Inside the Thriller: Medical Realism & Primal Fear Start the Story 🖋️
NEW BLOG POST RELEASE
Where Medical Precision Meets Primal Fear
Step into the medic unit. My latest feature explores the intricate dance between medical realism and high-stakes survival. In a world where motives are driven by crisis, discover how interconnected stories weave a web of suspense that keeps you guessing until the final pulse.
Find Your Type of Suspense
Psychological Deep dives into the fractured human mind.
Biological High-stakes realism in the medical field.
Survival Tense narratives of endurance against all odds.
The Pulse of the Story
Every thriller I write is grounded in the terrifying reality of pre-hospital medicine. My blog post reveals the opening prologue in my first novel, Aftermath.
Paramedic Maya Murphy was working her normal shift near Seattle, Washington. She’d just been joking with her younger partner, Jeff, about the fact that people knew when they worked with her anything could happen. She was known as the ‘shit magnet’ at work.
During Maya’s first year as a rookie paramedic, she had counted over forty-five cardiac arrests where she had overseen the coordination of the lifesaving efforts. A month after she graduated paramedic training, she was the lead paramedic on a six-person head-on car crash on a rural country road. That, along with countless car crashes, shootings, and complex medical emergencies, had set her reputation in stone. She was a shit magnet.
They were laughing as she shared her stories, when their pagers started beeping and the overhead alarms chimed in, followed by the dispatcher’s announcement: respond to 240th and Pacific Highway south for officer down. Shots fired; suspect has fled the scene. Scene is not secure.
The laughter stopped, and Jeff looked at her with that look that said, ‘I should have called in sick today’. Officer down. They jumped up and ran to the medic unit. Outside, the night air was cold, but the feeling in Maya’s gut was even colder.
They jumped into their rig and donned their headphones. As Jeff started the engine, Maya pressed the responding button on their dispatch computer. She was the officer in charge of the upcoming call. The door of the garage opened, and they drove out into the night with their lights and sirens ablaze, driving faster than they normally would. This was one of their own police officers shot and dying on the street.
When they arrived, police cars and emergency vehicles were coming in from all directions. Maya let dispatch and the battalion chief know they were on scene; she recognized the battalion chief’s voice as he directed them in just ahead of the fire engine. It was Danielson. He was by far the best battalion (bat) chief to have on a call like this.
Danielson and his team of firefighters had the police officer on a backboard, ready to carry him to the back of the medic unit. Two other firefighters opened the doors of their medic unit and removed the stretcher, as Jeff and Maya jumped in the back. The firefighters started loading him into the rig.
Suddenly, gunfire rang out around them. Everyone dove inside the medic unit. They grabbed the doors and shut them and ducked down, waiting as they heard the police return fire. Even though the medic unit was made of steel and aluminum, it wasn’t bulletproof. Maya knew that and felt extremely vulnerable.
She asked a seasoned firefighter, Dan, to gauge the situation. “When you think it is safe enough, drive us to a place where we can safely work.” In the meantime, everyone cautiously went to work disrobing the police officer, setting up a bag-valve-mask, and spiking IV bags.
Once his uniform was off, they realized that this was clearly an attempted execution. He was wearing a bulletproof vest. The gunshots, probably from a 9mm handgun, entered at his groin and neck, just below and above his bullet proof vest. This was strategic!
Outside was chaos, shouting, and more gunfire. There was the sound of rapid pop pops from a possible automatic weapon. Dan informed them they were being ambushed from two sides. One shooter was somewhere in a four-story apartment complex to their right. There was another shooter on the other side of the highway.
Jeff set up to place a breathing tube into the officer’s mouth as Maya placed an IV into his right arm. He was losing a lot of blood and his pulse was weak. After Jeff placed the breathing tube, a firefighter trained in basic lifesaving skills took over, pushing air from the bag-valve-mask through the breathing tube. Then Jeff placed two more large IVs into the officer’s left arm.
Maya drew up some morphine and Valium to make sure that the officer was not in any pain. With a lull in the shooting, Maya turned to Dan. “Do you think it’s safe to get out of here?”
“Yes, I’m on it,” he replied without hesitating.
They had a life to save! He jumped into the driver’s seat and hit the throttle, just as a bullet penetrated the box of the medic unit above their heads. He kept driving. They were in a race to get to Harborview Medical Center. The firefighter merged onto the freeway, using the lights and sirens.
Jeff monitored the officer’s vital signs. He echoed Maya’s fears. “His blood pressure and heart rate are dropping.” They checked for a pulse and could barely feel one. Jeff rechecked the officer’s blood pressure. “Too low!” They looked at each other. They both knew time was running out.
Maya gave directions to the firefighters to start CPR. One of the younger ones took off his firefighting jacket and started chest compressions. She gave another young firefighter the job of squeezing the IV fluid bags.
Maya called up to the driver. “Go faster, if you can!” She dialed up the emergency department medical control to let them know they were coming in with a gunshot wound, what they referred to as a GSW, and ongoing CPR. She added, “It’s one of our officers.”
Upon arrival at Harborview, the emergency department staff was waiting to help them bring in the officer. An officer was dying, and everyone needed to do everything right in the moment to save his life. The pressure was palpable.
They wheeled him into the trauma room and moved him over onto the bed. Maya yelled out the report.
“Thirty-year-old police officer shot in the groin and neck, possibly with a 9mm handgun. Patient found at the scene lying on the ground outside his patrol car, unconscious and unresponsive. Patient was given three liters of IV fluid en route, a breathing tube, Sux, morphine, and Valium. CPR initiated en route after patient’s blood pressure dropped to forty by Doppler and heart rate fell to forty-five.”
A team swarmed around their patient and began a well-orchestrated performance. The pre-hospital team stepped back.
Maya walked outside and sat down on the bumper of the medic unit, put her head down, and started crying. In the fifteen years she had been a paramedic, nothing had fazed her… until now.
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