The Concealed Culture Deep Within (part eight.)

"On it, I'll bring the slider board too!" shouted Ellen, as she fast-paced back to the ambo to fetch more blankets to wrap Josie in, who might well be responding through indications of the existence of a pulse at the time but, unfortunately, was still not in a position of providing any outward physical responses. Her heart rate was back in regular sinus rhythm right now, however, so her body was back in the land of the living, so to speak, but her eyes remained closed and her extremities were unresponsive to any outward stimuli. To all intense purposes, the young girl was really in no way safely out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

Ellen rapidly returned with additional blankets, her partner assisted her in making her safe by attaching a cervical support collar around her small neck, to protect Josie from any further unseen injuries that they were unable to ascertain. Of course, Lucy had told them that she had simply collapsed but, the paramedics insisted on the cautionary approach, due to her having fallen, and none were able to calculate whether or not Josie had any further unseen problems that had yet to be tackled so far.

Neck brace securely attached, both paramedics slid the two-piece slider board under each side of Josie's petite body and secured the seam to create a sturdy one-piece unit. On the verbal count of three, they both braced themselves to lift her from the porchway area and directly onto the waiting patient transport trolley. Quickly and efficiently they covered Josie snugly with the additional blankets and securely snapped the two restraining belts across her body, so there was no way she could slip from the trolley, thereby causing further injuries.

"Mrs. Crevin, are you coming along with your daughter, or following on in your car?" asked Marcie, as both paramedics rolled the trolley in the direction of the open doors to the rear of the ambulance.

"No I'm coming with you, I want to be by her side all the way, she's my only daughter," responded Lucy, "I just need my coat, purse, and keys."

Lucy returned inside the house to grab the items she need and hurriedly chucked on her coat. By the time she had closed and locked the front door, both paramedics had hoisted the trolley onto the electronic support lifter and secured it into the anti-slip tracks of the internal shelter of the ambulance. One of the paramedics showed Lucy to her seat and guided her into securing her seatbelt. The other paramedic was busily engaged in hooking Josie up to the cardiac monitor and the internal oxygen supply. Lastly, slipping a pulse oximeter clip to her patient's right finger.

"Right, Marcie, I'll get us off to Southern City Gen, it's the closest on-take for the area, I'll call this in as we go," said Ellen in a rather matter-of-fact way.

Throughout the thirty-five minutes drive, Marcie was firing a tirade of questions to Lucy about her daughter. The mum's responses were almost robotic & quite matter-of-fact in her voice. She couldn't think straight for her growing worries that were filling her head at a speed she just was not able to keep up with, she demonstrated a total lack of emotion as she desperately tried to force back the tears, that were welling up in her eyes. Marcie understood this and handled the responses she received in a typically calm and patient manner.

All the time there were beeps filling the confines of the ambulances. The atmosphere remained tense throughout the journey. Every few minutes the cardiac monitor would identify a momentary absence of' 'P-waves,' with the ensuing 'QRS waves' appearing at random, and irregular intervals of several seconds in their lengths,' Marcie appeared a little concerned when this occurred, who would then quickly go about busying herself with checking every single one of the ten leads that she had applied, once they were connected to Josie to her arms, legs, and to her chest areas.

Lucy's eyes bore into the paramedic as she did so, visibly beginning to perspire and uncontrollably shake in her growing panic. Marcie finished doing her checks. found nothing out of the ordinary to give a simple explanation for the discrepancies, catching Lucy's pained expression on her face. Rapidly switching from her professional-type imagery. Marcie reached an arm out and gently took hold of Lucy's hand that was nervously tap-tap-tapping on her thigh.

"Lucy, your daughter is in the best hands she can be right now."

Noticing the mother's intense anxiety for her daughter lying there on the ambulance stretcher, all hooked up to a variety of monitors and an oxygen mask, covering her mouth and nose, Marcie continued.

"I can understand that all this must look very frightening to you right now but, we're very close to the hospital now, about seven minutes away, and your daughter is showing some signs that she is beginning to fight to come round to us."

With tears now beginning to roll freely down her cheeks, Lucy managed a stuttering response, "but why isn't my daughter breathing without that damn mask," she muttered. "if she was okay surely, then she wouldn't need that thing," pointing her free hand out toward the oxygen mask and the confusing complexity of colored wires, wiping her eyes and sniffing, as she tried to regain some composure to herself before continuing, "why does it keep bloody beeping every now and again?"

"I'm really sorry because I should have told you before. But, as paramedics, we tend to simply concern ourselves with the patient. We never really think outside the box, but we should pay attention to the relative's needs at the same time too."

"It would bloody well help!" shouted Lucy, "I know it's hard, but we never have any idea, to us, it's our loved one, and we have a right to be kept informed!"

"I understand and I'm truly sorry. So let me try to explain what's happening here Lucy," replied the paramedic in a soft tone of voice. "We put Josie on the oxygen because, whilst yes, she is showing some indications that she can breathe on her own, your daughter's oxygen saturation levels are rather erratic, as they keep registering on this machine here", pointing towards the portable machine's monitor, "between 73 and 91 percent, what we would hope to see in a healthy person such as your daughter, would be anything between 95 & 100 percent, showing that she was able to take in enough oxygen. But because there is a fluctuation of the percentage below 95 it is indicating that Josie is unable to keep up the levels of oxygen in her blood supply, which could relate to a lung complication."

