The Gap

by Benjamin Gilmour

  As we wait for the police helicopter, the inspector recounts his Gap stories. Several years ago, he says, a woman launched off the top but had second thoughts and grabbed a branch sticking out from the cliff face halfway down. She clung there until Police Rescue got to her and saved her life.

  We leave the body for the police, who are making Lady Bay a crime scene. John and I head back to the ambulance through the shrubbery. Suddenly John stops and holds up a hand. ‘Shhhh!’ he says, pointing in the direction of a low bush.

  There, sitting among the branches, is a small, yellow-cheeked bird we can only assume is the rare honeyeater the birdwatcher was searching for.

  We look at each other in disbelief.

  While fuelling up in the last hour of work we get our final emergency for the day: a woman feeling dizzy at Westfield Bondi Junction. She ‘leant too far into a freezer at Woolworths while trying to reach potato gems’, and is now sitting on a bench outside the supermarket. John manages to wheel the stretcher down and parks it beside her. I give her a once-over and, as I deflate the blood-pressure cuff, she says, ‘I’m okay now. I’d rather die in Woolies than go to hospital.’ While I dread shopping malls, I hate hospitals more, and I tell her I understand.

  She declines further assistance and promises to see her own doctor. As soon as she’s walked away, John elbows me and nods to a large placard outside a liquor store.

  ‘Have a look,’ he says. ‘Twenty per cent off Pure Blonde.’

  Without a second thought he steers our empty stretcher into the bottle shop. I remind him again that we’re in uniform, but he doesn’t care. ‘Rules are for fools,’ he loves to say. So he looks around to be sure no one’s watching, then heaves two cartons of beer onto the stretcher and covers them with a blanket. At the cashier he lifts a corner of the blanket so the guy can scan the boxes, then pays for the booze and wheels it to the ambulance.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he asks me, detecting my anxiety. ‘Wasn’t I discreet enough?’

  ‘Discretion was there,’ I say. ‘But we’re not supposed to … I mean, just think about the headline. I’m always thinking about the headline.’

  ‘Fuck the headline. Aussies would cheer at the headline.’

  John slides the beer-laden stretcher into the ambulance and slams the back doors.

  As I’m about to walk out of the station after the shift, I notice a package in my pigeonhole. It’s a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. I open it and pull out a square blue box, like the ones precious jewellery comes in. I open it with a creak and see my National Medal for ten years’ service lying on a bed of velvet. It’s like the medal soldiers get, finally delivered to me after twelve years in the job; who knows why there’s been a delay. The medal is a brushed-gold disc with a red-and-blue ribbon. Above it is a small, striped bar I can attach to my uniform. I don’t take it out of the box.

  Of course I’m pleased to have a recognition from my employer, recognition for the hundreds of days and nights spent rushing round the city and country towns I’ve worked in, helping those in need. I don’t want to be ungrateful, but this is not the type of recognition that sustains me; what does is the appreciation I get from patients and their families. Even simple words of encouragement from a colleague or manager mean more to me than a medal.

  In any case, I feel like a fraud. How can the career of a paramedic who genuinely believes he’s never saved a life be worth this reward? Is the medal just for turning up and having a go?

  ‘Everyone gets it,’ says John when I show it to him. ‘Don’t start thinking you’re special.’

  I close the box with a snap and toss it into my bag. Once I get home I bury it at the bottom of my underwear drawer, in the same dark place I keep the word ‘hero’.

  CHAPTER 11

  A few days pass and I don’t see John. I phone him but my call goes to voicemail. A roster change has partnered John with Barry, a veteran paramedic who smokes like a chimney. I don’t work with Barry much. I had a run-in with him once, when I first got to Bondi, a shouting match in the stairwell. It started with an argument after a comment I made on the lack of decor at the ambulance station. I said, ‘This station needs more art.’ And he said, ‘It’s a fucking workplace, not your home.’ A week later I came in and found a three-by-four-foot painting on the wall, a hideous abstract artwork Barry had picked up from a charity shop which looked like an HSC kid’s major work gone wrong. Everyone thought it was terribly funny. Jerry even stuck a title under the painting, called it The Gilmour. I now get on well with Barry, but he and the others still bring in ugly pieces of art to hang on the walls as an ongoing joke.

