Violent Exposure (15 page)

‘Do you have the request form?’

‘The doctor sent it to the scan people. You don’t need to worry. There’s no real reason for it; it’s just routine.’

‘I bet you haven’t had dinner,’ Netta said. ‘We ate at this fancy place in Leichhardt on the way home. Ooh, it was pricey but so lovely.’

‘You only live once, you know?’ Franco laughed and
reached for the railing by the steps.

Netta touched Ella’s hand. ‘I’ve got some ravioli in the fridge. Won’t take a minute to heat up for you.’

‘When’s the scan?’

‘Not for a few weeks yet,’ Franco said. ‘No urgency.’

‘Let me know. I want to come with you.’

‘But you have your big case.’

‘I’ll find time,’ Ella said. ‘Promise me you’ll let me know.’

‘Promise.’ Her mother kissed her cheek.
‘Now come in and eat.’

‘Thanks, but I’m so tired I think I’d throw it up.’ Ella hugged them both. ‘I really need to go home.’

They stood on the steps to wave. She waved back, then drove slowly into the night, thinking about her usually thrifty parents splashing out and why a doctor might send someone for a scan for no real reason.

M
ick sat on the stretcher beside the open drug box in the back of the ambulance, checking the expiry dates on the bags of Hartmann’s. It was one minute to eight, and the sun streamed in the open station doors, and Aidan wasn’t there yet.

Maybe he had called in sick. Maybe he couldn’t face the place and the people so soon. Gossip ran like wildfire through the service, the flames licking
into the hospitals, the cops and even the fries, so he’d probably guessed that wherever they went today there’d be looks and whispers.

The station phone rang. The nightshift crew cheered and Mick knew it was eight. He jumped down from the ambulance and stuck his head in the muster room door to see Freya scribbling down the case details.

‘Ask him if Aidan’s called in.’

She nodded, but before
she could say the words there was the squeak of boots in the plant room.

‘Don’t panic, I’m here,’ Aidan said. He reached for the scrap of paper in Freya’s hand. ‘Your writing’s awful.’

‘Try harder,’ she said. ‘It says collapse query CVA, Phillip Street, outside the Justice and Police Museum.’ Mick nodded at the bandage on Aidan’s left hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’ He walked into the locker
room to get his bag.

‘Cranky cos he had to crawl out of someone’s bed to come here,’ Freya said to Mick. ‘You guys have fun today, won’t you?’

‘How could we not?’

He scrambled into the back of the ambulance to put away the drug box, then got in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

Aidan put his bag in the front and climbed in.

‘What’d you do to your hand?’ Mick said.

‘Nothing.’

‘If
it’s an open wound it needs to be covered with a waterproof dressing.’

‘It is.’ Aidan opened the street directory on his lap.

‘I thought maybe you weren’t coming in today.’

He drove out of the station, and Aidan looked left to check for traffic.

‘Clear this side.’

Mick pulled onto George Street and headed south. The red and blue beacons flashed off the shopfronts and pedestrians hurried off
the road. ‘But here you are.’

‘Yep.’

The siren was loud in the cabin and rang in Mick’s ears. ‘So how’re you feeling?’

‘Next left,’ Aidan said.

‘I know where Phillip Street is.’

Aidan would know that he knew; it was so close to the station, how could he not? The little punk was just avoiding talking. Well, fine.

They drove the rest of the way with only the siren breaking the silence. Aidan
eased a glove over his bandaged hand then pulled another onto his good one.

Outside the Justice Museum, two men in suits crouched by a third who lay on the footpath. Others walked past with sideways glances. Mick flipped off the beacons and siren and braked at the curb. Aidan jumped out and grabbed the Oxy-Viva from the back, and Mick followed with the drug box and cardiac monitor.

The standing
men in suits looked up with concern. Mick stood a little behind Aidan, making it clear who was in charge, nominally at least, and studied the patient. He was on his side, one hand grasping at the concrete. He looked to be in his early forties, with neat brown hair and a trimmed beard shot with grey. He was sweating so much that the collar and chest of his pale blue shirt were dark and clinging
under his loosened tie.

Mick watched Aidan put down the Viva.
The sweat’s a sign, but can you recognise it?

Aidan felt the man’s skin and took his pulse. ‘What happened?’ he asked the others.

‘We were walking up from the ferry together when he started talking funny then collapsed.’

