Seconds matter.
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second, so Bobby knew he was dealing with hundreds of thousandths of seconds trying to save the life that was quickly draining away.
Morning had hit like a meteorite striking the earth. Bobby had risen before the sun and driven slowly into work, while working on his coffee. Thoughts of the night before and everything that happened with Carlos still rumbled through his mind. They had gone to bed without talking about it. He knew that Elena would talk about it when she was ready. Bobby hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d simply protected his wife like any husband would. He wanted to extend grace to Carlos but at the same time feared for Elena and the boys.
Bobby’s team got the alert around midmorning over the PA system in the fire station. They needed to send the ambulance out to an accident in a nearby neighborhood.
When they got to the scene of the accident, it looked like any street might on a sunny Monday morning, except for the accident on the side of the street, and the dying man at the center of it.
Bobby and his partner Max had been the first responders on the scene. They had both been in a state of disbelief when they arrived. At first, Bobby thought the overturned vehicle on the side of the road near the rising driveway was a tractor, but then he saw the full view and realized it was a massive road roller used on road construction. Several crew members were hovered around the roller and one came up, immediately explaining the situation.
“We were startin’ to grade out a footpath ready for the tarmac, and he’d just started to put the roller in reverse to go up the path slightly. But it pulled and he got it stuck and then the thing toppled over like that. Not really sure how but it did it and it landed right on him. He flipped out. There’s no side protection on these things.”
The man telling him the story was talking a mile a minute, obviously in shock himself.
Bobby and Max went through the usual routine, first making sure the scene was safe and taking all the universal precautions. Max parked the ambulance as close to the roller as he could while Bobby grabbed his jump bag and assessed the situation.
The road roller sat sideways on top of a man’s lower body. Even before checking the breathing and pulse first, Bobby knew.
He’s not making it. No way.
But Bobby also never gave up. His job was to be there and to help and take care of the patients.
In seconds, Bobby was on his knees hooking an IV to the man’s arm and yelling back into his com link. The fire department needed to get down there with more men and tools, yet they weren’t coming fast enough. They didn’t know his only chance was if they got there right away. Even then, it was going to take a miracle. He wasn’t in the miracle business. That was God. All he could do was be an instrument for Him.
“We don’t have thirty minutes,” he lashed out. “I need a specialty team here now.”
As Bobby stabilized the man’s neck with a brace and then put an oxygen mask over him, the man screamed and focused on him with a startling look of fear and pain.
“Understood, Eighty-One. But Air-Med One is en route to Kenosha, and Air Two is grounded with electrical problems. Stabilize in place and wait for Life Flight assist.”
Electrical problems?
He wanted to let out a series of curses but he held back. It wouldn’t do anybody any good anyway, even if he did still have a foul mouth.
“I don’t wanna die,” the middle-aged man said in a weak, out-of-breath way. “Help me . . .”
Bobby held the back of his head gently. “I’m trying. I’m doing everything I can. Can you tell me your name?”
He needed to try to make the guy stay with him, to wait until help came, until real help arrived. The firemen were beginning to cut into the road roller with metal saws.
“Steven.”
Bobby checked the IV. Along with just being there and talking to Steven, there was nothing else he could do.
The second they got this beast of a machine off this man’s lower extremities, he would almost certainly go into hypovolemic shock. With the loss of so much blood and bodily fluids, the heart would not be able to give the rest of the body enough blood. It would shut down.
“All right, just hang in there, Steven. We’ve got a lot of good people here.”
But good people can’t save you.
Why couldn’t they get there sooner?
“Please . . . I’m scared,” the voice barely said, his eyes wide open like twin spotlights. “I’m really scared.”
Bobby tried not to show his fear or anger but instead stayed calm. He nodded and gave the man a smile.
“I know you are. But I’m right here with you, okay?”
Elena had always spoken about his presence. About his ability to be there in the moment and be calm and rational. Even last night, Bobby hadn’t lost his cool. He had simply been protecting his wife and doing the best he could for his family. He had always been levelheaded. Emotions only made things worse when you needed to stay calm.
Tears of pain or fear or both filled Steven’s eyes. “I can’t feel anything. What’s—what’s going to happen to me?”
Bobby breathed in and swallowed. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
He didn’t want to lie to the dying man. Bobby didn’t know what was going to happen. They were trying to get him out from underneath the road roller. Several men were now trying to dig the ground around him.
What’s going to happen to me?
Bobby blinked and saw himself asking that same question a year ago. He remembered sitting in the dark with tears in his eyes, wondering if he had lost it all. Wondering where to go. Wondering how in the world he was going to survive.
