pressure’s eighty-five over fifty,’ he told her. ‘Can’t see any external bleeding. I’ll check that her pelvis is stable in a tick.’
Fizz nodded but didn’t say anything for a moment. She had her stethoscope on her patient’s chest. Right side then left side. Yes...she was sure there were no breath sounds on the left but was it air or blood that was stopping the lung functioning?
‘I’m missing my ED ultrasound,’ she muttered.
‘The portable ones we carry in the ambulance now are great. Love them.’
She gave him a glance that probably looked startled but she knew that it was only the most highly trained paramedics that got to use equipment like portable ultrasound machines or ventilators. This guy not only knew what he was doing but he was very likely to be very good at it as well. It only took the briefest eye contact but she knew that he could tell exactly what she was thinking. His gaze was steady.
I am good at what I do, it told her. You can trust me...
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cooper. Cooper Sinclair.’
He wasn’t local. Fizz would have noticed this man amongst all the emergency services personnel she had worked with in the last few years. Noticed and remembered him. It wasn’t just his size that made him stand out. He had a strong Scottish accent. Not that where he came from or why he was here was of any interest to her right now.
‘What do you need there, Doc?’ A senior fire officer had come close. ‘Ambulance is just arriving on scene now but it’ll take them a minute or two to get their gear down the cliff. They want me to ask you what you need.’
‘The usual,’ Fizz responded. ‘Life pack, oxygen and the kit. I’d like to get her airway secured before we move her.’
‘Her name’s Sonya Greene. We got her bag out of the car and found her driver’s licence. She’s thirty-two years old.’
The same age as she was. With two very young children. ‘Somebody tracing next of kin?’
‘Cops are onto it. I’ll go and help get that gear down to you.’
‘You going to intubate?’ Cooper asked as the fire officer stepped back, talking into his radio.
‘I’ll need to decompress the chest before intubating.’
He nodded. ‘Positive pressure ventilation could make a pneumothorax a lot worse.’
‘I think it’s getting worse, anyway. Does that look like tracheal deviation to you?’
His head came very close to her own as he leaned over to get into a position to be able to see the line of their patient’s neck and chest. Fizz could feel his body heat, which struck her as odd because she knew how cold they both had to be, despite the thick jackets over their wet clothes. She made a note in the corner of her brain that they should probably wrap some foil sheets around themselves at the first opportunity. But she wasn’t going to mention it just yet. Somehow, she knew that this Cooper was not going to be any more interested in his own protection from hypothermia at the moment than she was.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Tension pneumothorax?’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’
The new medics on scene arrived moments later.
‘Want me to get an IV in, Fizz?’ one of the paramedics asked.
‘We’re good for the moment. You’ve got that, haven’t you, Cooper?’
‘Yep.’
It was someone else’s turn to look startled. Fizz gave him a brief nod. ‘Cooper here is an advanced paramedic, Jack,’ she told the new arrival. ‘I was lucky he was here. We nearly didn’t get to save this woman. And right now, I need to decompress her chest and I want to do a finger thoracostomy rather than a needle decompression. Can you draw up some local?’ She looked at the second crew member. ‘Could you get the monitor on, please? I’d like to know what her oxygen and CO2 levels are.’
All four of them were kept very busy for the next fifteen minutes but Fizz was satisfied that it was safe to transport their patient by that point. The chest decompression had dealt with the breathing emergency and both the pulse and breathing rate had dropped to an acceptable level. Blood pressure was coming up and the airway was controlled.
‘Good job.’ She nodded, as the paramedics secured their patient in the basket for the journey up the steep bank. ‘I’ll come with you in the ambulance and get a police officer to get my car back into town.’
There were plenty of fire officers ready to help lift the basket stretcher and pass it up the chain of people on the bank. Fizz shoved things back into her pack and zipped it shut. She could tidy and restock it at the hospital. Cooper was collecting his own kit.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she told him. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘It was a pleasure.’ Cooper smiled at her and, to her surprise, Fizz found her breath actually catching in her throat.
Wow...that was some smile...
‘Yeah...thanks, mate.’ Jack, the paramedic, was slipping the straps of his large pack over his shoulders. ‘You here on holiday or something?’
‘No. I’m actually starting work here tomorrow. At the Aratika Rescue Base?’
‘Oh, wow...choppers?’
‘And the rest.’ Cooper’s shrug was modest. ‘Coastguard work. Police operations. Specialist Emergency Response Team stuff.’
The glance Jack threw over his shoulder, as he went to catch up with the progress of the stretcher, was impressed.
Fizz had to admit she was pretty impressed herself. The members of that team on the rescue base were an elite group of people. She’d love to be an official, full-time member of that team herself but she loved her hospital work too much to give it up. Right now, she had arranged her life to give her the best of both worlds, by devoting her spare time away from ED shifts to the base and she got to work with some amazing people in both arenas.
It looked as if a new and very interesting person had just arrived in one of her worlds.
‘Guess I’ll be seeing you around,’ she told Cooper. ‘I try to be available to help on as many shifts as I can with the base.’
‘Good to know,’ he said. ‘I’ll be able to find out the end of this story. I hope it’s a happy ending.’
‘I specialise in happy endings wherever possible.’ Fizz threw him a grin as she headed towards the bank. The stretcher was more than halfway up already. They would be on the road and heading for the biggest emergency department in the area within a few minutes.
She turned her head once more as she stepped onto the first rung of the ladder that was now secured to the bank.
Cooper wasn’t that far behind her.
‘Hey,’
