The Concealed Culture Deep Within (part seven.)

Lucy stood in the doorway of their home frozen still suddenly, for what felt like an eternity to her, but in reality, little more than just a few simple seconds had gone by.

"Get up off the ground, this is not funny anymore Josie. Just because you are in a whole lot of trouble lady does not mean you can just try and hide from it!"

No reply was forthcoming from her words. Lucy continued just standing there, partly adopting a defiant posture, her arms folded and leaning against the door frame of their home with her face the portrayal of anger and annoyance, not willing to entertain what she perceived as her daughter to be simply acting out and seeking attention from her own mother, to avoid her having 'the discussion' about where she had been all day and what the hell kind of game she thought she was playing with her mother.

Lucy looked down upon her daughter, who was by now just lying splayed across the surface of their home porch, still not showing any slight of movement, under the light of the dimly lit porch she appeared reminiscent of a motionless animal who had just found its spot to fall asleep on.

Lucy spoke again but with a much firmer stand, "Josie get up this is getting stupid and god knows what the neighbors must be thinking if they saw you lying there, enough is enough, just pick yourself up and get your butt inside the house now!"

Still nothing. Lucy knelt down onto her knees now to get down to touch her daughter. Putting both of her hands upon her daughter's shoulders she started slowly shaking her and calling her name out to her every few seconds. Nothing, not even the slightest grown could be heard, her mum moved her fingers toward her neck, placing two upon her daughter's neck to find the throbbing of her pulse. Nothing still. Now, she was just a little more worried. Lucy probed Josie's eyelids, finding not even the slightest bit of resistance from her as she attempted to open them. She moved her left hand toward just below her nose and turned her own hand with the back of it toward her nostrils, not even the slightest wisp of breath could be felt upon the hairs of her hand. Now all previous anger and annoyance had vanished from her thoughts, just as speedily as they had initially appeared, they had transformed into fear just as rapidly, she had not experienced this since way back when the police had first turned up at her door to inform her of her husband's tragic demise.

"Oh my god, Josie, what's wrong love," she rhetorically thought to herself. Not even expecting any response from anyone, she hurriedly stood upright and turned to grab the cordless phone from its hallway perched shelf. Dialing the emergency numbers rapidly, her fingers were beginning to tremble now as she anxiously waited for a connection to be made.

What seemed like an eternity passed before she heard the line making its destined connection, "Hello, emergency, which service do you require, police, fi....," before allowing the handler to complete her well-rehearsed phrase, Lucy shouted her trembling words, "ambulance, my daughter is not breathing, she's collapsed." With the next few moments, Lucy's heart could be felt booming like a set of steel drums within her chest, filling her head with constant distracting tremors. After managing to get through the questions from the emergency handler on the phone, she disconnected and slammed down the phone, rushing back to her young daughter, still motionless on the porch. Lucy so much wanted to carry her daughter inside and get her warmed up and comfortable but, the emergency responder simply told her not to move her but make her as comfortable and as warm as he was able to.

She hurriedly collected her thoughts and darted into the living room to grab a blanket and a couple of cushions, with which she managed to sidle under Josie's delicate head and, covering her in the blanket, in an attempt to keep her warm. There remained a still a lingering level of fog outside but, the external air appeared uncannily warm. Her mum just sat there, cuddling her young daughter protectively. It seemed like it had been ages gone since she had been on the telephone as she listened out for any signs of support coming to help them both. As the minutes began passing by, out of the haze of the dullness, gentle drops of rain could be felt gently falling, giving the current despairing situation, even more, difficult and traumatizing to have to handle. Thankfully her daughter had fallen whilst standing under the partial overhead covering of the porch roof, providing somewhat of a little protection from the rain.

Lucy suddenly recalled taking part in the local parish CPR ( cardiopulmonary resuscitation) first aid course last month. Her mind & body seemed to shift up a gear as she remembered every step. 'Right,' she thought to herself, 'open her airway by placing a hand on her forehead, gently tilt her head back, then lift her chin,' her thoughts were almost automatic at this point, her nerves and worries appeared to have taken a backseat for the moment. Then, 'has she got anything I can see obstructing her mouth and nose, no.' Then Lucy pinched her nose, closing her mouth over her daughter's mouth, and started steadily, and firmly breathing air into her mouth, checking each breath so that could notice Josie's chest rise & fall, to confirm that air had entered the girl's lungs. Lucy breathed a succession of five times into her daughter's mouth, then stopped, swiftly locating the heel of her hand to place it onto where she determined the center of the little girl's chest should be, then began to push down to a depth of what she judged to be just five centimeters. Every now and then she needed to use both her hands (one atop the other) to gain enough pressure to compress Josie's chest wall. After counting to herself silently, she reached a total of thirty chest compressions achieving a rate of between one hundred to one hundred & twenty breaths a minute in doing so, following immediately with two more rescue breaths into her daughter's mouth, listening for a sign of independent breath sounds, but getting no response, Lucy instinctively returned to carrying on with another set of thirty chest compressions.

