‘Damn it,’ I say.
I whisk the portable radio from my waist and call for backup, hoping John will hear my transmission and bring our gear to the front door. Then I dash round the side of the house and find a tiny bathroom window slightly open. There’s a rusty barbecue nearby so I roll it against the wall and clamber up. I push the window up and go in feet first. There’s hardly enough room to squeeze through, but I’ve had plenty of practice. In my second year as an ambo a few of my colleagues saw me on the dance floor and began to call me Snake Hips. Ever since then I’ve been the one they send through cat flaps.
There’s a bang and a clatter as I knock a mug of toothbrushes onto the tiles. Then my feet hit the ground.
When I reach the woman in the sunroom I see she’s blue in the face. First I go to the front door and unlock it for John. I’m relieved to see him waiting there with our oxygen, defibrillator and drug kit.
‘I nearly choked on my tea,’ he says, pushing into the hall and handing me a bag.
The woman lies on her back, still clutching her phone. She’s got no pulse so I start CPR. Under my hand I feel a few ribs pop off the sternum. Meanwhile, John cuts off her singlet and connects the defibrillator. She’s in ventricular fibrillation, a quivering of the heart. We push some buttons and the machine charges with a whine. It’s an ear-piercing sound, rising in pitch like an air-raid siren. With it rises the tension in the room, as if a bomb is about to go off.
‘Press to shock,’ comes the robotic voice prompt.
John calls ‘Clear!’ and checks that I don’t have a hand on the patient. Then he presses the shock button and the woman jolts with the current.
Her heart flatlines.
Our backup crew comes through the door and prepares to intubate while John cannulates for adrenalin. Then, a minute later, the woman’s husband arrives home, whistling and swinging his satchel. It’s just like any other day. Only this time he stumbles in on four paramedics trying to revive his lifeless wife, who lies there with her bra cut off.
‘Sorry, mate,’ I say. ‘But she called us and we found her not breathing. There’s no pulse. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.’ I tell him this while pumping on her chest.
The man is rooted to the spot, snap-frozen. When I glance his way again, he seems to have taken my advice. Oddly, though, he’s now sitting on the lounge blankly watching a soap on television, cigarette between his fingers. John notices too, and raises an eyebrow. Smoke creeps around the room like a ghost. Immediate reactions to traumatic stress can be unpredictable, bizarre even; we accept that. Some people scream, some laugh, some run. Others smoke and watch daytime TV. Reactions to death can make as much sense as the death itself. The same could be said, I guess, about the paramedic’s black humour.
At Prince of Wales Hospital, after more resuscitation, the woman is pronounced dead. This doesn’t surprise me; it never does. People think saving lives is our bread and butter. But a full recovery after cardiac arrest is the rarest of things.
John’s ready to go again, and so am I. We hope our next case will be less of a downer. But our job is a lucky dip of drama; we never know what’s coming.
The billionaire’s wife has lips like a groper’s. They open and close and splutter through tears. Her name is Felicity and her wedding ring, with its giant diamond set in gold, is abandoned on the table. She’s alone in her mansion as the sun drops down behind a view of the harbour.
‘How can we help you, Felicity?’ asks John, sinking into a leather recliner like he lives here too. He knows how to make himself comfortable, John. Whatever the case, he’ll breeze in and, unless it’s a hoarder’s home, go straight for the sofa. There he’ll do what few men can; cross his legs and his arms at the same time, before casually getting a history from the patient as if he’s at a cocktail party.
‘Please help … I nearly killed myself.’
‘Nearly?’
‘Yes. At the last minute I stopped myself.’
‘You stayed your own hand.’
‘I did.’
‘You saved your own life.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. So what are we here for?’
‘It might happen again.’
‘You’ve been feeling depressed?’
‘Fucking depressed.’
‘If you’re suicidal we need to take you to hospital.’
‘I hate him! I hate him!’
‘Who do you hate?
‘Jeremy.’
‘Your husband?’
