“I’m not leaving him.”
“I understand.”
And I do.
But understanding does not change what has to happen.
The paramedics guide her towards the ambulance, talking gently, firmly. She keeps twisting back, fighting the blanket around her shoulders, trying to see past us to the car.
Brian takes longer.
Much longer.
He is badly trapped. The angle is poor, his leg caught, chest injury likely, blood where I don’t want blood,breathing shallow enough that every second counts and too fast to be safe. The paramedics work with us, one inside as far as access allows, one talking through what they need, what we can move, what we can’t.
The car is stable, then not quite stable enough, then stable again after Kev adjusts support.
Tools come out.
Glass management.
Metal.
Noise.
The shriek of cutting equipment bites through the air, and the smell of hot metal mixes with mud, oil and crushed hedge.
I give instructions.
I check positions.
I speak to Brian even though I don’t know how much he can hear.
“Brian, we’re getting you out. Stay with us. You’re doing well.”
His eyelids flicker once.
It is enough.
It has to be enough.
Time changes during an extrication like that. It stops being minutes and becomes tasks. Hold. Cut. Check. Wait. Again. Move that. Not yet. Mind the edge. Paramedic in. Paramedic out. Pressure there. Good. Again. Slow. Stop.
My body knows what to do.
My voice stays steady.
My mind does what it always does, holding the map of the scene while refusing to look too hard at the human centre of it.
Because if I look too hard, I see Brian’s hand. Old skin. Gold wedding ring. Blood at the cuff of his shirt. The ordinary intimacy of a man who probably put that shirt on this morning without once imagining strangers would cut him out of a car before lunch.
I do not look too hard.
I look enough.
There is a difference.
“Nearly there,” Dan says from the other side, not to me, not exactly. To all of us.
