224 Triage
Triage
It had been a long day, but it was finally over. While you were cleaning up the supply room, Sky Sweeper and Brian pushed the helicopter back into its hangar—or its nest, as Sky Sweeper called it.
She trotted into the ready room and helped put away the last few supplies, then stood up on her hind hooves so you could reach the zipper on her flight suit.
Before hanging her suit in her locker, she tapped her hoof on the PARAMEDIC patch on the back—Sky Sweeper had recently been upgraded. She still had some limitations in what she was allowed to do, since most of the equipment on the helicopter wasn’t meant to be used by a pony.
She took a box of Cheez-Its out of her locker and dumped a few into her mouth, then offered the box to you.
“No thanks,” you said. Cheez-Its were too artificial and too salty.
“Today went good,” Sky Sweeper decided, as she started putting on her flight gear. She had a second set for when she was in airplane mode: a high-viz vest, a flashing beacon, and now she also had a set of navigation lights that clipped to her wings.
“I can give you a ride,” you offer.
“Thanks, but I’d rather fly.”
“It’s going to rain.” And then you mentally facepalm, of course she’d know that.
“I’ll beat it,” she says confidently. “See you tomorrow.” She gives you a nuzzle and walks out the front door, lifting her radio as she crosses the threshold. “Pegasus FALX to Teeside tower, ready for departure from Great North Air Ambulance. Request low-level clearance to Saltburn-On-The-Sea.”
“Clearance granted.”
She’s still in the parking lot when she takes flight. As you unlock your car, you can see her flashing beacon disappearing to the East.
•••
Your car drives faster than she can fly, but she can take a direct route. You look for her whenever you get a chance, since your routes parallel more or less. You’ve got a flat in Nunthorpe, a short walk and a few train stations away from James Cook Hospital.
Traffic is light, not unusual for a late summer evening. You cover a yawn, even though there’s nobody in the car with you to see. One last coffee for the road would have helped you stay alert, but make it more difficult to fall asleep when you get home.
A couple of boring sections of the A67 offer you a chance to look for Sky Sweeper, but you don’t see her. She’s too far ahead, or else too far south, and you need to focus on driving, not searching the night sky for a lone pegasus.
Past the Tesco, over the Northern Rail tracks, and you take a moment at the Yarm Road intersection to scan the skies. No sign of her.
•••
By the time you get onto A174, your chances of pegasus-spotting are gone. There’s too much traffic to risk it. It’s not the M1, but it stays busy at all hours.
You’ve seen it plenty of times from the helicopter, flying east towards the coast or flying in to James Cook. You’ve seen it a few times from an accident scene, too.
As you cross by Bluebell Corner, you think of a wreck you worked there. If people saw what you saw, they’d drive a lot more sanely. Would leaving twisted automobiles by the side of the road slow down drivers? Probably not.
You’d seen plenty of wrecks, but you’d never seen one happen in front of you until now. You’d been gaining on a lorry and changed lanes to pass it, when it suddenly veered off to the right. You slam on the brakes, your heart already beating a million miles a minute, and you watch in what seems like slow motion as it crashes through the guardrail and skids into the median—
As it tears through the second barrier, you’re already having flashbacks to another similar accident you’d been called to, a nasty head-on collision.
The back of the lorry bounces, and you see headlight beams slash through the dust and tire smoke, spinning clockwise. There’s a cacophony of hollow metallic thuds, and screeching tires. When it finally dies down, you can hear leaves and twigs falling–the lorry wound up crashed into a tree–and a hiss of escaping coolant.
You’re working on pure autopilot as you bring your car to a stop on the hard shoulder, just abreast the sundered guardrail. You yank the door open and pop the rear hatch release, then grab your cell phone and punch in 999.
There’s a paramedic bag in the boot. Limited supplies but they’ll make a difference. Prompt action saves lives.
“999, what’s your emergency?”
“A174 west of Bluebell Corner, HGV crossed the median, multiple vehicles involved, injuries unknown at this time. I’m a paramedic.” You give her your name and then hang up, mentally triaging the initial scene. The lorry looks largely intact, one car got run over, another got spun around but its occupants are probably okay for now. You’ll be flying solo until ambulances and Fire-Rescue arrives.