She nods. ‘The bastard. He can’t do this anymore. He’s got me in a snow dome and he’s shaking me up. He’s always off on business, out of town, overseas. All to make me happy, so he says. Times are tough. Works late, every night. And what do I do? Sit here alone, snorting cocaine. And tomorrow, what then? Go to the races on my own. Imagine, the races on your own!’
Felicity’s case isn’t unusual. Sometimes, in the pursuit of money, other things are neglected, important things like health, spirituality and love. It’s no wonder the most affluent can be the most miserable. My work in the eastern suburbs has proven this to me. Anxiety, depression and suicide rates are out of control. Just yesterday we counselled a chief executive who could ‘only’ sell his company for $25 million. He too had lost the will to live.
‘On paramedic wages, with less to lose, we’ll never have these problems,’ says John.
As we drive back to the station we stop at a liquor store to pick up a six-pack. We often have beers together after work; it’s our way of debriefing. But we shouldn’t buy booze in uniform; it’s not allowed. When I say this to John he fixes me with a look and says, ‘Who’re you working for? Us or them? Don’t be a killjoy. No one gives a shit.’
When he returns to the ambulance he tells me a man waiting in the queue at the bottle shop tapped him on the shoulder and thanked him for saving his life last year. The guy then insisted on paying for John’s beer.
‘And there you were worrying about complaints,’ John says. ‘Truth is, everyone in this country wants to shout us a drink.’ I ask John for the story, the life-saving deed he performed on his benefactor.
John shrugs. ‘Who bloody knows. I’ve never seen him before. He probably mistook me for another ambo. But I’ll always take credit for saving a life. Wouldn’t you?’
CHAPTER 2
Beams of light sneak between the shutters as I sleep through my snooze alarms. I’ve woken alone again in the apartment I rent on the top floor of a Darlinghurst terrace. I think about Kaspia, my girlfriend and muse, my travel companion, a burlesque dancer, the woman I love, who is no longer here.
It’s a trial separation, we agreed, for three months. We’re in love but we fight way too much. It’s hard to understand, most of all for us. A decade of travelling and living together, and now this. Separation. Kaspia in a place in Balmain, me here in Darlinghurst. We haven’t talked for weeks and I’m not as relieved as I thought I would be. My apartment’s too quiet, too empty, too dark. And the only arguments are down on the street, between working girls and pimps. It’s funny how they make me feel, these late-night shouting matches peppered with expletives. I get warm all over, nostalgic, and I’m reminded of the counsellor who told us once that arguments between couples are a special kind of intimacy.
I roll out of bed for a shower, then pull on my uniform. I turn on the hairdryer, comb up my quiff, add some wax. Half the job’s done simply by having a smart presentation, winning the confidence of patients. It’s reassuring to people. No matter how I feel or where I go, my comb comes along.
Like a seagull suspended by an updraught, the rescue chopper hovers over Bondi’s northern cliffs and winches up a dead man.
We park the ambulance on the ninth hole of the golf course overlooking the sea. People are playing the eighth hole as the helicopter lands on the seventh to give us the body. It could be a fisherman swept off the rocks. But we suspect it’s more likely a man who fell from The Gap last night. The outgoing crew told us about i
t. That’s two gone over in a day and a half.
John looks at the golfers. ‘You go to the trouble of killing yourself and no one seems to care. They just keep on hitting little balls into holes.’
The ambulance smells like fish and sea water on our drive to the morgue. We stop to pick up coffee and croissants. There’s bossa nova playing on the ambulance stereo.
The perils of the ocean are part of summer in this city. A bluebottle sting at Bronte Beach takes us back into our area, a catchment extending from Bronte to Point Piper and up to Watsons Bay. Swimming into a school of bluebottles can make a person rather sick, but this sting’s not too bad. After treating and releasing the patient, John suggests we park the ambulance at the northern end of the beach. He’s supposed to be doing his paperwork but instead he sits there gazing at one of the mansions the way a kid might look at a lolly shop. The multistorey building overlooking the ocean has heavily tinted windows for privacy. Everyone knows it’s the house of Australian actor Heath Ledger.
