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http://www.neenaw.co.uk/index.php/ambulances/237/what-did-you-do-this-weekend/ One of the worst things about this job is having to work at weekends. I’m always acutely aware of the things I could be doing when instead I am rising at 5am to go and sit in a stuffy control room wearing green and talking to idiots, timewasters and the occasionally critically ill person. My general procedure for working Saturdays is to sit with a glum look on my face moaning “The football will be kicking off about now… and now my friends will be in the pub… and now they’ll be out clubbing… and POOR ME”.
And then sometimes, something happens to make you stop feeling sorry for yourself, and that there are much worse places you can be.
An ordinary family, consisting of a man and a woman in their late twenties and their ten month old son, who apparently were not similarly cursed with weekend working, were on a busy single carriageway A-road on the outskirts of our patch. Perhaps they were returning from a picnic in the forest or a day by the beach. Dad was driving and Mum was sitting in the back seat with baby on her lap.
Going the other way on the road was a black taxi.
Who knows what happened to make the family’s car career into the path of the taxi? Perhaps baby grapped at Dad’s hair, causing him to momentarily lose concentration. Perhaps Dad was distracted by the news that Portsmouth had won the FA cup. Maybe he swerved to avoid a squirrel. Whatever it was, it was enough to make the two vehicles meet head on when both were travelling at 70mph. The taxi driver was jerked viciously in his seat, hitting his head against the steering wheel and slumping forward, semi conscious. Mum crunched into the seat in front of her, and felt a crack in her spine followed by the contrast of the numbness in her legs and the agonising pain of her splintered arm. The unsecured baby, meanwhile flew unimpeded into the front of the car, smashing his head against the windscreen, shattering the glass and collapsing in a bloody heap on the bonnet, just in front of his shellshocked father.
Before the FRU paramedic even touched the patients he phoned control for urgent back up. Three ambulances, preferably paramedic crews, and the helicopter, please. Unfortunately, the helicopter was out, so a Delta Alpha was sent instead - that is, an on-call HEMS doctor from their home address in a blue light car. The FRU reported that the baby had a GCS of 3 (ie. was totally unconscious), that he had a head injury and that one pupil was completely blown (indicative of brain damage).
Three ambulances arrived on scene, their blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, and over the next hour, three ambulances left the scene, one by one.
The first ambulance contained the baby. The baby was now in cardiac arrest. The massive head injury he’d suffered had proved too much, and there was nothing anyone could do. Perhaps the only reason he was taken to hospital, rather than being pronounced dead at the scene, was to show the parents that everything that could be done was being done.
The second ambulance contained the taxi driver. With a serious, possibly life threatening head injury, he had little idea of what was going on, which was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
The final ambulance to leave the scene contained Mum and Dad. Of course, they weren’t anyone’s mum and dad any more, but they didn’t know that yet. Mum also had very little idea of what was happening. Collared and boarded, all she knew was that her body didn’t feel right, that pain was everywhere and her baby was not with her.
Seated in the same ambulance, clutching a compress to a dripping wound on his head, watching the paramedics work on his wife, silent, in disbelief, was Dad. He was conscious and alert and not in any real pain. He’d been the lucky one - the only person to escape from the crash without life threatening injuries. Yet his life would be ruined by this family day out just as much as if he had been the one who died. | 
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