About the Book
Benjamin Gilmour has been a paramedic for more than twenty years. He has seen his fair share of drama. But the summer of 2008 remains etched in his memory for the very worst reasons.
In this riveting memoir, Gilmour recounts the call-outs that summer: some dangerous, some gruesome, some downright ridiculous. And we meet fellow paramedic John who, they say, can get a laugh out of everyone except the dead. As the city heats up, however, even John begins to lose his sense of humour. People are unravelling – and Benjamin and John are no exception.
The Gap is a vivid portrait of the lead-up to Christmas; an unflinching, no-holds-barred look at what happens after the triple-zero call is made – the drugs, nightclubs, brothels, drunk rich kids, billionaires, domestic disputes, the elderly, emergency births, even a kidnapping. Patients share their innermost feelings, and we witness their loneliness, their despair and their hopes.
Beautifully written and sharply observed, The Gap exposes the fragility of our lives and the lengths that paramedics will go to try to save us.
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Mental Health Support Services
About the Author
Also by Benjamin Gilmour
Imprint
Read more at Penguin Books Australia
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book has been written from detailed notes I took while working as a paramedic on ambulances in Sydney during the summer of 2007–08. An early draft was finished in 2009, but I considered the material too sensitive to publish at the time. Ten years on, enough has changed to allow for the story to be told.
Although this book narrates true events, the names and ages of patients have been altered, as have locations, times and other identifying features, to protect their privacy. The names of my fellow paramedics have also been disguised, with the exception of my friend John, and in some cases the characteristics of two or more colleagues have intentionally been merged to further respect their wish for anonymity. For narrative purposes, there are instances where the order of some events has been shifted. Conversations are either recorded word for word based on my notes, or roughly as I remember them.
All views expressed in this book are mine alone and do not represent those of other paramedics or my employer. Nor does my attitude and conduct in this book necessarily reflect the person and paramedic I am today, ten years later, or the attitude and conduct of my colleagues in the present. I no longer work in Sydney, and every main player in this book has moved on too. But what will never change is the trauma and death paramedics are exposed to, and the impact this can have on us and the way we manage our mental health.
While there are many external factors that affect paramedics’ wellbeing beyond the influence of an employer, since writing this book a decade ago remarkable work has been done by ambulance services in Australia to address the emotional and psychological needs of staff. NSW Ambulance, for example, has hired full-time psychologists, expanded their chaplaincy and peer support programs and conducted wellness workshops. While organisational change can be complex and slow, the shift in workplace culture and the generous funding and strategies implemented to improve paramedic wellbeing should be acknowledged.
A word of warning: there are moments of black comedy in this book that some readers may find confronting. But an authentic narrative of this kind cannot exist without the gallows humour that paramedics are famous for, a humour shared by many doctors and nurses, police and undertakers. Studies have shown that this type of humour has an important psychological and social function in professions that deal with pain and sorrow on a daily basis. It’s a way of slaying the monster, of dealing with stress and keeping up morale.
There is also frank discussion of mental illness and suicide. The manuscript has been assessed by psychologists at Everymind for impact on vulnerable readers, and dozens of changes have been made to soften imagery and remove explicit detail. Even so, if you feel triggered while reading, please reach out, make a call and ask for help. A list of excellent crisis support services that can assist you are included in the back of the book.
Lastly, since writing about some of my experiences with poor survival rates of cardiac arrest, I’ve been involved in more than half a dozen saves. Increased community CPR and access to defibrillators, along with improved paramedic resuscitation techniques, have played a part in this.
Special thanks goes to my former colleagues, both paramedics and nurses, for their ongoing friendship and reading of the manuscript; to my brilliant publisher Sophie Ambrose, editor Tom Langshaw and agent James Wills; to psychologist Sara Bartlett and the suicide prevention team at Everymind; to the Dixon family, Antony Loewenstein, John Zubrzycki, Tony Ayres, Craig Henderson, Marele Day and Alex Warner; and to my parents and my ever-supportive wife, Kaspia.
Benjamin Gilmour
August 2019
CHAPTER 1
At the highest point of The Gap, where the clifftop rises like a tower, it is ninety metres to the sea. Tourists and daytrippers come in groups to stand at the wood-and-wire fence, inhaling the sunrise. They chatter about nothing of consequence, but are quickly made speechless by nature’s might. I’ve seen them stand like people at a crossroads, suddenly conscious of their smallness. The Gap is a place of great change, new journeys, different paths. But for others who come, their hope is long lost. To them, The Gap is a backdrop for the final act of life. It’s the edge of the world from which they leave. Fifty or more go over each year, from the top, or further around where the fence is easier to scale. They do it at dawn, in the heaviest rain, and on the quietest of nights.
For us local paramedics the beauty up here is hard to admire.
We’re called to a woman in her twenties who’s been seen climbing the fence. I slow the ambulance and turn around, head back that way.
‘How inconsiderate,’ says John, my paramedic partner. ‘Killing herself so close to our knock-off time.’