Mick waited while Aidan asked the patient if he knew where he was, if he could speak, while putting the oxygen
mask on him and getting out the sphygmo. The man didn’t reply.

‘Monitor, please,’ Aidan said to Mick.

‘Sure.’ Mick knelt and unbuttoned the man’s shirt. He was drenched with sweat and staring past them at the street. Mick wiped down three patches of skin and peeled the backing off the monitoring dots. ‘Sinus tach of one fifteen.’

If Aidan didn’t ask the friends about the man’s medical history
soon, he was going to have to step in.

‘BP one ten over seventy,’ Aidan said.

Mick nodded and waited for his next instruction.
Come on, come on.

‘Does he have any health problems?’ Aidan asked the men.

‘Not that we’re aware of, but we don’t know him that well.’

‘And he just started talking funny, then collapsed?’

‘Yes.’

Mick groaned inwardly. When trainees started repeating back information
like that and making busy movements – like

Aidan was doing now: inspecting the screen of the monitor, reaching for the sphygmo as if to take another BP – you knew they had no idea what to do next.

Mick opened the drug box and took out the blood-sugar testing kit. Aidan’s eyes brightened and he put out his hand. Mick didn’t give it to him but looked up at the men. ‘Did he seem to hurt himself
when he fell?’

Aidan got the message and started a nose-to-toes examination, checking the patient all over for injuries.

Mick set up the kit and soon had a reading of 0.2 mmoL. He showed Aidan who nodded and said, ‘No sign of injury.’

‘Will he be okay?’ one of the friends asked.

This was Aidan’s cue to explain what was going on and what they would do. Mick waited a long moment then pulled
the dextrose from the drug kit.

‘Oh,’ Aidan said. ‘His blood sugar is low so we’ll be giving him an injection to bring it up to normal levels. Then he’ll wake up.’

Careful with your wording. What if he doesn’t?

Mick clipped a tourniquet around the man’s arm and swabbed the bulging vein inside his elbow. ‘Name?’ he muttered to Aidan.

‘Oh, right.’ Aidan felt his pocket then frowned. ‘Borrow
your notebook?’

‘Hurry up.’

Aidan reached over and pulled it from Mick’s shirt pocket, then stood up to ask the friends if they knew the man’s details.

Mick shook his head. All he’d wanted was a first name so he could reassure the man.

‘It’s okay, mate, little sting here now,’ he said as he slid the cannula through his skin and into the vein. The man didn’t flinch. Mick taped the cannula down
then added a bandage over the top, knowing the tape wouldn’t hold long against the sweat. He flushed the line with normal saline, then Aidan crouched next to him.

‘His name’s Andrew.’

‘Thanks so much,’ Mick said. ‘Set up the bag and burette, would you?’

Aidan got them out of the kit and tore the wrappers off then hesitated.

For fuck’s sake.
Mick took them off him and in a minute had 150 mls
in the burette. He clamped off the line from the bag. ‘Hold this.’

Aidan stood with the bag in his hand. Mick opened the lower clamp and let the ten per cent glucose solution run through to the end of the tubing then connected it to the cannula. The fluid flowed into the man’s bloodstream and in half a minute he started to blink. It was magic, and Mick never tired of the miracle, but this morning
old Aido was tarnishing his whole world.

The man licked his lips. ‘What happened?’

‘Looks like you had a hypo,’ Aidan said, full of enthusiasm now that there was nothing much left for him to do. ‘You a diabetic, buddy? I mean Andrew?’

‘Yep.’

‘Had your brekky?’

‘Yeah, but I went to the gym as well.’ He sat up and plucked his wet shirt away from his chest.

‘Need to eat more, mate.’

The one-fifty
mls was almost through. Mick got ready to turn off the line. ‘Andrew, do you have lunch in your case there? Sandwich or something?’

Andrew fumbled with the locks then pulled out a salad roll.

‘Hoe in,’ Mick said. ‘The sugar we’ve just given you won’t keep you up for long without food.’

He disconnected the line then looked at Aidan.

‘Oh, right,’ Aidan said. ‘You want to come to hospital and
get checked out?’

