I love these posts from author and EMS expert Dianna Benson where she weaves medical detail into a fictional piece.
Welcome back, Dianna!
I shake my head to full awake
from my cat-nap, and gear up for the trauma call less than a minute drive away.
Once my partner and I roll on scene, I note the three cop cars arriving.
Additional information regarding
the call flashes across our ambulance laptop screen.
Proceed with caution. Law enforcement dispatched.
“What’s the deal?” my partner
yells out the driver window at a cop rushing toward the building.
“Another worker pushed the guy.”
“Ah,” I say with a nod.
“Attempted homicide.”
“Or homicide, but if the guy’s
not already dead, he’s gonna need us.” My partner jumps out of our ambulance.
We grab a C-collar (cervical
collar) and a backboard, and toss it onto our stretcher already loaded with EMS equipment and supplies.
“Remember caution?” I remind my
partner.
“Yeah, yeah. Guy was pushed not
shot or stabbed. Let’s go.”
I really didn’t want to hang back
either. Our patient’s life may be over if we wait.
Inside the building, we push
through a crowd of gawkers. I notice three cops drawing their guns at a man
choke-holding some young woman, her wide eyes glossed-over.
“Let her go,” the cop at the left
yells out. “Now.”
I’m hoping the guy follows the
demand or we’ll have more than one patient. As I rest my hand on my radio in
case I need to request additional EMS crews, I
scan the area for an injured man on the ground. I spot our patient on the other
side lying supine and lifeless in a pool of blood on the cement, his attacker
in the middle and blocking us from our patient. I glance up and see the catwalk
and assume our patient was pushed off of the suspended walkway about twenty
feet above.
The guy fell twenty feet? I think
to myself. If he’s alive over there,
he’s in critical condition.
“Clear out,” the cop to the right
shouts. “Everyone. Out of this room. Now.”
The crowd scampers away. My
partner and I hold our position behind the cops. The perpetrator doesn’t have a
weapon, so there’s no danger to us.
After a few drawn-out minutes of the
cops warning the perp to let the woman go, and our patient remaining lifeless
and out of my reach on the ground in the near distance, I somehow dig up my
most gentle tone and interject, “Sir, I don’t think you want to hurt her. Do
you?”
The perp jerks his head in my
direction. Ten seconds tick by with him just staring at me as if pleading me to
help him out of this. “Ah…no. No, not really.”
“I didn’t think so. How about
letting her go and we’ll talk?” Stop
blocking me from my patient. If he’s not already dead, he needs me now. Needed
me minutes ago.
“Talk? Yeah, yeah,” he nods, “I just need to
talk.” Chest panting, arms shaking, the perpetrator shoves the woman aside and drops
on the ground. All three cops pounce on him and drag his arms behind his back.
I roll the front of the stretcher
around the chaos on the ground; my partner pushes from the back. As I pass the
perp, I ignore his insistent yells to talk with me since my focus is on my
patient.
“Sir?” I say to the lifeless man as
we approach him.
No answer. No movement of any
kind.
I slide my fingers to his neck
and find a thready carotid pulse. His chest is rising and falling in steady
rhythm bi-laterally.
My partner holds his head in an
in-line spinal stabilization position as I strap the C-collar around his neck. I
slip a towel underneath his head for hemorrhage control and feel for trauma. I
find an open skull wound, crepitus bone, and flesh.
Two firefighters appear at our
side and assist me with log rolling the unconscious patient onto a spine board
and strapping his body down. I secure the man’s c-collared head to the
backboard with head blocks, straps and tape, allowing my partner to finally
release the manual c-spine stabilization.
“What do you need from me?” some
guy asks. “I’m his supervisor.”
“How old is he?”
The manger answers that pertinent
question as well as all my others, as I connect my patient to our cardiac
monitor. Less than a minute later, I’ve assessed all vital signs and the heart
rhythm, as my partner performs a rapid trauma examination. Our patient remains
unconscious. I’m thinking internal bleeding is the main cause and he’s headed
to hypovolemic shock, and if that’s the case, surgical interventions are vital.
No more time to waste on scene.
“Femur fracture,” my partner
says.
“Among other things,” I say. “Let’s
go.”
All of us lift the backboarded
man onto the stretcher, and roll it out to my ambulance.
As one of the firefighters drive,
my partner and I attend to our trauma patient in the back with the assistance
of another firefighter. Our patient remains unconscious. In order to protect
his airway, I slide a lubricated oropharyngeal airway down his throat. With a
curved laryngoscope, I lift the epiglottis and gain a visual of the glottic
opening and white vocal cords. I drop the orotrachael tube between the cords,
down the trachea. I connect a bag valve mask over the tube opening. To keep him
oxygenated, I squeeze the football-size bulb every five seconds.
“Take over bagging,” I say to the
firefighter, and he grabs the bag valve mask from my hands.
I spike an IV bag as my partner
slides in an eighteen-gauge IV needle into our patients left arm. Since the
patient is unconscious, there’s no point to administer pain meds.
I grab the radio mic. “Wake Med
ED, this is EMS 16.”
“Go ahead EMS
16.”
“We are en route with a thirty-three
year old male. Trauma patient. Twenty-foot plus fall onto concrete.
Unconscious. Intubated. Open head trauma posterior. Fractured femur. Normal sinus cardiac rhythm. BP 95/52 and
falling. 182 heart rate. ETA 5 minutes.
Even if this man’s body survives,
his brain will probably never be the same. I swallow the sadness clogging my
throat, hoping he doesn’t have any children, and I re-focus on finishing my job
on this trauma call.
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Dianna T. Benson is a 2011
Genesis Winner, a 2011 Genesis double Semi-Finalist, a 2010 Daphne de Maurier Finalist,
and a 2007 Golden Palm Finalist. In 2012, she signed a nine-book contract with
Ellechor Publishing House. Her first book,
The Hidden Son, released in print world-wide March 1, 2013.
After majoring in
communications and a ten-year career as a travel agent, Dianna left the travel
industry to earn her EMS degree. An EMT and a
Haz-Mat and FEMA Operative since 2005, she loves the adrenaline rush of
responding to medical emergencies and helping people in need. Her suspense
novels about adventurous characters thrown into tremendous circumstances
provide readers with a similar kind of rush. Dianna lives in North Carolina
with her husband and their three athletic children. Learn more about Dianna at
www.diannatbenson.com.
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