Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Bring out your dead, bring out your dead...

...but only if Dan is on duty, please.
I spent part of last night at another murder scene. Sure it was an accidental death from a domestic argument gone badly wrong, but that doesn't alter the fact that when I rocked-up to ask some questions there was a dead guy laying across his porch step.
So in the last fortnight that's two murder scenes and a double fatality I've been to. And in the space of three days I've tripled the number of dead bodies I've ever seen. At least this one was partially covered and still looked recognisable.
The horrible thing was, when I first heard it on the scanner it was simply a domestic dispute. When the cops arrived they said someone had been stabbed so they called an ambulance. But as the updates and the pleas to find out how far away the ambulance was became more frantic they started to say "This is a poss 228, this is a poss 228, where is that ambulance? What is the ETA for that ambulance?"
I looked on my list.
A 228 is a sudden death.
Then the cops started doing CPR but they said the eyes were already fixed and glazed and there was no breathing. It was another two minutes before the ambulance arrived - a good 10 minutes after it was ordered. How can it take so long?
In the meantime, I listened to a man die over the radio.
Another great evening on night shift.

3 comments:

Andrew said...

Are you getting any councilling for this?

my name is kate said...

Oh god that's horrible. I was going to complain about writing some hideously dull SES-related story but I think I'll just shut the fuck up now.

Andrea Gibbs said...

Oh blimey. Man, that's rough. I want to give you a hug. x