He’s the king of dark humour, our John. It diffuses frustrations, lightens a little the tragedies we see, and helps us to get through each shift.
‘Least we’ve come well prepared.’ John opens the glovebox and pulls out a packet of peanuts.
‘Ever nibbled Nobby’s Nuts?’
Standing by at suicide attempts can lead to awful hunger. Some suicidal patients will hesitate for hours. For paramedics the tedium of the wait is bad enough, but the hunger is worse. Emergency nuts have long been the answer.
Patients who are still on the edge when we get to the scene don’t often follow through. Many others have fallen before we manage to get there. Sometimes we see their bodies on the rocks or in the water. If the chopper or rescue squad don’t reach them in time, they can disappear forever.
Just past the little row of shops at Watsons Bay a police officer waves us down. He approaches and says the girl can’t be found. He thinks she must have gone over. Her sneakers were neatly placed at the edge. Why people leave their shoes is anyone’s guess. Perhaps to not drag any dirt from this world into the next.
We park the ambulance behind the girl’s blue hatchback and see a man – must be her father – cross the road. John opens the bag of salted peanuts, throws a few into his mouth. He cr
unches down, then passes the packet over.
We watch the father and the police officer through the windscreen. It’s like a silent movie. All I hear is our crinkling peanut packet and the crunching of Nobby’s Nuts as the tragedy unfolds.
A constable extends his baton with a flick. He smashes the driver’s window of the girl’s car and carefully reaches in, taking a folded letter off the dash. He hands it to the father. With trembling fingers the man slowly opens it. As he reads his daughter’s suicide note his lips begin to quiver. He runs a hand through his thinning hair: once, twice, a third time. Then he finishes reading and his chest begins to heave in sighs of grief. His head tilts back and he closes his eyes like somebody injured. When he opens them again a gush of tears spills down his face. We’re mesmerised by his anguish, his agony.
‘Fuck it,’ says John, twisting the top of the packet and returning it to the glovebox. He gets out and walks to the back of the wagon to get the father a blanket. Then he goes and puts it round the man’s shoulders. It’s summertime, and not even cold. But the man huddles into it like a child. John puts a comforting hand on his shoulder, stands beside him in silence.
Easing pain is our job. It’s natural to want to reassure this father, perhaps remind him that his daughter isn’t alone, that she’s with a thousand souls who’ve gone before her. But John knows, as I do, that the man has lost his little girl and no words can bring her back. She can never be a number, never like the rest who’ve ended their lives up here. She’s the world to him, the centre of the world, the one he might have saved. The one we might have saved, if we’d reached her in time.
We streak into the city on another urgent call. An old man on Victoria Street, Kings Cross, hasn’t been seen for days. Usually it’s a case of someone going on holiday without informing their neighbours. But every now and then we find a dead body.
The neighbour meets us at the entrance, says, ‘The guy, his name is Stanley, he’s an artist type.’
We knock at the door, but don’t hear an answer.
‘You boot, I’ll shoulder,’ says John, looking over.
When the door splinters open we find Stanley on the floor, conscious and a bit confused, mumbling and muttering. There’s weakness down his left side and his speech is slightly slurred, and whenever he opens his mouth we see his tongue has gone purple.
‘Ever seen that in a stroke?’ I ask John.
‘Been eating crayons,’ John speculates. He puts a finger into Stanley’s mouth and pulls out a stick of lilac.
‘There you go,’ John says with pride.
As we carry Stanley out we see portraits on the walls, all of the same young woman nude. In one framed work her breasts are resting on her belly like two small cupcakes, and her slightly parted legs show a hint of pubic hair.
‘You’ve got a muse?’ John asks him.
The old man’s face lights up, his confusion gone.
‘That’s Helena,’ he says, now smiling.
Back in the seventies Helena used to ‘work the street’ in front of his block, he tells us. Between her clients she’d come to his place to have a rest. He’d serve her Bushells tea and Anzac biscuits, and she’d sit for him. He’d sketch Helena almost every day. Soon enough she was the only subject he was interested in. He sketched her several times a week for years. And then one day she vanished.
‘No goodbyes, no nothing,’ Stanley says. ‘I knew she’d disappear eventually.’
We lift him up and take him to the ambulance. He’ll need a brain scan to check for a stroke.
‘That’s why I drew Helena as much as I could, why I still draw her now, why I copy my portraits over and over, so I’ll never forget, and her face and her body will be fresh in my mind. That’s love, I suppose. She’s been gone thirty years; she could’ve died long ago for all I know. But even if she’s dead, she lives on in my heart.’
At the hospital later I ask John if he’s ever had a muse. My girlfriend Kaspia, with her classic Renaissance figure, is the perfect muse for me.
‘Antonio? A muse?’ John laughs, referring to his long-time Brazilian boyfriend. ‘He’s got a good body, but I wouldn’t sit there sketching it. Not like you, sketching everything in your little black book.’