  It’s possible that our station officer, Frank, has put John with Barry because he thinks John needs someone senior to get him on track. As far as managers go, Frank’s one of the best. He passionately advocates for all of us, especially in recent times for John. It pains Frank, I know, to give John letters from higher up the chain, putting him on notice for ‘unacceptable’ sick leave. If we clock up eight or more absences in a twelve-month period, we get a written ‘please explain’. The last time I saw John get one of these he scrunched it up and threw it across the room, right into the recycling bin. It was a brilliant shot. Frank couldn’t help smiling when John did that, even after he said, ‘I’ve had it, I’m going off sick!’ and left for the day.

  Not long before Christmas I cross paths with John as he’s leaving the station after work. His hair is a mess, his face covered in stubble. I can’t think of a time I’ve seen him unshaven. There are few paramedics as presentable as John usually is, but he’s let himself go. Barry tells me he’s been buying bottles of a codeine cough suppressant and taking it home to drink between beers. All of us worry about him, but we’re not sure what to do.

  I’m about to ask John how things are going with Antonio, but his expression tells me all. Without a smile he gives a curt hello and is back in his thoughts, far away, too far to reach. When he pulls out from the station he narrowly misses a delivery truck.

  I’m now working with Matt, the paramedic intern who Jerry’s been training. Matt lives somewhere near Cronulla. He moved down from the Northern Rivers region after joining the service two years back. Matt’s twenty-three, intelligent, quick-witted and a keen learner, but thankfully takes himself less seriously than many new recruits. He’s good for a laugh, and has a great future ahead of him.

  It’s Christmas Eve and a jogger at Bondi has phoned about seeing an unconscious woman lying on the beach. The lifeguards are also responding. We pull up on Queen Elizabeth Drive and Matt says, ‘It might be that chick who likes getting on Bondi Rescue.’

  Could be, I think. The woman Matt’s referring to has borderline personality disorder, and frequently travels to Bondi from her Campbelltown home with the sole intention of appearing on the popular reality TV show Bondi Rescue, which follows the beach’s lifeguards. The way she usually attempts her stunt is by flailing about in the water, pretending to drown, sparking a rescue effort. If she’s not in the mood for getting wet, she’ll feign a seizure near the shoreline. Everyone knows her by name: the lifeguards, the paramedics, the police. And she still makes it onto Bondi Rescue because she gives the audience the entertainment they want. The TV show, in turn, gives her the attention she wants. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

  But our patient today is not the regular pseudo-drowner. We’ve never seen her before. She’s in her early twenties and is on her back with her eyes firmly closed, breathing quietly. The lifeguards say she can’t be woken. The patient doesn’t answer when I call to her, but I’m not convinced she’s unconscious; her breathing’s too quiet, as if she’s asleep. I run my fingers across her eyelashes, and they flicker.

  ‘Hi, we’re Matt and Ben, we’re paramedics. What’s your name? We’re here to help. Can you open your eyes?’

  But the woman isn’t interested in waking up. Matt unzips our kit and passes me the Glucometer. I tell the girl I have to prick her finger and check her blood sugar. She doesn’
t respond so I just do it, and she still doesn’t stir. Her glucose is fine. I take her pulse, do a blood pressure, check her temperature and pupil reaction, a few other things. All unremarkable.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, more sternly now, ‘sorry to do this, but we need to know you can wake up and make sure there isn’t something medically wrong with you. I’ll have to inflict some painful stimuli by pinching you, understand? It might hurt, so now’s the time to wake up of your own accord.’

  She’s lucky to get an invitation to stop faking it, if that’s what she’s doing. Plenty of medics launch right in with painful stimuli, although I did hear that our colleague Frank once tipped a jug of water over a patient’s head at the Hakoah Club a few years back, which was rather unorthodox of him. Our patient doesn’t accept the offer to wake voluntarily, so I take a bit of soft flesh behind her upper arm and pinch it between my finger and thumb. Then I twist it a little, watching her face for a grimace. This pinch can wake the dead, but our patient doesn’t move. I look at Matt and raise an eyebrow. He shrugs. Then I pinch again, harder still. Half a dozen times I do it, confident one of my killer pinches will get a reaction. But she doesn’t flinch.

