I was working as a Paramedic on the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, it was a team of two people, the unit driver and me. The ambulance in that time had a lot of specialized equipment to help people having a bad time. We were going to the station after a false alarm when the radio central called us saying that a car fell to the river of the city. We turned back in the first intersection with the alarm and answer that we were on our way. When we arrived, there was the rescue truck and the team was going down to the crash site. There was a girl and her boyfriend, both in very bad conditions, head trauma, closed chest trauma, fractures... The rescuers went up with her first, I received her in the ambulance and started with the first aids inmediatly. Meanwhile the other guy, her boyfriend, was in a lot more trouble, because he was stuck with both legs broken and the contaminated river filling that part of the car. Rescuers secure the car but there was no way to get it up, the crane didn't work after an accident to the rescue unit days before. Time was expiring in order to save his life and I had to leave with the girl to the hospital, meanwhile another ambulance was on the way to the site, to wait for her boyfriend to be rescued. The girl was in a really bad condition that we saw just after the ultrasound and x rays and she drank a lot of the river's blackwater, so a massive infection was on the table too. The father of the girl arrived to the hospital between crying and alteration, saying thank you to us every minute, but we knew the worst part was just about to happen. Her boyfriend never arrived the hospital, he was dead. The dead body was retrieved after hours in the crash site by police forces after the fire departmen had to cut the legs in order to release him from the car, it was a nightmare. Also it was the first time I got involved with a family story and what happened to them affected me so much. She was recently graduated from university, her boyfriend was in Venezuela for the first time, her father told me they were going to his house to celebrate but never got there. The girl survived after a severe contamination, several surgeries from fractures on one arm, hips and both legs. I visited her and her father every work shift since the accident, but one day her father called me saying she entered a comatose state. I offered him whatever we have to offer in the ambulance and the station. Days passed with no new results but maybe a week or more later it came out that an brain aneurysm was happening and the mobility had to be minimum, because a hard move could result in death. We had the responsability to take her to a clinic in order to make the full study of the brain, and the clinic was in the other side of the city. Her father told me he trust us and only us to do it, and it was hard, her life was in more danger with the aneurysm than the day we took her with fractures from the river. We used all immobilization techniques known and the good thing is that she was unconscious, so she won't be moving for herself. We did a good work going slow on the highway and get to the clinic safe, with the hairs standing but safe. All studies were done and we knew we've just done the 50% of the work, we had to take her back to the hospital in the same safe condition. We did. Her father and I became really good friends, and after a year in the hospital and two brain surgeries she was able to recover her life entirely, slow but secure. All that her father told about her, his only daughter, was a story of love for her, a father/daughter love and sacrifice story, everything he did for her to make her stay alive was incredible. He says that we were heroes, but to me he was the real hero of the story, because we did only a part of the rescue, the rest was on him.
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