Set: during Let it Bleed. Peter, Claire, and a couple of EMTs trying to do their job.

Sparked by: Me reading Peter Canning's "Rescue 471" prior to watching "Let it Bleed" and thinking, "No paramedic will leave a guy with serious injuries lying around on a stretcher, unattended, without any IV or monitors." So this story needed to be written.

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One weird day at work

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We get called to a shooting at an office block in 1583 W Hudson at 6:11 PM. Dispatch tells us there are several people injured, probably critical.

My partner, Shaun, curses. Our shift ends in twenty minutes, and his wife's got a pork joint in the oven. I feel I know that pork joint by name; he's been talking about it all day. Seems he won't get to his dinner anytime soon.

"Dispatch, this is 461, we're three minutes out," I acknowledge the call, and we're rolling. We get on scene at 6:14; the guys from the FDNY are everywhere. Cops too. Someone says terrorist attack. Someone always says terrorist attack. Information is slow to trickle through. Finally we get some new reports from the cops. Seems a former office worker who got fired went berserk in there. The reports contradict themselves. We hear shooting from the office block and can only twiddle our thumbs. Shaun goes on about his dinner.

Then finally we're told it's clear; the shooter's down. I grab the bag and jump out, Shaun coming after me with the stretcher. We're not the first paramedics to enter the building.

The first casualty we find is a police officer lying on the ground in the corridor. Two EMTs from the FDNY are checking him; as we run past them, I hear one of them announcing a blood pressure of 120 to 65, no injuries discernible, pupils and breathing normal. It's like he just dropped of his own accord. We run on. A couple of officers are patrolling among the cubicles; one of them calls out to us. "In here, in here!"

We pass a few more people being attended by other paramedics – some with gunshot wounds, some just shaken – until we reach the cubicle the officer points us to. Three casualties here. A black woman with a leg wound, a guy in his forties unconscious on the floor. The cop tells me he's the shooter. There's another man in a formerly white shirt that's soaked with blood now. A blonde girl is sitting next to him, staring at us as we rush in. She looks unharmed, only her hands are covered in blood.

A quick checkup of the shooter tells us he's just out cold – exactly like the cop in the corridor.

Shaun yells at the officer to get more crews in here, and then turns to the two patients who are bleeding. He tells the girl to move over so he can take care of the man. She seems shaken, doesn't get up at once. She's pretty, dressed all in black, as if she's just come from a funeral. For that matter, so does the guy with the white shirt. He's conscious, but doesn't give Shaun his name when he asks him. Shaun stops trying to pry information out of him and gets to work on him instead.

I take a quick look at the black woman. The leg wound's been bleeding, but someone has rather efficiently staunched it. She tells me her name is Wendy.

"It'll be all right, Wendy," I reassure her after I've made sure the leg wound is her only injury. "My name's Alan. We're gonna take you to Bellevue Hospital; they'll get you checked out."

"I can't remember what happened," she whispers.

"It's OK," I soothe her. "It's OK. Everything's gonna be all right now."

I apply a fresh compress but don't put her on the stretcher; the guy in the white shirt looks like he needs it a lot more.

In the meantime, Shaun has gotten rid of the man's tie, has opened his shirt and assesses his injuries, pressing a compress to the entry wound two inches below his collarbone, and another to the one on his back. The bullet went right through his chest/shoulder area at a close distance, and he's lying in a pool of blood already.

"I'm all right," he gasps, shaking. "Look, guys, just let me – I'll be fine—"

"Like hell you are," Shaun tells him, firmly keeping the patient down with a hand on his chest as he takes his pulse. It's fast and thready due to blood loss, he's pale, and his skin feels cold as I take over keeping pressure on his wounds.

"Lie still," I tell him as he keeps squirming, and I see him close his eyes as he takes a deep, shuddering breath, visibly calming himself.

Shaun plugs the ends of his stethoscope into his ears and listens to the man's chest, to search for the telltale signs of lung damage. "No fluids or tension in the lungs," he says. "About the only thing I'd say is fine with you right now, buddy. Alan, help me get him on the stretcher. We'll start a line in the rig, and put him on oxygen."

I'm already taking the guy's legs, Shaun his arms, and together, we put him on the stretcher. He needs surgery, most likely a blood transfusion, and soon. Working on him here won't be any good. He's alert, he's breathing, his lungs aren't injured as far as we can tell, so an IV and airway management can wait until we're back in the truck, en route to the hospital.

Our patient is still protesting feebly as Shaun straps him onto the stretcher and pulls up so we can wheel him out. "I don't need an IV or an NRB," he tells Shaun. "I'll be OK, really." I wonder about him referring to a non-rebreather, especially since Shaun hasn't even mentioned that. It's obvious he has some medical training, although his self-assessment is decidedly poor. He keeps looking back at the girl. Even though he's in a lot of pain, the look he gives her is accusing. Or maybe beseeching. I can't figure out what's going on, but that, too, will have to wait. I briefly consider getting an IV line going right now, to calm him down and relieve his pain somewhat, not to mention get some fluid back into him, but Shaun is right – medication, and fluid resuscitation, can wait another two minutes.

"Go!" I tell Shaun. "I'm right behind you." He takes over the compress, nods, and heads out, pulling the stretcher.

