She indicated a line in the middle of her PRF. This wasn’t her first rodeo; she knew how likely these jobs were to come back and bite her on the arse, and she had documented absolutely everything, no matter how trivial.

“I’d informed my dispatcher of Kyle’s deterioration. I think my exact words were, ‘I need help out here. This lad’s about to arrest.’ Once he actually had arrested, I was a little too preoccupied to repeat the request.” Trying to rein in her temper, she gripped her mug until her fingers began to tingle. She was usually far more diplomatic when dealing with management, but Baxter’s question was a ridiculous one, and it had hit a nerve. Later newspaper reports had seized on the lack of an appropriate ambulance response that night, raking the service over the coals for inadequate staffing and sketchy emergency provision, and she wasn’t about to take the fall for NHS budget cuts and the resultant organisational chaos.

“Have you listened to the tape?” she asked. It was the first thing he should have done—all radio exchanges were recorded for posterity—but she wasn’t surprised when he shook his head. “Ask for a copy of it,” she said. “I run alongside this dispatcher for most of my shifts, and he’s on the ball. If he’d had backup to send that night, he would have sent it.”

Baxter’s answering grunt was as opaque as his handwriting, so she considered her point made and moved on to describe her actions and interventions prior to Rosie and Kash arriving on the scene.

“Did you decompress his chest?” he said, interrupting her mid-sentence.

In lieu of an immediate answer, she bit into a piece of shortbread, took her time chewing it, and finished the last of her tea. It stopped her from walking out of the room and returning with Kev and a union representative.

“No, I didn’t,” she said.

He sat up straighter, everything about him more animated as he seized on a potential mistake. “Bilateral needle decompression is indicated in cases of traumatic cardiac arrest.”

Jem clasped her hands in her lap. While she lacked confidence in most social circumstances, she had no such qualms when it came to the technicalities of her profession. “I’m aware of that. In this particular case, however, the patient’s lungs were functioning just fine, and the portion of grey matter I found on the riverbank strongly implied that the arrest was due to cerebral trauma. The last thing he needed was me giving him a double pneumothorax because I’d blindly followed the guidelines.”

“So you decided to go against protocol,” Baxter snapped.

“I used my common sense,” she said quietly. “Have you seen a copy of the post-mortem?”

He folded his arms like a petulant child. “No. Have you?”