A Life on the Line

When the author was a kid, a big white sleek ambulance squatted like a lion in the driveway next door, always ready to go, and sometimes it did, roaring down the street. Today he is a MICA Flight Paramedic with decades of varied experience in &apos;a life of extremes&apos; in an Australian ambulance service. He does shifts at base on-call, and teaches another generation of paramedics now. Loves his job.<br /> <br />A list of well-known events that includes Victoria&apos;s Black Saturday Fires and the 2005 Bali Bombing – he was trying to get married when that call came in – mark two dark extremes. Technical matters – trauma treatment decisions, and the limits of aviation, for example – are explained. And this book includes the little things like the time the supermarket aisle was alive with the sound of music from an ex-patient&apos;s kid&apos;s lips: &apos;Thanks for looking after Daddy.&apos; Darren couldn&apos;t have put it better himself, and it made his heart sing.<br /> <br />This book tells what is like to be Darren Hodge on the end of a line, what it is like to be a paramedic. Open, honest reports, warts and all, this memoir is an unflinching account of how it feels, say, to pluck people from imminent death. And there are some laughs on the way…