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Chapter Five tells of a long flight deep into Mexico to retrieve a trauma victim from a small hospital that couldn't take care of her.
CHAPTER FIVE – A FLIGHT TO NOWHERE
Flying helicopters, we were always pushing the limits and trying to avoid running into things. Flying the Learjet, though, was a welcome respite of quiet power and performance. But the missions we were called for in the jet brought with them a different brand of danger. Because we pushed the limits in the jet just like we did in helicopters, we faced dangers most jet pilots never saw. Long duty days and flying in and out of marginal airports were trials that would cause other jet pilots to question our sanity. They couldn’t know, of course, that’s the medevac business.
Compared to our helicopter missions where we flew in a state of continual doubt as to our position, in the Lear, we always knew exactly where we were. Most helicopter pilots have little or no airplane experience and have never known what it’s like to have the clear, three-dimensional picture that jet pilots take for granted. I think that may have been why I was so worried in the helicopter those long nights in the mountains.
Medevac airplane and helicopter operations were different in so many ways, but the one thing they had in common was the constant need to push the limits. And, if you weren’t careful, no matter the platform, you could get into trouble.
One such patient trip in the jet started with a man calling dispatch asking if we could retrieve his mother from a hospital in Mexico. He told us that while visiting relatives she had fallen in a bathtub and struck her head. The local hospital was unable to treat her injury and if he didn’t get her out of there she would die. He’d heard about us from television news and, desperate for help, called us, willing to pay whatever it cost. His name was Bob Melendez.
We calculated the amount that would just cover the trip expenses and presented it to him, the charges almost $20,000. He gave us a credit card, his only question: how soon could we leave? We wondered if he’d had to mortgage his house, or if he just had money. But then, it was his mom who was in trouble.
He asked to go with us and we agreed, which turned out to be a great idea, since no one on the flight team spoke Spanish. The dispatchers told Bob where to meet us and when.
As we finished fueling the Lear a shiny black crew cab pickup drove up to the plane. The driver leaned out and asked, “Is this the plane going to Mexico?” He was maybe thirty-five, his arm out the window clothed in a stylish leather jacket. His well tanned face and strong neck showed he was in good shape, but his eyes had wrinkles around them, as if he hadn’t slept.
I walked over to the truck and stuck out my hand. “You must be Bob,” I said, smiling.
He shook my hand and smiled back.
“Yeah, that’s me. When can we go pick up my mom?”
I pointed toward the hangar. “Park your truck in there,” I said. “We’re ready to go.”
As Bob parked his truck, Pat, our nurse, turned to me. “We’re all packed up and ready to go, Woody.” Pat and I had flown together a lot in the helicopter and had become friends. She was one of those steady, pleasant professionals who stayed in control no matter what. Dressed ready for a trip into the wilds - combat-style shirt, cargo pants and light boots, she turned around and looked again at the plane, her blue eyes scanning its cabin from afar, I imagine thinking through everything they might need for a long trip into unknown circumstances.
Tom, one of our transport doctors climbed in the plane as well. One of the young, sharp members of Dr. Morgan’s team, he was on the mission because we had no idea how badly injured our patient was. His skills would probably be needed to care for her during the long ride home.
Tom was slim and athletic, like so many of the new generation of doctors. I’d met him before at patient transport conferences around the medical center. For a doctor Tom was kind of a normal person, a good conversationalist interested in things other than medicine. We had a few drinks one night after one of the conferences. He confessed that flying made him nervous, then asked me a lot of questions. As I took him through the answers and, sensing his need to understand flying better, elaborated on them, he thanked me for making him feel better and said he’d enjoy flying with me if we ever got the chance. And here we were, headed out on what would be a long day’s flying.
Two hours later we landed at the airport serving the town of Leon where Bob’s mom was lying in the local hospital.
The airport had two long runways, a massive ramp, and a large, shiny terminal with panoramic windows facing the ramp. But there were no other planes and no people. That was strange, but then, we’d seen it before on other trips south of the border. Governments often built highways and airport in hopes of attracting jobs for their citizens.
Dispatch had arranged for an ambulance to meet us and take the team to the hospital. Standing on the ramp, we looked around. Where was it?
Two skinny young men in shabby uniforms that hung off them like hand-me-downs, with M-16 rifles carelessly slung over their shoulders, ambled toward us, their eyes shifting from side to side. As they closed on us whiffs of marijuana wafted through the air.
They waved their guns at us while they circled like wild dogs and mumbled to each other. I wondered if they might try to shoot us. What scared me most: their fingers were on their triggers. No one who’s passed Shooting 101 ever puts their finger on a trigger unless they’ve aimed their weapon and are ready to fire it. In the state they were in we were as likely to get shot by accident as we were from whatever muddled sense of duty they had to defend the airport from gringos. I stepped out in front of the team and motioned for them to do what I was doing, smile and show raised hands, palms out, so there wouldn’t be any confusion that might provoke them. Bob asked them if they had seen an ambulance. Hearing one of us speaking Spanish seemed to calm them. They shook their heads no then turned and walked away.
