The Gap

by Benjamin Gilmour

  Face to face with my colleagues, I watch as their tears flow freely down their faces, gushing from under their sunglasses and spilling onto uniform shirts. I see their tears as they see my own. And none of us lifts a hand to wipe our faces. No one is remotely concerned about keeping that hardened composure the public assume we rely on. Our grief pours out and all of us allow it to. It’s as if, in this moment, we face our own fragility, a reminder that all of us are only human, as vulnerable to loss and sorrow as any of our patients.

  Out of the church and through the corridor of paramedics come John’s parents and sisters. His mother is sobbing and unsteady on her feet, held upright by his elderly father. As they bravely walk they look at us and see the love we had for their son. Perhaps for the first time they truly grasp how respected and adored he was, how we stand in solidarity with him. His mother’s knees give out. Two paramedics step forward to support her. Following behind her and John’s father come the rest of his family, Antonio and his friends, weeping as they pass through our silent guard of honour.

  Tea and biscuits are served in a nearby hall. I meet John’s parents and tell them how beloved he was. Then I go and embrace Antonio and tell him how sorry I am. After that I stand around with my fellow paramedics, swapping stories of days and nights working with John. We all agree on how enjoyable it was, how funny and outrageous he could be, and the fine rapport he had with patients. Half an hour later everyone starts leaving.

  It feels as if John’s life is done and dusted, wrapped up and put away. But there are patients out there who still remember him, and always will. For many, calling an ambulance is sparked by a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. That day when they were critically sick or injured, that moment of drama into which John arrived to ease their anxiety or pain, is not easily forgotten. I wonder, as Kaspia drives us back to Sydney, how many patients and their friends and relatives will forever think of John. In their memories he’ll live on, just as he will in ours. And what we should remember is not the way he took his life, but the way he lived it. With gentleness, humour and compassion.

  On the morning of my first day back at work after the service I drag myself reluctantly up the stairs of the station, wondering if I really want this career anymore. I open John’s locker and look at his stuff: a uniform shirt, two pairs of trousers, gold buttons enamelled with Maltese crosses. There’s a can of deodorant and a toothbrush and toothpaste. These are simple, commonplace things that remind me how John was just like the rest of us. If pushed to a point of total despair, any of us could suffer like him, perhaps react as he did, just as I almost had. We’re no strangers to death, paramedics. If we feared death we couldn’t do what we do, yet our job is to keep it at bay.

  With coffees in hand, Matt and I sit in the ambulance in the car park at the beach. It’s sweltering outside, and our aircon hums. Out at sea, black clouds loom on the horizon and lightning flickers. Neither of us is in much of a mood for our usual jokey banter. We sip our coffees without a word and know perfectly well what the other is thinking about.

  Then, as if delivered from above, a remarkable thing happens.

  A man has collapsed at a restaurant in Double Bay and no one’s quite sure if he’s breathing or not. We’re told he’s making gurgling sounds. He’s in his eighties, and I’m cynical as ever about his chances, but Matt and I still make an effort. Matt drives hard, our tyres screech round corners. He gets from Bondi to Double Bay in less than three minutes. I sling my stethoscope round my neck and pull on some gloves.

  We turn into Bay Street and see a man vigorously pumping on the chest of our patient, who is on the footpath, splayed awkwardly between café tables.

  Matt cuts the siren. I step out of the ambulance and slide open the side door in one fluid motion, grabbing oxygen and the Lifepak defibrillator. I ask a waitress to shift furniture out of the way and several bystanders rush to help her make room. The man doing CPR has muscular arms, and performs the best compressions I’ve seen. The patient’s chest has a ‘zipper’ down the middle: an old scar from a bypass.

  ‘Keep going, mate,’ I tell the first-aider. ‘Good work.’

  Matt attaches the pads and charges the Lifepak. Meanwhile I slip an airway between the man’s teeth, place a mask on his face and begin ventilations. Matt’s ready to shock.

  ‘Here we go,’ he says, then calls, ‘Everyone clear!’

