“Vitals?”
“Steady but not good”
“Ok, let’s get her to Lancelot”
“On 3… 1…2…3”
Fred had been on the job for a long time, and so was somewhat desensitized to individuals, in all that entailed. People get hurt, people die, he tries to help them all, but he knows he can’t – it’s all numbers. Paul was different from Fred, he got attached, but he was also quick to move on. He was scared of death but had a strange fascination with staring it into the eye quickly before looking away like a small school girl. Like any two man show there had to be a leader and a sidekick, Paul was the latter. The two paramedics carefully lifted the burn victim onto the stretcher, and proceeded to fasten the middle aged woman securely in a anti-friction blanket.
“Man, she’s got some nice stuff!” Paul remarked as they rushed her out the door. Once getting the unconscious woman down her front steps and onto the ground Paul stopped. “Hey what about her door? Should I try and lock it? Did you see any keys?”
“Look just lock the front and them come out the back, we don’t have time for the keys” Fred said as he resumed pushing the stretcher towards Lancelot, their affectionate nickname for the ambulance. By the time he had reached the back and opened the doors Paul was back. Fred had to give him credit, he was a fast and agile little fucker. Plus he knew what was at steak, a couple minutes probably wouldn’t hurt this woman, but a burn of this magnitude is fairly serious.
“Ok lift…now”
They both simulataneously unhinged the legs to collapse the stretcher back down to it’s wheels and lifted it into the back of Lancelot, Paul hopping up with the woman and Fred closing the back door and jogging around to open the driver’s side door before hopping into the start the ambulance.
Lancelot raced through the night, it’s contrasting lights flashing brightly in the wake of the illuminescent flood coming from the streetlights above. Fred watched the road in a strange mindset; the practically flawless neighbourhood creeped him out, he felt as if he was in some storybook town after the book had been closed. The imagined characters retired for an indefinate period of time. “Think she’s single? I couldn’t really tell, don’t remember seeing any pictures” Fred asked over his shoulder to Paul, trying to take his mind off the road flying beneath him. "And more importantly… how did she get that burn without any evidence of a fire?
“I’m not sure…” Paul started, looking back down at the woman. Scarface was all his mind could think of. The woman literally had a burn to half of her body, right down the middle, not the worst he had seen in terms of it’s severity per square inch, but it was up there. “But this is definately an odd call” Odd indeed, something wasn’t right here, something was off, but Paul was too intimidated to question it further, he justed wanted to do his job and go home. Intimidated, he shook his head at this. Intimidated of what? He thought about this to himself, looking at the woman once more. “Getting burned” he said under his breath to himself.
It was the end of their shifts, and with the busy flow of the sick and wounded, and those helping, bustling around them, they caught word that the burn woman was out of treatment and had woken up. They found the door and listened in on the occurances inside.
“Ok Ma’am, to help aid in your recovery I’m just gonna ask you a couple questions, then I’ll be out of your hair to let you rest” the nurse said to the woman, looking down on her as she lie in the bed surrounded by technology.
The woman nodded her bandaged head.
“Ok, firstly… how exactly did the burn happen?” the nurse asked, clicking her ballpoint pen into action and preparing her clipboard.
The victim didn’t answer this for quite a while, but everone waiting anxiously; no one seemed to have a doubt the woman would speak, they just did not know when it would happen, and then it finally did. “It’s from my marriage” she said finally, she exhaled slightly before going on. “I got so close to him. I would lie beside him at night, he burned me without even knowing but I screamed for more. He was important, I was nothing. I was scared, not of him but just in a general sense. He made me feel different, HE was different, he was better than me, a dream.” she started to cry. “What am I supposed to do without him? I… where did he go???” the damaged woman demanded inbetween sobs. “I just… I didn’t know what to do, so I called you people. You have the drugs… and it hurts so much”