The Loophole

By Paul R White

At the start of what appeared to be just another day at ‘the office’, Paramedic Adam attends a call that would change the course of not only his career, but his life forever. He finds himself plunged into the murky world of life and death. An area usually unknown, a place where we have no control. Or do we?

As Adam discovers, just one simple ticket can change your fate forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jun 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463635964

Paul R White

Paul R White joined the ambulance service in 1988 and has been a UK paramedic since 2006. He holds the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal as well as the Ambulance Service Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. The father of three lives in rural Warwickshire with his youngest son, his long-term partner and her two young children, while his two older daughters live with their own young families not too far away. Since 2011, he has worked with a permanent EMT partner. In 2017, they both received Chief Officer’s Commendations for maintaining a high rate of successful resuscitations. Despite a national average of only 8% successful pre-hospital resuscitations, the pair has somehow managed to maintain an unusually high personal success rate of over 90%. To this day, their method for maintaining such an exceptionally high rate has never been fully explained...

Book preview

Prologue

There were times when Adam had wondered if he was beginning to annoy God, ‘if God existed’.

Was there a God’s great master plan, and if so, was he part of the plan? A simple catalyst that played a part in a short sharp shock designed to change the lifestyle and outlook of the patient that was successfully resuscitated.

Or was he a spanner in the works, pissing God off every time he managed to claw someone from the grip of the Grim Reaper?

Was the patient really supposed to die or not?

The questions had been bugging him for some time, without any realistic hope of an answer.

Chapter 1

It was almost 3:35 am as the ambulance arrived at the scene. Its lights pierced the dark unlit country road, and illuminated the wreckage.

Adam Graham’s crewmate Jack Collins (a 40-something ex-special forces medic) parked the ambulance across the carriageway to protect them from any oncoming traffic.

As he turned the vehicle to face the scene, the ambulance’s headlights silhouetted what looked like a body lying on the road.

Leaving the blue lights on, he ran towards the body that was lying several yards past the wreckage.

Even before he got to her, he could tell from her impossibly twisted torso that she was already dead.

The teenaged girl had been thrown through the rear window of the car as it span violently, and had landed head first on the tarmac, before continuing to roll another 25 feet or so, fracturing her ribs, arms and legs as she did so.

As soon as the ambulance had fully stopped, Adam had grabbed the response bag and made his way to the wrecked car.

As he arrived at what was left of the vehicle, the heady mix of petrol and warm engine oil filled his nostrils.

A young male driver, who Adam guessed was not yet 20 years old, was slumped against the steering wheel of his newly purchased car; he clearly hadn’t been wearing a seat belt.

Adam reached through what was left of the shattered windscreen and checked his neck for a pulse…There was none.

The violence of the initial impact had crushed him against the steering wheel, pushing shards of fractured ribs deep into the soft tissue of his lungs, forcing blood-splattered air out of his chest and onto the dashboard of the car.

In the same instant, his head had been propelled forwards, snapping his neck and killing him instantly.

As the speeding car had left the road, it had smashed into a huge fir tree sending splinters of bark, wood, metal and glass high into the air.

The impact had been to the front, slightly off centre towards the left hand side.

The car had started to crumple around the trunk of the tree but the momentum of the impact had caused the car to spin wildly out of control.

It was as it continued to spin anti-clockwise through a full 360o that the unfortunate backseat passenger had been thrown through the rear window and into the hard, cold, unforgiving surface of the road.

The front of the car had come to rest just inches from another huge fir, making access to the front of the car difficult.

The teenage front passenger began to groan softly as she started to come around.

Anne Devlin looked around her, everything was so blurry at first and she was confused as to where she was, her ribs hurt and so did her feet, her head was banging.

Slowly, her memory started to return.

She remembered telling Pete to slow down but he had just laughed at her, It’s OK, relax, I know what I’m doing, he replied, looking at her and sped up as if to prove a point, her sister Julie started to laugh from behind her as the acceleration pushed her back into her seat.

The road suddenly started to disappear to the right, and Pete pressed his foot hard on the brake pedal to try to slow the car enough to make the bend.

Its four tyres managed to maintain their grip on the damp road surface initially but as Pete continued to harshly apply the brakes, the weight distribution of the vehicle shifted.

The front of the car had dipped slightly, making the rear tyres lift just enough to start slipping, and as the inexperienced driver steered the car to try to follow the bend of the road, they lost their grip completely.

Anne looked out of the front screen just in time to see a huge tree loom into view, then nothing…

Adam looked across at her and she looked back at him, still drowsy from the impact that had knocked her unconscious. She tried to focus on his face and after a few seconds it started to become clearer.

She looked across at Pete, he wasn’t moving. She looked back at Adam.

She could see blue lights reflecting rhythmically on his high-visibility jacket.

The word ‘Ambulance’ was printed on the left-hand side of the jacket. Just seeing the word helped to slow the feeling of panic that had started to rise up from inside her.

She leaned back and let out a deep breath. He was here to help her. Everything will be fine now, she thought to herself through the confusion.

I’m Adam, he said, you’re going to be fine. What’s your name? he asked her, as he reached over and took her wrist.

Her pulse was a little faster than it should have been but it was nice and strong, a good sign for the moment.

He stretched across the bonnet and clipped a small gadget to her index finger, after a few seconds it began to flash rhythmically.

It confirmed that her pulse was 90 beats per minute, her oxygen levels were good at 98%. The fact that she had a good pulse in her wrist reassured Adam that she was stable enough, for the moment.

