911, What’s your emergency?

I need help! Please send someone right away to 924 Roswell Way. Please hurry, I don’t know if she’s breathing.

Sir, sir, I need you to tell me who is not breathing and what has happened.

I don’t know, I came home and I found my wife unconscious. I can’t wake her. We need help immediately. Please hurry!

Okay sir, I am sending the paramedics, but I need you to stay on the line.

Ok, but I need to help her. I have tried CPR but it wasn’t working. I need to get back to her right away! How long will it be before they get here? We need help right away! Please tell them to hurry, I can’t lose her!

Sir, we will do everything that we can to save your wife. What is you name sir?

Eric, Eric McBride. Wait a minute. I think I hear something! I have to go now; I think that I hear the ambulance outside. I have to let them in. They have to save my wife!

Dropping the phone, Eric runs and throws the door open to allow entry to the paramedics.

She’s in here, please hurry! I don’t think she’s breathing. Please save her, I don’t want to lose her as he sobs desperately.

The medical team follows Eric into the couple’s bedroom not knowing what they may find. Susan Gibbs and her longtime partner Tom Henry take a couple of deep breaths and head toward the bed to do what they do best.

A frantic, Eric is held out of the bedroom to allow the Gibbs and Henry to work.

The bedroom was fairly innocuous. Nothing seemed out of place. If the medical team didn’t know better, they would swear that the woman on the bed was simply asleep. Gibbs and Henry moved toward the bed. Susan reached out to touch the body to check for a pulse. Susan looked up at Tom and shook her head indicating that they were too late to save this one. This was a DOA. How could this have happened? This woman was in her late twenties; what a tragedy.

Susan headed toward the bedroom door with the distinct heaviness of death. Once she walked into that hallway she knew that there was no turning back. This was the part of the job that she hated. She hated the moment of realization, that tiny moment that only happened when a person could not be saved. The moment that she knew that no rescue efforts necessary. Death had laid claim to its latest victim.

Gibbs and Henry worked this job for at least 12 years and it never got any easier to arrive on the scene and watch the life slip away forever. Gone. Just like that.  In a moment and without notice life had turned to death. Watching the surviving family members look at them with bewilderment on their faces as if they did not understand the word that had been spoken. As if they did not understand that death had chosen them. Death had descended on their household unexpectedly and claimed one of their own. Gibbs especially hated the looking and searching of the family member’s eyes trying to gauge their understanding and comprehension that this was permanent.

Gibbs and Henry reached the door of the bedroom and emerged with their strategy in hand. Henry would go and talk to the husband and deliver the news, while Gibbs would get the coroner in to take the body and call the cops.