Two little angels

A true story

It was a beautiful sunny day in a perfect neighborhood, at a perfect house with perfect parents and two perfect children.

The two six-year-old twin girls ran across the manicured lawn toward their mother who was drinking iced tea and talking with her neighbor.

“Mommy can we go to the kitchen and get something to drink”?  “Yes” she replied, “but only to the kitchen and then come right back here”. “Ok” they both chimed and off they ran to the house. But instead of stopping at the kitchen, the two girls ran directly through the house and into the backyard.

All mothers have an inner alarm clock that sounds when there is a lack of noise. It was too quiet. She called out the names of her daughters. When they didn’t answer she began walking toward the house. She yelled their names. Red flags in her brain. Adrenaline dilated her pupils and every hair on her body stood erect. She dropped her glass of iced tea and raced around the house into the back yard where the newly erected above ground pool was. Her scream pierced the air. “OH GOD NOOOOO”! “SOMEBODY CALL 911”!

My partner and I were in our ambulance when the sound of a call being dispatched brought our radio to life. The dispatchers monotone voice said “aid 3, medic 71, CPR in progress” and she gave the address. By habit my partner picked up the map book and started plotting the address. This wasn’t our call but when you work a semi-rural area you always keep track of where other units are.

A few moments passed when the radio again came to life and the dispatcher said, “all units responding to this call be advised this is a pediatric CPR in progress”.  Without realizing it my right foot pressed down on the accelerator and I turned to my partner and asked “where was that address again?”

Thirty seconds later the stressed filled voice of the dispatcher said. “All units be advised this is a double pediatric CPR in progress, repeat, double pediatric CPR in progress!”

My right foot slammed down on the accelerator as I turned on our lights and siren and reached for the microphone. My partner tightened his seat belt and grabbed the map book again as I asked “where do I go?” He began a rapid succession of instructions, all the while yelling, “Clear right, GO, GO, GO”! as he visually cleared the intersections that we were speeding through. The same thought was running through both our minds, “oh god, two babies in arrest.”

I keyed the microphone and told our dispatcher “central, medic 6, we’re rolling on that, ETA four minutes.” Even though we weren’t one of the primary units on this call, in fact hadn’t even been called to respond, there was nothing she would do to stop us. She simply said, “10-4, medic six responding”.

I remember trying to push the accelerator pedal through the floorboard and the voice of my partner, constantly talking to me about the traffic around us. “Clear left, clear right, watch that guy! Ok he sees us, go for it, easy man, watch him, watch him, clear right GO, GO, GO!” If our ambulance had wings, we would have flown.

I heard the first two ambulances radio ‘on scene’. We were still two minutes out and only slowing down for intersections and when absolutely necessary. It’s hard to describe the anxiety we feel when responding to certain emergency calls, when you know what’s waiting for you and that every second counts. ‘Kid calls’ are the worst.

Folks, when an ambulance comes up behind you, move to the right and stop. Get the hell out of our way!

An eternity passed before we came to a stop behind the other ambulances. We grabbed our equipment and ran across the lawn to where dark uniformed EMS personnel were kneeling over two very small patients and performing the unmistakable task of CPR.

Adrenaline is a strange drug. Time either slows down or speeds up. You have hyper-sensations. You see, hear and take in so much more of your surroundings, or you become so focused, that everything else is blocked out. For me, on that day, I was focused.

I knelt down beside one of the girls. There was one medic doing chest compressions and another at the head giving breaths. I started setting up an I.V. line as another medic prepared to intubate her. Short, rapid conversation passed between everyone. “How long were they in the water?”,  “We don’t know, the mother says they were out of her sight anywhere from five to fifteen minutes”.  Instantly I thought “the mother, oh shit, where’s the mother?” It was then that her screaming started filtering into my brain. I looked up and she was kneeling on the grass not ten feet away crying “MY BABIES, MY BABIES!” Her girlfriend was trying to hold her back away from us. They were both soaking wet. I listened to her anguished cries for a millisecond and then my brain turned down the volume on her and drew my attention back to the fact that I had already stuck the I.V. needle into a vein on the girls’ tiny arm.

Communication and teamwork, everything happens very fast. “I need epi here”, “Ok tubes in, listen to the lungs”, “how much do they weigh?”  “Hurry up with the bicarb”, “I need another O2 tank”, “we’re still asystole here” “charging defibrillator, how many joules?” “CLEAR!” and so on as we tried to reverse the time that ticked away on both girls’ lives.

