At last October’s annual Killingworth Ambulance Association banquet, Mark Clifton was honored as the EMT who responded to the most calls the previous year. This month he was honored again … but not for responding to a call.
For responding to a calling.
A member of the Killingworth Ambulance Association board of directors and director of Deer Lake Camp, Clifton was commended in an email the KAA received this week from a paramedic who assisted in a call where a patient ultimately died (you can find it in the Testimonials section under “About Us” in our website index).
“A difficult and sad situation,” wrote Middlesex Health’s Gary Johnson.
It happened last month when a father and his 24-year-old son asked Mark and wife Patty if they could fish at Deer Lake. It wasn’t an unusual request. The father, who lived in Branford, had known the Cliftons for 10 years, and his son, who lived in Georgia, was on his way to a military boot camp and wanted to spend one of his last free weekends fishing with his Dad.
And so he did. Unfortunately, what should have been a joyous morning turned tragic when the father collapsed and 911 was called.
And that’s where Clifton comes in.
On his way to emergency call taken only minutes before, he received word that urgent help was needed at the Deer Lake location he just left. He didn’t know who or what was involved. He simply knew he had to continue to his destination — which he did, finding a full crew from the KAA there when he arrived.
So he returned immediately to Deer Lake, helping a Madison Ambulance team on the scene in first finding the son and his father and then driving his Land Rover to a remote location at the north end of Deer Lake to ferry the patient through the woods to an awaiting ambulance.
“Otherwise,” Clifton said, “they would have had a half-mile carry-out.”
But that’s not what caught Johnson’s attention. This is: After the father was hurried away, Clifton drove the son to the Shoreline Medical Center in Westbrook (“I could tell he needed someone,” Clifton said). It was there that the distraught young man was told his father had passed away and there that Clifton spent an estimated five hours consoling him and assisting with phone calls to relatives.
“I didn’t want to leave the clinic with him until he had come to grips with his Dad’s death and gone to see him,” Clifton said, struggling to control his emotions. “The son said, ‘It’s so nice of you to be here.’ And I told him, ‘If the situation were reversed, your Dad would be here.’ We didn’t leave the hospital until he said he was ready.”
Afterward, Clifton offered to feed the young man dinner and house him overnight, but he declined.
“Mark came down to Shoreline,” Johnson wrote in his email to the KAA, “spending several hours with the patient’s son, keeping him company and being a support. For most, the job would have been done back at the scene. Not Mark. He spent the afternoon helping this young man, showing much compassion and empathy.
“Your agency should be proud to have a member as dedicated and caring as Mark.”