‘Nah,’ Andrew said through a mouthful of roll. ‘I’ve had this happen before. I eat, take it easy for the day, I’m all good.’ The friends promised to walk with him to his office and tell his colleagues to call again if anything else happened. Aidan filled in the case sheet and got him to sign the refusal of transport, while Mick took out the cannula. By the time they were done
and packed up, the salad roll was gone and Andrew was on his feet and grinning.

‘Thanks, guys.’

‘No worries,’ Aidan said.

The three men walked off together.

Aidan got back into the passenger seat of the ambulance while Mick restocked and stowed the gear.

‘Good job,’ Aidan said, snapping off his gloves.

‘You think?’

‘You don’t?’

Mick slammed the back and got behind the wheel. ‘You and me
need to talk.’

‘Dammit.’ Aidan held up his hand. Blood had spotted through the bandage.

‘I thought you said it was sealed.’

‘It was.’

Mick gritted his teeth. ‘Call Control and tell him we’re going to Sydney ED for you to get patched up.’

Aidan did so as Mick hung a U-turn. The hospital was close.

‘We’re still going to have that talk,’ he said when Aidan rehooked the mike.

‘I know I could’ve
worked faster. The other night’s all . . .’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Overwhelming my mind.’

‘I don’t give a shit,’ Mick said. ‘That job was bad. You had no idea what was wrong with him or what you were doing. This is crucial stuff, and it goes in your report.’

Aidan hunched in his seat.

‘It’s fucking basic stuff too,’ Mick said. ‘Decreased level of consciousness plus sweaty equals check blood
sugar.’

They were at the hospital. Aidan was already reaching for the door. ‘Think about it,’ Mick said as he slithered out. ‘Why are you here?’

Aidan flung the door shut and walked away. Mick parked out in the lane, leaving the bay clear for other ambulances. He turned off the engine and felt in his pocket for his report, folded up behind his wallet. He took out his pen and wrote:
Failure to
recognise basic signs of hypoglycaemia; failure to establish treatment; failure to set up burette set.

Another ambulance drove past and he waved at the driver, who waved back, then Mick got out his phone and texted Carly.
Aido just missed a textbook hypo – Rozelle next stop!

‘Thirty-seven,’ Control said.

He grabbed up the mike. ‘Thirty-seven’s still a single officer.’

‘Understood, and that’s
fine,’ Control said. ‘Call’s a concern for welfare: 3 Arcadia Lane, cross is Young Street, Redfern.’

‘Copy.’

Mick hung up the microphone and put his phone away. If Control was happy that he go on his own, then so was he. Aidan should’ve heard the exchange on the portable radio, and if he was so dopey as to have forgotten to turn it on (again) then he could come out later with his freshly bandaged
hand and gape at the empty bay and work things out for himself.

Concern for welfare calls came from relatives or friends who got worried when old Albert failed to turn up to bowls, or because Ethel hadn’t called her sister in Adelaide for a fortnight now, or Bill’s mail was piling up and he was normally so particular. Usually it went one of two ways: the person had either been dead for days or
wasn’t home. Neither required urgency, so Mick aimed to save the beacons and siren for traffic but was lucky and scored greens all the way. It was nice to be alone and have a little time to think. Everything Aidan did wrong was another nail in his coffin, another reason why they should kick him out and let Mick go back to full-time. Unfortunately, he knew the service too well to think it was anything
like a given.

As he’d said to Jo, they were just as likely to pretend nothing was wrong and let Aidan through.

When he pulled up at the address, there were no neighbours waiting. The house was a neat, blue-painted weatherboard with security grilles on the windows and front door. The letterbox was full of junkmail but so was the box in front of the next house along. Mick got out of the ambulance,
pulled on gloves, hooked the strap of the Oxy-Viva over his shoulder, then went through the little blue gate and up the path. The front door was closed behind the grille. He knocked and listened. Nothing. He tried the handle of the security grille. Locked.

He phoned Control on his mobile. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Guy’s aunt rang. She lives in Brisbane and says he calls her every few days and it’s
now up to five and he doesn’t answer his phone.’

Mick stepped off the end of the porch and rounded the corner of the house. He glanced up at the neighbour’s house but the wall on this side was covered by a greenhouse. The windows of the subject house were all closed and covered by grilles. The lawn was short, and a freestanding garage at the end of twin concrete runners had a padlock on the door.

‘So far it looks like he’s gone away on holidays,’ he told Control.

Phones rang in Control’s background. ‘Gotta go. Call if you need backup.’