We got our girls heart beating again and started getting ready to move to the ambulance. Gently lifting the small weightless body onto the gurney it struck me how tiny she was on this adult sized stretcher. I jumped into the back of someone else’s ambulance with one girl and saw the other girl being loaded into another unit. I watched my partner gently put the mother into the passenger seat of our ambulance. It would be hell for both of them following us to the hospital.

The doors were closed and the ambulance began to move. 

I sat at the girl’s head ventilating her lungs while the other medic pushed more drugs. To no one in particular he said, “My two girls are just about their age and I have an above ground pool in my back yard”. He paused, looking down at one of his daughters laying on the gurney with tubes sticking out of her body. “I’m going to take it down tomorrow”.

We continued the litany of things to do. Rechecking the lungs, I.V.’s, medications and EKG. It was when we checked the pupils that our hearts would drop. Both pupils were fixed and dilated. We knew our little girl was brain dead, that she was gone.

I stared down at that pretty little face, at the eyes and the big black pupils that didn’t stare back. I silently asked God, any God, to please let this little innocent child into heaven, or any place where she could play and laugh and sing. You wanted her, for whatever reason, so now you take care of her!

I felt the ambulance stop. Doctors and nurses flung the doors open and the relative quiet of our office was turned into voices everywhere, questions, orders, movement and teamwork. We wheeled the gurney into the trauma room and lifted the little body over to the hospital gurney as a report was given to the doctor. I said another silent prayer and headed outside for a smoke.

My ambulance pulled up and the mother was helped out and guided into the ER’s sound proof ‘Quiet room’ where she would sit, waiting for this nightmare to go away. Another ambulance arrived with the second girl and as she was wheeled passed us the medic gave a slight shake of the head. Not good.

I wandered into the trauma room every few minutes until I heard the doctor say, “ok folks, that’s it, thank you everyone, are the parents here?” A nurse said something about the father being away on a camping trip but the mother was waiting. Nurses quietly cleaned up the child’s body and the doctor headed toward the quiet room. Everyone else scattered. No one wanted to hear the cry of anguish that we knew was coming. The cry that couldn’t be contained by soundproof walls.

We were getting into our ambulance to leave when a lady hurriedly walked up to us and asked, “The little girls, the girls you just brought in, how are they”? We must have looked down at the ground to avoid eye contact because she stiffened and put her hands over her mouth. I said “she’s inside ma’m, why don’t you….” She cut me off saying, “they’re dead aren’t they”.  It was a statement not a question. She was looking at our eyes and she knew. What the hell can you say but “yes Ma’m”. Her eyes filled with tears. She reached out and touched my arm and looked deeper into my eyes than I wanted her to. I felt her squeeze my arm slightly, and then she disappeared into the Emergency Room.

When she touched my arm and looked at me, it was as if she was telling me that she was sorry for us. It was too much emotion for me. I was letting myself think about what just happened too much for having twelve hours to go before the end of my shift. I took a huge hit on my cigarette, threw it on the ground and got into the ambulance.

I went home that night and casually mentioned to my dad and brother that we had lost two girls that day. They shook their heads and gave a “that’s too bad” look. It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t been there what it was like, so usually you just keep it to yourself.

Four days later the phone at my house rang. When I answered it my heart stopped. It was the father of the two little girls. He started the conversation by telling me point blank, “Mike, I just want you to know that there was nothing more you could have done to try and save my girls, not gotten there faster, not tried harder. God wanted them and that’s that.” “You and everyone else did all you could do, don’t ever doubt that.”

He had been camping that week and told me about the last time he saw his two daughters. He said the reason he was telling me this was because he needed to know about the last few moments of his daughters’ lives.  “I want to know mike, I need to know.  Please, tell me”.  I put myself in his shoes for a moment, desperately needing to know. I sat down and for the next hour we relived that day together. It was one of the hardest hours of my life.

Throughout the phone call my father stood near by, listening. As I hung up the phone I began crying like I’ve never cried before in my life. I sat hunched over with my head in my hands. My dad came over to me and put his arms around me. He knew. He lost a daughter, my sister, when she was five years old. He had carried the small white coffin down the church isle himself. He knew.