Confessions of a Police Constable by Matt Delito Page A

the chinstrap (which was a goddamn double-D clasp; great for motorcyclists, but a royal pain for rescue personnel). I stuck my hands into the helmet – one hand on each side of his neck, as far into the helmet as I could get – to steady his head. Kim, swearing under her breath, was gently rocking the helmet back and forth, to very carefully get it off him. All the while, the motorcyclist didn’t move a muscle.
    After what felt like an eternity, we finally managed to remove his helmet. Kim produced a CPR mask out of nowhere – I had no idea she carried one around with her – and started performing rescue breaths as I unzipped the motorcyclist’s jacket, ready to perform chest compressions.
    Once he had had his rescue breaths, I started the compressions. The first push gave a horrible crunching sound. Here’s something they don’t often tell you in the first aid course: if you’re doing CPR correctly, you’re more than likely to break their sternum and ribs in the process. The first time it happened to me, I was so surprised and sickened that I dry-heaved. I was lucky not to throw up all over my own arms and my victim, but to my credit I didn’t stop giving CPR.
    With this particular patient, we only made it through two cycles before the ambulance arrived. They had an AED 23 on them, and started hooking the man up right away.
    â€˜Shock advised,’ the AED machine bleated out.
    â€˜Stand clear,’ one of the paramedics said, glancing around quickly to make sure no one was touching the patient, before pressing the button on the AED.
    â€˜Shock delivered,’ an unnaturally calm voice spoke from the AED machine.
    Almost immediately, our motorcyclist shot back to life. The change was rapid, and downright incredible. From the increasingly white colour he had had in the minutes since we’d found him, his face and lips turned instantly red, as he groaned and gasped for air.
    I too felt a rush of blood run to my ears, face and fingertips. It was almost as though my heart had decided to stop beating in sympathy with the motorcyclist’s.
    It is a rare thing to see someone brought back from the dead, and the feeling when it happens is indescribable.
    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the reasons why I absolutely love my job.
    With the motorcyclist’s chances looking a little bit better, I let my mind wander back to the accident. I was puzzled about what may have happened to the motorcyclist: the road was clear and dry, the visibility was good, it was early afternoon so there wasn’t a lot of traffic around, and no one else appeared to have been involved. I looked at the bike, and other than the damage of the accident itself, I couldn’t really see anything obviously wrong with it.
    After hooking the man up to another one of their machines (I’m not a medic, so you’ll have to forgive the vague terms – it was a machine that went ‘beep’ a lot), one of the paramedics provided a solution to the mystery.
    â€˜This guy has just had a heart attack,’ he said, looking at the readouts on the little display. ‘We’ll take him with us, he’s going to need to be looked after, but I think he’ll be fine.’
    As the paramedics loaded the motorcyclist into the back of their ambulance, the Traffic Police arrived to do an investigation. Traffic are usually called if there’s a risk a collision is ‘life changing or life threatening’. It didn’t take long before they concurred with my initial assessment: nothing was wrong with the road or the bike. There was no sign that he even tried to hit the brakes – he just tumbled off the side of the motorcycle at about 30mph.
    â€˜Seems like the LAS guys were right,’ the traffic copper said. ‘Heart attack makes sense.’
    The man was conveyed to hospital at full speed. Later we discovered he had a broken shin, a gallery of bruises and his very