The Gap

by Benjamin Gilmour

  ‘We’ll follow you in the ambulance,’ I tell them.

  Before we leave, one of the constables mentions to us that a man went off The Gap this morning.

  ‘We almost called you,’ he says, ‘but there was nothing to do. Can you believe he flew up from Melbourne on the first Virgin flight of the day? Took a taxi to The Gap and over he went.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ John says. ‘If it was my last flight, I’d want to go Qantas.’

  The cops have a chuckle, then catch themselves and get serious again. There’s still a crowd watching and perceptions are everything. They can’t have people thinking they’re laughing at the woman in the police truck. By now she’s settled down with her cursing, and she’s no longer pounding on the back of the door either.

  ‘Thank God,’ says a cop. ‘Peace and quiet.’

  ‘Must have worn herself out,’ says another.

  Before the police pull away I decide to take a quick look through the small perspex window in the side of their truck. The window is foggy, and a bit scratched up. But I see the lady clearly enough: she’s lying unconscious, with her apron string tied around her neck.

  ‘Shit!’ I yell. ‘Open it – she’s strangled herself!’

  The cops unbolt the door and drag the woman out. She’s limp and comatose and frothing at the mouth. John pulls the stretcher from the ambulance and we heave our patient onto it. I toss our keys to one of the cops.

  ‘Drive for us, will you?’

  The cop nods and jumps in the front. The engine roars.

  John ventilates the woman while I set up the monitor and look for a vein. ‘Why is everyone necking themselves?’ asks John. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  By the time we reach the hospital the patient is awake again, and markedly calmer. But John’s about ready to call it a day.

  We’ve got less than thirty minutes to clean up, finish paperwork, go to the toilet, have a drink and prepare for the next emergency call. Sometimes they come in before we’re ready. Ten minutes after arriving at St Vinnies I hear about a cardiac arrest in Surry Hills. No ambulance is available to respond, so I answer the radio and take the job. John makes a lame attempt to snatch the handset off me.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asks.

  I shrug. ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘You’re jumping a cardiac arrest? After the day we’ve had so far? You really think I want to work up a sweat pumping on somebody’s chest, mess up our gear and carry some overweight bloke down a long flight of stairs?’

  There aren’t many cases I’ll volunteer for. But life-threatening ones – the chokings, arterial bleeds, cardiac arrests, the ones where seconds count – those I’ll take. I might have doubts that I’ve ever saved a life, but somewhere deep down I hang on to hope. Why else would I volunteer for this cardiac arrest if I didn’t believe my luck might change, if this could be the one?

  John’s cranky. And he’s right, I should’ve asked first.

  ‘Sorry mate,’ I say.

  We drive to the address, our lights and siren scattering the lunch crowd. It’s a ground-floor apartment, and we walk in to see a toothless man doing CPR on his friend. It was heroin, he tells us, panting as he pumps. We connect the defibrillator and find the patient in asystole, where the heart has lost all electrical activity. Not many will come back from that.

  We take over resus and the patient’s mate goes to sit on the lounge. He leans over a coffee table and starts eating a meat pie with a knife and fork.

  ‘Came home and found him,’ he says with his mouth full.

  The man continues eating while we try to revive his friend. He stops only once, to loudly squirt ketchup onto his plate.

  ‘Shit!’ he says. ‘Why does it always shoot out like that? Tomato fucking sauce.’

  He starts eating again, loud enough to hear above the siren of our approaching backup ambulance.

  ‘Fellas,’ he says, ‘do ya think he’ll be able to stay here tonight? If he’s staying, I’ll put a pie in the oven for him.’

  We don’t get a chance to answer before a second crew from Redfern comes through the door. One of the paramedics, Andy, is quite the mischievous operator. The first thing he does is go to the stereo and hit the play button. The song ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ comes on.

  ‘Always curious about the music a person was listening to when they dropped,’ says Andy, an intensive-care paramedic, rolling out his intubation kit. ‘Everything seems to go better if a good tune is playing, don’t you think?’

