Featured Guest Column: Monday Morning
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Monday morning started as any other morning that I am scheduled to volunteer. I got up at 0530 to get ready, left my house at 0600 with a full cup of java, and arrived at the station by 0640. It was a pretty, yet bitterly cold (mid to high 30s), Monday morning that resembled any other start of the work week. Unit checks, chores, and meetings were all finished by 0900, 2 hours after shift start.
At around 0930, Medic 1 was dispatched to a medical alarm activation for a patient who had reported difficulty breathing. We arrived on scene, and I recall that the feeling of the scene was just off. And I was right. This wasn’t a normal “difficulty breathing” call as the patient’s wife met us at the door exclaiming “I think he’s dead.” Sure enough, we were starting our day with a DOA (dead on arrival). I’ve been on numerous DOAs, but for some reason this one was particularly sad and had caused some winter allergies to act up.
We arrived back at the station to find an ABC 8 film crew in the garage bay along with our fire chief and fire marshal. Also in the bay were Dinwiddie’s, Colonial Heights’, and Prince George’s fire chiefs. They were filming a PR piece with Prince George Volunteer Fire Department Company 1’s old Seagrave engine. A few firefighters and I stood back and observed as the camera man shot some B-roll footage with the chiefs around the old engine.
Prince George Vol. FD Co. 1's Engine
It was then, at 1033, that Hopewell Fire & Rescue Engine 1 was dispatched to the Hopewell Marina to assist the police department with a water rescue. Hopewell Police were reporting possibly multiple patients in the Appomattox River. The assignment was quickly upgraded to include Fire Boat 1, Medic 1, Battalion 1, FTO, Fire Chief Hunter, Engine 2, and Medic 2.
As we were en-route to the call, I was thinking that this was most likely going to be a false alarm. Something like we would arrive on scene to find out that it was a log or someone’s bag floating in the river. Engine 1 arrived on scene at Riverside Avenue and reported that there was a car seat in the middle of the road and that multiple Hopewell Police officers had recovered a baby from the waist-deep water with one patient remaining in the water about 100 yards further away. This was after multiple residents of Riverside Avenue reported a woman walking with a small baby into the cold water. It was at this point where the “oh crap” adrenaline kicked in. Myself, along with two other providers, arrived on scene at 1040 on Medic 1.
Riverside Avenue is a rather narrow road, and there were already two engines blocking the way (through no fault of their own). This meant that we had to park what I would say was approximately 1,000 feet away from where providers from both engines had already started efforts to resuscitate the baby on the side of Riverside Ave. I threw the BLS and ALS bags onto the stretcher, along with the oxygen bag as one of my partners grabbed the cardiac monitor. I don’t know if many others have had the opportunity to run almost 1000 feet with a 200-pound stretcher with an N95 covering their face, but let me tell you, it felt more like half a mile rather than just a thousand feet. The other fire chiefs, that had been in the bay just minutes ago filming a promotional video, had also been on scene. I was met by Colonial Height’s Chief Hoover who thankfully grabbed the other end of the stretcher so that I wasn’t rolling solo.
By the time I had arrived at the spot where the resuscitation efforts were taking place, there was already a provider giving breaths with a bag-valve-mask, a provider performing CPR, a provider gaining intravenous access to administer drugs, a provider suctioning the water and vomit filled airway, and a provider holding the child’s head. Now keep in mind that this was a very small child, approximately 6 months old, so there were a lot of people in one small area. At this point, I made the decision to stay back, but close, and prepare the stretcher for transport while also making myself available to perform any task that was asked of me. I didn’t want to make an already chaotic situation more chaotic by adding another person.
As we were preparing the child for transport and moving him to the stretcher, he began to cry. I can vividly remember one of the providers exclaiming “oh thank you god,” which I believe was a mutual feeling among all of us. Even with that breath of fresh air, the adrenaline began to pump harder as it became even more vital that we transported the child quickly and safely to the proper facility.
After the child had been loaded up one of the HFD Captains on scene urgently said to me “can you drive?” to which I replied, “Yes sir.” I had just recently, within the past month, received my Emergency Vehicle Operators Certification (EVOC). The only experience that I had driving an ambulance, and particularly Medic 1, was on a cone course where I was not too kind to some cones. At this point I’m hopping in the driver’s seat, trying to stay cool and collected, as I realized I now had the responsibility of getting the child and the multiple providers in the back of the truck safely to VCU pediatric emergency (a 22-mile drive from Hopewell up route 10 and I-95 north). Not only that, but I was doing it alone as there were not enough providers to ride up front with me. Luckily, I did not hesitate too much, and we were off with lights and sirens.