  ‘What a tolerance,’ I say to Matt. ‘Incredible.’

  Just as I’m about to give up and ask Matt to bring down the stretcher, her eyes spring open like those of a doll in a horror movie. She’s suddenly alert, and furious. She begins to scream at the top of her lungs: ‘Fuck you, motherfucker! What the fuck is with you? How dare you pinch me like that, you fucking fucker!’

  We back away now, Matt and I, from the bear we’ve woken. In a rage she lunges for me, but she stumbles in the sand and falls forward.

  ‘Please,’ I say, ‘I was just trying to see if you were okay.’ My hands are raised in defence as she gets up again and starts swinging her fists. Then she stops and points a finger at me. ‘I was fucking okay until you came along and pinched the fuck out of my arm, you bastard!’

  She turns to the crowd of morning beach joggers who have stopped to see the action and pulls up her sleeve, holding her elbow in the air for all to see, waving it back and forth.

  ‘Look at my arm, people! Take a good look! That fucker there pinched the hell out of me. That para-fucking-medic!’

  People step forward and squint to get a better view of the woman’s pinched arm. From where I stand I can just make out a few red marks I’ve left behind, and I start to feel guilty. Trying to make amends, I say, ‘I’m sorry for pinching you. But I needed to know if you were unconscious. How can we help you?’

  ‘Fuck off!’ she yells back. ‘That’s what you can do. I’m reporting this assault to the police right now. I’m having you fucking charged!’

  Then she picks up her handbag, shakes the sand from it, and storms up to Campbell Parade.

  ‘She’s heading to the cop shop,’ Matt says.

  ‘I know she is,’ I say.

  ‘What’re we gunna do?’

  We return to the ambulance and I tell Matt to drive as fast as he can to the Bondi police station. I’m hoping we can get there before the woman does. But as we head down Gould Street we see her going through the front doors, so we park outside and discuss our options.

  ‘Ya gotta call the supervisor,’ says Matt.

  I agree. I phone the ambulance supervisor and tell him the story, and he suggests we return to the ambulance station and ring the cops from there, explaining the situation.

  When we get back I phone the police station and manage to get onto the sergeant at the front desk, who’s still in the process of taking the woman’s complaint. I know him. It’s Stuart: nice guy.

  ‘She’s pretty unhappy with you,’ he says in a low tone. ‘Did you see the welts on her arm? Bloody hell, was that you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Didn’t know she bruised that easily. I was just trying to wake her up. It’s painful stimuli, it’s what we do if a patient doesn’t rouse to voice.’

  ‘She’s a bit psycho,’ says Stuart. ‘But you know, we have to investigate. Sorry, mate.’

  ‘You going to charge me?’

  Stuart laughs. ‘Maybe. But don’t lose any sleep, okay?’

  Then he hangs up. Even though I know Stuart, even though he laughed, I’m not sure if he’s serious or not. He has a job to do, after all. I start to feel nauseous.

  ‘They gunna charge you?’ asks Matt.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Matt shakes his head. ‘How come she’s the one pretending to be knocked out for whatever crazy reason and you’re the one who ends up feeling bad about it?’

  I suppose next time I’ll have to be more gentle, or try another method. In some countries I’ve seen paramedics poke their patients in the eye with a finger to wake them up. But that’s not a helpful thought right now. Imagine if I’d done that to the girl on the beach? She’d have me for blinding.

  While I contemplate the dreaded idea of seeing in the new year behind bars, we’re sent to another suicide attempt. I tell Matt how John and I have lost count of such cases this month, how some shifts they were all we attended.

  ‘Suicide magnets,’ says Matt with a dark chuckle. ‘That’s what you are.’

  Margo, an obese woman with schizoaffective disorder, is one of our regulars. She’s sitting in her unit with the police. She tells us she went to throw herself off the tenth-floor balcony of her Housing Commission block but couldn’t get her leg over the railing.

