‘A quiet night in the emergency room became my most bizarre shift. At 4:30 in the morning I answered the phone: ‘112, police, what’s going on?’ A trembling voice said, “My father killed my mother.”
‘I really didn’t see that coming. “What exactly happened?” I asked. ‘I woke up to a noise’, a boy replied, ‘I went to look in my father and mother’s bedroom and saw that Mama was lying on the floor. My father sat on top of her and kept stabbing with a knife.’
“Is she still alive?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “And where is your father?” I wanted to know if the boy was safe. “He drove off,” he replied.
”Where are you?’ He gave an address in a small village, in the middle of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. I knew that place, it’s at least a ten minute drive for the police and ambulance, not counting the roadblocks that were there at the time.
‘That boy had lost his father and his mother at that moment. So I did what I normally never do: I asked his name, and said, ‘I’m Willy, I’m going to talk you through this. How old are you?’ He was 18. I didn’t dare put him through to the ambulance service for fear of losing him. “We’re going to do this together,” I said. ‘Can you go to your mother? What do you see?’ He shuddered: “She’s really bleeding everywhere, I see a lot of blood.”
My buddy next to me listened in. While I was talking to that boy, she sent the units to that address.
“Is she still breathing?” I asked. “I think so,” replied the boy. “We’re going to check her heart rate together,” I said, explaining to him how you can feel it with two fingers in the neck, just above the collarbone. He felt nothing.
‘Then I struggled with two dilemmas. Am I going to have an 18-year-old boy resuscitate his mother or not? Because that’s trauma upon trauma. And: does that make sense? I couldn’t assess the victim’s condition from a distance. But I also thought: if we don’t do it, his mother doesn’t stand a chance. So I said, “I want you to resuscitate your mother.” “Good,” he said. “Do you know how?” ‘New.’
‘I heard a buzz, a sister was with him. ‘Put the phone on the speaker,’ I said, ‘and give it to your sister, because you need both hands. Sit firmly on your knees next to your mother.’ Then he put his hands on his mother’s sternum, as I explained to him, and started doing chest compressions. I counted to thirty with his sister to indicate the rhythm and then explained how to give his mother two breaths, not too hard, not too soft, like blowing up a balloon. He then continued to give compressions and ventilate.
“Very good,” I kept encouraging him. “Hold on a little longer, the police and the ambulance are almost here.”
‘I heard sirens approaching, I heard men’s voices and then a colleague who said, ‘I’ll take it for you.’
‘After that conversation I was completely stunned. As I went outside to recover, my mind went through: did I do this right?
“Back inside I heard that the mother had passed away. Shortly after, an ambulance operator said, “I’ve got the father on the line.” She gave me her headset, I put it on and said: you are now talking to the police, you are calling for your injured wife. Where are you?’
He sounded confused and said he was at the police station in Doorn. There was no one there at the time – everyone had gone to that stabbing. My buddy sent colleagues to him.
“Are you hurt?” I asked. He didn’t need an ambulance. I said, “The police are looking for you.” He replied, “I understand.”
“Do you have a weapon with you?” I deliberately didn’t talk about a knife. “No,” he said calmly. “Then I’d like you to put your hands in the air and stand still.” Sirens blared again. A colleague on site said to my buddy: ‘We see him standing, he has his hands in the air. We’re arresting him.’
‘Bizarre. This was in 2015, but I still wonder if I made the right choice at the time and how that boy is doing. I was only able to listen to the tape recording after a year, I was not emotionally ready for that before. Chills ran down my spine when I heard that conversation again. I’ve had a lot of trouble with that.
‘A colleague once asked: if you were confronted with the same situation, would you do it differently? New. I think this was the best of all the bad solutions.’