It was a bright, warm summer day as you were on your way to get some last minute shopping done. The sun, reflecting and radiating off your skin as you walked ever so close to the store. You pulled out your phone, desperately trying to kill time as you failed to notice the car driving at a dangerously fast speed, speeding towards you. The driver, not paying attention in the slightest continued to speed down the narrow road, missing the fact you’re about to cross the road. You desperately tried to jump back, but to no avail, the car hit you, flipping your body over the front, then the roof before it came to a complete stop against a pole. A sharp pain engulfed your abdomen, all the way to your toes as you started to heave on the warm pavement. A group of bystanders tried to stop the car, but it left the scene faster than it even arrived.
“Hello, Miss, can you hear me?”, a soft voice asks as she reaches for her phone in her pocket.
“P-P-Pai..”, you try to blurt out as a small trickle of blood starts to run down your cheek.
“Try not to move, help is on the way.”, the old lady softly says as she dials the emergency number.
“Emergency services? Yes, hello, I need help, some lady got hit by a car and there’s blood coming out of her mouth.”, the lady says, the panic audible in her voice as her eyes are locked onto your broken body.
“I-I think she is breathing, her chest is barely moving though, please, help her.”, she says as she tries to fight back a tear.
“Please hurry. Did you hear that, help is on the way!”, the lady says as she kneels down next to you.
A fear engulfs her as her shaky hands gently touch your neck, trying to find for a pulse. The panic in your eyes is overshadowed by the thousand yard stare as your eyes desperately try to keep focus. Your weak attempts at breathing barely manage to get enough oxygen into your lungs as a set of sirens can be heard from a far distance. The old lady gently picks up your hand, tightly gripping it in yours as your body starts to lose the battle against itself. Your eyes, ever so glazed start to fall shut, then bolt open again, only for the cycle to repeat itself.
“Hey, stay with me, hello.”, the lady says as she notices your struggle.
She gently taps your cheek, desperately trying to keep you conscious as the ambulance finally arrives.
“She just lost consciousness.”, the old lady cries out as the door to the ambulance swings open.
A team of paramedics exit the ambulance, led by a male doctor as they finally reach your body. The driver places the stretcher, with a monitor on it, right next to your broken body before the nurse starts to rumble through the bag on her back.
“Get her shirt off, we need to get her on the monitor as soon as possible, try to get her BP and prepare the oxygen kit.”, the doctor commands as he gently creeps open your eyes before shining his penlight across them.
“Pupils are reactive, get me the neck collar.”, he commands as the nurse starts to run the shears along your shirt.
She quickly pulls aside the fabric, revealing your heavily bruised stomach before the doctor tightly secures the neck collar along your neck. As he slides the BP cuff along your arm, the nurse quickly dots electrodes along your chest before connecting them to the monitor.
“BP is 85/40, heart rate is 101, we need to get her to the hospital quickly, I’m suspecting a major internal bleeding.”, the doctor sighs out as he hangs a plastic oxygen mask around your face, securing it tightly with the straps.
“Is she stable enough?”, the nurse asks concerned as she started inserting the needle for an IV into your arm.
“She won’t be for much longer if we don’t get her out of here.”, the doctor sighs out as he moves towards your shoulders.
“We’ll roll her onto the plank, then tightly secure her to the stretcher, there might be some damage to her neck or spine, but we won’t know for certain until she’s had an x-ray.”, the doctor says as the nurse pulls the plank closer to your body.
“On my count, one, two, three.”, he orders as they gently pull your body to one side, allowing the plastic plank to be slid underneath you.
They carefully lift up the plank, placing it onto the stretcher right next to you before tightly securing the straps, making sure your body can’t move at all as they start to make their way towards the back of the ambulance. They gently slide the stretcher into the ambulance as the monitor continues to display your elevated heart rate. The entire car shakes slightly as the doors get slammed shut before the ambulance takes off with it’s sirens blaring. The doctor’s eyes are glued onto the monitor as the sirens from the ambulance mask the erratic beeping coming from the machine between your legs.
“I want an x-ray, CT scan and OR to be ready on arrival.”, the man shouts towards the driver as the nurse connects an oxygen meter to your finger, then the monitor.
“Her O2 sats are far too low.”, the nurse sighs out as she sees the look on the doctor’s face.
“A-Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”, she asks concerned as the doctor grabs his stethoscope.
“Punctured lung, damn it.”, he curses out as a sudden wave of blood spurts out of your mouth, covering the oxygen mask providing your lungs with oxygen.
“She’s haemorrhaging, get the suction.”, the doctor commands as he pulls away the mask from your mouth.
The nurse quickly slides the tube into your mouth, then your throat as she attempts to remove the sudden increase of blood in your lungs.
“BP and O2 are crashing doctor, we can’t keep her stable for much longer.”, the nurse sighs out as she desperately tries to clear your lungs.
