One of the officers, a younger male on his hands and knees, was giving CPR to one of the victims on the road. He looked back at us as Hansen approached, eyes wide with angst as he scrambled to the side to let us through.
“He had a pulse five minutes ago, but now I can’t find it.”
I kneeled next to the little boy, searching his face for something, anything, to give us the hope we needed to keep this boy alive. He was deathly pale, almost white, and the dark eyelashes looked out of place against his porcelain face. My hands shook as I checked for any signs of life. No breathing, no pulse. Behind me, from the ambulance, being held back by a police officer, a woman was screaming the boy’s name, Jacob, repeatedly. Her terrified wails echoed through the air, piercing my heart with a shard of ice until nausea swelled in the pit of my stomach, threatening to spill over.
“It’s the mother,” Hansen said. “She’s alive.”
“Come back to us, kid,” I whispered, and without thinking any further about it, I placed my hands firmly over the little boy’s chest and started CPR. Behind me, Hansen was grabbing a pediatric bag-valve-mask from the BLS bag. “Starting compressions.”
The boy’s body felt so small beneath my hands, a chest that was still fragile, bone stills growing and forming. Hansen was on the other side of the little boy, holding the mask over his mouth as he pushed air into the boy’s lungs. He wasn’t saying anything, but I could see his lips moving as he worked, brow furrowed in concentration.
“Check him,” he said. I stopped compressions just long enough to feel for a pulse, praying, hoping, begging God or the Universe or some higher power for some sign, some flicker that he was going to pull through, that we weren’t too late.
There was nothing.
“Cap, we got a live one over here,” Korbin shouted from across the road. Hansen looked briefly over his shoulder, then looked back at me. His hand was steady around the mask, but he wasn’t pumping air like he should have been.
“Paisley.”
“Keep going.” My heart was pounding fast, painful, air escaping my lungs and refusing to fill back up. The tendons in my hands were aching, my arms weakening as I pumped the boy’s chest. The little boy’s mother was still screaming from the sidelines, her broken wails shattering the stilled shock of the air around us as she begged for her son, her little boy, to return to her.
“We have to move on,” Hansen said gently. “Other people need our help.”
“Heneeds our help.” I panted. “Heneeds our help, Hansen.”
“Paisley,” Hansen said sharply. He grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at him. “It’s over. He’s gone.”
My hands dropped from the little boy’s chest, and I rocked back on my heels, feeling sick to my stomach as I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, smothering the emotion that threatened to burst through. My fingers trembled, and my knees felt weak and painful as Hansen reached out to help me stand, squeezing my hand with his in a way that was meant to be reassuring, but that only made me feel worse.
“Come on,” he said softly. “There are others who need us.”
The rest of the night was a blur. It was like walking through a dream—maybe even a nightmare—and not knowing if you would ever wake up or if you wanted to. I felt numb from my head to my toes. Numb and shut down, like my mind was only half working tonight.
The drunk man who had hit the little boy’s car—successfully killing him—was named Jack Denny, and he was taken straight to the ER by Korbin and Finn, alive and well, if not delirious. A few bruises and some cuts on his face were all he’d walked away with, and that made me angrier than anything else.
Later, as I drove through the city with the sirens wailing and the lights flashing, the woman’s horrific, gut-wrenching screams from the back of my ambulance sliced through the air like a jagged knife. Every once in a while, Hansen’s voice filtered through, trying to calm her down, but to no avail. She wailed, sobbing, screaming for her dead son, who was still back on the road waiting for the coroner—lifeless, cold, dead.
Gone.
Thankfully, Hansen didn’t need my help getting her into trauma because I couldn’t have moved even if I wanted to. Instead, I sat in the driver’s seat of the rig, both hands tight on the wheel, gaze focused on nothing. My head hurt, my heart hurt. Everything hurt. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe, and it wasn’t until Korbin opened the door to the ambulance and leaned over me to turn off the siren and lights that I’d realized I’d left them on. I let my hands drop to my side, numb, tears pressing against my eyeballs. A moment later, Hansen and Finn joined us, and the two of them escorted me to the passenger’s side of the ambulance so Hansen could take the wheel.
“It’s over,” he said quietly, eyes scanning my face under the glowing light of the ER bay. “Let’s head back to the station, okay?”
“Sure,” I whispered, and it was not lost on me how often Hansen took his eyes off the road to glance over, the concern evident in his features. Once or twice, he opened his mouth, looking like he wanted to say something, but each time he closed it again, obviously thinking better of it.
Night came quickly, but the hours seemed to pass in mere moments. I avoided dinner, knowing I couldn’t very well face the guys; not now, not when I was such a mess. Despite Hansen’s warnings, I found myself back out in the ambulance bay near the end of my shift, opening the back doors to the rig. I climbed into the back of the bus and sat on the bench seat, ignoring the sticky sensation of blood on clean floors stuck to the bottom of my shoes. I hadn’t had a chance to clean them yet. The blood was from the mother, a life we had physically saved, yet a life that would never be the same. Had it been me, I wasn’t sure I’d want to survive an ordeal like that, not without my son.
“You never remember the good ones.”
“What?” I looked from the ambulance floor to Hansen, who had approached quietly. He stood at the back door of the ambo, arms crossed as he leaned against the open door, watching me. I couldn’t read the expression on his face.
“The good ones,” he repeated. “In all the years I’ve been doing this, Paisley, I best remember the loss of each human life.” He paused and looked away, pondering this. “I’ve saved many people. Men and women and children … people hanging on the edge of death, and I’ve brought them back.” He shrugged. “But for the one person we lose out of the twenty or so we save, I can guarantee you something: you won’t remember all the good you’ve done…all the ones you save. You’ll only remember the ones you lost.”
I looked down at my hands, spotless from any blood, clean, and then down at my pants, still speckled with the little boy’s last bit of life. My stomach hurt. I wanted to vomit.
“Do yourself a favor and throw out the pants.” He pushed himself off the door and nodded at me. “You won’t get the blood out. The first is always the worst. Especially if it’s a kid.”
“Does it get easier?” My voice caught, stopping him short, and Hansen held my gaze for a moment. He was chewing on the inside of his bottom lip, a little thing I had noticed in the time I’d known him I found obnoxiously endearing.