  ‘Have you seen the costume Cher’s wearing in the music video?’ asks John, starting an IV. ‘Fishnet body stocking over a one-piece swimsuit.’

  The job goes smoothly enough. John runs the meds, Andy gets the tube, his partner does CPR, I work the defib. But after twenty minutes our patient is still in a flatline. We decide to wrap things up. I turn down the stereo volume slowly, a gentle fade-out, like a DJ. Then Andy looks at his watch and announces a time of death. The man’s friend licks his plate and sits back on the lounge, holding his belly. With a lazy eye he sees us start to pack away our stuff.

  ‘Dead?’ he asks.

  I nod. ‘Yeah, mate. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well I fucken told him, didn’t I. Nigel, I said, don’t be shooting up on your own. It’s not fucken worth it, I said. So what does he do?’

  The man gets off the lounge and dumps his plate in the sink.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ Andy tells him. ‘It’s procedure, a matter for the coroner.’

  ‘Nigel, Nigel, Nigel. Fucken idiot Nigel.’ The man shakes his head. Then he takes a second pie and puts it in the oven. ‘One thing’s for sure though, mate. If ya gunna fucken die, someone else’ll eat ya pie.’

  Between jobs I get a phone call from my mother with the news that my youngest brother, Mark, a pilot, has saved a life. She reckons he dragged a bloke from the surf yesterday morning and revived him on the beach.

  The story is hard to believe, so I call up Mark and catch him as he’s getting ready to go out with his mates. He sounds distracted.

  ‘Heard you saved a guy,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yeah, that.’

  ‘Elaborate?’

  Mark tells me he was waiting for a wave at Dee Why when a man surfing nearby rolled off his board and was facedown in the water. Mark swam over and grabbed him round the chest and swam the guy to shore, dragging his lifeless body up the beach. Along with a passing doctor and another surfer, he performed CPR for ten or so minutes. A bystander called an ambulance and ran to the surf club to get a defibrillator.

  ‘By the time ambos got there the guy was coughing up sea water and trying to talk,’ says Mark.

  Hearing my brother recount his tale triggers weird emotions in me. Cynicism, doubt, jealousy, frustration. Shouldn’t I be pleased for him? Proud of his achievement?

  A nervous laugh escapes me and I say, ‘Good on you, mate,’ and remind him just how remarkable his saving of a life really is. The man would be dead now if not for him.

  Mark says, ‘Thanks, mate. Gotta go, we’re about to hit the town.’ He’s way too dismissive for my liking. Too flippant. Does he grasp how significant and rare his save has been? I wish it was me who’d swum the guy in, done CPR. Mark saved a man but shrugs it off like it’s nothing. How strange that a full-time paramedic like me can’t safely say he’s saved someone whose heart has stopped while my brother, a pilot, raises the dead on a sunny day off.

  When I recount the story to John he says, ‘To save them you have to be there on the spot, right when it happens.’ But I know that already. It’s a truth rarely spoken. Research has told us that for every minute without defibrillation, the chance of survival for a cardiac-arrest victim decreases by roughly ten per cent. A response time of ten minutes might not sound that bad, but for cardiac arrests it doesn’t bode well. Maybe I need to drive faster.

  Heavy clouds loom in the distance and it looks like one of those late summer storms. As the sun is snuffed out, we’re sen
t to our third suicide attempt of the day, once again at The Gap. It’s at Lighthouse Reserve, not quite Gap proper, but close enough to count.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. Just drop me at the Junction,’ John says.

  ‘You know I can’t do that,’ I reply.

  ‘Say I’m sick, I’ve got the shits.’

  ‘They’re not stupid.’

  ‘They’ll find another car.’

  ‘Can’t do it, sorry.’

  John purses his lips and crosses his arms as I step on the accelerator up Old South Head Road.

  ‘Well you can do the talking, then,’ he says. ‘Consider it my wildcard. I’m staying in the car.’

  I’ll do it, I don’t mind. I’ve seen John talk down dozens of people. He’s one of the best, he’s got nothing to prove. But he knows if his heart isn’t in it, if he’s feeling dejected himself, things might go wrong. There’s a life on the line, and while John may be doing it tough, he’d never compromise on patient care.

