CHAPTER TEN | OLIVIA
“You must feel pretty special, huh?” Scott Fuller asked, glancing at me from the driver’s seat of the ambulance. He was drumming his hands on the black vinyl steering wheel, and he was wearing this outrageously cocky grin on his face.
“Why should I feel special?” I asked.
“You must have made a good impression on the boss man,” Scott said, stretching his smile even wider. “Perkins doesn’t usually let new EMTs go out on a bus during their first week.”
I shrugged. I had to admit, I was just as surprised as Scott seemed to be.
It was a Friday morning, which marked the end of my first week on the job at Hartford Fire Department. When I had gone into the office, I had assumed that I would be spending my Friday doing the same mundane desk jobs that I had been doing all week: filing paperwork, organizing incident reports, taking coffee orders…
But instead, Perkins had suggested that I spend the day out in the field, shadowing another EMT. I was so thrilled that I almost jumped for joy right there in his office. My joy quickly turned to horror, however, when my boss revealed the second park of his plan: the EMT that I would be accompanying was none other that office pervert, Scott Fuller.
Fuck. My. Life.
To call this arrangement “uncomfortable” would be an understatement.
Scott and I were sitting side by side in an ambulance, idling in the Save-a-Lot parking lot. It was a hot summer day outside, but inside the cab of the ambulance felt like an icebox. Scott had the A/C cranked all the way up, and I was shivering and freckled with goosebumps. I was wondering how Scott could possibly be comfortable with the bitter air blasting out of the vents, when I noticed the two little pinpricks poking through the chest of my crisp black EMT uniform.
I was mortified and immediately crossed my arms to cover my chest, but that didn’t stop Scott from stealing glances; every time I so much as shifted in my seat, his eyes flung to my chest.
Pervert.
A radio console was affixed to the dash, and every so often an emergency message would blip through the fuzzy speakers. All we could do was wait; wait for a call to come through the radio, and summon us to the scene of an emergency.
Unfortunately, all of that waiting meant that we had ample time and silence for smalltalk.
At around noon, Scott reached under the driver’s seat and grabbed a sandwich wrapped in cellophane. As soon as he pulled away the clingy plastic film, the pungent aroma of tuna fish filled the ambulance. I rolled down my window and leaned towards the crack, sucking in a gulp of hot, fresh summer air. Scott just laughed.
“So,” he garbled through a mouthful of sandwich, “you still owe me that drink.”
I stifled a groan as I remembered where my last conversation with Scott Fuller had left off: with him trying to lure me to some dive bar called Rusty’s.
“Listen, Scott…” I said. I was trying to work out the best way to let him down gently, when suddenly we both heard a scratchy voice break crackle through the radio speakers.
“Code one, Code one,” a voice chirped urgently. “Medic needed to 1025 Willow Haven Drive. We’ve got a ten year old boy, unresponsive. Do I have a bus responding?”
“That’s right around the corner,” Scott said. He threw his plastic-wrapped sandwich into the cup holder, then grabbed the radio’s handset.
“We’re responding,” he barked into the mouthpiece. He cranked down the gear stick and the ambulance screeched forward towards the road. The sirens blared from overhead, ringing through my ears.
My heart started racing. I had been out of the field long enough that I had almost forgotten the rush; the frenzy of responding to an urgent 911 call. Now, I remembered it all at once. The adrenaline pounded through my body like an electric shock.
“Just hang back,” Scott instructed me as he weaved the ambulance through traffic. “Remember, you’re shadowing me today, so you’re just there to assist—”
“I’m a qualified and experienced EMT,” I reminded him. “I may be new to Hartford, but I’ve been working in this field for years—”
Scott ignored me, spinning the ambulance around a corner. We were in a suburban neighborhood. The street was lined with square, boxy houses and dense green trees.
“This is Willow Haven Drive,” Scott said, glaring through the windshield. “The house number is 1025 — do you see it?”
“There!” I said, pointing to a mailbox marked with brass numbers: 1-0-2-5.
Scott jerked the steering wheel and the ambulance lurched up the curb, landing in the middle of a grassy front lawn.
The front door on the house flew open and a hysterical woman rushed towards us, fanning her face with her hands.
“Please hurry!” she cried, leaping towards us. Her flip flops slapped against the concrete driveway. “I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine, and then—”
“Where is he, ma’am?” I asked calmly.
She pointed back towards the house. Scott pushed his way in front of me as we both followed the woman through the house, then through a sliding glass door that opened to the back yard.
