ACV's 1 Operation Black Gold (45 page)

CHAPTER 48

I thought the hardest part of our training was over.  I was wrong.  The temperature dropped sharply and on Tuesday morning there was a freezing mist.  On Davies’s advice we put on scarves before we ran.  We heard the crash as we reached the Bigger road and ran towards the noise.  At the next junction down a woman, unable to see properly through her frozen windscreen, had pulled out in front of a van.  She’d managed to swerve at the last second avoiding the full impact and probably saving her life, but the van ripped her door off taking half her arm with it.  Her child strapped into the back had a triangular piece of plastic sticking out of her neck.  The injury looked a lot worse than it actually was.  The child was also fully conscious and screaming.

The driver of the van had suffered a smack in the face from an incorrectly fitted air bag, giving him slight concussion and a bit of whiplash to go along with his broken nose and bruised face. 

Davie Whitton took immediate charge, grabbing Grizz’s pack he dived onto the roof of the car.  ‘Jim, move that van, Buff call an ambulance, Davie, Grizz, get up here and help me get the sunroof off.’

The car had been pushed hard up against a dry stone dyke and the sunroof had popped.  Davie M and Grizz had it off in seconds and Davie dived head first through the roof.

‘Ali, pop out a stretcher and let’s get this guy out of here.’  Gigs ordered.

‘Put a collar on him first,’ came Davies’s muffled cry from the car where he was busily applying a tourniquet.

We got a collar on and placed him onto a stretcher.  I jumped in and got the van started, by working the wheel back and forward, I managed to work the van free.  I backed it off a few meters, the juddering and whine of rubber against metal only served to frighten the child even more, but it gave Davie the room he needed to work.

‘Jim.’

‘Aye Buff.’

‘We canna get an ambulance there’s been a multiple pile up down the road; they’re either in attendance or canna get through.’

‘Jim, I need a word.’  Davies’s gloved hands were covered in blood.

‘Whit is it?’

‘Without immediate attention this woman’s not going to make it.  Half her arm’s gone; she’s got punctured lungs and internal bleeding.  She’s also going into shock from loss of blood.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Well we’ve got the equipment but she’s going to freeze to death in that car.’

I was struggling to come to terms with what was happening.  I felt well out of my league.  My eyes fixed on the van for a moment then my brain unfroze.  ‘You’ll need shelter and heat to operate?’

‘Aye but we can’t move her far.’

‘We won’t need to, Ali, Gigs.’  I opened the back of the van to reveal two pallets of sweets.  ‘Get rid ó this stuff, leave the pallets.  Nommy, Buff.’

‘Aye Jim.’

‘Restart this van and get some heat into the back.’

‘Right.’

We started heaving boxes of sweets on to the verge.  Abie came running up.  ‘I need your plasma.’

We paused for a moment to hand it over.  ‘This stuff’s out ó date.’

He shrugged.  ‘Davie says it’ll have to do.’

I covered the pallets with a ground sheet and called Davie, his team manhandled her onto a stretcher then into the van.

Nommy tugged at my sleeve, ‘this thing’s a fire hazard Jim, there’s sparks flying everywhere under that bonnet.’

‘Then un-hazard it Nommy.’  We stared at one another for a second.

‘Aye, OK, bit I’ll need Ali he’s the sparky.’

‘Then grab him.’

Davie M had some success making a makeshift collar and fitting it to the child, but he had no success in stopping her crying.  He’d made a mouse out of a triangular bandage and was trying to distract her with it to no avail until Boy leapt in through a smashed window and grabbed it.  We just about shat a brick, a black rage swept through me.  Where the hell he’d come from god only knows.  He proceeded to rip the toy mouse to pieces.  The bairn seemed mesmerised by his antics though and quietened down, which saved the cat’s arse from a size eight.

‘Jim are your hands steady?’  Davie shouted from the back of the van.

I actually looked at them.  ‘Aye, I think so.’

‘Then get your arse in here.’

Gig’s was now tending the old van driver, who was wrapped from neck to foot in a foil blanket and secured onto the stretcher with the wrap around and restraining straps, it rested off the ground on its handles.  I climbed into the now smoothly running van, they’d ripped out hoses and taped them together, heat flooded into the back.

‘Put on a pair of gloves and a mask.’  Davie ordered.’

The woman was laying bare chested with a heart monitor on.  The receiver was strapped onto Davies’s wrist with the audio turned on.  On the move, he would switch off the audio and a sensor would buzz against his skin in time to her heartbeat.  He was just finishing her arm, which held more resemblance to a piece of striped meat.

‘Right Grizz, start pumping.’  The arm became encased in an inflatable splint as Grizz worked the concertinaed type pump by hand.  ‘OK that’s enough, Abie hand Jim over that container by your side.’  Abie was in charge of the anaesthetic machine and drip.  He didn’t look well at all, but he did Davies’s bidding.

I opened the kit taking out a pair of gloves and a mask and put them on.  Davie reeled off the equipment he needed while I struggled to keep up.  He made an incision on a large welling on her side and blood erupted forth.  ‘Suction.’  I flicked on the small pump and the small bag began to fill with blood.  ‘Here man, in here.’  I didn’t want to shove it anywhere, all I wanted to do was to run and scream.  The next thirty minutes passed in a daze.

‘Right that’s as much as we can do here.’

‘Are you sowing her up?’

‘No, they’ll just have to open her up again; I’ll pack it and tape it.’

We jumped out into the cold air.  ‘You can puke if you want now Abie’, Davie told him.  He didn’t need telling twice.  Davie checked the piece of plastic sticking from the child’s neck, complimenting Davie on his work and eyeing the cat warily.  He moved onto the old man giving him the once over.