She continued with this process for what felt to her like an eternity whilst waiting for the paramedics to arrive, as she was not finding any indications of life in her daughter so far.

Eventually, seemingly from out of nowhere within the damp and foggy haze, the quiet two-tone shrill of an ambulance response could be determined, eventually speedily through the eery darkness.

As the seconds passed by, the two-tone sirens of the responding paramedic crew grew far louder, shrilling through the, what was usually and typically a quiet, hushed village, now rapidly closing in on the distressing scene. The immediacy of the flashing blue & red lights atop the fast-approaching vehicle blinking intermittently in a coordinated fashion to the speed of the tones. A couple of minutes passed by and the sight of the fast-approaching high-speed response to Lucy was a relieving sight for her to see.

Moments later it had pulled up outside the porch of the house. One of the crew jumped quickly out from the side sliding door and made her way quickly to Lucy who was more than relieved to see them here with her.

"Hi, I'm Ellen, what seems to be the problem here?" spoke the woman dressed in a work-green paramedic jumpsuit.

"This is my daughter, she's nearly eleven, she came home a short time ago but she suddenly collapsed on the porch, when I opened the door, she wasn't breathing and hasn't said anything," Lucy rapidly fired out her words in a single panicked breath.

The paramedic, Ellen, quickly knelt down next to the supine body of Josie, made a quick manual pulse check, whilst at the same time taking over the CPR interventions that the little girl's mother had started, then without any further hesitation, shot a warning gaze back toward her colleague Marcie (who had driven the ambulance) shouting, "get the trolley, portable defibrillator, and the O2 cylinder stat!"

Less than 30-seconds went by until Marcie was on scene with equipment. Defib unzipped, whilst Ellen cut through Josie's pale pink blouse, using her tough-cut scissors from their holster on Ellen's work belt, exposing her lacey-white trainer bra and yellowed paled skin. Applying rapidly the pads, one to the girl's upper right side below the collar bone, with the second pad to her left side below the armpit. Marcie, once both pads were in place switched on the cardiac monitor, instructing everyone to stand hands-off. A few anguished moments went by before the mechanical voice of the monitor alerted the audible words, "no detected pulse, begin resuscitation."

As the minutes of time ticked on by, the paramedics had been actively and effectively working closely alongside one another, methodically as part of what was something reminiscent of a well-oiled machine. Lucy had handed over, what had been a grim and desperate act of trying to help her daughter who had remained, for all intense purposes, unconscious, for the whole time. Up until the moment that the paramedics had taken over the resuscitation process, she had simply been acting totally upon her instincts, her attention she had paid at the local parish CPR course had definitely caught her full attention. The end result? She had simply gone into overdrive when she discovered that her own daughter had fallen foul of the darkness that unconsciousness brought along to her. Consequently, Lucy had psychologically transformed from a loving but angry and confused mum to a highly-functioning efficient 'machine,' no emotion, no normal emotional powerlessness, just pure calculated efficiency, nothing more, nothing less. Lucy without any warning whatsoever suddenly paled and began complaining just how cold she now felt. She was now trembling uncontrollably from head to toe, tears began to stream down her face, her focus on the situation of the paramedics working tirelessly on her young daughter began to fade out of focus as dizziness overtook her. The whole event appeared just as if she were watching the scene on a television screen; it seemed so surreal to her.

Out of the sensation of the darkness enveloping her, one of the paramedics who had introduced herself to Lucy earlier, suddenly shouted with a sense of urgency, "I have a pulse, weak but steady, let's get her on the trolley and into the ambo."

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Stay tuned for the 8th part coming soon, of this fiction, 'The Concealed Culture Deep Within.'

If you missed the first six parts of this story, you can click on the links below, to catch up.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part four:

Part five:

Part six:

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✨I can't wait to hear from you soon... Jonathan💕.