Another EMT crew has arrived to take care of Wendy and the shooter. The girl in black looks after Shaun and the patient and starts going after him. I try to get a good look at her, to see if she's just shaken or injured in any way. She looks at me like she's trying to figure out what the hell I want from her. Definitely acute stress reaction.

When I introduce myself and ask her if she works here, she frowns at me and doesn't answer.

"It's gonna be OK," I say. "It's over now. We'll get you out of here, you should sit down outside for a bit. I just want to make sure you're OK. All right?"

She blinks, and looks after Shaun and his patient again. For a moment, she looks almost exasperated, but I decide it's all to do with the stress reaction.

"He a friend?"

She nods.

"We'll take good care of him, OK? Come along."

She doesn't look convinced we will. "I'm all right," she tells me. "You'd better take care of someone who actually needs it."

Now I have a feeling she's slightly amused. Poor kid. Nobody so young should have to watch people getting shot right in front of their eyes.

By the door, I sit her down and am just about to go after Shaun when a fireman shouts from a few yards away. One of the victims they've already wheeled out is going into hypovolemic shock. The EMT with him is just basic level, so I run over to secure an airway while the EMT hooks up an IV. Tonight's pure chaos. After I've intubated the patient, I look around for someone to relieve me so I can head back to Shaun and our patient, but can't see anyone who could. I decide Shaun will have to go without me. The Bellevue is less than ten minutes from here. Our patient wasn't critical. Shaun can take care of it.

It's past 7 PM when I can finally hand my patient over to the other EMT's partner, and go in search of mine. I don't expect to find him. I've been twenty minutes. Shaun is probably already wheeling our guy into the trauma room.

I walk to the curb where we parked, and can't believe my eyes when I see 461 parked there, right where I remember it. My first thought is that Shaun's already got our man to the hospital and has come back at once. That thought is blown from my mind when I see Shaun unhurriedly coming around the side of the truck, pulling off his gloves. The back door is open; the rig is empty. No stretcher.

"Shaun?" I ask him as I run over. "What happened?"

He blinks. "What'ya mean, what happened? I just helped out over there." He makes a vague motion. Over there are a lot of people who need help, all right.

"Where's our patient?"

"Our patient?"

I'm this short of gripping him and slapping him. I hope he's just pulling my leg, although this sure as hell is a bad moment. "Our patient. Dark-haired guy in his twenties. White shirt, black tie. Bullet through the chest. Probably haemorrhaging right now."

He stares at me for a couple of seconds. "You're freaking kidding me, right?"

OK, he's done it. I'm questioning my sanity too.

"Where's the stretcher?" I grind out. Let's approach this with a system. We find our stretcher, we find our guy.

His eyes are the size of saucers. "In the truck."

I grab his arm and pull him around behind the ambulance. Gesture inside without a word.

He continues to stare at me, then at the empty space where he thought our stretcher was. I expect to wake up from a bad dream any moment. I've worked with Shaun for twelve years. He gets grumpy when he doesn't get his pork joint on Sunday nights, yes, but he's one of the most committed guys I've seen in this job. I can't believe he's snapped like this.

OK, I tell myself. Someone else must have taken care of our patient. Sure we're all in a mess tonight, but someone must have noticed a guy bleeding out on an emergency stretcher.

I pull Shaun along, and start searching for our stretcher. We find it after a couple of minutes. It's empty. And covered in blood. I look around, and am not surprised to see no signs of IV tubes or monitoring. Shaun never forgets these things. And Shaun never forgets his patients. At least not within twenty minutes on scene.

I look around. This guy simply can't have gone far. Shaun stands there, also looking wildly about himself, but to me, it doesn't seem he really knows what's going on. If I didn't know him, I'd say he was on drugs.

"The girl," I suddenly say, and whirl around for the entrance, and the bench where I sat her down. There's someone else sitting there right now, holding a bloody compress to his forehead but looking mostly alert. The girl's gone.

"Hey," I say. "Did you see a blonde girl around here, a few minutes ago, maybe?"

He concentrates. "Pretty blonde? Yeah, saw her walking in that direction." He vaguely points in the same direction as our stretcher. I feel like the ground is opening up below me.

"She somehow went off with him," I tell Shaun.

"Who's she?" he asks me. His voice sounds cautious. As if he knows he's missing something here, and trying not to be too obvious about it.

I can't deal with Shaun right now. I absolutely can't. We let a patient get away. I can't believe this is happening.

"OK, come on," I tell him through clenched teeth. "Let's put our stretcher back, see if we can find them. They have to be around here somewhere." A shaken-up girl and a guy bleeding to death, someone's gonna stop them.

We help with the casualties for another hour, keeping an eye out for our man. It's nearly half past eight when we pack up. There's the run form waiting. Shaun's wife will have to warm up his pork joint later.

We never find out what happened to our patient. One fellow EMT from the FDNY later recounts he saw the guy sitting up at some point, and claimed he didn't look like he was badly injured, but didn't see him leave. We never hear from him again.

Shaun needs some persuasion before he gets checked out for the memory loss. Only when several people confirm he was treating the guy in the white shirt does he agree to go see a psychologist.

The checkup yields nothing at all. Just a clean gap in his memory between entering the building and finding himself back at the ambulance.

We avoid the topic afterwards.