I was working with a young lady, let’s just call her Vie.

Well Vie and I were having a great night shift, just cruising between jobs around the Parramatta area. Just before midnight we get a call for the job you never want to get … a baby not breathing!

Well we put the pedal to the floor, and got to scene very quickly. It was a red brick house, on an elevated block of land, with stairs leading up to the front veranda of the house.

Light was shining out through the open front door, as we opened up the back of the ambulance and got out the oxy-viva and the defibrillator. We mounted the stairs with some conviction, and entered the house, to find a frantic mother in the kitchen, on the phone to the coordination centre. Her baby was laying on the kitchen counter top, pale and cool to the touch.

Our hearts were in our mouths and we were hoping the intensive care crew backing us up, would get there soon.

I checked for signs of life, and there were none. The baby was limp and lifeless, so I started compressions on her with my fingers. It was nothing like working on one of the baby manikins at the training centre at all. Her chest was not clunky like the manikin, but smooth in its’ movement, and her small head was moving slightly in time with the compressions.

Vie took the pads out of the defibrillator, tearing the sealed packaging to get them out. She changed the electronic module in the defibrillator, from the adult module to the paediatric module, and changed the setting for the babys’ age and weight.

While I was using the fingers of one of my hands to carry out the compressions, I was hurriedly sorting through the oxy-viva with the other, looking for an airway to put into her mouth. That was when the intensive care crew arrived at the house, thankfully.

I stopped the compressions momentarily, to turn her on her side, so I could put a folded towel under her back and shoulders so her airway could be maintained, and that is when we noticed the signs of dependant lividity, telling us that she had been in arrest for some time before her mother had found her not breathing.

Dependant lividity occurs when a body is left in a position for some time, and the blood in the tissues tends to settle to the lowest point, due to gravity. It looks for all the better description, like bruising and mottled skin colouring.

Knowing what it was, we still continued with the arrest.

Vie had the pads out, and we applied one to her back, and then one to the front of her chest, and that was when it really hit home to us, who we were working on.

The pads completely encased her body, touching front to back. She was so tiny that the pads COMPLETELY ENCASED her.

Dave from the intensive care ambulance, tried to put an intubation tube into her airway, but it was swollen and had fluid in it, and was unable to establish an airway.

It was then that we made one of the hardest calls of my career, to stop the arrest.

Fortunately, Dave, a very experienced Intensive Care paramedic was there to help guide us with the scene. We felt like just sitting down with her mother, and crying together.

Up until that point, we didn’t even realise that there were 4 other children in the household. All aged under 6 years old. They had been in another room fortunately whilst all of this was going on.

The mother was inconsolable, but Vie did her best to explain to her about the process about to be put into place. The police need to be called, and we had to leave the baby as we had finished working on her, pads and all. We couldn’t even allow her to nurse or cradle her limp and lifeless body.

Dave’s partner, Rob, helped me put our gear back into the ambulance, while Dave and Vie were talking to the mother up in the house. Rob and I were discussing how much of a shitty job it was, and that there is something definitely wrong in the world for beautiful little babies to end up like this. It was just wrong, no matter how you look at it.

Dave and Rob left the scene, to return to the station, leaving Vie and I to wait around for the police.

While Vie was talking to the mother, I sat in the lounge room with the other children, watching Mr Men cartoons, keeping them occupied while we waited, for the police to arrive and question us, and start to work the scene.

Anyway, the police turned up, and told us to wait around for the detectives to turn up so they could talk to us. The baby had died in possible suspicious circumstances.

When they finally arrived, we told them exactly what we found when we first walked in, and what we had done in the way of treatment. When they were satisfied, they said we were right to leave the scene, as they would be a while investigating, and that they would contact the contractors to come and take her to the morgue.

I notified the coordination centre that we were cleared from the scene and that the police were now in charge of the scene.

They sent us back to station at Parramatta.

The job was a really stressful event, and we all felt it.

Back at station, Vie decided that was it for her for the night, and she was going to go home early, and rightly so, as we weren’t going to get any support after the job from the Service.

As a result of Vie going home, it left me single, so the coordination centre decided to partner Rob and I up, leaving Dave to respond single for the rest of the shift.

It was about 2 hours later, we were called for what we thought was another job. As it turned out, the Government Contractors were unable to respond to the request to pick up the baby girl and transport her to the morgue, so the police requested that the Service send someone around to transport her.

 Well, the Coordination centre decided that we were the closest available vehicle who could respond to the job, not realising we were the ones who originally responded to the arrest. Rob and I were not looking forward to what we would find on arriving at the scene.

Well we turned up fairly promptly, not wanting to spend any more time on this job than was necessary, but that wasn’t to be.

We walked up the footpath to the stairs, and there were people standing outside, obviously quite distressed, and they had been crying at some stage. Then it struck us both … we are here to take her away from her family for ever.

As we walked into the house, there were a lot of very distressed people, all looking at us as we went by. We were directed into the nursery room, where some of the other children slept with their little sister, and here she was in the cot, looking like she was asleep.