So he still has a problem with my little black book. It’s a Moleskine diary I occasionally write in, full of drawings of faces, snippets of dialogue, the stuff anyone interested in observing and writing makes note of.
‘When you first arrived at Bondi everyone thought you were spying.’
‘Spying? Who for – the Russians?’
‘Bugger the Russians,’ he says. ‘Ambulance management more like. We thought you were gathering evidence on us, your fellow paramedics, passing it on, up the bloody chain.’
I could tell at the time my colleagues at Bondi were nervous. It didn’t help that I’d stumbled on their secret brewery set-up in an unused laundry of the ambulance station. At first I’d mistaken it for a meth lab. I mentioned my discovery to John, and it vanished overnight.
‘You can’t have been that worried,’ I say to John. ‘You’ve been telling me your scandalous stories from the day we met.’
John laughs. ‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Yeah, for sure,’ I reply. It’s always when I’m obviously jotting away in my little black book that John will share his most salacious tales of life as a handsome gay man in Sydney, about ambulance work in the eighties, about smoking on the way to emergencies and the triple-0 discos, the burnouts in vacant lots and happy gas on night shifts. Never once has he held up his hand to stop me transcribing his stories. Never once has he asked me to omit a sordid detail.
‘Anyway, I’m not always writing about you,’ I tell him.
He’s suddenly offended. ‘Why not? Don’t tell me I’m boring.’
But he knows he isn’t boring. He’s never been boring.
They say the dead are the only ones John can’t make laugh. Although I’m sure I’ve seen a few of them smile.
On a Kings Cross street corner an alcoholic we know is lying on his back. A crowd stands around him, gawking. Like many people with alcohol addictions who try to stop their drinking, Bobby will throw the occasional fit.
We discuss the best way to get him to our stretcher. He’s breathing okay; just a bit groggy. As we’re moving to lift him a man in a suit taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Excuse me, don’t you think you should put him in the recovery position?’
‘Pardon?’ I reply, taken aback.
‘Recovery position. I did a first-aid course and that’s what I’d do if I were you.’
John chuckles beside me. ‘Be our guest, sir,’ he says, lowering Bobby.
We step back a little to allow the man in. The good Samaritan hesitates, then with annoyance he sets down his briefcase and kneels by the patient. His lips curl in disgust at Bobby’s unwashed T-shirt and grimy black jeans. Then he places his clean office hands on our patient’s leg and shoulder. I’m surprised and impressed. But just as the corporate guy rolls Bobby over, our patient wakes up and opens his eyes.
‘What tha fuck are you doing?’ Bobby yells in anger. ‘Get tha fuck off me! Leave me alone or I’ll kill ya!’ He spits and kicks a leg at the stranger.
‘Careful,’ John warns.
The businessman stumbles backwards in horror. John steadies his elbow to stop him from falling. Then the man grabs his briefcase and hurries away.
Yeah, John’s never boring. Maybe it’s why he’s mentioned so often in my little black book.
Bobby snores on our trolley in the emergency-department corridor of St Vincent’s Hospital, waiting for a bed. This wait can sometimes take a while, so John has made us tea and sits beside Bobby slurping his loudly. Slurp, snore, slurp, snore. The noise gets the attention of a few passing nurses, who laugh and shake their heads at my partner. John takes things seriously when he needs to. But between those fleeting moments, the job is a circus.
Ten minutes later we’re rushing to an asthma attack in Bondi Junction. O
ur control centre has taken a call from a woman too breathless to pass on her address. Luckily it’s come from a landline, and the call has been traced.
Shooting through a red light, I’m careful not to spill John’s hospital tea in his lap. ‘Don’t you scald my greatest asset!’ he warns me.
The caller doesn’t answer the doorbell when we ring. We knock and shout and ring again. Nothing. We see the curtains drawn and speculate that the woman must have made her own way to hospital. Perhaps her husband or a friend has picked her up, John says. There’s no car out front, and when I look through the mail slot there’s no movement in the house.
‘No one’s home,’ I say.
John returns to the ambulance to finish his tea.
‘Take a look round the back,’ he calls over his shoulder.
I head down the alleyway alongside the house and find the rear entrance. There’s a shabby wall too high to see over, and a wooden gate that’s locked. I grab the top of the brickwork and try my best to scale the wall, then curse as the soles of my rescue boots struggle to get purchase. But I make it over, and then I’m down the other side. Few professions allow a person to break and enter like this, and we’ve done it twice today already. It’s rather enjoyable, a bit James Bond, although usually there’s no one home. Once, in North Sydney, I climbed a drainpipe to a balcony and into a flat where I found a woman murdered in a gruesome crime of passion. Now and then we’ll get a case like that.
‘Hello?’ I call out.
There’s a sliding door to the sunroom. I knock. No response. Cupping my hands around my face, I peer into the gloom. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I see indoor palms, some hanging ferns … and a pair of skinny legs sticking out from behind a bamboo lounge. I squint again. Definitely a pair of skinny legs.
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