  The man doing CPR lifts his hands off the chest and we check it’s a shockable rhythm. Matt pushes the button and the patient’s body contracts in a spasm then relaxes again. It’s a little confronting for people to see, and the bystanders gasp. I ask the man who had been doing compressions to continue CPR, noticing how drenched in sweat he’s become. He won’t be needing the gym today.

  After another two minutes of CPR, once we’ve charged the machine and go for another shock, I see a regular rhythm appear on the screen. I feel for a pulse.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ asks Matt, looking up.

  We confirm at the femoral artery. Yes, the man has a pulse. We haven’t even got an IV or given him adrenalin. Just CPR and a shock and he’s back.

  We’ve saved a life.

  People can see the surprise on our faces.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ I exclaim, as Matt congratulates the man who did compressions.

  The patient’s son arrives on scene and tells us his father had his first bypass twenty years ago. He’s hardly a picture of health, and I remind myself not to get too hopeful about his return of circulation. The man hasn’t woken yet and it’s likely he won’t. Despite getting excellent CPR from the time of collapse, in all likelihood he’ll have brain damage from lack of oxygen. He’s not the first cardiac-arrest patient to get their pulse back but never come to. It’s the usual scenario.

  When our backup crew arrives, we roll the old man onto a spine board and lift him onto our stretcher. It’s only a two-minute trip to hospital and we offload at St Vincent’s straight into the resus bay. Doctors and nurses swarm around us.

  ‘Well done,’ says a cardiologist, patting me on the back.

  Outside, I shake hands with Matt.

  ‘This could be the one,’ I say.

  ‘If it is, it’ll be my first too,’ he replies.

  Both of us are beaming.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it. Twelve years in the job and no save, then just after John dies, this guy …’

  It seems to me like divine encouragement, or perhaps John’s gift from the afterlife.

  The man’s name was George. A couple of days later, after night shift, I visit him in the intensive-care ward. When I pull back the curtain he’s sitting in a recliner having breakfast, sipping on tea. He looks so carefree and comfortable, as if his hospital stay is a little getaway.

  ‘I nearly died, you say?’ He slurps on his tea.

  ‘Yes, your heart stopped.’

  ‘Oh dear. You don’t mind passing me that toast there, do you?’

  I pass him his toast and know there’s no way I can make him comprehend how exceptional his survival is. Before waking up in ICU the last thing George remembers was drinking an espresso in Double Bay while discussing the business of his hotel chain with a friend.

  George speaks in a muffled tone, a bit like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. He smiles and says, ‘When I get out, I’ll take you and your partner to lunch at one of my hotels, okay?’

  His offer of a posh lunch makes me less annoyed at him for his laissez-faire attitude about his heart attack. I’m disappointed when he never follows through with his invitation, but I suppose for George his cardiac arrest was just another medical inconvenience. Why should he care that I’ve waited my career to save his life?

  On my way out I see the doctor looking after George. I’ve met her before, down in Emergency. Her eyes light up and she asks if I was the one who brought him in. Yeah, I say, my partner and me. The guy doing CPR at the scene was crucial too. Then I tell her this was my first real save in twelve years, as far as I know. But she doesn’t believe me. S
he’s been fully qualified for only eighteen months and saved dozens of patients already. I remind her that the ones who collapse in a hospital have a much better chance of survival, as medical staff are on hand to help. Many who drop in the street or at home don’t get CPR at all. By the time an ambulance arrives ten minutes later, their chances are poor. The doctor shakes her head. I can tell she feels pity for me.

  ‘Thanks to George I can happily retire now, right?’

  She laughs, and says, ‘Or it’ll buy you another twelve years in the job.’

  ‘I don’t think I can wait twelve years for another save, doc.’

  She frowns. ‘There are many ways to save a life. You know that, right?’

  I leave the hospital, and before going home to bed I make a special trip to The Gap. Last time I was here, just after John went over, we didn’t have time to reflect much. We were picking up Veronica, the girl who denied she was planning to die.

  The spot where I saw the flowers that day is easy to find because another paramedic has put a cross on the railing and secured it there with medical tape. The flowers are looking worse for wear, though there’s a fresh bunch cable-tied to the fence a metre away. Up here one can never be sure who the flowers are for. At least two more souls have left from this spot since John went over.

