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Sweat is dripping down my brow and back. Who knows how long we are going to be sitting out here. Where are they coming from? Washington state?
“Hey Nathan, grab some water bottles!”
The 105 degree weather isn’t for the fainthearted. She doesn’t need to have a heat stroke being stuck out here. Hydration is key.
He hands me two bottles of water, and I take the cap off of one. “Here. Take a sip.” I put the bottle to her mouth and tip it.
“Listen, it’s getting harder to breathe with this thing against my chest.”
The faulty airbag isn’t deflating. “Go grab a knife from the truck!”
While he runs, I focus on keeping her calm. “Let’s breathe together, okay?”
There are no close sirens, and she is showing signs of having a panic attack, fast breathing and enlarged pupils.
“I’m Theo.”
“Felicity. I've talked to you before when dispatching.”
“I’m sure you have. Do you like your job? What made you get into that line of work?”
She side eyes me. “It gives me the opportunity to save lives without putting my own in danger.”
“The ambulance is still five minutes out,” the officer says, 10-4ing the people on the other end.
The guy from the Jeep is standing away from the scene. He doesn’t appear to give two fucks about the woman trapped in her car because of him. The muscle t-shirt and fuckboy shades give him away as a pure douchebag. He couldn’t even come over and check on her? No, cause she must be such an inconvenience right now. He is probably missing CrossFit.
Felicity’s breathing has slowed down, and she is laughing. Who does that in a situation like this?
“What is so funny?”
She snorts. “Here I am, a dispatcher stuck inside of a damn car, and the ambulance is taking their sweet damn time. If they knew it was me in this car, maybe they would move their asses a little faster.”
Wailing sounds rise and descend. They are getting closer. This poor woman needs to get out of this car and to the hospital. I see them coming down the road, and Nathan meets them as they get out.
“Alright, Felicity, are you ready to get out of there?”
She shakes her head and starts taking deep breaths. “It’s getting harder to breathe. My chest is tight.”
Nathan brings the piston-rod hydraulic tools to cut away the car to get Felicity out. I continue talking to her as Nathan and I insert into the door jamb to pull the door apart. She screams.
“I know it looks scary, but I won’t let anything happen to you. Only a couple more seconds.”
The buzzing of the tool makes it hard to focus on anything else, but gets the door off and the EMT’s push us out of the way with a gurney.
“I’m going to cut the airbag so it deflates all the way,” she says.
As it's going down, my eyes land on a piece of the windshield lodged into her abdomen.Shit!I throw my hands around the wound to control the bleeding. “We need to move her now!” I’m not moving my hands. The likelihood of her bleeding out before making it to the hospital is likely, and I’ve just spent the last thirty minutes trying to assure she is going to be okay.
Nathan and the EMT’s maneuver her out of the car carefully and onto the gurney without me losing my hands on the wound. We walk slowly to the ambulance, my hand being the only thing that is keeping her from dying.
“I’ve got this from here,” she says after we get her into the back and I’m standing over Felicity.
The woman places her hands right above mine and slides in as I retreat. “Let’s go!”
Is she going to make it? Can she keep the bleeding under control long enough for her to make it to surgery to repair? I pull the shirt from against my body, back and forth, trying to create a breeze as the sweat drips down my brow.
He picks up the tools and starts walking back to the fire truck.My eyes watch as the ambulance turns off main street heading toward the hospital. Should I go check on her when my shift ends? Is that creepy?