‘Did I ever tell you how much I love him?’ says John.
‘Yes, you did,’ I reply.
John is a celebrity-watcher par excellence. At the hospital he browses the trashy magazines the nurses bring in, getting all the latest Hollywood gossip. Right now he’s hoping Ledger will emerge on one of his balconies wearing nothing more than a bathrobe. Several months ago John was working with Jerry, another Bondi paramedic, when they saw Heath Ledger jogging between Bondi and Tamarama. As Jerry recounted it, John leant out the window of the ambulance and shouted, ‘Yoo-hoo, Heath! Hello!’ and gave the actor a big flamboyant wave. Apparently Ledger looked up, but didn’t respond. No wave, no smile, nothing. He even seemed annoyed. The actor’s response hurt John badly. He wouldn’t let it go. Put him in a foul mood for weeks.
John opens the door of the ambulance and gets out. He smooths down the creases in his shirt with his hands.
‘What’re you doing?’ I ask.
‘Going up.’
‘Up where?’
‘To Heath’s house.’
‘What?’
He slams the door and starts climbing the stairs of the property. I wind down my window and call after him.
‘John! Are you crazy?’
But he ignores me and keeps ascending the path to the mansion. Then he disappears around the side of the house. His derring-do is well known, but this could be going too far.
Five minutes tick by as I sit and imagine what trouble is brewing. Then I see John emerge and descend the path, hands in his pockets. He gets into the ambulance.
‘Well?’ I ask him.
He sighs. ‘It was just his fucking PA again. When the guy opened the door I told him someone had called an ambulance and I needed to confirm with the actual resident personally if he or she needed help or not.’
‘And?’
‘Told me it was probably another prank call. Said Heath was perfectly okay. Then he closed the door in my face. Just like that. Can you believe it? Closed the door on a paramedic, a respected paramedic. I suppose it’s how he’s become after hassles with paparazzi.’
Paparazzi and paramedics, I’m tempted to say.
‘You’ve got a boyfriend,’ I remind him. ‘Remember?’
John sighs and looks out the window. My comment ruins the atmosphere. We respond to a job in the city and John doesn’t say a word on our drive to the scene.
Not far from the fountain in Hyde Park, a man in a beige suit approaches us. He points to a dishevelled woman on a bench and says, ‘I was having my sandwich and that woman over there told me she was in pain, so I called you.’
When we get to her she hands John a scrap of paper, a handwritten note.
‘What’s this?’ asks John.
‘My shopping list,’ she says.
‘And?’
‘My knees are giving me trouble. Can you drive me to Coles? The supermarket? I need to get my vitamins and garlic tablets from the chemist on the way, if that’s okay.’
John stands like a statue, expressionless for a moment, the shopping list fluttering between his finger and thumb. But the woman is up and already shuffling towards the ambulance. She has every intention of getting into it until I gently divert her to the nearest taxi stand.
‘Listen,’ I say once John and I are back in the ambulance, ‘if Heath Ledger had actually met you, like properly met you, his PA might’ve let you in. So don’t feel jilted. He hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting you properly, that’s all.’
John’s about to reply when another man comes to the side of the ambulance and taps on the driver’s window.
‘Oh, God,’ says John. ‘Look at this guy. Our job was hard enough with one good Samaritan; now everyone’s in on it. Fucking ridiculous.’
John winds down his window and says, ‘No, sorry, we can’t take you shopping, sir.’
The man is understandably confused for a second, then says, ‘Righto, yes, no problem. Thing is, I just wanted to tell you there’s a girl lying down over there near the giant chessboard. She says she feels sick.’
‘Thanks very much,’ says John, winding up the window. He hesitates for a moment, then puts the ambulance in reverse to take us out of the park.
‘Come on, mate,’ I say. ‘We gotta check it out. We can’t pretend –’
‘Can’t we?’ he says. But he catches sight of the good Samaritan glaring at us from the fountain. John puts his foot on the brake and lets out a long sigh. ‘Bloody do-gooders,’ he says, moving off in the direction of the patient.