  As I look down into the mouth of The Gap the waves rush across the rock-shelf, then draw back again. This would have been the level of tide when John took his life. It’s rare that I come here in my own time, and it really is a beautiful place. How many people intent on dying are seduced by this beauty and decide to live instead? How many come up here with death in mind, then quietly walk away? Beauty should stimulate happiness, admiration, gratitude, joy. Perhaps John and the many others go over too quickly for the beauty to work. Or maybe they’re just blinded by despair.

  I think about the parting words of the ICU doctor. There are many ways to save a life. Why am I so obsessed with cardiac arrests, trying to save patients with the poorest prognosis, basing my value as a medic on those outcomes? I may have an unlucky track record in that respect but like many paramedics, I’ve talked a lot of people down from the edge, convinced them not to take their lives. I hold that thought and let it grow, then I turn my back on The Gap and head to the car.

  CHAPTER 18

  It’s already thirty degrees at 9 am, when Jerry and I drive down to North Bondi and park beside the Mr Whippy van. We unzip our rescue boots and go to the water’s edge, roll up the bottom of our uniform pants and dip our toes in the shallows. Together we inspect little rock pools that shimmer in the sun like odd-shaped mirrors. When my shadow passes over one I can see it’s filled with waving seaweed and red anemones. Jerry’s close behind me and I hear the crackling of the portable radio that he’s carrying, a necessity so unnatural and distracting.

  ‘Jerry!’ I call out, beckoning him over, showing him the rock pool.

  ‘Sea enemies,’ observes Jerry matter-of-factly, reaching a hand into the water and sticking his forefinger into the tiny mouth of a hungry anemone. It puckers up on his fingertip just as the portable radio splutters and breaks the tranquillity again.

  Sydney, 402? Exact location, please …

  With one finger in a sea anemone and another on the press-to-talk button, Jerry answers that we are beachside and available to respond.

  ‘Copy,’ comes the controller. ‘Female unwell, up the road from you.’

  At the back of the ambulance we dry off our feet with hospital towels. Working with Jerry is not too different to working with John. How much fun John had with us down here at Bondi for all those years. How much more he could have had.

  As we drive to the job I turn to Jerry and say, ‘I wonder where John is right now. You ever wonder that?’

  ‘Belly of a whale?’ replies Jerry. ‘I don’t know. It’s not him, it’s his body. It’s not like we’ll get a living John back again. Think about it. He’d probably want his ashes scattered out at sea, anyway. He loved the ocean.’

  People need answers, I tell him. They need closure.

  Jerry looks annoyed. ‘Closure is bullshit. People need acceptance, so they can live with what’s happened.’

  As we enter the house of the elderly woman we’ve been sent to, I notice what looks like a retro child’s bedroom. The colour scheme is brown and orange, and there’s a lava lamp and an Evel Knievel figurine on the chest of drawers. A Snoopy poster hangs on the wall above the bed. When I ask the woman about the room she tells us that her five-year-old son, her only child, was hit by a car and killed in 1975. She hasn’t moved a thing in his bedroom since that day, just vacuumed and dusted it every so often.

  For a tragedy like this, closure might be impossible. But acceptance is almost as futile.

  We hear the news after lunchtime: Heath Ledger has died in his Manhattan apartment. The bulletin is announced on the radio as we’re driving less than a kilometre from Heath’s former mansion overlooking Bronte.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ says Jerry.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I repeat.

  ‘John and Heath in the same month.’

  ‘Too weird.’

  ‘I wonder if they’re finally hanging out in the afterlife. It’s what John always wanted, wasn’t it?’

  On the North Bondi headland, a stone’s throw from the ambulance station, a man is standing on the edge, high above the sea. We arrive before the police, and walk to the crest of the hill. A young boy meets us and says we should hurry, the man’s barely holding on.

  ‘You’re treating,’ says Jerry, dropping the kits and pushing me forward.