  When I get out of the ambulance just north of the lighthouse and head towards the cliff I hear John’s door slam behind me and I know that he’s following. We’re partners and he’s always got my back, no matter how bad he’s feeling. I’m grateful for his loyalty.

  We’ve beaten the cops to the scene and the talk-down falls to me. On the other side of the fence, on the lip of a rock jutting out above the sea, sits a man in his thirties. He wears little round glasses, like John Lennon did, and his shoes are on the ledge, neatly placed beside him. John hangs back as I make the approach.

  I introduce myself, gently. I don’t want to startle him and cause him to fall.

  His name is Martin, and he explains that he was checking Facebook in the early afternoon when he stumbled on a picture of his ex-boyfriend Simon cuddling another man. Devastated, he jumped in his car and raced up here with every intention of ending his life.

  ‘I could’ve made the relationship work,’ he says, sniffing. ‘I had a chance with him. I’ll never find anyone like Simon again.’

  I look over my shoulder and see John’s out of earshot. Listening to a patient with a similar story to your own can be especially difficult.

  I try fishing for something in the man’s life that might make him change his mind.

  ‘You have parents?’ I ask him.

  He nods. ‘Yes, my mum.’

  The mum is the key, almost always the key.

  ‘She loves you very much, doesn’t she?’

  He thinks for a moment, then says, ‘Yeah, she does.’

  Occasionally this strategy doesn’t work. Some people have less-than-harmonious relationships with their mothers. Or their depression is so severe that even the love for a mother can’t save them. The risk of a talk-down going wrong is ever present. One false move and the patient is gone, but Martin’s scared and he’s sober. I’m feeling confident he won’t go through with it.

  It begins to rain lightly. There are raindrops on Martin’s glasses; he takes them off and folds them up, puts them down beside his shoes. He moves closer to the edge and drops his legs over. His body is shaking with fear.

  Nothing’s for sure, and now, as he inches closer to losing his balance, my confidence fades. I start to think he will actually do it. Why else would he take off his shoes and his glasses? Why anyone would care about their glasses getting shattered on the rocks or lost in the water is beyond me. But taking them off is symbolic.

  Police Rescue, who’ve been getting harnessed up behind me, make hand signals that indicate their readiness to act. I consider giving them the nod, as Martin is now in a delicate spot. If he sees them approaching, things could go badly. Rescue know how to win people over, but they can also see I’ve built a rapport so they leave me alone. Suicidal people are quickly exhausted by sharing their woes over and over with different negotiators. My priority is coaxing Martin from the edge and convincing him to put his glasses back on. I need to buy time before I bring in the others.

  As if in answer to my thoughts, I see a humpback whale a hundred metres out to sea. It catches my eye as it launches from the ocean in majestic slow motion, a glorious sight. The whale seems to pause in midair, surrounded by spray, before dropping back gracefully into the swell. Never have I seen a migrating whale this close to the cliffs.

  ‘Martin, look! The most beautiful whale, just out there. Put your glasses on, quick!’

  He turns to the ocean, realises he can’t see a thing, then fumbles for his specs and puts them back on.

  ‘Where? Where is it?’

  We look, but there’s nothing. The whale’s gone back under.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ he says.

  ‘Ah, whales. You know how they are. After jumping they go for a dive, and no matter how long you stand there and watch they might never come up. In saying that, we could always get lucky. You never know.’

  Martin sighs and looks doubly depressed. I’ve made him feel worse: from a failure in love to a failure in whale watching.

  ‘Believe me,’ I tell him, trying to win back some ground that I’ve lost, ‘that whale was a beauty. Isn’t life worth it, to see that?’

  But he wasn’t a witness, and I feel like an idiot. At least his glasses are back on his face.

  The rain falls steadily now and John comes up behind me carrying a blanket. He’s probably impatient, and I worry at first that he’s going to play bad cop.

  ‘This is John,’ I say. ‘John, meet Martin.’

