Air Ambulance
Blair Orr
I lay on my gurney
on the second floor of the airport terminal. I had a great view of the tarmac
and several of the runways. Planes from around the world were landing and
taking off every few minutes.
It had been a
rough several weeks. I had felt a few chest pains for weeks and tried to ignore
them. My mother finally persuaded me to go see my doctor. The doctor did a few
quick little tests, ordered a blood test of some kind, and did some stethoscope
work in the examining room.
“There’s something
wrong, but it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before,” she said. “I’m
ordering a technetium-99m stress test. It’s good you came in; men
usually ignore warning signs.”
Two days later I
was walking on a treadmill for the stress test.
“You’re in better
than average shape for a 37-year-old,” the technician said.
“I run several
times a week.” I was proud that I didn’t have a slobby body like so many men my
age.
The doctor called
the next day. “The stress test showed some anomalies in the left anterior
descending artery, but not the blockage we would normally expect. Can you make
it to the diagnostic lab for a CT angiography tomorrow morning? It’s
noninvasive.”
Of course I could.
It was beginning to sound like my life was at stake.
The doctor called
on a Saturday. “I’ve sent the results to several clinics that focus on heart
problems. In the meantime, no exercise and no going to work. We want you to
remain as relaxed as possible. No alcohol and no smoking.” A call on a Saturday
that included these instructions struck fear into me.
On Monday I was told that I had an enlarged artery that would eventually kill
me. It was a rare condition. Surgery was possible. It was like a coronary
artery bypass graft with extra surgery – they needed to remove a bit of my
heart. I would be going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. They had performed
this surgery several times. I would fly there next Monday in an air ambulance,
Atlanta directly to Rochester, Minnesota. Surgery would be on Wednesday. They
reminded me again of all the precautions I needed to take over the next week.
Monday at 5 a.m. I was at Atlanta’s Northside Hospital Heart Institute. They
went through the procedures needed to put me in an air ambulance. I was partially
sedated, put on the gurney and wheeled into an ambulance. In an hour I was in
Hartsfield–Jackson. We went in through a special entrance and had a special
inspection by TSA. Once out of the ambulance I was wheeled through some tunnels
under one of the concourses, then up to the second floor in an elevator. I
shared the large room with five other people waiting for air ambulance flights.
A grouchy nurse came over and asked my date of birth and name, inspected my medication
orders, checked a few vitals, and told me I was number six, the last, to go. I
was groggy enough that I didn’t care what number I was.
We lay there on
our gurneys or sat slumped in our wheelchairs. The nurse came around again to
give everyone a touch up to their sedative. I felt fine. I didn’t think I needed
it anymore. So did the guy who was number two. He was about my age and looked
like what my ex-wife would have called a real stud. The nurse told him he had
to have it. They were shooting the sedative up everyone’s IV. I decided to pull
mine. Lucky my ex-wife was a nurse. I knew how to pull out the IV. I pulled it
out and snapped off the needle and put everything back in place so it looked
like the IV was still in.
The clock said
10:15 when they came for number one. She was a pretty teenage girl in a
wheelchair. Some spinal injury. They wheeled her out. About ten minutes later
we saw the little air ambulance taxi out among the large commercial jet liners.
It sat on the tarmac for about five minutes and then disappeared.
10:45 and they
came for the stud. The process repeated itself. Another air ambulance,
identical to the first showed up, sat on the tarmac a bit and then disappeared.
The nurse came by
again, this time checking vitals.
I was still groggy
from the early rounds of sedatives. “Do you do this all the time?” I slurred.
“No,” she said.
“Usually the ambulance work is once a week, now and then twice, rarely a week
without a call up. You’re a big group. You need more sedative?”
“No,” I replied.
“When I was in the army I flew around all over the place. I’m comfortable
flying.”
“You in combat?”
“No, I had a
college degree in accounting so I ended up doing auditing. They’d fly me
somewhere and my team and I would count things to see if the paper count
matched reality. Usually it was pretty easy although they flew me into a few
wicked places in Afghanistan during the war. Assignments in the Pacific were
nice. A sixth grader could have done the counting, but the army wanted a
trained accountant.”
“Pretty shitty
that you’d end up here,” she said. “You’re the only red tag.”
“Red tag?”
“Yeah. I have no
idea what the tags mean though I’ve tried to figure it out. Look around.
Everyone looks pretty healthy and everyone but you has a green tag. Nothing is
ever written on a green tag. Yours is red and has ‘heart’ written on it.”
“Heart is my
problem,” I said.
“Everyone has a
problem. Only you have it written down.”
“The tags make no
sense. They come in green, yellow, orange and red. Green pretty much means
healthy since nothing is written on it. But I can see a yellow with “heart” on
it and a red with “heart” on it. When I talk to people the body part doesn’t
always match their problem, I wish I could see charts, but all I get is a set
of instructions on the drugs to administer and you each have a sheet where I
record vitals.