"Thanks, Marcie but, what's with all these wires then?" retorted Lucy, who was beginning to regain some of her composure that she had initially lost, through panic and fear of the unknown.

"Right, well I'll try to put this in a non-jargonized way then. What you are seeing on this other screen," Marcie demonstrated the waves shown on the portable electrocardiogram monitor, "we call these PQRST waves, the P waves represent the activation of the upper chambers of the heart and, the QRS waves and T waves represent excitation of the ventricles or the lower chambers of the heart."

"And you said you were going to tell me about this in a non-jargonized way Marcie?" replied Lucy questionable and with an actual hint of sarcasm in her voice now. Ellen sighed and went on, "I'm sorry, I didn't do a good job of that did I, at all!" said Ellen beginning to laugh. "let me try that one again okay, so this time in English then! Basically, the machine looks at the rhythms. We are a little worried as it is demonstrating to us that some level of atrial fibrillation is present but then, seconds later, the monitor is indicating a normal sinus rhythm once more. Until we can get to the hospital, we can't say much more."

From the relative confines of the driver's cabin area, Ellen shouted back through into the cabin, that they were just approaching the hospital emergency set-down zones.

************

"Where the hell am I?" silent words filtering through Josie's head, left completely unheard from within the reality of the outside world, which was by now a flurry of activity as the two paramedics disembarked their young unconscious patient and, handed her over to the awaiting medical team, that had been awaiting their arrival at the hospital. Josie was not physically aware of any of this activity going on around her, remaining blissfully unaware of any of the panic that her mother had been subjected to ever since she had returned home hours earlier. At this moment in time, she felt no pain or emotion, her body was seemingly somewhere elsewhere that was evident enough to her, and Josie could not even begin to comprehend any of it. She remained shielded from within this world that she was currently in. Within her environment, Josie remembered just one dulled memory, that of a much older woman who had called out to her in some veiled murky gloom. Her immediate interpretation of what was happening to her left her in an almost trance-like orientation.

Suddenly & unexpectedly from a point in time that she was unable to judge, a seemingly familiar and kindly voice emanated within her, "Hello again young child, do not fear us, for we mean you no harm.'

At this point in time, as before, Josie felt strangely close and intimate to this voice, she knew that she had heard this before, somewhere else but, couldn't quite pinpoint this. Almost sensing the thoughts of the young girl, the ethereal articulation entered into her head once more. "We understand you. You must be afraid of us, please do not be so. We chose you to meet with us for the first time in our history of observing your planet."

"Who the hell are you?" her voice once again vibrating from within her but no physical utterances were ever actually being produced. "Okay so I'm now scared, is this a dream, if so, why can't I just wake up?"

"What you are experiencing is not real from your own perspective Josie, but very much tangible to us, to you and your world, you sense this as unimagined," the continued discourse remaining very much ethereal in style, "but we have tried many, many, others of your species but we have failed, failed to take any of this further as their frontal lobes appeared so feeble, so incapable of understanding what is not of your world."

Josie frowned more to herself though, as she could not see anything but random gently flashing images from within her own mind. Josie continued to hear nothing other than the strangely familiar ethereal voice, which seemed to be radiating from all around her. She felt nothing except for the bewildering sensation of floating, "but where am I, what the hell is going on, what and who the hell are you?"

"Try to remain patient Josie. We chose an image from within you of someone who was dear and close to you," the ethereal voice was suddenly broken off by the girl in mid-sentence as Josie quickly jumped in, interrupting, "Dad?" she questioned disbelievingly once more. "Yes and no Josie, what you hear is your memory of him, a figure that made you feel safe, we felt it best in comforting and reaching out to you. We will continue to stay with you and reveal our true plans to contact others through yourself but, for now, we must leave and allow you to recover."

Josie was alone once more as she momentarily caught hazy shadows busying themselves around her, hearing muffled voices, but the occurrence was short-lived again before the so-called 'friendly' ethereal voice could be clearly picked out from her mind once more, "we must leave now, as you are destined for elsewhere in time, we have interrupted you with some damages occurring to your body, we believed you to be strong but, we erred in our calculations," with that, Josie could slowly begin to recognize hurried noises all around her, as the ethereal entity began dissipating into a vacuum from where it had been.

************

Loud and annoyingly persistent bleeps were everywhere. Lucy sat next to the bed area on the pediatric cardiology ward hoping, silently praying that her little girl would get through this, whatever it indeed was. The registrar had left her only a few minutes earlier, after having been able to catch up with the paramedics who had brought Josie in less than an hour ago. "This is the 23rd incidence that we've come across in the past month doctor," expressed Marcie to him, "do you have any idea as to what's going on?"

Dr. Carmichaels looked at the paramedic with strained and tired eyes, "no, but this is getting weirder and far more illogical as every minute passes by." Marcie's eyes bored into Dr. Carmichael before uttering uncertainty in her tone, "will she survive?"

The only final answer he gave before bidding farewell to the paramedic team was, "just not sure anymore, twenty-one died in the last month, the other one died last night..."

Stay tuned for the 9th part coming soon, of this fiction, 'The Concealed Culture Deep Within.'

If you missed the first seven 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:

Part seven:

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