It was the question every single soul asks eventually: When will they die, and what will happen after their last breath?
For a second, Bobby thought about grabbing the shock pants from the ambulance. They were old school, the kind that every ambulance used to carry for situations like this to try to avoid a body going into complete shock.
Wait a minute.
He realized they didn’t have them on the truck. It was on another vehicle, the one from the other night that was being serviced.
Bobby shook his head, holding back his sigh, continuing to try to think of what to do.
He realized there was only one kind of hope that he could offer now.
He dug into his pocket and produced the wooden cross he’d brought to work. He had wanted to carry it on him as a reminder. Bobby had thought that maybe he could put it in the ambulance or possibly give it out to someone. He didn’t think that someone would show up so soon.
“Here. Take this.”
He pressed the cross into Steven’s hand. The man didn’t understand what he was holding or why he had been given it in the first place.
“What is it?”
Seconds, Bobby. Milliseconds.
Too often they’re wasted. Too often someone’s standing over a coffin wishing to have said more. To have done more. To have offered more.
“Do you believe in God, Steven?”
The face, drained of all color with sweat beads on his forehead and tears on his cheeks, looked surprised.
“No. I mean . . . I don’t know.”
Bobby thought of one of his favorite stories in the Bible. Suddenly, he wasn’t some paramedic talking to a victim. He was a man talking to his brother. Talking to a friend. Talking to another person created in the image of God.
“Well, I can promise you this—Jesus wants to know you. He loves you and he suffered and died on the cross so we could be forgiven.”
Suffering and dying next to two thieves on either side.
“Forgiven?” the man muttered out as if he was saying, Wait, what?
“Absolutely,” Bobby said without thought or hesitation. “If you believe . . . and accept Jesus Christ as your Savior . . .”
The face looking at him winced and then appeared to be thinking, confused but wondering, blinking and trying to figure out what he was hearing. But before the man said another word, they heard the piercing gasp of a woman. Screaming about her husband, she rushed to get to them.
Bobby saw her being restrained by an officer.
“That’s my husband! What happened to him?” she howled, flailing her arms and trying to move forward. “Let me go, that’s my husband!”
The cop was telling her to stay there, that it wasn’t safe, that they needed to do their job.
Bobby looked down at the man, who started to mouth words again. His voice wavered and shook as he spoke.
“Please, God, take care of my wife. My children.”
More sirens could be heard. The sound of the cutting saw biting into the metal blasted at them. His wife behind them continued to scream. Doors opening and men calling out and voices speaking on their radios. Shovels scraping up the dirt around them.
Yet for a moment, Bobby heard nothing but Steven’s words. He looked up at the EMT with that look Bobby knew well. The stinging look of defeat and hurt. Like a blank whiteboard with no words to fill it. Destitute and hungry and ashamed.
“Jesus, please forgive me,” Steven said in a gasping tone. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.’ ”
The thief on the cross asking and begging for mercy in the last moments of his life.
Holding his hand, seeing that desperation, hearing those words . . . Bobby couldn’t keep his guard up anymore. The tears began to block his view. Once again he did the only thing he could do for this man.
“Lord, hear Steven’s prayer and bless him and his spirit. Have mercy on him and give him strength even in these moments . . .”
For a few moments, Bobby lifted Steven up in prayer, quoting from Psalms, asking for help, asking for anything. He then couldn’t help but quote from the passage he had just remembered.
“Lord, help Steven to know, to be assured that on this very day he will be with you in paradise. Jesus, smile on his face. Please, Jesus.”
Steven’s grip loosened, like the boys’ did as they fell asleep. The face below Bobby softened and shut down at the same time. He watched the man and then could hear the screaming right behind him.
Steven’s wife was now on her knees next to her husband. Wailing, clawing at his lifeless body, begging for him to wake up.
Bobby stood up and waited for a moment, trying to console the hysterical woman. She was dangerous now, and she would fight him off. She called out Steven’s name several times through the choking tears. Then she stopped for a moment as she held up the loose arm.
The cross fell out of Steven’s hand and onto the ground.
“What is this?” the woman shouted at Bobby.
“Please, ma’am,” Bobby said as he offered a hand to help her up.
“No,” she said as she swatted him away. “Tell me what this is doing here. What’s going on here?”
Frantic, desperate, the woman looked like a rabid animal. Bobby had seen what grief and panic could do. He stayed strong and stoic, waiting to help her up, waiting to walk away from the scene with her.
He couldn’t help Steven anymore. But he could help his wife.
I have to help his wife. Whatever she needs I need to be there.