Anne, Anne Devlin, she replied.

How’s Pete? Is he OK? she asked.

We’ll worry about Pete later, first I need to make sure you’re OK, Adam replied, trying to somehow distract her attention away from the dead driver.

I can’t move my legs, they hurt, and my feet are stuck, Anne said.

Don’t worry, we’ll soon have you out of there, Adam replied.

Where’s Julie? she asked suddenly realising her sister wasn’t in the car.

Julie…Julie, she shouted weakly, beginning to panic again as she looked around wildly for a glimpse of her younger sister.

Don’t worry, my mate’s looking after her, Adam replied, still unaware that she was also dead.

Do you have any pain anywhere else? he asked.

It hurts to breathe, she replied drowsily, my ribs are killing me.

You’re breathing just fine at the moment, Adam said, smiling reassuringly at her.

He held her gaze as she smiled weakly back at him.

From where he was, he couldn’t reach her to assess her properly, or to pop a hard collar on to protect her neck.

He knew from experience that any passenger in a car where another occupant had died also had the potential to have life threatening injuries.

Let’s just concentrate on getting you out of there, he smiled to her.

The car was so close to the tree’s trunk that several of its branches virtually covered the bonnet.

There was no clear way around the front of the car and so Adam started to make his way around the rear of the vehicle so he could check her properly from the passenger side.

As he rounded the rear of the vehicle, he glanced at the rear seats in case there was another occupant that he had missed. The seats were empty.

Suddenly, the night sky lit up with an orange glow and a huge force threw him backwards, he never even heard the sound of the blast.

For a few seconds, he lay on the floor winded, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Jack had instinctively ducked as the sound of the igniting fuel filled the air, but quickly scrambled to his feet to run to his crewmate.

Anne was now fully awake, and the air was full of her terrified screams.

The awful sounds she made were almost inhuman as she watched flames start to appear from somewhere under her trapped feet and slowly start to flicker up her legs.

Adam ran back to the car but he couldn’t reach her, the heat was just too intense.

Jack tried to pull him away from the wreckage.

Through the rising flames, they could see her desperately clawing at the remains of the window frame, trying to pull herself from the burning car, but the twisted metalwork around her feet held her fast.

She looked directly at Adam and Jack, her eyes wide in panic. She held her arms out and screamed at them to help her.

Pushing Jack aside, he tried again to get to the car but another blast of searing heat blew them both backwards to the floor again.

As Adam tried to stand up, he became aware that her terrible screams had stopped.

Adam and Jack sat in silence staring at the orange flames that were now billowing through the car’s passenger side window.

A tear started to roll down Adam’s right cheek.

The only sound coming from the wreckage now was the crackling and roaring of the fire as it slowly consumed the vehicle and the remains of its passengers.

Distant blue lights started to illuminate the macabre scene as more emergency vehicles started to arrive at the scene.

But as he held his head in his hands, all Adam could see were her terrified eyes, begging him to help her.

And the guilt he felt was almost unbearable…

Anne Devlin was feeling confused. A minute ago, she was screaming in terror and agony, clawing at the remains of a broken car window, now she was surrounded by a blindingly bright white light.

The pain had gone, and as her eyes started to become accustomed to the intense light, she realised that she was sitting in a soft white chair on what looked like some sort of huge train carriage.

She looked left out of the window at the blurry shapes that sped past, as her mind tried to make sense of what the hell was happening…

Chapter 2

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the heat from the morning sun had made short work of the dew on the back lawn hours ago. The entire back wall of the house was flooded with its heat and light but the recently fitted blackout blinds meant that Adam’s bedroom was still perfectly dark.

He liked it that way. Not only did it seem to help him get to sleep, but it also meant he could now lie in for as long as he wanted in wonderful self-inflicted sensory deprivation.

The past few years of changing shifts from days to nights had completely stuffed his internal clock, so actually getting to sleep in the first place was a far more difficult task than it sounded.

He had often spent hours in bed after a night shift, trying to clear his mind so he could drop off. Add the flashes of daylight that the old unlined curtains couldn’t keep out into the equation, and it’s no surprise that he seemed so continuously shattered.

But today, even with the help of the new blinds, he just couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t get her out of his mind.

Each time he closed his eyes, he saw Anne’s face and heard her terrified screams as the flames licked around her body.

And he couldn’t help but feel that he should have tried harder to get her out, even though at the back of his mind he knew that nobody could have saved her.

Even without the horror of the previous night, he knew he would have struggled to clear his mind enough to actually sleep.

Today was an important day, it was the day that his mother would get her scan results.

Adam glanced at the alarm clock neatly perched on the small wooden bedside table, it was just after 10:35.

Before the crash, the shift has been a busy one so it was really no surprise that he felt so physically and mentally shattered.

He rolled over again and once more tried his hardest to clear his mind and drop off.

The blinds could do little to keep out the heat, and even though it was still morning, the room was beginning to be uncomfortable.

Still keeping his eyes shut, Adam reached around on the bedside table for the remote, the aircon’s fan whispered into life as he found it and the unit started up.

Forty minutes later, Adam finally gave up on the idea of sleep and reluctantly dragged himself out of bed.

Pulling on a pair of grey shorts that he eventually found amongst the clutter of his room, he opened the bedroom door and scratched the back of his head as he turned immediately left into the bathroom.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror looked back at him, swollen and puffy eyed. He looked like he had