I knew it was going to be a suspended the second the operator connected the call. Whilst a hysterical caller does not always (or even usually) mean a serious call, these weren’t the usual panicking screams but howls of sheer terror. I wondered if it was going to be something gruesome; it was almost a relief went she told me that the patient was her elderly grandmother, who was “not waking up”.
“Hurry up!” she sobbed, again and again, oblivious of the fact that she hadn’t even given me an address to send to. It’s usually one of the most frustrating things on earth to be told to hurry when you are waiting for a response from the caller, but I could hardly feel annoyed in the circumstances. I managed to coax the address out of her (thankfully, just down the road from Callsville Ambulance Station) and confirm what I’d already guessed — that the patient was not breathing. This flagged the call as a Red 1, and already two ambulances and an FRU were on their way. Now, for the hard bit — giving CPR instruction to someone who is barely together enough to remember where she was.
“Did you see what happened?” is the next question. This helps us determine whether it’s going to be a ‘working job’ or a ‘purple plus’ and therefore how much we should try to coax a reluctant caller into giving CPR. This caller, unfortunately, did not see what happened — she’d just come to visit, she sobbed, and found her grandmother in the bed. Not a good sign — she could have been there for hours. But there was still a remote chance, so I ploughed on with the “get the patient on her back, check the airway, check for breathing…” instructions. It took a little while because the caller was sobbing so much, but she was doing as she was told — she wanted to do everything she could to save her grandmother. Not breathing confirmed, I moved on to the CPR instructions.
“I’m going to tell you how to do resuscitation,” I began. “Put the heel of your hand…”
“No!” sobbed the caller, who had been totally compliant until now. “I can’t, I can’t, just send the ambulance!”
This was a setback.
“Yes, you can — I can tell you how. We need to do this to give her the best chance,” I said, which is my usual coaxing patter.
“No,” she said, “I can’t“, and this time I understood that she didn’t mean I can’t, I’m too scared, I don’t know how but I can’t, it’s too late, she’s already dead. I didn’t mention the CPR again, but stayed on the line with her anyway, even though I had nothing left to say or do other than ooze meaningless placitudes like “help will be with you soon,” and “you did very well, you did everything you could”. Now the urgency was over, I became aware of a background noise that I’d been blotting out. There was a small child crying in the background.
“Is that a child with you?” I asked.
“Yes… my little brother,” she told me. The boy was wailing inconsolably and shouting “Granny!” and the caller’s name. He sounded about five. It occurred to me at that point that to have a brother that young, my caller was most likely not an adult yet herself.
“Okay, let’s get him out of there,” I said. “Both of you leave the front door open and go and stand outside and wait for the ambulance. Give your little brother a hug and look after him.” They both sounded terrified; I figured they needed each other.
I didn’t say anything else, but I heard the girl explaining that because she couldn’t wake grandma up she thought she was gone (not ‘dead’, never ‘dead’). The little boy howled that he didn’t want grandma to go, and the girl said that she didn’t either, and then they both cried again. Then, a familiar sound, nee naw nee naw nee naw — it was the FRU arriving. The girl snatched up the phone and thanked me about ten times before going to greet it. I wasn’t sure what she was thanking me for; in retrospect, I think it was the fact that I’d got an ambulance there so that she didn’t have to be the responsible adult any more.