Messy

The medical orderly and I open the back doors.

Blood covered the walls, the stretcher, over the patient and over the guys inside.

We flipped out the handles and unlocked the stretcher from the floor.

"All good?" I queried.

Steve nodded, as he continued pumping on the chest.

With every compression, blood seeped from beneath a universal dressing, flowing in an intermittent stream onto the ground below.

With speed but with care, we unloaded the stretcher, ensuring the wheels were locked, and wheeled into the open doors of A&E.

Red blood trailed on the ground, intermixed with bloodied footprints.

The trauma room was well prepared; all manner of doctors, nurses, orderlies and xray techs were around, all gowned up in yellow splash aprons, goggles and red stickers proclaiming their role.

It was relatively silent.

The beds were lined up, stretcher sides down and in a few seconds, the patient was slid across from the ambulance stretcher and onto the trauma bed.

Like clockwork, a medical orderly on a stool took over compressions from Steve.

"Stop compressions" the team leader shouted authoritatively.

Eyes focused on the ECG as it displayed asystole.

Simultaneously, a trauma surgeon removed the universal dressing from the chest, revealing a 10cm open laceration slightly left of the sternum extending to the nipple. It looked rather deep, past the intercostals.

"Continue CPR" the team leader shouted authoritatively.

The room then became quite loud filled with a furry of activity.

About 30 minutes later as we were hosing out the bloodied stretcher and ambulance interior, one of the nurses came up and had a quick chat. They had, expectedly, called the patient. She also mentioned that the chest lac was indeed deep - there was a 4cm lac to the ventricle. That explained the massive amount of blood inside the ambulance!

Messy.