“Put on your boot covers—we have carpets!”
How often do you say this to someone from the ambulance service, for whom every second matters, and any extra delay can cost too much? This collection of stories offers a glimpse behind the scenes of the profession of those who arrive first. It explains why paramedics sometimes don’t act as quickly as everyone expects—and why the safety of a carpet is never more important than human life.
This is a hard-hitting, vivid diary of an ambulance feldsher: an ordinary Khrushchev-era apartment in a minute turns into an operating room, and “returning a person to life” happens right on the doorstep—before the stunned eyes of a wife. Episodes that take your breath away change the way you look at how rescue truly happens. And the next time you see an ambulance, you’ll no longer be able to look at it the same way.