I would say Route 10 was the hardest part of the drive, as it was only two lanes and there was a moderate amount of traffic who did not necessarily want to move out of the way. I had never had the opportunity to control an intersection, before proceeding through a red light, or even weaving in between the shoulder and the lanes. Luckily, I received a speeding ticket about a month and a half ago- ironically on the second day of taking my EVOC class- so I had some experience in exceeding the speed limit. I also had one of the greatest EVOC instructors and was easily able to remember my recent training.
I always thought that it was kind of over-exaggerated that people didn’t move out of the way of a massive ambulance with lights and sirens blaring, but not anymore. It became very obvious on I-95 that people couldn’t be bothered even with rapidly switching between the different types of sirens and very liberal use of the air horn. At one point, I believe someone even tried to race me in the middle lane (I was traveling in the far-left lane the entire way to Richmond). What my adrenaline had me thinking was, “How do these people not care that I am trying to get this drowning victim, a baby, to VCU?!”- even though there was no way for them to know.
24 minutes after leaving Riverside Avenue, we pulled into downtown Richmond sirens and air horns ablazing and made it to the pediatric ER shortly after exiting I-95.
We were met by a group of doctors and nurses outside the ambulance tunnel, and the child was unloaded, crying intermittently, and rushed into the ER. I turned off the lights and proceeded to parallel park in downtown Richmond.
This is the point, after patient care has been transferred, where you can finally start thinking like a normal person again. You can finally let the reality of the situation creep in, after pushing it away for what seems like so long. You begin to process every single thing that just happened in the span of less than an hour as it all replays in your head. This is when the reality of the situation occurred to me- the child’s mother had tried to drown her newborn, along with herself- not an easy realization to come to.
I have been in EMS since November of 2018 when I started as a student. I have seen some messed up things and countless dead bodies. It’s morbid, I know. I have seen young adults my age shot in the head with brain matter splattered on the ground, attempted suicides, stabbings, assaults, etc. I’ve even had my share of pediatric codes, many of which are sometimes easy to shrug off after a bottle of water and decon at the hospital. Nothing had prepared me for what happened on Monday. We as providers and first responders train for incidents like this all of the time to ensure a smooth operation in the case that the call does actually come out. However, nothing trains you for circumstances like these.
You can’t help but think, “What do I do now? Do I go in the ER? Do I stay in the ambulance? Do I start putting the back of the truck back together?” Extremely flustered and adrenaline drained, I made the decision to call my mom- who I had already texted about our tougher than usual DOA- and made a very difficult attempt to describe what the hell had just happened, in a phone call that lasted less than 4 minutes as I was soon flagged down by my partners. I hung up and was allowed to park back in the ambulance tunnel. I hopped out of the driver’s seat and felt like I had been rolled over by a Mack truck. We were taken back to the pediatric ER where we retrieved our final signatures for our reports and transfer of patient care, all while we were all extremely aware of what had just happened and the severity of the situation while trying to stay composed.
It was a very long and thoughtful drive back to the City of Hopewell, thankfully with someone else behind the wheel. When we arrived back at the station, there was this almost ominous feeling among all of us who were trying very hard to keep a smile on our faces.
We then proceeded to have a debriefing of the call with most of the providers who were on scene around the kitchen table. This is something that I have never experienced before. Many of the providers who were on the call also made themselves available to privately speak with me if needed, for which I am very grateful. Colonial Heights also came through and staged one of their units outside of the station to take Medic 1’s calls while we gathered ourselves and our thoughts. I can’t even begin to describe how helpful this was. I seem to always forget how difficult it is to run the next call after one as traumatic as this one. However, this is all a part of the job that we all signed up for, and about an hour later, after restocking the truck, we were off to another call.
I don’t think I have ever been on a scene like this one where things seemed to work as well as they did. Everyone pulled together to help this baby and his mother. While we were working on the child, providers from the Quint and Engine 1, the fire marshal, and the training captain were working on getting the rescue boat in the water to retrieve the mother from the deep water. One firefighter even commandeered a kayak and a life vest and paddled pretty far out to her while the boat was being launched in the marina. She was pulled aboard and taken to a local hospital by the other medic crew on scene.
FF Deal in his commandeered kayak meeting up with the rescue boat.
Everyone comes down from an adrenaline rush differently, and even after a nap and almost a full night of sleep, I feel like I have been awake for 24 hours plus (a mutual feeling among a few of us). Calls like these are the ones you will never forget. One of those calls that will linger in your head for the next few days and shifts.
With the baby not out of the woods yet, we pray for a speedy and full recovery.
Kudos to the Hopewell Police Department and my fellow providers at Hopewell Fire & Rescue for an amazing save. It was an honor to work with such a hard-working group of people on a call that we all hope never comes from dispatch again.