  ‘I’m too fat,’ she says, matter-of-factly.

  The lady next door saw her struggling to climb the railing and called the cops, but she’d given up by the time they arrived.

  She tells us her teddy bear is suicidal too, asks if he can come to hospital with her. It’s a grubby old thing, all matted and grey, with just a hint around one ear that it used to be pink. I guess stuffed toys can also be victims of negative learned behaviours, victims of their environment. We take pity on the bear too and allow him to come along.

  I’ve always had a soft spot for Margo. She’s a troubled child stuck in an adult’s body. But it turns out she’s not completely harmless. When I try to sit her down at the hospital she gives me a terrible fright by pulling out a six-inch kitchen knife from the back of her tracksuit pants.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, handing me the blade. ‘It’s just not that comfortable sitting on this.’

  What’s not comfortable is the number of troubled people who carry knives around, even innocent-looking patients with teddy bears.

  The streets are jammed with people doing their last-minute Christmas shopping. Shoppers in a frenzy can be dangerous, and injuries are occurring at regular intervals. We hear our controller send an ambulance to a woman who walked into a display at David Jones, while another has fallen down escalators at Westfield and a third has fainted in the perfume section at Myer. We could’ve been dispatched to any of these. But we’re the suicide truck and I’m the suicide magnet, as Matt says, and that’s what we’re called to next.

  In a backstreet of Surry Hills, not far from the terrace where John lived with Antonio up until a week ago, a man is sitting in his car covered in a strange white powder. When he sees us approach he winds down his window and calls out, ‘Stay back! Keep back! Get away from me!’

  ‘Why?’ asks Matt.

  ‘I’m killing myself,’ he declares.

  Turns out the man is a chemistry professor who has broken up with his online lover, and is now attempting an unconventional suicide.

  ‘See this powder here?’ he says, holding up handfuls of it. ‘I’m not telling you what it is. But it’ll kill me in forty-eight hours.’

  This has to be the slowest suicide attempt ever made.

  ‘Bet you it’s only self-raising flour,’ I say to Matt quietly.

  ‘But ya never know,’ he replies. ‘Better call it in.’

  As I give my report by radio I imagine the palaver that’s about to unfold with the police and fire hazmat converging on the scene, the street blocked off, crowd gathering and news choppers ci
rcling. In late 2001 a mad scientist in the US sent anthrax spores by letter to media companies and congressional offices, killing a number of people. The whirl of media attention around these anthrax letters caused a whole lot of copycat white-powder incidents in other countries, though most turned out to be nothing more than flour posted by troublemakers getting in on the hype. All this resulted in a high level of cynicism about white-powder incidents among emergency-service workers like us.

  Matt and I sit and wait and watch as the fire brigade’s hazmat team arrive, donning their bulbous spacesuits and setting up a shower tent. They drag the professor out of his car for a naked hose-down by the roadside so we can put him in our ambulance. The whole operation takes a good two hours. After a chemical analysis, the fire hazmat commander formally concludes that the white powder was indeed self-raising flour, no anthrax bacteria detected. Seems our patient wanted nothing more than to make a scene, which he did.

  Time for one more suicide before the day is done, I say to Matt as we hit 6 pm. He laughs, but I don’t. When we make ourselves available I’m relieved the final call is to a ‘concern for welfare’. An old man in a high-rise Waterloo apartment block hasn’t been seen for a while. It’s an easy job. We’ll break in with the cops and find no one home, and that’ll be it.

  The Housing Commission tower casts a long shadow across the terraces below. It’s not the first time I’ve been to this particular block. Last year a woman fell from the top and landed on the concrete below. Her curtain flapped like a flag in the breeze through her open window. I covered her body with a blanket and the blood soaked right through.

  Today, a group of residents on the fifth floor are worried about the old man in 5534. Most days he leaves his place to buy bread, milk and a packet of cigarettes at the corner store. He usually does this around midday, says the woman in the apartment next door. But for the past week she hasn’t seen him, and he won’t open up when she knocks. He’s in his eighties, she tells us; he might’ve tripped over.