“Like I said, I
don’t even know what the tags mean. The orange aren’t common but they’re
different from the others. Usually a tag has some common organ written on it,
like ‘kidney’. But the orange ones have weird stuff. We’ve had an orange one
with testicles and another with scalp. Two women had clitoris on an orange tag.
The only thing that made sense was that they were women and not men. They were
both scheduled for spinal surgery. I’d have loved to see the patient records on
those two.”
“My ex was a
nurse. It seems strange not to have patient records given the stuff she used to
talk about.”
“You’re divorced?”
she asked.
“Yeah”
“My name’s Thelma.
I can’t give you my last name, it’s against the rules. My main job is weekend
ER nurse at Piedmont Walton Hospital. When you get back, give a call. There’s
only one ER Thelma there.”
I was pretty
groggy but I wasn’t sure Thelma was my type.
11:15 and number three
was wheeled out on his gurney. Another air ambulance appears and disappears.
It started to seem
strange. I memorized the tail number of the air ambulance. Good thing I had
pulled the IV and the grogginess, while still there, was starting to wear off.
11:45 and number four,
the woman with the severe skull fracture, was wheeled out. Sure enough, same
tail number. Patient number five, same tail number. How could the same plane be
used over and over again for flights to places all over the country?
They came for me.
I faked drowsiness. They put me in the little air ambulance, strapping me in. A
solid transparent plastic wall separated me from the pilot, copilot, and nurse.
This seemed odd. Why wasn’t the nurse with me, on this side of the barrier?
As the plane
pushed away from the gate the pieces fell into place. We had been driven in
past several LifeLink of Georgia vans. All of us were healthy except for some
single problem. Number five, the basketball player looked like she was
healthier than 99.99% of all Americans.
Panic struck me.
They were killing us for our organs.
“Okay, okay. Don’t
panic. Think this through,” I thought.
I struggled
against the gurney tethers. We taxied away from the terminal. How much time did
I have left? What were they going to do to me? My IV was still out.
I began to feel a
little dizziness; a headache was starting. I was a little nauseous, not ready
to throw up, but that early queasy feeling.
Carbon monoxide.
We had it in our house a few years ago, before the divorce. The same feeling
and then the carbon monoxide detector had gone off. We got Janie, our little
daughter, and fled the house. This was the same feeling. Exactly the same
feeling. I looked around. Where was the gas coming from? The little hose next
to my head. I grabbed it and squeezed it to pinch off the gas flow. I jammed the
end of the hose through the rubber seal between the plastic barrier and wall of
the plane. The pilot, copilot and nurse weren’t paying attention to me. They
looked like they were laughing. In a few minutes they were sick, then
unconscious, then dead.
My part of the
plane started to clear a bit. How long would the air traffic controllers allow
the plane to sit in the same place on the tarmac without any communication
before they would send someone to investigate? Then what would happen?
It didn’t take
long to answer the questions. First the copilot side door popped open. I could
see a group of panicked men. They pulled the nurse out first and tried to
revive her. Two of them looked at me, partially tethered and wiggling away.
They came back and opened my cabin door.
“Nail him now,”
one of them screamed and the big guy pinned me and put a mask over my face.
I started to come
to in a place that felt warm. I could hear people talking. I could make out
enough of it to figure it out.
“We’re almost
done
with the girl. She had beautiful kidneys. Then we’ll go to the big guy.”
“You mean the
pilot?”
“If the big guy is
the pilot, yes. We’ll get the dead ones first and save the guy who is alive for
last.”
I could hear all
this but I couldn’t move. My eyes were shut. I couldn’t even open them.
“How’s the guy
who’s alive doing.”
“Vitals still look
good,” a voice said.
“Give him a little
more vecuronium in the new IV line and some morphine in the old line. We want
him completely paralyzed, but in no pain.”
I don’t know how
long it was, but I could hear them naming organs as they extracted them from
the pilot and copilot. This was interspersed with idle chatter.
“Okay, let’s
get
the last guy and get out of here. A little more vecuronium and more morphine.
He’s alive and we don’t want him to feel this. Too bad we don’t have a good
general anesthetic.”
I realized that
the morphine was going into the IV I had ripped out.
“We’ll start
with
the eyeballs.”
I could see as
they peeled back my eyelids. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do
anything and they were taking out my eyeballs.
The pain was
incredible. I thought you were supposed to pass out from intense pain. Eyeless,
I lay there in complete pain. The most total pain in existence.
“He’s red tagged
for the heart so we don’t need that. Kidneys next.”
That slice into my
abdomen was the pain that triggered final unconsciousness.
Blair Orr is a retired
economist living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Every now and then he can
still get spooked in the woods. He wonders why his old house creaks the way it
does. He has previously published another story in Black Petals.
