Hard-Hat and I are meandering our way back to station after a quiet morning. The sun’s been blazing all day, we’ve been ’standing-by’ different districts of the city, finding sunny spots to recline the front seats, slap on the sunglasses and doze in the heat.
The good Burghers of the Capital are too busy enjoying the sunshine to bother their arses getting ill. Who wants to sit in an ED when you could be lying in the Meadows with a cold one in your fist?
The radio buzzes and it is immediately apparent that things have gone Very Wrong Indeed, the despatcher doesn’t even wait for us to say “hello” - blurting his message as soon as the channel is clear.
“410 emergency call to A&E to collect Medic One for HorrendousSoundingRTA on BusyCommuterRoute.”
Medic One is a dedicated vehicle parked at A&E that “brings the hospital to the patient”. When it was devised as a concept 25 years ago it was revolutionary, transporting two doctors and a nurse to patients who faced lengthy extrications from debris or road accidents.
I’ve called Medic One out once, been at several jobs that it’s attended, including a triple roll-over on my first ever shift.
Your first Medic One shout is surprisingly easy, you’re so overwhelmed by the scale of the job or extent of the injuries that you run about, fetching and carrying, not involved, little more than a bystander.
After a while you learn to get stuck in; to see the gaps where everyone else is working and fill them.
Every Medic One shout has a cast of characters on scene, there’s the caller; the crew who arrived on scene and shat themselves, stabbing buttons on the radio, begging for help.
Then there are the back-up crews who arrive afterwards, thankful not to be first on scene, not to be responsible for the situation until an officer arrives.
And then there’s the driver. The doctors aren’t blue-light trained, so a crew is despatched to the hospital to drive the trauma team to the incident.
Today that’s us.
I’ve never driven Medic One before, I don’t know the vehicle, I don’t know the layout or what’s expected of me.
I screw my eyes closed and mutter a prayer to the Gods of Despatch. Maybe when I open my eyes I’ll be working with Pally, or Node…even Jaffa would do at the moment, someone who knows their stuff, who’ll look after me and hold my hand at the edge of this abyss.
Sunlight squints through my eyelashes, I turn to the attendant’s seat. There sits Hard-Hat, two months out of school, her eyes and mouth forming three perfect circles as she looks to me to have the answers.
I don’t know what to do, so I light up the roof and U-turn hard in the road, stomping the gas down the hill towards the ED where staff bustle between the front door and Medic One.
“Hard-Hat? Grab our PPE and the response bag, I’ll go and have a word.”
My boots take me from my motor to the Medic One bay, a nurse hustling around the doors, securing gear, locking boxes shut. At the back of the vehicle, a young registrar (Reg) stands on one leg, hopping into a pair of hi-vis trousers; as wobbly on his feet as I feel on mine.
“You my crew?”
I nod.
“You’ll need these.”
A hedgehog of keys lands in my paw and I jog to the driver’s seat to work out which is the ignition. Hard-Hat jumps in, cramming our jackets and helmets in at her feet.
“Reg needs to sit there.”
An ED consultant at my window, pointing at the bench seat between Hard-Hat and I.
We stamp our jackets under the seats, chuck the helmets over the head rests and shuffle up to make room for the nervous young doctor while the nurse and consultant strap themselves into the back seats. I start the engine, push the gas and nose us out of the car-park. Medic One is a Mercedes and our Mercedes ambulances can shift like shit on a greased shovel.
The consultant at my ear.
“ETA?”
“Six minutes.”
“Excellent, I’m going to brief Reg, alright?”
“Course.”
He starts a lecture to his junior colleague, battering into him those actions that are second nature to ambulance crews: safety, access, communication, triage and THEN airway, breathing, circulation. We pull onto the main road and I open her up.
Medic One grumbles and snorts, sighing up the hill, apparently it’s older than the Mercs in our garage. I curse under my breath and update the doctor.
“ETA eight.”
“K.”
I’m not stupid when it comes to blue-lights, I can drive at speed when I have to, but I’m not fool-hardy enough to push the limits of a vehicle that I’ve only just stepped into. I don’t know the motor, it doesn’t know me, we’re both feeling our way along the road as fast as I dare.
It is, apparently, one of the first times that Reg has travelled up front on blue lights, because as he listens to his superior’s briefing, his eyes rarely leave the traffic. I feel him tense his muscles when I face down oncoming cars, muttering “RedlightredlightREDLIGHT” as I blast through junctions and when the one car that hasn’t seen us pulls into our path he blurts a little “Jesus!”
The consultant wraps up his briefing, ending with the statement “If you get stuck, ask the ambulance crew, they have more experience at doing this than you ever will.”
Thanks mate, no pressure, huh?
A radio bleep, my Controller’s voice through the speaker.
“Medic One…Stand by for incident update.”
“Medic One, receiving.”
“You are responding to a job so distinctive that Kal’s local readers would know the people involved…suffice to say it sounds horrible and you should be scared shitless.”
My sternum becomes a long sliver of ice.
“Thankyou Control, all received.”
Through roadworks and roundabouts I pull onto PopularCommuterRoute and see…nothing.
There’s no crash here.
Where’s the fucking crash?
The whine of a siren behind me and a silver Audi traffic car nips at my heels, I shimmy Medic One into the gutter, the consultant butts in.
“Why are we pulling over?”
“We’ve got an escort.”
“Ahh, excellent, when was that arranged?”
He thinks this has been arranged? I’m just thrilled to find someone else who knows what’s going on, probably shouldn’t let that show.
“I requested it through Control.”
“Oh! Good job.”
The Audi smacks past us and I swing into its wake, he can afford to be more aggressive at tail-gating the traffic, he has the braking and acceleration potential that I lack.
I just hope he’s going to the same job as me.
Round the corner and the road is filled with lights, emergency vehicles are parked diagonally across lanes, in the absence of the traffic cops everyone has tried to seal off the incident to the best of their ability. I weave my aging vehicle through the gaps, following the madly waving firemen into a barely ambulance sized parking space.
Here we find three fire engines, two ambulances, an officer’s car is parked behind them. Police cars and bikes are descending on the scene from both ends of the road.
In the middle of this maelstrom lies a car, its wheels waving forlornly at the clouds, the roof crushed to the head rests and a conclave of firefighters and green suits prostrated on the road around it. That would be our entrapment, then.
People die, most survive, there are tears and recriminations, the emotional impact of what’s occurred slaps me hard in the chops. Late to the party as I am, there’s little for me to do, so I busy myself with treating and assessing the minor injuries of various other affected parties.
Once the worst is over we load the consultant back into our vehicle and blue-light him back to A&E where his skills are urgently needed.
At hospital I return Medic One’s keys to a nurse and boil the kettle. I visit the chocolate machine for Hard-hat and I and on returning to our motor, discover she’s done the same.
She’s sitting in the vehicle, head in hands, staring at her boots. It’s been her first really big job, I should say something, but I’m shaking as hard as she is.
“You alright, mate?”
“I had my hat on backwards.”
“You what?”
“I’ve never worn it before, I didn’t know, they don’t TEACH you that in College, I was standing in the middle of that job and Woody came up to me and said “Hard-hat? Do you know you’ve got your helmet on back to front?”"
A laugh bubbles from my throat, it steals the energy of the tears and vomit and rage I want to expel and the two of us roar at the image of the visor down the nape of her neck, the black sizing wheel slap bang in the middle of her forehead.
And a nickname is born.