I advised the copilot, Ron, that, when the ambulance arrived I’d go with the med crew to the hospital and he should stay with the airplane, updating the flight plan with the Mexican authorities every fifteen or twenty minutes. This too was in the days before cell phones, so we’d be completely out of touch. By keeping the flight plan updated, when he saw us driving into the airport he could activate it and we could take off without delay.
A former freight pilot used to flying in bad weather into bad airports at night and always getting there, even in zero-zero conditions, Ron stood about six feet tall and had a calm toughness about him. His blue eyes beneath a tousle of brown hair seemed to view the world around him with a kind of cynical pleasure. I picked him for the flight because we needed a strong, steady hand on the team going into all the unknowns in Mexico. He’d been off duty when I called him for this trip, but he dropped his plans and joined up for the mission.
The soldiers walked back over to us waving their arms toward an old pickup truck that was just driving onto the ramp. They kept saying something in Spanish that sounded like ambulance. Looking at the ancient, dilapidated vehicle, I wondered what they were talking about.
It drove slowly toward the plane, as if the driver were lost. As it got closer we could see faded red crosses painted on the sides of a cracked old camper shell. This couldn’t be an ambulance. It pulled up and turned so that the driver was facing us. He cranked the window down and mumbled something in Spanish. Bob replied, then told us that yes, this was the ambulance that would take us to the hospital and bring his mom back to the airport.
We opened the camper shell door. A wooden bench was bolted along one side of the truck bed, with two tattered seat belts screwed to it. The driver turned around in his seat, watching us through the open rear window in the truck’s cab. He said something in Spanish and waved his arm. Bob replied, “He says this bench is the patient bed.”
A single oxygen bottle hung next to the bed, held in place with two hose clamp brackets screwed into the camper shell wall. We looked at each other in shock. Tom surveyed the camper shell then, shaking his head in disgust, walked back to the plane and pulled out the portable oxygen bottle, along with all of its hoses and fittings.
“Pat, we better take everything with us we think we might need,” he said. “Who knows what this hospital has or doesn’t have?” They went back into the plane and filled a large med bag with drugs, surgical tools, monitors, IV pumps and batteries.
We climbed in the truck, tossed the medical gear in one corner and spread out on the floor for the ride to town. We’d been told it was twenty-five kilometers from the airport to town. That wasn’t that far, maybe fifteen miles. Bob asked the driver how far it was, and the conversation turned into an argument. Then Bob turned to us, frustrated.
“It’s not twenty-five kilometers, it’s twenty-five miles,” he said. This battered excuse for an ambulance, the soldiers with M-16’s threatening us and now confusion about the distance we had to travel had us off to a bad start.
As we drove along the narrow, two-lane road we looked out the camper shell windows at the countryside - green, rolling hills, with creeks flowing through them - quite beautiful. The road wound alongside the water, meandering toward the city, we hoped. Occasionally, large semi-trucks would roar by us going the opposite direction, almost blowing us off the road.
Finally, we drove into town and joined the traffic snarl, everyone honking and veering in front of each other. The ambulance driver defended our position, banging on his horn and pushing forward through the traffic until the hospital loomed in sight, from what we could see, the largest building in town. Turning off the street, down an alley and parking at what must have been the ER receiving door the driver and his fellow attendant got out and lit cigarettes. They waved us toward the ER door then walked away.
Walking into the ER reception area, a maelstrom of wailing patients jammed the lobby. Doctors and nurses yelled at each other over the howls of the stricken. Bob elbowed his way to the main desk and asked the nurse where his mother was. She looked through piles of charts then shook her head and picked up the phone. She spoke to someone then hung up and pointed down the hall, rattling off directions to Bob. How lucky we were to have brought him. We’d have been in a bad way on our own.
We climbed the stairs to the third floor and walked down a hall lined with patients moaning in agony, some on gurneys and others lying on the floor with blankets tossed over them.
Bob led the way, found his mom’s room and shoved the door open. Running to the bed, he grabbed her hand and spoke to her in urgent Spanish. Towering over his mom’s shrunken little body he touched her gently. Tears drenching his face splashed onto his mom’s cheeks. She was as still as death, her body pale from lack of oxygen. An IV line had been inserted into her left hand, but the needle had slipped out, and the insertion wound was badly bruised.
Tom took one look at his patient and shook his head in anger at her poor condition. “We’ve got to get to work, Pat,” he said. “She is not looking good.”
He gave Pat a whole host of instructions as they gloved up. Pushing aside the scattered monitors and pumps they set up their own equipment and worked steadily for almost an hour. Then Tom looked at me.
