barbecues and laughter on the beach and parks of Bondi. It would have been harder spending Christmas Day without Kaspia if I wasn’t on this shift. At least I can tell myself we’re apart because of work, and not for any other reason. But I still check my phone far too often to see if she’s sent a message or if I might’ve missed a call.

  By midday, we haven’t had a job yet.

  ‘Let’s not get complacent,’ says Matt. ‘There’s always a handful of tragedies on Christmas. One of them might be ours.’

  A couple of hours later one of them is.

  After picking up a few jolly drunks, including an Irishman dressed up as Santa, we’re called to a grandfather who has collapsed on his patio. His wife is crouched beside him, crying, ‘Please help him, he’s not breathing.’ The rest of the family are huddled nearby, including his grandchildren.

  Matt unbuttons the man’s shirt and I stick on the defib pads. The rhythm’s a flatline and no one’s done CPR. We work on him for twenty minutes, but get no result.

  I tell the man’s wife that we’re sorry, that there’s nothing more we can do. Her husband of fifty years has passed away.

  She takes his head in her hands and strokes his hair, telling him, ‘Thank you, Henry, darling Henry. Thank you for being such a wonderful husband.’ Then she cries out, ‘I’m in a dream, a bad dream, a nightmare …’

  I’ve heard this before, many times, the bad dream that people long to wake up from, the disbelief. I’ll surely feel this one day too, but for now I can only imagine what it’s like.

  I get up and go to the mantelpiece, keeping my composure. I look at the couple’s whimsical pet rock collection. Their neat row of Christmas cards. Photos of their grandchildren remind me they’re in the house too, being shielded from this. The violence of chest compressions, needles in veins and tubes in throats wasn’t for them. I take a deep breath and go give them the news. They read my face before I speak, but I say my piece anyway. ‘We tried our best but he didn’t pull through.’ It’s a worn phrase that makes it sound like it’s the old man’s fault, as if he refused to come back. ‘We tried our best’ sounds inadequate too. It may be true that we tried our best, but I wonder if trying is good enough. In our line of work, where the opposite of success is death, there’s no prize for trying.

  I wonder if love’s like this too, if this sense of failure and recrimination follows you around when the pulse of a relationship stops. All those years of investment, the sweat and the tears, the battles to save it, for what? If my relationship with Kaspia ends, or if John and Antonio’s does, will there be any comfort in saying, ‘We tried’?

  CHAPTER 12

  It’s the day before New Year’s Eve, and an Air Ambulance plane from Broken Hill is due to come in to Mascot with a patient for St Vinnies. I’m back on with Jerry and he volunteers to drive. On the way out to the airport he tells me about Christmas with his wife and his kids and I tell him about Christmas with the grandchildren of a dead man.

  ‘You didn’t wish them Merry Christmas as you left, did you?’ Jerry asks.

  ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘We all say dumb things, mate.’

  ‘No, I didn’t wish them Merry Christmas as I left.’

  We slip into a window booth at Krispy Kreme, opposite the Air Ambulance base. There’s a good view of the hangar from here so we can see when the plane arrives. Jerry orders two cappuccinos and a small plate of cinnamon donuts. I sip on my coffee and ask him if he’s been in touch with John. ‘I tried calling Christmas Day, but he didn’t pick up,’ I say. ‘From what I’ve heard he’s been having more sickies. He looked like a tramp when I saw him last week.’

  ‘Maybe we should search for him in Woolloomooloo,’ Jerry says with a mouthful of donut.

  ‘Funny you say that. He talked about moving down there if he had to. Joking, of course.’

  ‘Or not joking,’ says Jerry. ‘I spoke to him before Christmas, you know.’

  ‘So he answered your call?’ I turn to Jerry.

  ‘Yeah, but don’t get offended he didn’t answer yours. He’s hardly talking to anyone. Maybe just his parents and sisters up the coast. A couple of friends. He only picked up because I redialled his number for an hour and it pissed him off.’

  ‘Is he getting any help?’

  ‘A shrink, so he reckons. Wh
o knows.’

  Our conversation is interrupted by a kid about twelve years old, who approaches from the next booth, where his parents are sitting. He sidles right up, says he loves paramedics.

  ‘Thanks, matey,’ replies Jerry. ‘Very nice of you.’