The monitor between your legs starts to go haywire as multiple alarms begin to go off. Your heart desperately tries to pump enough blood around, trying to make up for the amount you’ve lost as the doctor tightly secures an ambubag over your mouth.
“We’re nearly there, hang in there.”, the doctor sighs out as the ambulance takes a sudden turn before coming to a harsh stop.
The doors to the ambulance slide open, revealing a team of gowned nurses and a doctor as they pull the stretcher out of the ambulance.
“Female, early 20’s, victim of a hit and run, suspected massive internal bleeding, started haemorrhaging 2 minutes ago, vitals are all over the place as we couldn’t keep her stable.”, the doctor informs the team as they rush you towards the trauma room.
They quickly transport you from the stretcher onto the table already present before removing the monitor from between your legs.
“Prepare her for a chest tube, we need to get her lungs cleared.”, the doctor commands as your O2 sat continues to be dangerously low.
A nurse quickly snips your bra, before coating the side of your chest in iodine as the doctor quickly puts on a yellow gown, followed by a pair of gloves. He grabs the scalpel, lowering it to your skin before making a crude incision between your ribs. A nurse swiftly follows, guiding a tube down the hole. That’s when it happened, a sudden rush of blood squirts out of the tube, covering the doctors gown in blood as the monitor starts to fire off a new alarm.
“She’s in V-Fib, charge the paddles!”, the doctor commands as he quickly interlocks his gloved hands before lowering them between your breasts.
He violently starts to crush your sternum as the defibrillator whines to life. The man forces your chest to cave inwards, in turn making your stomach bulge outwards as the defibrillator finishes charging. A nurse quickly places a pair of orange gel pads onto your chest, while another one undoes the button to your pants.
“Charged at 200 doctor.”, a nurse says as she firmly places the paddles onto your chest.
“Clear!”, she shouts before pressing both buttons to the paddles simultaneously, releasing the shock onto your body.
Your chest arches as the electricity runs through your body, before falling completely flat. The doctor let’s out a sigh before interlocking his hands once again, lowering them into your sternum. He counts out loud as he rhythmically presses down on your sternum while the team waits for the defibrillator to finish charging.
“Charged doctor.”, the nurse says as she once again guides the paddles down onto their spots.
“Clear!”, she waits a moment for everyone to clear your body before sending the shock through your quivering heart once again, making it stop completely inside your chest.
“Asystole, resume compressions, get ready to intubate her!”, the doctor commands as a nurse steps up to deliver textbook compressions.
A second IV is set up, blood being pumped into your body in an attempt to recover what you lost while the nurse continues to crush your heart between your sternum and spine. She nears the end of her set, pausing momentarily to let the doctor slide a tube down your throat.
“Tubes in, continue compressions.”, he says as he grabs a roll of white tape, tightly securing the tube.
The nurse resumes compressions, putting her entire weight into compressing your still heart as her ponytail bops up and down in rhythm of her compressions. Despite her best attempts, the line on the monitor continues to run completely flat as your body shakes violently from side to side. The nurse once again pauses for a moment, letting much needed oxygen flow into your lungs before she resumes her brutal attempts at making your heart beat again.
“After this round, push epi.”, the doctor commands as his eyes are glued onto the monitor.
The nurse’s breathing starts to become heavier and heavier each compressions as she nears the end of her set of compressions once again.
“Switch.”, she says out of breath as she watches a nurse plunge epi into your IV.
“She’s been down for 5 minutes doctor.”, the recorder in the corner of the room says as she looks at her stopwatch.
A new nurse steps up before delivering textbook compressions onto your chest once again, shaking your breasts gently as your sternum becomes more and more bruised.
“She’s fibrillating again.”, the doctor sighs out as the flatline on the monitor gets replaced by a squiggly line.
A nurse next to the defibrillator quickly turns the nob to the machine as your chest continues to be bombarded by rough compressions.
“Charged at 300.”, the nurse says as she quickly places the paddles onto the orange gel pads.
“Clear!”, she shouts, waiting for the nurse to drop the ambubag next to your head.
The shock once again violently rips through your body, making your back arche as the shock appears on the monitor.
“Nothing, go again!”, the doctor shouts furiously, starting to lose hope.
The same cycle proceeds, a nurse violently compressing your chest as the team waits for the defibrillator to finish charging.
“Clear!”, the nurse simply shouts as she forces the shock through your heart.
“Hold, I think we have a rhythm.”, the doctor says as the frantic line on the monitor gets replaced by a more stable beeping.
Nurses start to dig their fingers into multiple of your pulse points, confirming the reading done by the monitor.
“Get CT and a fast x-ray machine in here, we need to know what’s happening inside her.”, the doctor orders as your vitals become more and more stable with each passing second.