  The girl we took off The Gap the night after John fell was already in custody. But this man is dressed in black, his shoes are off, and he’s over the edge, standing on a ledge, holding on with one hand. I approach him slowly and can see his body is drenched in sweat.

  ‘Hi there,’ I say from a distance, then introduce myself when I’m a few metres closer. He yells, ‘Get away! I’m gunna do it! I don’t want your help!’

  There’s no fence up here, and I creep forward a little and sit down on the clifftop.

  I repeat my name and ask him for his. ‘I just want to sit with you, please,’ I say.

  He turns back to look at the sea surging against the crags far below, and it seems to me he’s shifting his weight. His body language tells me he has every intention of following through. I’ve no doubt that if the boy hadn’t found him, and if we hadn’t arrived so quickly, we’d be dealing with a body on the rocks like John.

  ‘I really want to talk with you,’ I say.

  ‘Why do you care? No one gives a shit!’

  ‘Believe it or not, I do care.’

  ‘You’re only doing your job.’

  Our conversation feels like movie dialogue. Plenty of conversations we have in this line of work could be lifted from an action-film screenplay. I’ve always wondered to what extent fictional drama informs off-screen behaviour: life imitating art, as they say.

  ‘Seriously, mate, it would’ve been easier for me to wait for the police and let them talk to you. But I’m here because I care. I don’t want you to do this.’

  After thinking for a second he says, ‘My name’s Michael.’

  ‘Thanks, Michael. Any chance you can come up and away from the edge? You’re making me nervous. Better we chat away from the edge.’

  ‘The sea is calling me, mate. It’s calling. I’ve driven down from Queensland for this. I’ve planned it for months. I’m going over, I’m telling you straight, I’m telling you now. There’s nothing you can do about it. You don’t understand. No one gives a shit.’

  ‘Surely there’s someone out there you mean something to. What about parents? Are your parents still alive?’

  ‘I was fucking adopted. My parents threw me to the dogs. And my adoptive parents abused me. They tied me up. They beat me. My adopted father sexually abused me, he raped me. Do you know how that feels? As a child? The people you’re meant to trust, the ones who you rely on for y
our needs, the ones who are meant to show you love, abusing you? Beating you and making you do fucked-up shit?’

  I shake my head. I can’t reply.

  Michael is trembling, he’s in the grip of anger. ‘No, you don’t know how it feels, do you. I’ve got no one, mate. I’ve got no family. I’ve got no friends. I’ve got no job. I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘What about a partner, Michael?’

  ‘Partner? Yeah, I had a partner if you want to know. She fucked my best friend and pissed off with him. And when she pissed off she took all my shit. She was everything I had. Finally I thought I’d found a person I could trust, because I didn’t even know the word “trust” existed. Understand? Then she fucked off.’

  ‘Is there anything at all that makes you happy?’ I ask, clutching at straws.

  ‘Happy? What the fuck is happy? You know what makes me happy is to look down and see those waves calling my name. You know what it’s like to live with schizophrenia? To feel worthless? Every moment of every day I hear my adoptive father telling me I’m dirty and worthless. He’s right here in my head. Fucking worthless piece of shit, he says. Do you know what it’s like to hear yourself being called a fucking worthless piece of shit every waking second of your life? It’s a voice you can’t escape. My whole life has been fucked up from the word go. Death can’t be any worse, can it? When life is hell, death looks pretty good.’

  For perhaps the first time in a situation like this, I find I’m lost for words. Jerry and the others often make me do the talk-downs because they know I like counselling, and my track record’s good. But now I’m stuck, and it’s because I feel unqualified. Not in the professional sense, but in life experience. I’m a man with a healthy body and mind, raised in a middle-class family, with generous, loving parents. I have loyal friends, a nice home and a beautiful partner who I feel I’m slowly reconciling with. As Michael tells me about all the things he doesn’t have to live for, I think about the things I do have. Who am I to talk him down? What if I had walked in his shoes? Wouldn’t I be standing there too, at the edge of the cliff? How arrogant I am to tell him how great life is or how much better it can get. For all his life, Michael’s hoped for things to get better. But they haven’t, and now he’s here, at the end of the road, an escape from his hell.