Flying solo. You cast your eyes to the sky, a broad sweep—she can’t be all that far away, and the shiny new paramedic patch on her helicopter flight suit came with a paramedic radio. You know she has it on her, you saw her strap it to the leg opposite her airplane radio.
You could call her. She might beat a ground ambulance to the scene, and any help you can get would be appreciated.
[CHOICE]
>Call her, it’s a matter of life and death (hero)
>She’s off-duty and deserves her rest (chaos)
[CHOICE A: Hero]
Your radio tones out, and as soon as the dispatch call has finished, you click the mic, acknowledge that you’re on scene in a civilian vehicle, and then call for Sky Sweeper.
“On it,” is her terse reply.
Whatever tech she uses to switch between radios fails her, and you hear her call to Teeside. “Pegasus FALX requesting emergency diversion to Bluebell Corner.”
“Granted.”
“Where’s Bluebell Corner?”
It takes you a second to realize she’s talking to you. Think like a pegasus, an aerial view. “Northeast of Hemlington Lake.”
“Roger, be there quick.”
You don’t have time to wait. You check the spun-out car first; as you suspected, the driver is shaken but otherwise okay. You advise him to wait in his car, or else walk well clear of the road. Until the police establish a cordon, there’s a chance somebody who’s not paying attention will cause a secondary accident.
Other people are already stopping, more assistance. In a minute you might be shouting orders.
You start jogging to the Vauxhall, your heart sinking. The headlights of stopped cars are giving you a better look at it than you wanted.
The entire bonnet of the Vauxhall is crushed, and it’s got contact damage down the length of the driver’s side. Airbags are blown—you normally arrive after Fire-Rescue, and haven’t had to deal with those before.
The driver’s trapped but conscious. Lower limb injuries are certain. The front seat passenger wasn’t wearing a seat belt and has a nasty contusion on his head, he’s unconscious. Two women in the back seat, the one on the left side appears uninjured and the one on the right is responsive, neck and back pain—you tell her to stay put as you mentally catalog injuries and try and reassure them.
You’re reaching into your duffel bag when Sky Sweeper lands beside you, all of her navigation lights still lit. She lifts up her airplane radio: “Pegasus FALX has landed” then her paramedic radio: “Paramedic Sky Sweeper on scene.” Then she looks at you. “What do you need me to do?”
“Is that a pony?” one of the girls in the backseat asks.
“Yes, she works with me.” You turn to Sky Sweeper. “Check on the lorry driver, I haven’t yet.”
“On it.”
You hear her hooves clipping across the macadam as she trots to the truck.
Her radio discipline reminds you that you’ve been lax. You key your mic and radio your current assessment of the situation.
A moment later, Sky Sweeper adds her discovery. “Driver unresponsive, no pulse detected, starting CPR.”
You’d thought he’d fallen asleep or the truck had had a mechanical failure. You glance over to the lorry and then turn your attention back to your patients as the distant high/low warble of an emergency siren splits the still night air.
•••
An hour later, the two of you watch as a heavy wrecker starts pulling the wrecked lorry off the motorway. “They say the HGV driver’s going to make it,” you tell her. “In case you didn’t know.” So was everybody in your car. The driver had a long road ahead of him. “Sorry for calling you on your way home.”
“I’m glad you did.” She nuzzles your side, then looks up to the sky as the rain starts.
“I wasn’t going to check on him, I figured he’d be okay.”
“That’s an important thing to remember,” Sky Sweeper said. “You can’t always tell from the wreckage who’s gonna make it and who’s not.”
“I’m not used to being first on scene and alone.”
“Me, either.” She snort-laughed. “I kept waiting for somepony to come with the paddles.”
“Yeah.”
“Feels weird to not be getting into the helicopter.” Sky Sweeper lifts her hoof and then lowers it again. “So, if you’re still up to giving me a ride home, I’d take it.”
“Wore yourself out giving CPR? Or don’t want to fly in the rain?”
She nods. “Wore myself out. And I forgot to turn off my navigation lights and the batteries died.”
[CHOICE B: Chaos]
Sky Sweeper has got medical training but no equipment, and the hospital’s only five kilometers away. It won’t take long before there are fully-equipped ambulances on scene. Your own equipment is limited as well; you’ve got a first aid kit that would make preppers proud, but it’s still a fraction of what you normally have access to. You can take a quick assessment, maybe get some help from good samaritans who have stopped.
