MW_Secret_files/Erotic Dreams.pdf - Medwords.com.au

PRACTICE TALES
Ambulance Ride
The call came into the ambulance depot in the coastal city at 10am in the morning.
A miner had fallen down a shaft at a remote camp 150km. inland. He had been
rescued, but the other miners were afraid to move him further, and an ambulance
was needed to transport him out. One was promptly dispatched.
An hour or so later, the conventional ambulance that had been sent radioed in that
it had slid off the rough mountain track, and was severely damaged. A replacement
ambulance and a tow truck were required. This time a four wheel drive ambulance
was dispatched, which anyone knowing the track, would have known was appropriate
in the first place.
In the middle of that afternoon I was phoned by the ambulance depot. The 4WD
ambulance had reached the injured miner, but he had deteriorated as they were
bringing him down the mountain. They wanted to be met by a doctor to administer
emergency treatment.
A third ambulance, with me aboard, now headed inland along the bitumen at high
speed.
I had no real idea of what was wrong with the miner, but I sympathised with the
ambulance driver cautiously moving down the steep, slippery, twisting mountain
track. I had explored it a few months earlier in my own Land-Rover and knew it to be
extremely difficult and treacherous. The ambulance report said that he had multiple
wounds, was vomiting, and semi-conscious. I kept running over in my mind the
procedures necessary for the revival of acutely injured patients.
The steep ranges loomed out of the plain ahead, and we soon had radio contact
with the other rapidly approaching ambulance. They had reached the foot of the
range, and were making good time on the flat dirt road across the plain.
The bitumen petered out, so I told the driver of my ambulance to stop at the side
of the road and wait for our patient while I prepared my equipment. A drip was set up
and run through, drugs were drawn up into syringes, and almost immediately we
could see the cloud of dust approaching in the distance.
The 4WD drive ambulance pulled to a stop beside us. I was in the back in a flash.
The patient said “G’day doc”, but I didn’t notice as I slipped in the drip and started
examining him. The ambulances headed back to the city in convoy.
My patient seemed to be in remarkably good cheer. He was talking normally, and
replied to my questions about the accident. He had slid down a thirty metre inclined
shaft, and (fortunately for him) not a vertical one.
He asked to be sat up. After examining him carefully, I allowed the back of the
stretcher to be raised so that he was half sitting, and could see the road rapidly
disappearing through the back window of the vehicle. He almost sighed with relief to
be in this position.
51