  The boy smiles, then pulls out a glossy Baptist Church pamphlet and lays it on the table. How to avoid Hell! is printed on the front. He slides it over to Jerry.

  Jerry picks up the pamphlet and inspects it earnestly. The kid sits next to him, watching Jerry’s face, waiting for questions or, even better, a sudden conversion. Jerry takes another donut and starts eating as he reads, then he looks up at the boy.

  ‘Son, do you know what a whoremonger is?’

  The kid is stumped. He shrugs.

  Jerry goes on, ‘Says here that a whoremonger is an example of the type of person who’ll be going to Hell. This is very harsh stuff you’ve got here, you know? You really need to fully understand what you’re handing out. It’s only fair. Now, go back to your parents please, and ask them very nicely what a whoremonger is, okay?’

  The boy, who doesn’t quite know what to make of Jerry, takes the leaflet and retreats to the safety of his family.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to avoid Hell,’ Jerry says to me. ‘But I don’t think it’s for humans to tell other humans who’ll be going there.’

  I couldn’t agree more.

  Out the window I catch sight of the Air Ambulance plane approaching. We get up and brush the cinnamon from our uniforms, nodding politely to the Baptist family on the way out. Then we head over the road to collect our patient.

  Alfred, the man we load up, has unstable angina and some dubious dysrhythmias we see on our monitor. He could slip into cardiac arrest any minute, so I put on our beacons for the ride into town and switch on the radio for a tune. AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ comes on and I quickly turn down the volume, embarrassed. But Jerry won’t have it. He shouts from the back of the ambulance, ‘Come on! I love that tune. Turn it up, will you? There are no whoremongers in this ambulance. We’ve got nothing to worry about, do we Alfred?’

  In a Randwick house of black leather lounges and glass tabletops, a forty-nine-year-old man is suffering food poisoning. Jerry picks up the bucket containing the man’s vomit. Brow furrowed, he studies the contents as thoughtfully as he did the Baptist boy’s brochure.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he ponders. ‘You’ve been eating beetroot, haven’t you? A dish with beetroot in it? Am I right?’

  Curled up in the foetal position on his lounge, the man groans in the affirmative. Jerry swishes the bucket around, panning for more clues.

  ‘Aha, I’ve got it. Cabbage! There’s some cabbage here too, isn’t there? I’m getting a good picture now. Let me guess. A steak? You had a steak, didn’t you? With some cabbage and beetroot on the side?’

  Clutching his stomach, the man nods.

  ‘Excellent!’ says Jerry, looking proud of himself.

  We give the guy a drip, then leave him with some advice and a booking with the after-hours doctor service. Back in the ambulance Jerry says to me, ‘The guy’s forty-nine and calls an ambulance for gastro. Thousands of people vomit in this city every night. Imagine if all of them called.’

  But everyday illnesses we think don’t warrant an ambulance can be utterly catastrophic in the minds of sufferers. Paramedics are among the most resilient members of society helping many of the least resilient. On one hand it’s a perfect match, the way it should be. On the other, our frustration at some of our patients is a constant challenge to suppress in public, though frequently expressed in private.

  ‘You know what the guy needed?’ says Jerry.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A can of Harden-the-Fuck-Up.’

  ‘It comes in a can?’

  ‘Yes it does, like a drink. Harden-the-Fuck-Up printed on the side in big gold letters.’

  I feel like Harden-the-Fuck-Up has been part of the paramedic’s private vernacular long before Mark ‘Chopper’ Read made it famous last year.

  The radio’s turned down but I’m pretty sure I hear our callsign being repeated at low volume.

  ‘Job,’ I say, nodding to the handset.

  Jerry picks it up and replies.

  We’re assigned to a man with a stomach-ache in Maroubra, another patient vomiting.

  Jerry and I sigh at the same time.

  At least it’s not a suicide.

  A seventy-three-year-old man with a giant belly lies on his bed, his wife hovering anxiously nearby. She says her husband threw up after a sudden onset of abdominal pain. Our patient is very pale, sweaty and short of breath. It’s no ordinary gastro, this one.

  Unzipping the oxygen kit, I see the gauge level is nearly on zero and I curse quietly.

  ‘You checked this earlier?’ I ask Jerry.

  ‘Yeah, what’s up?’

  ‘Almost out.’

  I look closer. The regulator’s come loose. Oxygen’s been leaking all morning.

