10 September 2001
‘Ambulance service. Is the patient breathing?’
‘No. No! It’s my dad, he was making tea literally just now, and I heard this thump and – Dad, Dad, wake up!’
A Category 1 call. This is why we exist.
‘OK, I need you to stay calm for me. Help is on the way. What’s your father’s name and how old is he?’
‘Mike. Mike Purcell. He’s sixty-seven. Come soon, please! Dad!’
As I take her details, I hear the hiss of the kettle in her kitchen, a late-night local radio discussion about parking permit zones. ‘And what’s your name?’
‘Jane.’
Jane is the first link in the chain.
‘Listen to me, Jane, an ambulance is coming but I need you to help your father by giving him chest compressions. He’s on the floor already, right? He needs to be on his back, on a flat surface.’
The instructions appear on my computer screen, though I know them by heart. On the map next to them, a little moving dot shows the progress of the ambulance the dispatcher has sent. Six minutes away.
Jane is panting. ‘He’s on his side. I can’t . . . he’s a big man.’
‘Is there anyone there to help you?’
‘No. Oh shit, Dad . . .’
‘All right, get him flat on his back as quickly as you can.’
‘But what if he hits his head?’
This part is hard: how do you tell the caller that the person they love is beyond pain, as far as we know?
‘Please do as I say.’
She groans, her mouth right by the receiver; I picture her, the phone tucked into the crook of her neck. I hear a slap as the patient falls. ‘Is he in the right position now, Jane?’
‘Yeah, I think so. But why isn’t he breathing?’
‘You need to help him. Kneel down next to him and move his clothes out of the way so you can see his chest properly.’
A flashback: the sight of Joel’s perfect torso as I pulled up his T-shirt to do what I am asking Jane to. I replace the image with one of this older man, with more fragile ribs and looser skin, but so much life still ahead.
My current patient’s collapse was witnessed. Like Joel, but unlike many others, he does have a chance.
‘Now place your palm right in the centre of his chest, below the nipples. OK so far?’
‘I think so.’
On the radio someone says: The rows over parking are splitting us down the middle. Neighbour against neighbour.
‘Now place the other hand over the first one and begin to push down, hard, by at least two inches, at the pace I’m going to give you: one and two and three and four. Keep your arms straight, one and two and three and four . . . Are you doing that now, Jane?’
‘It’s going to hurt him. Dad, wake up!’
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read this script in the past eleven months with the service. It hasn’t worked once. The crews have never been able to restore spontaneous circulation. My first death almost broke me, because saving Joel had convinced me I was invincible.
But I got over it. You just do.
A colleague stands close by, both of us staring at the screen, willing the crew to get there faster.
‘My arms are getting tired . . .’
‘I know, Jane. Help is nearly there but don’t stop. Keep that rhythm going, hard pushes.’
‘But what about . . . when they arrive?’ She’s panting now. ‘How do I open the front door?’
I remember how lonely it feels, to know you’re the only one keeping someone alive.
‘Run – safely – to the door then go back to your dad to restart compressions immediately. They’re pulling up outside. One and two and three and four . . .’
A musical doorbell rings in the background: an Abba song. ‘Take a Chance on Me.’
Jane takes the phone with her and I hear her tell the crew, ‘Please. Don’t let him die,’ before she resumes her counting, one and two and three and four, and then one of the crew says, ‘We’ll take over CPR, love.’
‘Jane?’ I say, softer now that I don’t have to help pace her compressions. ‘I’ll leave you with the crew, OK?’
‘But . . . what am I meant to do now?’
‘You’ve done brilliantly. You’ve given your father the very best chance. Take care.’
‘Bye . . .’ Even though there are now two people with her, and more on the way, she sounds more alone than before.
I end the call, and exhale. My colleague nods: he knows about the comedown. ‘Textbook, Kerry. Nice work. We’re not that manic, so take a couple of minutes.’
I shake my head. ‘I’d rather get on to the next thing.’
He shrugs. ‘Your call.’
An hour later, the dispatcher comes over to my station. She’s smiling. ‘They got return of spontaneous circulation on your arrest, second time with the defib.’
‘Mr Purcell?’
She nods. ‘Woke up, too. Looks like he’s fully compos mentis. You did it.’
Jane did it. ‘That’s my first ROSC.’
‘You know how rare it is. Girl done well. He’s gone straight into the cath lab, they think the arrest was caused by a heart attack.’
The rest of the shift flashes by. The feeling is back, the one from after Joel woke up, that euphoria. Even though I never touched Mr Purcell, will almost certainly never see his face, I helped his daughter to save his life.
I can smell bacon frying as I walk up the path. When I let myself in, Tim appears in the joke apron my mum bought him for Christmas, with a six-pack torso and skimpy lifeguard shorts printed on the plastic. The radio is on; Kylie sings, ‘Can’t get you out of my head . . .’
‘One egg or two?’
‘Two. I helped get someone back last night, Tim. ROSC in under ten minutes.’
He comes closer, and gives me a bear hug. I can smell fresh coffee on his breath. ‘You’re getting an extra rasher of bacon for that.’
It’s a ritual we’ve adopted at the end of a run of nights. Tim’ll do us a cooked breakfast, and we’ll sit and chat. This morning it’s warm enough to eat in the garden, which also means we won’t risk waking Elaine as we talk. It looks better out here: I talked the builders who fixed the subsidence to throw in some patio slabs for free.