There was an in-ground swimming pool in the backyard. A table was set up on the pool deck, covered in confetti and a giant chocolate sheet cake. A banner hung over the table: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’
The party guests — a cluster of 10-year old boys — were huddled together by the side of the pool, shivering and dripping wet. This was supposed to be a birthday party, but they were completely silent; petrified.
Splayed out on the concrete at their feet, I saw the limp, lifeless body of a little boy. His wet hair was pushed away from his face, and his chest seemed perfectly still, like he wasn’t breathing.
I darted towards the boy, but Scott stopped me.
“I need you to clear the area!” he barked at me. He pointed towards the group of shivering boys, “They can’t be here.”
“We don’t have time for this!” I protested. “They’re not in the way—”
“Get them out of here!” Scott yelled. Then he turned to the woman — the only adult on the pool deck — and asked: “Is this your son?”
“No,” she shook her head frantically. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “His name is Ben. He goes to school with my son. We invited him over for the birthday party—”
“We don’t have time for this!” I said again. This time, my voice was more urgent.
“Let me do my job, Olivia,” Scott snapped at me. Then he turned back to the woman: “We need to get in touch with his parents. Do you have their contact information?”
This is insane! I thought to myself. I glanced back at the boy on the pool deck. God knows how long he’d already been out for… we needed to act now. Every EMT knows that time is crucial; why was Scott wasting so much of our precious time?!
I have to take matters into my own hands, I decided.
Scott was still having a back-and-forth with the woman, so I turned to the cluster of kids.
“Can any of you tell me what happened to Ben?” I asked.
“He just starting gagging and fell over,” one of the boys offered. A tear rolled down his cheek as he spoke, and I felt my heart sink on his behalf.
“What did he do before that?” I asked.
“He ate some cake,” another boy said, pointing to the cake table. I glanced down: the cake had been cut into squares and served on round Spiderman paper plates. I grabbed one of the plates and inspected the spongy cube of chocolate.
Then I noticed the gooey creamy filling that was sandwiched in the middle of the cake…
“Does anyone know if Ben has a peanut allergy?” I asked the boys.
They mumbled amongst themselves uncertainly, then a single voice from the back said: “Yeah! I remember one time he got mad at me for eating Reeses Pieces in front of him, because he said peanuts could make him sick!”
Shit. He’s in anaphylactic shock.
“Scott!” I shouted over my shoulder. “I need an EpiPen!”
He glared at me stupidly, then he glanced down at the paramedic kit that he was holding.
For a split second he hesitated. Then he flung the kit onto a pool chair and immediately started rifling through it, tossing aside bandages and suture supplies…
“I don’t have it!” he shook his head, glancing up at me. He didn’t look bossy or in control anymore; he looked scared. “I… I don’t have it.”
My eyes shot back down to the little boy. His face was drained of color and his lips were blue.
Shit, shit, shit, shit…
“We need to do an emergency tracheotomy,” I said, swallowing heavily. I turned back to Scott, and his face looked just as blue as the victim’s.
“I—” he stammered helplessly.
Fucking useless, I wanted to grunt. Instead, I flung out my hand and demanded: “Give me something sharp to make the incision.”
He nodded slowly, then he started digging through his kit again. He produced a scalpel wrapped in sterile plastic packaging.
“Gloves too,” I said.
Scott handed me a pair of purple latex gloves and the scalpel. I took a deep breath, positioning myself over the boy.
The only experience I had performing tracheostomies came during my training, when I had practiced on a rubber dummy. This was different; this was real life.
But if I don’t do this, I reminded myself, This little boy might lose his life…
I gulped down my fear and traced my gloved fingers along the boy’s throat. When I found the right location, I slowly dug the blade of the scalpel across his skin and made an incision.
I glanced up and saw that the audience of boys had gone pale as they watched in horror.
“Hand me one of those straws,” I told them, pointing to a package of neon plastic drinking straws that were left on the table. One of the boys jumped forward and passed me the straws. I carefully extracted one, then I pressed it into the opening in Ben’s trachea.
I leaned forward and breathed into the tube.
Once… Twice…
I felt the boy’s chest seize upwards under my palm as his lungs inflated with a breath… then a second breath. Color slowly faded back into his face and his eyelids fluttered open.
Immediately, the audience of boys erupted into applause.
“You saved his life!” the woman cheered. “You saved Ben!”
I was suddenly out of breath myself, and all I could do was roll back onto my heels as relief flooded my body.
That was when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Scott Fuller storming back to the ambulance.