  ‘Come on, guys,’ says John. ‘It’s about to piss down. I’ve got a nice warm blanket. Martin, let’s have a chat in the ambulance, out of the rain, okay?’

  Martin nods. ‘Can I call my ex-boyfriend?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course,’ says John.

  His kind and firm approach seems to have worked. It never takes him long to have patients eating out of his hand.

  Martin climbs back over the fence and puts his arms around me. He cries into my shoulder before we start the slow walk to the ambulance.

  After the job John says, ‘Honestly, do you really have to hug them?’

  He makes me laugh.

  ‘It’s them hugging me, okay?’ I reply.

  What I don’t say is that John’s just as guilty as I am with hugs. He too gives them out when the moment is right. Often it’s all that a patient will need.

  It’s dark by the time we reverse into the plant room of the ambulance station. We’ve worked nearly thirteen hours straight and both of us are spent.

  ‘It’s depressing, all these depressed people, don’t you think?’ John says as he mops out the back of the ambulance. I recognise the feeling. I too have worked shifts in the shadow of the black dog while comforting others in similar states.

  As he tips out the mop bucket he says, ‘When I started in this game it was car crashes, heart attacks, drownings, real shit. Not people feeling sorry for themselves, crying and carrying on. Tell me, have you ever called an ambulance because you felt depressed?’

  In my twenties I suffered a bout of depression, for less than twelve months. Relationship problems before I met Kaspia and too many overtime shifts were to blame. I guess a year is not long to be feeling depressed, but a doctor was worried enough to prescribe medication. After ten months I stopped it. Am I depressed now? I don’t think so. I’m sad, and feel lonely at home, but I’m also optimistic. The breakup with Kaspia is temporary; we still have feelings for each other.

  I say, ‘Depression is a sickness. I had it once too.’

  John looks up, surprised. Then he turns and puts the mop in the bucket. ‘Sorry, didn’t know. But still, tell me, did you ever call an ambulance for it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ Although it’s fair to say that, like many paramedics, there isn’t much I’d call an ambulance for. It runs in the family. I recall a story about my father’s grandfather, who fell into the harbour from a Sydney ferry at Circular Quay on a rainy winter’s day. He suffered a nasty laceration to his leg on the way down. Once he fished himself out with his umbrella and briefca
se, the ferry master offered to call him an ambulance, but he refused. Instead, he bought a copy of the Sydney Morning Herald and laid it out on the back seat of a taxi, which he took to Sydney Hospital to have himself stitched up. My grandmother Murial was equally resilient, with a no-fuss attitude. She was hit by a bus in her eighties and got to her feet, brushed herself down and carried on walking. She wouldn’t have been able to do that had she had a serious injury, of course. But it shows what we’re made of.

  ‘If you or I called an ambulance, we’d just be worried about who they’d send us. What if we got a pair of dickhead paramedics?’ says John.

  ‘Luckily there aren’t many of those,’ I reply.

  But the real issue is our colleagues finding out about our breakdowns. There’s a learned mindset in this line of work that vulnerability is a liability. It may be the same for other professionals, but for them privacy can be maintained when emotional cracks appear. I’ve treated politicians, CEOs and celebrities with mental health disorders and drug addictions, some of them after suicide attempts. They all know we’re bound to keep their identities secret. We use separate radio channels or phone networks, we cover their faces or disguise them and organise private rooms at hospitals. Their employees or fans will never find out. But the same can’t be said for paramedics. When paramedics pick up other paramedics, it doesn’t take long for the whole service to know, as our colleague Hamish discovered. Your sanity and competence come into question, and your reputation and future feel threatened.

  ‘If you’re genuine, you’ll go through with it,’ John says. ‘Serious players don’t call. If they reach for the phone it means they’re okay. Okay enough to speak to a shrink or Lifeline or a friend or whatever. Not paramedics. People don’t call us because they might break a leg. But they call because they might kill themselves.’

  ‘Because that’s what we do, prevent people dying.’

  ‘If they’ve made the decision to call, they’ve saved themselves already. Their inner voice has talked them down. No ambulance required.’