He brings out the plates and I tell him the story, though I leave out the part about it reminding me of Joel. I know how Kylie feels.
‘It’s incredible that you’re saving lives while I’ve barely scratched the surface of a cadaver.’
‘Not when I’m about to eat!’ It’s a joke, because I’m not actually squeamish. As I cut into my first egg, the perfect runny yolk pours onto my toast. He gets it right every time now, even though he couldn’t cook at all when I moved in.
He hasn’t learned for my sake. His girlfriend Laura probably gets breakfast in bed when he stays at her halls. She never stays overnight here. His mother approves of her because she’s also a med student, but Tim tells me he couldn’t bear to do that under her roof.
‘Is Laura back from the States on Saturday?’
He shrugs. ‘Sunday, I think. If I get up in time, I might fetch her from the airport or something. Though Heathrow is a bit of a trek.’
‘You old romantic.’
He blushes. It’s weird, us both dating. Nice weird. We’ve had great chats about Laura, and about Andy the paramedic – until he dumped me last month, that is. It didn’t hurt, which was a relief, but also . . . I dunno, I’m worried I’ll never feel that intensity again, the way I felt about—
‘I should try to talk myself into picking her up, I guess. I think she’d be very grateful . . .’ He peters off, grinning. Is he imagining how grateful? For all our discussions about life, death, medicine and the nitty-gritty of us both dealing with his mum’s personal care, we don’t discuss our sex lives.
‘I’m sure she’ll have missed you.’ I hear something barbed in my voice. It’s been strange, ceding territory to this girl I am not sure deserves my best friend.
We sit and eat and all seems well with the world: the birds sing and the clouds pass across the autumn-blue sky and I think, I am happy again. My life here is good, in a way I couldn’t have imagined a year ago.
My family worried that moving in with Tim was me punishing myself for failing to get my grades. But right now I can’t think of a place I’d rather be than this scrappy patio, with my belly full of fried food, my arms tingling in the sun, knowing I have saved another life.
‘Kerry! KERRY! Wake up. You have to come.’
Before I can open my eyes, Tim is in my room, and I’m instantly on high alert because he always respects my privacy, so it must be something bad—
Elaine. A fall, a stroke, a heart attack, like Mr Purcell?
‘Your mum?’
I push the duvet off and remember belatedly that I took off my vest top off in the middle of the night.
Tim stares for a split second before turning away embarrassed, and I pull the duvet back over while I quickly grope for the vest under the covers. ‘Have you called an ambulance?’
Still he doesn’t seem to hear me. I’m about to slap him to get a response when he says, ‘No. Why would I do that?’
My hand closes around the cotton of my vest and I pull it over my head and jump out of bed, towards Elaine’s bedroom. But the lounge door is open and she’s there, sitting upright on the sofa looking no worse than usual.
The TV is on, some disaster movie. I can’t even tell how long I’ve been asleep, but I do know I’m pissed off that he’s woken me for this.
He puts his hand on my arm and nods at the TV. ‘It’s really happening. It’s an accident or – or something worse. It’s New York.’
I stare at the screen and realize the same scene – a plane hitting a skyscraper – keeps playing on a loop, while a smaller live stream of the building on fire is broadcasted in the bottom corner. ‘Where Laura is?’
He nods. I’m fully awake now but I have no idea what to say or do, and as the three of us watch the same unreal footage as a news presenter vocalizes our own bewilderment, the only thing I know for sure is that I want to be with the people I love.
It takes two hours to get news of Laura: two hours during which both towers fall and my parents and Marilyn come home from work to join us in the bungalow, glued to the TV. Even though there is nothing we can do, I almost feel culpable. We’re not responsible for the act – who knows who is behind this? – but witnessing hundreds, maybe thousands, losing their lives as the buildings collapse makes me wish I could be doing something. Anything.
Laura manages to call from her hotel and when Tim answers the phone his face softens and he gives us a thumbs-up. We all burst into tears. It’s not real relief, though. How could it be?
It goes dark and we’re still watching. Eventually my dad says we must eat, it’s not going to help anyone if we don’t. They go back across the road and Mum returns to our side of Hazelmere Crescent later with a bottle of brandy – her go-to medicine for shock – and a big bowl of pasta. Elaine refuses to go to bed, but falls asleep for long enough for us to carry her into her bedroom.
Alone again, Tim breathes heavily. ‘Jesus, Kerry. Who would do this?’
I shake my head. I am imagining the American emergency call handlers and the paramedics and the firefighters and the police and the doctors and the nurses.
‘You must have been beside yourself about Laura.’
He nods and takes a gulp of the brandy he’s poured. ‘The thing is, though, Kerry, all the time I was ringing round, trying to find out where she was . . .’ He closes his eyes. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m relieved she’s OK. But I knew there was only one person I wanted to have here with me, safe, in this room, where no one can get us. And that’s you.’
‘Well, of course, I—’
Before I can finish, he’s kissing me, tasting of sweet brandy, but the real sweetness is how tender it is, this kiss, and how much I want to kiss him back. It is not only desire, though that is there too.
Most of all, this is my place of safety.