‘Jim.’

‘Aye Buff.’

‘I’ve been back on the phone to the police, the roads are still blocked.’

I found they were all staring at me.  ‘How long?’

He shook his head.  ‘There’s been a multiple pile up with deaths, most of the day.’

There was no chance of getting a helicopter in.  ‘Well?’  I asked Davie.

‘We need to get her to hospital, fast.’

‘Can she be moved?’

‘Well, it’s not advisable, but she’s stable for the moment.’

‘How long will she be under?’

‘About another half hour.’

The decision-making was back to me.  I flicked out my map.  ‘Show me.’  Buff filled in all the accident spots.  ‘Get the police back on the phone.’  I tried to work out a way in which an ambulance might get through but couldn’t, I could only see one possibility.  Buff handed me the phone and I worked out a plan with the police.  They didn’t seem very keen on my idea but like us, had little choice. 

‘Never mind how we’re going to get there just make sure the ambulance is there in thirty minutes,’ I told them before I hung up.  ‘We move out in two minutes gentlemen.  I had a little trouble finding something to put the surgical waste in.

I took the lead and forced the pace down a bit.  The old man was mumbling.  Davie had slightly sedated him and the child.  We ran straight up the road for a mile then I took them through a gate, set my compass and took off across country.  There was a collective sigh of relief as we left the bone-crunching tarmac behind.  After a few minutes, I fell behind to check with Davie, letting them open up to their own pace.

‘What ho?’

‘They’re all fine Jim.  Where the hell did that bloody cat come from?’  Boy was balanced on the stretcher with two chubby three-year-old fists clutching a hand full of whiskers and fur; it looked painful.

‘If it wasn’t for that cat the bairn would still be greeting.’  Davie McAllister growled menacingly.’

‘I’m not complaining David.’  Davie reassured.

I sprinted ahead until I was lost in the mist, checked my bearings and the terrain we were crossing.  I needed every ounce of skill I had on this one.  When they caught up, I set off again.  The mist thickened over the open moorland until visibility was basically zero.  I skirted around the top of the moor until I came to a large boulder, took another bearing, then set off at a diagonal.  As the terrain changed underfoot, my confidence soared.  Eventually we could hear the faint honking of a horn.

‘Every fifteen seconds Jim.’

‘Aye, Ali, it could be the ambulance.’

‘You’re heading past it.’

‘Aye, the road’s at the bottom of a cliff, the path’s down on the left hand edge, watch out everybody.’

‘We’ll just watch you, ye daft cunt, you’ll go over first,’ Buff grunted.  It brought a little muffled laughter.

I detected movement in the mist before me as it spilled over the edge.  ‘Got it,’ I’d only missed the path by about ten meters.  I swung left, the path was steep and I could hear the stretchers click behind me as they were adjusted.  I called out obstacles as I reached them.  As we descended, we began to pick up the headlights of a long line of vehicles and the flashing blue of the emergency services.

A sharp-eyed Commuter spotted us and jumped out shouting.  By the time we reached the bottom a few people had started to gather, presumably to help.

‘Stand clear,’ I roared, the people jumped back out of our way. 

One of the ambulance men recognised Davie.  ‘Mr. Whitton, sir.’

‘George, how are you, when did you come through to Edinburgh?’

‘Transferred last month sir, are you coming with us?  We could do with the help.’  He raised an eyebrow at me.  I nodded; these people needed him a damn sight more than I did.

‘We canna take the cat Jim.’

I emptied my backpack of the bags of sand I’d been using to simulate weight and held it open for him.  ‘Boy.’  He disengaged himself from the fists of the sleeping child, leaving more than a few tufts of fur and jumped into my pack.  ‘Nice one Boy.’  I stroked him a few times.  He meowed his concern.  ‘She’ll be á right now,’ I swung the pack back on cat and all.  Buff pointed me out to a policeman who came over.

‘Hello.’  He offered his hand and I shook it.  ‘I’m PC Walker are you in charge of these men?’

‘Well, they’ll probably argue the point, but officially aye.’

That seemed to amuse him as he retrieved his notebook.  ‘Could you give me a brief statement as to what happened?’

‘No problem, but could you wait a wee second?’

‘Yes certainly.’

I took the bag of surgical waste to an ambulance man.  ‘Could you dispose of this please?’

One quick look was enough.  ‘Yes, I’ll take care of it’

‘Thank you.’

They were getting treated like heroes.  An old woman had cornered Davie M, Gigs, Nommy and Buff.  She’d produced a flask of tea.  A white mug was being passed from hand-to-hand and continually being topped, up much to their embarrassment.

Ali was laughing at Abie’s antics.  He was stretched across the bonnet of a police car pleading with a very pretty WPC to arrest him.

‘I can’t arrest you, you haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I could, nothing too bad like, just a wee something, go on arrest me, please.  Pretty please.’

‘No, I know your face.’

‘That’s because I’m rich and famous.’

‘You’re not.’

‘I am, go on arrest me and I’ll tell you who I am.’

‘No.’

Grizz on the other hand was being chatted up by a lassie half his size.  I left them to it and gave a brief statement to the policeman.

‘Get that thing out ó my face, or I’ll shove it right up your arse.’  I threatened a man with a mobile phone.

‘Sorry man.’  He backed off and the policeman let me off with it.

‘Jim we’re ready to go.’  Davie called from the back of the ambulance.’

‘Right, good luck Davie and don't forget to bring our kit back.’

‘I won’t, see you.’  He jumped into the back of the ambulance closing the doors behind him.  It started up and pulled away.