Operating Table

Several weeks back, I attended the scene of a hit-and-run RTC. The patient was left seriously injured lying in the middle of the road.

He was unconscious. Barely breathing.

A massive head injury.

Every long bone was broken.

Joints were dislocated.

Blood covered the road surface in copious amounts.

I was first on scene. Then a crew, an ambulance officer, and the HEMS team.

We all worked quickly, professionally, silently at times.

If he was to survive, we needed to be at the top of our game, and even then there was barely a hope.

He was intubated, and we breathed for him.

He was cannulated, the fluids replacing the blood he was losing.

Limbs were straightened, some wounds covered with pressure bandages to try to control the worst of the bleeding.

He was loaded into the ambulance, and taken to a trauma centre the other side of town.

I didn't expect him to survive the journey, neither did I expect to ever find out if or how he did.

A couple of weeks ago I met one of the police officers who was there, who told me they still haven't found the driver, but he didn't know anything about the patient.

This morning, just before I left work after another busy night, all I wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed, the ambulance officer who was at the scene was just walking in.

"Morning", he said. I grunted a tired, and I think polite reply.

"Oh. You know that hit-and-run guy? That HEMS job a few weeks back?"

"Yeah. What about it?" I was waiting for him to tell me that the police wanted to take another statement.

"He died on the operating table three hours later".