Cattytaurus--
This is a very touching and informative piece about the trials and tribulations of a medical helicopter dispatcher. There were a lot of things that I never knew before reading this, so thank you very, very much for sharing your story with us.
Issues
 I send helicopters to accident scenes to get the truly critically injured to someplace where their lives may be saved.
I don't think you need the word "truly" in this sentence. Taking it out would just streamline it a bit more and it wouldn't diminish the content.
At any given time during a shift, we may be called upon to help an elderly victim of abuse or neglect, or perhaps a family car ran off the road in a bad storm.
The phrase about the family car running off the road doesn't make sense. You either need to say "a family whose car ran off the road" or "a family car run off the road."
All of the heart breaking calls where CPR is in progress, the firefighter who got caught in the flames while protecting others, and the policeman who was T-Boned while in the line of duty.
I don't know what "T-Boned" means and--though, I may be wrong about this--I don't think I'm the only one. There are a few other "technical" terms that you use in this piece that could probably use a little more explanation. Just to help us lay-people stick with the story. 
I could share with you about the countless motor vehicle accident responses we launch on everyday.
You don't need "about" in this sentence. If you're sharing the motor vehicle accident stories, it's understood that you're telling us about them.
Or maybe tell you about the untold many sporting injuries, the never ending stabbings, gunshot wounds, attempted suicides or assault and batteries.
Another redundancy issue here: "untold" and "many" mean the same thing. You only need one of these.
There are several comma issues in this piece. For example:
--All of these requests are devastating in their own way, but we in Flight Comm are trained to handle and respond to each with the greatest efficiency, and the least fret. Don't need the second comma in this sentence.
--After all the studying, after all the testing and training I was finally going to take the reins and handle the radio traffic for our helos. You do need a comma after "training."
Instead of listing every single one of them, I'm going to give you a link to "Invalid Item"  and let you go crazy, in the good old fashion Socratic way. 
We respond to a Dad whose fallen off his roof while putting up Christmas decorations and we think, "We can save this guy," only to hear later from the ER Doctor he didn't make it through the night.
The "doctor" after "ER" doesn't need to be capitalized. Doctor, teacher, fireman, nurse, astronaut, nose-picker, etc....occupational titles don't get caps.
All of them required transport to separate burn centers around the state and when the frantic phone calls of anxious grandparents, despairing cousins and distraught friends came in trying to locate them made us pause because no one survived.
This "when" needs to be removed, or else the sentence doesn't make sense. As it is, we're waiting for what happens when those phone calls come in.
It's not all glamor and happy endings like Hollywood's ER, no.
First, "glamour" is misspelled. Second, I think the "no" should go at the beginning of the next sentence, not at the end of this one. It seems to be more part of the response to this sentence, which is what the one after it is.
I remember the first minutes of the shift, in fact I can well remember every detail of the entire shift like it was a gift of a pony at Christmastime.
First, I think you could safely take the "time" off the end of "Christmas" and the impact would be safely retained. Second, the comma in this sentence either needs to be a period or a semicolon. There are some other semicolon issues so, like before, I'm going to give you a referal (a prescription, if you will ): "Invalid Item" . Go to town!
Then over one of the open channels we happen to monitor, we heard a garbled message called in by a firetruck responding to our auto crash scene, "static, static, fire!, static, static, garbled sounds, helicopter crash, static, desert."
To separate the static noise from the actual words spoken (instead of the reader thinking that the person is saying "static"), you might consider italicizing each of the "static" words.
We kept thinking, these reports are all wrong, someone screwed up, our crew will come up on the radio anytime.
To distinguish what you were thinking from the rest of the sentence, you might consider either italicizing the thoughts or putting them in single quotation marks, like this: 'I don't know,' Sandy thought to herself, 'that guy looks like trouble.' See what I mean?
Things I Like Immensely
 The rock. The soul.
Very powerful. I love the way you use almost technical language, then slip things like this in.
But my voice is rock steady, and my fingers type just as surely and quickly as always, until I hear that beautifully alive voice on the other end.
My lifeline. My rock. My soul.
I completely teared up when I read this. You've got a very compelling way of telling a story.
Overall, I think you have the most important part of writing down: the acutal putting into words what is inside you. This is a very touching, very real story.
Your style is very raw, but that's okay! The more you write, the more feedback you get, the more you'll improve, the more we'll be dying to read you! You're descriptive, emotional, honest and the flow of your writing picks up naturally once the piece gets going.
Once you get the small things fixed--grammar, punctuation, clarity, the ability to use less to say more--this will be a truly powerful, phenomenal piece.
Yours,
Wee
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