  ‘Gotta get another cylinder,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

  Jerry shrugs and starts taking the man’s blood pressure. But it’s easy to see how low it is just by looking at him, so I call for backup on my way out the door.

  I fetch another cylinder. When I come back I see Jerry on the bed straddling our patient and doing CPR. The two of them are bouncing up and down in the most ridiculous fashion. Jerry turns to me all puffed and says, ‘Can’t get him on the floor, too heavy. Give me a hand!’

  We drag the man off the bed and onto the carpet. His head hits the rug with a thud. He’s been incontinent and faeces is spread all over the place. I tear off his pyjama top and apply the defibrillator pads while Jerry continues chest compressions, trying to avoid the free-flowing shit.

  The Lifepak 15 shows a bizarre and pulseless rhythm, one we can’t shock. But Jerry, a former swimming champion, has muscular forearms and his compressions are excellent. They’re so effective, in fact, that CPR is enough to give our patient a cardiac output and he starts to wake up. This only lasts half a minute, before he drops unconscious and loses his pulse again. Jerry jumps back on his chest. The man regains a pulse and wakes a second time, attempting to push Jerry’s hands off his sternum.

  These short periods of wakefulness are transient, seemingly generated by CPR alone. They are, most likely, the man’s last lucid moments before his heart gives out permanently.

  His wife stands with a hand over her mouth in shock. When the old man wakes again and looks around in bewilderment I tell him, ‘Your heart keeps stopping and may stop for good. If you have anything important to say to your wife, now’s the time.’

  If I were the patient and a medic was telling me I had seconds to live, I’d like to think I’d find something meaningful to express to my partner, at least tell her that I loved her. But our man just stares at us, then at his wife, then back at us. I see on the monitor that his rhythm is starting to change, and I know he’s about to slip away.

  ‘Well?’ I prompt him. ‘Anything to say to your wife?’

  But his stare becomes a glare, and all he says is, ‘Nup.’

  Then he flatlines and dies.

  Later I feel bad for setting him up. Maybe there was too much to say in just a few seconds. Maybe he’d already told his wife how much he loved her and didn’t want some paramedic directing the scene. Maybe their love language wasn’t poetry, wasn’t even verbal. Or maybe death is simply a private experience, as many believe it is, one that excludes all others, even life partners: a final pause of inward reflection.

  In the wake of the man’s death, Jerry and I sit down for a debrief over chicken curry at an Indian restaurant. Dipping a bit of poppadum in mango chutney, Jerry questions the point of some of our resuscitation attempts.

  ‘Death’s natural in old people, right? And the younger ones I’ve saved I reckon went back to their TV dinners, mouthing off and being the same slobs they were before.’

  Either that, or they wind up brain-dead in nursing homes,
which is what happened to the first two saves of a paramedic friend of mine from St Ives. The disillusionment about those cases nearly broke him.

  ‘People in cardiac arrest I’ve treated seem to never leave hospital,’ I say. ‘They stay in ICU for a week until the family switch off life support.’

  ‘You got the lucky streak, eh?’ Jerry chuckles. ‘Remind me not to take you to the races.’

  My only consolations have been the hope that these brain-dead patients are registered for organ donation, that their deaths may in some way help others have a better or longer life, and that families get a chance to say goodbye.

  We pull away from the Indian restaurant and I tell Jerry about my brother Mark, how he saved a guy in the surf. Jerry says he also had a save not long ago, a famous actor in cardiac arrest on the beach.

  ‘Far as I know, he’s alive and well.’

  It could’ve been me sent to that job, if I’d been on shift that day. It’s strange, this feeling of jealousy again, the same I had with my brother’s save. It’s mostly luck of the draw: right place, right time. Even so, Jerry agrees that my saving of a life is long overdue.

  ‘It’s probably only my second one ever,’ he says, trying to make me feel better.

  ‘What was the other?’

  ‘Ten years ago in the Cross. Guy was stabbed in the heart. Frank and I were parked around the corner having burgers. We got there in seconds. Just threw him on the stretcher, and I jumped on top like I did on that last bloke and I stuck my finger right in his heart while Frank floored it to St Vinnies. Guy pulled through.’

  It’s a remarkable story, especially as Jerry’s pretty relaxed when it comes to the clinical stuff. Some think he’s a slacker, but he just keeps his gunpowder dry. I’ve seen him work wonders on critical patients.