What I first noticed was that she was now dressed in what I could only identify as a Christening gown, all in white. I asked the police officer who had dressed her, as it was my impression that when we were to transport her to the morgue for the coroner to investigate her death, she was to be the same as when we left her, with just the pads from the defibrillator on her. The pads were missing, and now she was dressed. Apparently, the detectives had given them permission to dress her to say goodbye to, so they had.

Well we gave our condolences to the family, and the father was now home from his nightshift. We asked the father if he would be able to carry her down to the back of the ambulance, as it would give him a chance to say goodbye to her.

He accepted, and gently picked her up, the dress spilling over his arms as he carried her toward the front door.

We walked in front of him, so as to reach the ambulance and open it up. Rob opened the back of the wagon, and I pulled the stretcher out so she could be laid on the mattress. We moved the pillow and blanket, to accommodate her on the stretcher, and we placed the blanket and pillows around her to keep her safe on the way to the hospital. It was required that we go to the hospital first, to have a doctor write out a death certificate before we transport her to the morgue.

At this point, the father broke down in the middle of the street, sobbing uncontrollably. Some of the family friends came out and ushered him back up the steps in the front yard, towards the house.

Rob and I got into the front of the ambulance, as I was not required to be in the back with our little traveller at that time. We drove towards the Children’s Hospital, and tears were streaming from our eyes as we drove along. I had not experienced anything so sad in my entire life, up until that moment, and even though I have had other moments of sadness, there have been none that have touched that depth again.

Thinking that the worst was behind us, we proceeded at normal speed toward the hospital. I called a code 5 on the radio (proceeding to the hospital for certification).

On arrival at the hospital, I walked in and spoke to the nurse in relation to what we required, (certification of death by a doctor), in a quiet tone. She notified the doctor on duty at the time, a relatively young doctor, who we had not had any dealings with before.

He came over and said he would call the local police, as they are part of their protocol, to have them investigate the situation.

I politely told him that the police and detectives from the Hill, had already investigated, and they had cleared her for transport and certification at the Children’s Hospital, to which he firmly replied that he was going to call the local police to the hospital.

At that moment, I informed him that the police from the Hill, were waiting down at the morgue for us, as they had already initiated the investigation. He didn’t take any notice, and got agitated with us. It seemed that if something was outside his sphere of influence, it may have made him uncomfortable. It was just a vibe he was giving off, as he became quite terse with his answers and questions.

I got sick of these silly games, and asked to use the phone to call the morgue, to alert the police to the events up at the casualty area.

I made a point of making sure that the staff heard me discussing the doctors’ belligerence to the police officer on the phone, and she stated she would be right up, as she wasn’t in any mood for games. This was apparently the first time she had had to deal with the death of a child or infant as well.

Anyway, she made very good time coming back around to the casualty bay, where I reaffirmed what had gone on, and the doctors’ insistence on calling the local police in.

At that, she went inside, and asked me to identify the doctor of concern, so I pointed him out. She walked over to him, as he was doing some form of paperwork, and politely asked to speak to him in private in the side corridor of the casualty.

They walked around the corner, and a heated discussion commenced. Once the mention that the police officer was representing the Coroner office in relation to this matter, the doctor relented, knowing full well that he should not impede the beginning of a coronial enquiry. He got the shits, and walked over to the desk, picked up his certificate pad, stethoscope, and stormed out in the casualty bay. We know he had the shits, because we heard him say to Rob in a not so friendly tone, “where is it!” Not her, …. But “IT!”. What a prick.

He listened to her chest, checked her pupils, wrote out the certificate and threw it onto the foot of the stretcher, and stormed of.

At that, we carefully loaded the stretcher back into the ambulance, took the certificate so it wouldn’t get lost. Fortunately, I had the good luck to never have to deal with that doctor again, as I have never forgotten what he did.

It wasn’t to be smooth sailing, even now.

When we arrived at the morgue, the attendant there questioned us as to the fact of her dress. Was she wearing that when the arrest occurred, to which we replied “no”. He became agitated, and proceeded to tell us that the baby was to be left in the condition of the end of the arrest procedure, to which we replied that we knew that.

We informed him that we were away from the scene for nearly 3 hours, owing to the fact that the police had begun the investigation of the scene, and cleared us to leave. The police had given the family permission to dress her, so as to say goodbye to her and have the memory of a beautiful little girl, not a naked child with large defibrillation pads stuck to her body. None of this seemed to get through to him, as he also, became quite terse. We transferred her over onto the morgue trolley, turned and left.

My feeling of sadness had been replaced with anger, over the responses from these people. Talk about shooting the messenger. In this case the delivery guys.

For the readers information, there is something that I need to explain for you.

When I mentioned the Government contractors, they are a group of people that are paid to pick up and transport bodies to the morgue when an autopsy is required for the coroners’ office. We, in the ambulances, will generally transport bodies to the morgue if they are in public view, such as a road traffic accident, or if the contractors cannot make the pickup for one reason of another.