Shortland Street - Carmen after the truck crash

...my jaw hit the floor. I ran outside to share the tragic news to my mother: Carmen Roberts, quick-witted nurse and beloved new mum, had just died .“But what about the baby?” my mother asked, in a tone of voice that was unusually serious.

– Tara Ward on the day Carmen died, The Spinoff, 17 December 2015

Christmas Cliffhanger 1995. The big, end-of-season cliffs are always fun to write, putting story pegs in place several months before. This year, we didn't go off air for the holidays, so the aftermath played on Christmas Day. We set up an expectation that Kirsty would be injured (she only had amnesia — one of our soapier moments) but it was Carmen who suffered the consequences in this particular story.

– Shortland Street writer Steven Zanoski in The NZ Herald, 16 May 2002