“We’re ready to go, Woody, and we really need to get her to the plane.” Bob and I stepped out into the hall to clear a path for the gurney. Tom and Pat followed, pushing the gurney as we worked our way carefully around the patients lying in the hallway. We pushed a button to call the elevator. The door clattered open and we rode it down to the main floor. Pushing the gurney slowly - one of the wheels was about to come off - we found our ambulance. Luckily our drivers were still there, and helped us load Bob’s mom into the camper. We settled her in place, covered her with blankets, tossed the gear bags inside and drove out into the traffic.
The crew began turning the crank on an old, mechanical siren, its parts screeching against each other making almost as much noise inside the truck as the siren did outside. Two rotating lights on the roof served as the only visual warning that we were an emergency vehicle. Our driver pushed through the throng of cars and trucks until finally we were out of town. Still cranking the siren and driving about forty mph, we crept back toward the airport.
But Tom was worried about his patient.
“Bob, can you ask them to go faster?” he asked. “We really need to get your mom to the plane.”
Bob peered through the cab window and said something to the driver. The next instant, we heard the old engine gasp, then accelerate with a roar. Thrown to the rear of the truck as it leaped ahead, we were suddenly careening around curves in the road, holding on for dear life. Through the cab window we saw that we were hurtling toward a sharp curve while we surged up on the rear bumper of an old farm truck creeping down the highway. Our driver blew his horn and passed the truck just as we entered the curve.
I watched in horror. If one of those semis was coming the other way we were dead. But the way was clear, almost. As we pulled up alongside the farm truck, in the wrong lane, a car appeared up ahead, coming toward us. Our driver charged at him, honking his horn, while his helper cranked harder on the old siren. We gritted our teeth, tensed for the collision, then the opposing car lurched off the road into a shallow ditch. We roared past and blew out a collective sigh of relief.
A few minutes later Pat, sitting next to me, motioned to the rear of the truck. “Woody, I need to get back there and check the arterial line in her ankle. Can I get by you?”
I scrunched aside while maintaining my grip on the camper rib. “Yeah, sure, Pat,” I said. “In fact, I’ll hold on to you so you have both hands free to work. If you lean forward I can hold you by your belt.” A sturdy web belt held her EMT pants in place.
Pat nodded her thanks and slid around me while I gripped her belt. Just as she was positioned to lean over the IV line the ambulance lurched sideways. Pat started sliding across the floor. I tightened my grip on her and on my perch.
As the ambulance wobbled slowly back to normal, she looked back at me and chuckled. “Thanks for hanging on,” she said.
Trusting soul that she was, she continued with her work. As the truck heeled from side to side on the curving road Pat swung from side to side under my arm. I maintained a death grip on her and wedged myself in place so we didn’t slide across the floor.
Pat signaled she was finished. I pulled her back and she slumped into her seat. “Jesus, that was scary,” she said, putting her head back to catch her breath.
By the time we arrived at the airport we were exhausted. As we drove on to the ramp the driver slowed down and his companion stopped cranking on the siren. The silence was deafening.
Ron saw us coming, stepped into the cockpit and started the right engine. It was on the opposite side to the passenger door so it gave us power to all the plane’s systems and the medical suite with only a whisper of engine noise.
He stayed in the cockpit, copying our clearance and entering it into the computer while we loaded Bob’s mom into the jet’s litter and settled her in the clean, cool cabin. Bob plopped himself into one of the seats and blew out a deep sigh.
I shook the driver’s hand and his partner’s, the siren cranker, nodding our thanks. The thanks were more that we’d made it and not been killed but they smiled and nodded, oblivious to the terror they’d caused. I climbed in the Learjet, secured the door and, as I slid into the pilot seat, Ron asked how it went. I started laughing.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Soon thereafter, we were sailing quietly through the stratosphere on our way back to California, a lovely contrast to the smelly, scary hospital and the suicidal ambulance ride. Tom came up and told us Bob’s mom was doing better than he would’ve ever hoped.
We landed and the ambulance took Bob’s mom straight to the operating room. Tom, Pam and Bob rode in with her. We heard the next day she was expected to make a full recovery, thanks to our rescuing her. Later we got a nice note from Bob, thanking us for saving his mom’s life.
On this flight, we learned a valuable lesson: no matter how carefully we planned for a safe mission, danger we could never have anticipated could come at us. Landing at that airport in Mexico, at first it looked like the young soldiers might detain us, which would’ve shut down the whole mission. But the real threat turned out to be our well-meaning ambulance drivers bent on getting us to the airport Code Three, so to speak. We only survived because the one vehicle that we nearly ran into was a car and not one on those semi-trucks.
Copyright © 2021 Woody McClendon. All rights reserved.
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