Her name is Tammy; she’s wearing a random assortment of clothing and she has a silver lip ring. John asks her how we can help and she asks for a lift to Sydney Hospital because she’s ‘spent the whole night drinking riesling’. She holds up a drained bag of cask wine.
‘They took me up there yesterday too,’ she adds.
The hospital in question is less than a hundred metres away, a short walk. But we’re not in the mood for arguing; we just want to leave the park. So we offer Tammy a ride.
She tells us her dad used to be the only paramedic in a remote outback town.
‘I don’t speak to him anymore, he never cared for me, never hugged me. He was a druid and my mum was a witch, and a prostitute. They were in a secret coven in the bush and did this ceremony one night when the seasons changed. The coven decided my mum and dad should have a union, know what I mean. The two of them didn’t even like each other. That’s how I was born.’
While taking Tammy’s blood pressure, John asks her how she ended up sleeping rough in the big bad city.
‘I’m looking for a home,’ she says.
After showing Tammy to a hospital bed she takes out a PlayStation Portable and starts to play.
‘You have a PlayStation?’ John points out, surprised.
‘Yeah. It’s pretty boring being homeless, you know,’ she says without looking up.
John shakes his head. He probably thinks she’s lazy. But I feel a special sympathy for this girl who was let down so terribly by one of our own troubled souls.
Our controller asks us to stand by in the city for a while. I turn down past the barracks towards George Street as I want to drive by the Strand Arcade, where Kaspia works her day job managing Love & Hatred, a jewellery boutique. I hope as I pass the entrance that she might emerge on her way to have lunch or to pop into Haigh’s for some chocolate buttons. Just a short time ago, when we were living together in Bronte, she’d bring me home a little bag of buttons once a week. We’d go to the beach and sit on the sand and eat them together, looking at the sea.
But she’s not walking out of The Strand and she’s not in the queue for chocolate and my heart sinks low. I don’t tell John. I just keep driving, regretting the day I agreed to her suggestion that we needed a break.
Ocean Street, which runs from Edgecliff Station to Centennial Park, is a corridor of green, the afternoon sun shimmering through its enormous overhanging trees. I cross double lines and watch a dozen cars veer away as I barrel d
own.
We park in the shadow of a blond-brick apartment block and lug our gear up the stairs to the fifth floor, where a man is experiencing chest pains. I’m surprised to see our sixty-four-year-old patient has three children under eight. They stand around him, stroking his arms and asking, ‘What’s wrong with Daddy? What’s wrong with him?’
We suspect the man is having a heart attack and we’re reluctant to let him walk. His face is ashen and sweat pours out in buckets. We give him aspirin and some other medication and quickly insert an IV. We’ve called a backup crew to help us carry him down, but they’re taking too long. I hear them on the radio asking for an ‘address check’ and assume they’re lost.
John and I decide not to wait any longer. We lift the man down ten flights of stairs, two between each floor, struggling with our oxygen pack and monitor. He’s heavy and the stairwell is dangerously tight. The children follow behind, carrying the rest of our gear. Slightly flustered and puffed, I climb into the back of the ambulance as the man’s wife, a woman in her mid-forties, arrives on the scene and catches my sleeve. Her eyes are desperate.
‘Please save him,’ she begs. ‘He’s got three kids, look at them …’ She points at the children, who stand bewildered at the roadside. I pause for a moment to glance at them, then acknowledge her comment with a nod.
‘Let’s move,’ I say to John with urgency.
Halfway to hospital the man begins to gasp, ‘Can’t breathe! Can’t breathe!’
His wife’s voice echoes in my head.
Please save him, he’s got three kids, look at them …
I tell John to pick up speed. I rarely ask my partner to step on it like this. But he knows as I do that time is running out. John activates the siren to cross William Street, and a minute later we’re at St Vincent’s. We hand the patient over to the doctors and nurses, relieved he’s survived his ride.
The Gap Page 2