Editor’s note: We got so many great EMS Week story submissions during last month’s contest, we’ve decided to run a few of our favorite entries. Here is one of our top picks. View all entries here, and check out our winner.
By Cynthia Rivera
LA County EMS
The call was July 21, 2008. Outside temp was 97 degrees that day. This call hit CNN national as well as local news, and the mother ended up on Oprah. I never saw that episode.
I was completing my clinical for my EMT class. We’re required to do one ambulance ride along shift and one emergency room shift. I was on my second ride-along shift because the first one was completely uneventful. I was the “trainee” riding along with two other female EMTs. We were responding to 911 calls along with LA County Fire Dept.
The second ride-along was a little more exciting and towards the end of the shift, the call came in. It was cardiac arrest. My adrenaline started pumping as I envisioned (for some reason) a 40+ year old man. I didn’t have any other details yet. My thoughts were that I was going to be able to perform CPR!
En route to the call we ended up right behind LAFD. As we pulled up to the call I noticed police had already arrived. Since there were three of us, I was in the back of the rig looking through the little door and windshield.
It became clear that what I saw next I wasn’t mentally prepared for. Not in my wildest imagination. Looking through that front window I saw an officer kneeling down, holding a very pale child. My partners jumped out of the rig, as did LAFD paramedics. She ran to the back, opened the doors and told me to “grab the jump bag and let’s go!” I grabbed it and I was just stepping out of the rig when one of the paramedics had brought the child to the rig, motioned us back in, placed the child on the gurney and told us to “start CPR now.”
We both did. I bagged the child and she did compressions. I couldn’t get any air in no matter how hard I tried. The child was hooked up to a monitor quickly as we continued CPR. Unfortunately there was no activity whatsoever. The child was dead. It didn’t completely hit me until the medic had me check his pupils. What I saw in his eyes told me he had just died of something horrible. He would have been 2 years old the following month.
As we did what we could, completed our assessment and examination, we noticed he had blisters on his legs and arms. I’ve done electrical work before and this child looked like he had severe electrical burns except there was no char. Turns out that the mom had taken this child along with her other kids out shopping and had returned home somewhere around 11am. The call came in at a few minutes after 5pm. He was strapped in his car seat and left in the van until we got the call.
Everything was done to revive this child but it just wasn’t going to happen. After that, and a few other tests, the child was pronounced dead at the scene.
The scene itself had become a bit unruly and questionable. Several police officers and firefighters were visibly emotional and the crowd was showing increasing emotion as well. We were then told to transport the child to the nearest level 1 trauma hospital, so me and the other EMTs did. On the way to the hospital, we were told by the hospital staff not to transport the child to that hospital and they would not be accepting the body since it’s a DOA. Left without a choice, we proceeded to the hospital anyway and waited outside the ER, in the ambulance bay. It wasn’t quite 6pm yet and still hot outside.
After several conversations with all concerned, we ended up having to wait there at the hospital until the County Coroner arrived. We left the rig running, air conditioner full blast. The ER nurses kept asking us if we were okay. I didn’t understand why at the time. The severity situation never hit me until later. We were all over the local news about this point so we made sure the windows of the rig were covered.
The Coroner finally arrived somewhere around 9 to 10pm. Her examination concluded that the baby’s core temperature was still 106 degrees. The baby was finally moved to the coroners van and we de conned the rig and went back to the station. We were beyond overtime since our shift started at 6am. The supervisor had offered to take me back to the station so I could go home shortly after we had arrived at the hospital but I declined because I knew I would never likely experience training or any situation like this ever again.
At school the next day my teacher told me I was pale and quiet. I still don’t think it had completely hit me just yet, but it was beginning to. I was distracted and unable to focus after that for a few weeks. My teacher was very understanding. Usually we all share our ride-along experiences with the entire class. We stand up front and spill all details so we can all learn. My teacher decided this story is not to be shared with the class. It was “too close to home” and very likely someone in class knew the party involved. She was right on target with that.
So that’s my “I was there” story. I still think about it. What I find most interesting about this is how this call affected so many people — some that weren’t even there like my teacher. She is extremely well known throughout the county in the EMS community, and is currently a trauma nurse as well. It also affected the community immensely. I would hear people taking about this everywhere I went. I had to keep my mouth shut at the time since there was an investigation going on, and HIPAA, of course. My teacher knew the firefighter in charge at that scene and “kitchen tabled” with him over the phone for two hours about this call. I guess we all just needed to talk about it. We needed to get it out. I still think it helps now.