Already, two dazed people are staggering from the spun-out car. You give a quick assessment—they’re upright and you don’t see any obvious serious injuries; they’re probably both okay.
The occupants of the Vauxhall are a different matter. The side-curtain airbags are blown, preventing you from getting a look inside. You’ve got a small knife and hack at the airbags until you’re in.
“I’m a paramedic,” you announce as you take a quick assessment of the car. The driver’s pinned for sure; leg injuries are a certainly. Passenger was unbelted and is unconscious, a nasty contusion on his forehead. In the back seat, the right-side passenger is moaning and semi-conscious; she would have hit the side of the car hard. The left-side passenger is on the phone to emergency services and is understandably panicked.
It’s obvious where your attention needs to be directed.
With limited supplies, you’ve got limited options available to you. You turn to the backseat passenger who’s on the phone. “What’s your name, love?”
“Belinda . . . are we going to be okay?”
“You’ll be fine,” you assure her.
After introductions, you start to offer reassuring platitudes while assessing the driver. No major bleeding that you can see. Mentally, he’s in a bad way, which is completely understandable. He’d have had no warning, just headlights coming across the median, and bam. Life changed in an instant.
Odds were that the lorry driver fell asleep. You haven’t seen him yet; he’s probably still sitting in his lorry, wondering what had happened.
Wouldn’t be a bad idea to check on him, but you have your hands full right now. He’ll wait.
•••
The distant high/low sirens are a welcome relief. It feels like it took forever for them to arrive, but when you check your watch it’s only been ten minutes.
You breathe a sigh of relief as the paramedics move in; now you’ve got access to more supplies and more hands. Fire-rescue starts setting up for extractions—neck injuries are a real possibility for the front-seat passenger, and you’d pressed Belinda into head-support duty.
•••
Usually, you’re off-scene before cleanup, but after you’ve given your witness report, you hang around and chat with the police.
The lorry driver didn’t make it. Heart attack, they think. CPR and a defibrillator were tried to no avail.
You turn away when the cop says that. You pick up your duffel bag and in a voice that seems far away bid them a good night.
Could you have saved him if you’d checked the lorry?
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Nice to see Sky Sweeper again.
11766993
Thanks! She's a good pony, and fun to write.
I've got another Sky Sweeper story in the works. It was published as an exclusive at PVCF, and it'll be along here sooner or later
Hero
Idiots not wearing seatbelts have a nasty habit of bouncing around the cabin murdering the other passengers:
11776931
That can happen, or else they can smash head-first into the A-pillar of the truck and also get a window-crank bruise in their leg, don't ask me how I know this.
I wonder what the average Equestrian thinks of this "airplane mode".
(And I bet whoever came up with that name is still snickering.)
As you know, I got hit once at night, so now, I am the weirdo always wearing an high-visibility vest. I discovered that many countries require drivers to have high-visibilty vests in their cars for emergencies. That sounds like a great idea:
I imagine a driver being mad about having to by a 10-Pack for 19.99 U$D, but when the car breaks down on a back road with no reception, he and his family will be glad when they start walking and a big rig stops and drives them to town because it sees them instead of running them over and killing them because it did not see them.
11815403
I honestly can't believe that I never though of calling it 'airplane mode' in a story.
There's been a long progression in my writing about what kind of flight gear pegasi wear. Silver Glow needed an airplane radio, a blinking light, an altimeter, and a high-viz vest (and a pilot's license), whereas Sky Sweeper has nav lights as well. Some of the tornado ponies are wearing experimental equipment that includes nav lights. In most of my PoE stories, pegasi have to clear their flights with ATC if they're above building-height.
I think that generally ponies are rules-oriented, and if it's something that they have to do to fly they'll do it.
11818252
I prefer not walking along roads at all if I can avoid it, and I would probably be the 'weirdo' walking in a drainage ditch rather than the shoulder, to at least lessen the chance that I get hit by an inattentive driver. Mostly I avoid walking in shared spaces with cars, because as a former wrecker driver, I know full well what idiots drivers are--and I was a wrecker driver before smartphones were a thing.