5:1
One day while working on the ward of an Australian country hospital (Collie), I heard a man calling for a nurse from the Accident and Emergency area. I walked out into the corridor and saw a man, clinging to the limp, pale body of a lifeless child. When I reached him, I took the child and hit the 'cardiac arrest' button. Between giving the child mouth-to-mouth breaths while walking quickly, I indicated for the father to follow me and I said to the nurse that had run down, "Call the doctor and tell him I am resuscitating a little boy". As soon as we reached the examination room and I had placed him carefully on the bed, I began CPR on the child. Another nurse came and we did what we had practised after lunch every Friday with Sylvia.
The seven year old boy finally took a few quivery, weak breaths and made a small movement after what seemed like an eternity but was probably a long, tense twenty minutes or so. In the background, the distressed mother had told us that they had been enjoying a day at the Collie River and the kids were swimming while the adults relaxed after lunch with a few drinks. She was in tears, distraught and preparing for the worst. When I told her that he had started breathing, she could hardly speak with emotion while we had to concentrate on our job and bite back tears of relief. She pointed out a stranger, a dark haired man in his early thirties, who was in the waiting room. After hearing the alarmed parents calling for assistance, he had had started mouth to mouth resuscitation out on the river-side without any hesitation. His face looked tired and fearful.
The mother kept thanking us profusely for saving her son but I remember thinking how scared they must have been. We had been scared too- not of the resuscitation but how to deal with failing to save him. If my whole career was based on saving a single life: I wouldn't have that career if it wasn't for the many strangers that had done exactly what he had done that beautiful, calm summer's afternoon, amongst people he had never met before, and in the most awful of circumstances. When the doctor had decided that the child was stable enough to go to the ward for observation, I was finally able to go out into the waiting room, where the stranger was sitting on his own. I remember standing in front of him saying to the boy's mother, "We weren't the ones that saved your son….this man here saved him." Then I went home and cried and resolved never, ever to go through that again.
We did go through that again but in more awful circumstances. A few months later, a car pulled up in front of the hospital and a distressed fourteen year old boy ran in saying that a tree had fallen on his father, crushing his chest. Somehow he had got his father from under the tree and into the back of the car. This would have been bad enough if four men had tried. Distraught, he ran somewhere in grief, to be alone...away from the hell that kept unfolding. With Keith Meadows' help, a local G.P, I managed to climb in through the window and unlock the door so we could pull the boy's father out of the back seat of the car. I started CPR while we pulled him onto a stretcher and ran in to A & E with him. I vaguely remember the weight of one of the wheels as someone drove the trolley over my foot while we were still running. After a long and difficult attempt at saving the man, we finally called for all to stop. That was a terrible day and that was one life we were not able to save. If my whole career was based on one single life: I wouldn't have that career if it wasn't for the boy that brought his young father in so that we could try, at least, to save him.
