Are you sure?

Lights and sirens help us part the traffic a little like the Red Sea would have done, walls of cars forming on both sides of the road, just slower and with greater apathy. A few stray waves decide to make a stand and not get out of the way, one racing to see if he could beat the ambulance, only to have his plan ruined by a red traffic light. Another just stops dead right in front of us, clearly having more faith in our brakes than we did. A tug on the steering wheel, a slam on the anchors and a few choice words had the desired effect, and we avoided the back of their car by an air particle or two. 

Emergencies come in three broad categories: Life-threatening, possibly life-threatening, and not life-threatening. This call was the former. An unconscious twenty-year-old girl, believed to have taken some sort of drugs, the quantity and type as yet unknown. 

"It's my girlfriend, Clara," says the panic-stricken gentleman who greets us in the car park, barely giving us a chance to open the ambulance doors. "I think she's tried to kill herself!" 

"Is she breathing?" We talk as we walk towards the patient. 

"Yes, but she won't talk, won't open her eyes. I think she's unconscious." 

"Do you know what she might have taken?"

"She's lying on top of the box, so I can't see it. They told me on the phone not to move her." 

Having climbed the two flights of stairs, we find Clara lying on the floor of the lounge. Flickering eyelids tell us all we immediately need to know - she's not unconscious. Some gentle persuasion and asking Dean to leave at the realisation that as her boyfriend, he was possibly the catalyst to the drama, finally convinced Clara to open her eyes. 

"Dean seems to think you might have taken some tablets. Is he right?" 

A nod of the head. 

"Can you tell us what they're called?" 

A shake of the head. 

"OK, how many have you taken?" 

Clara holds up four fingers. 

I decided to end the game of charades, and ask a question that would require a spoken answer. "Were they prescription tablets, or something you bought by yourself?" 

"Bought them from a friend." She looked down at the floor, thought for a second and then went on. "They're not going to kill me, are they?" 

"Do you still have the box they came in?"

Clara went back to nodding her head. 

"Can I see it?" 

Slowly, she moves to remove the box from the pockets of her pink hoodie, and hands it to me. 

"You took four of these?" 

A nod. 

"And nothing else?"

A shake. 

"I think you'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" 

"I'm sure. Four Strepsils have never killed anyone." 

"But I didn't have a sore throat, so isn't that dangerous?" 

"No it's not. Not sensible, possibly, and might give you a bit of belly ache, but it's not dangerous." 

"Are you SURE?" 

"I'm sure." 

"Can you take me to hospital, just to be sure?" 

"If that's what you want? Sure." 

"Yes please. Y'know, just to be sure." 

My persuasive skills that managed to bring her back from unconsciousness were no match for her concerns about four throat lozenges. 

"Sure." 

Gossip Monger

It's taken a while to get used to the new radios, not that they've been a bad thing, especially for someone who spends most of their time working solo. Prior to their arrival, the only communication we had with the control room was if we were still in the ambulance or the car. Failing that, we could use our own mobiles or even the patient's phone, sometimes dialling 999 if it was particularly urgent. Summoning police in a hurry often involved one of the crew running back to the ambulance and calling for help whilst leaving their partner facing whatever the danger was. A solo worker was even more isolated. 

There was, however, certainly as the people on the front line, one advantage to the old radios: they were an open channel. As long as you were on that channel, you could hear everything that was going on with all the ambulances in your sector, and therefore it was often the people you knew best. If you heard them calling for extra help, for whatever reason, you could call up and offer that help. Now the channels are blocked. Communications are direct between a radio and the control room. 

The airwaves are silent most of the time, except for the control room sending out "General Broadcasts" advising of calls waiting for ambulances, and other general information. Even these seem to have reduced in number now that they can send messages down the MDTs (mobile data terminals, or, for ease of use, the computer screens on which we get our calls). Communicating to the whole sector is still possible, but is very much frowned upon, except in one instance. If you need help in a hurry. 

On top of the new handsets is an orange button. Press and hold that for a second or two, and everyone else on your channel hears you. No need to push any buttons to talk, your mic is open and hands-free. Everyone else's radios flash bright, and make an alarming sound. In the control room the radio-op has a similar sequence of events and alarm bells sounding. Nine times out of ten, the next words you hear are a crew discussing how upset they are at yet another hospital banning them from the coffee and tea, or some slanderous gossip or rumour, or even someone dealing calmly with a patient. Nine times out of ten, the button has been accidentally pressed, control checks in to make sure that all is well, and nine times out of ten the crew will apologise and spend the next few minutes panicking about what may or may not have been said as the world and his wife were listening. 

A while back, I hit the orange button. On purpose. 

The next words everyone heard were probably a garbled stream, and would have looked good on an old-fashioned Batman TV show: 

"Get off!" "Step back!" THUD "Ow!" SMASH 

"Red Base, I need police on the hurry up!"

"Z751, are you OK?" Control actually sounded a little worried.

"NO!" BANG "I need police! NOW!" "OY, GET OFF!"

I think the magic of the hands-free open-mic only lasts for ten or twenty seconds, so that's probably all they heard. Luckily, probably. Profanities are not welcome across the ether. 

At that point, a crew turned up, not realising what they were about to walk in to, especially as they're on a different radio channel and hadn't heard my calls for help. An innocuous sounding call with little prior information other than the fact that the patient was crying doesn't normally call for any concern. 

The next few seconds, maybe minutes, are a bit hazy. One of the crew waded in trying to help get the patient away from me as the other called again for back-up. Between us we tried to get him down on the floor, both for our safety and his. We failed miserably. In the background I could make out the sounds of several sirens, and a few seconds later half a dozen police officers ran in. 

"Someone call the cavalry?" 

"Er, yes! He's all yours!"

In a blur of arms, legs, handcuffs, swear words, brute force and brilliant technique, the patient, high on illicit drugs and alcohol, was finally subdued and taken into custody. It took all six officers to deal with him, so my pride wasn't too dented by the fact that I couldn't do it on my own. Still, malicious thoughts (often spoken in jest) of using an oxygen cylinder as a weapon came all-too-close to being a reality. 

I drove back to station, covered in my blood and his, uniform ripped and with a sore shoulder and back. On the way back I phoned control to thank them for their prompt assistance and told them that during the events I'd made a new discovery. 

"What's that then?"

"I now know that the orange button isn't just for accidentally spreading gossip!" 

"Well, you say that, but now everyone's talking about you!"

"Oh." 

The Night After

It was one of those nights. I only saw five patients. 

1) Drunk, fallen asleep in the street. Told me to get lost. Not quite as politely as that, however. Then proceeded to walk straight into a wall.

2) Drunk, fallen over in the street. Told me I need a shave, which I do, and that I speak good English for a Chinaman, which I'm not. Also, I need to go back to China, where I come from, "'cos we don't need no more foreigners in the country." Nice.

3) Drunk, fallen over at home, slightly apologetic. Slightly better natured than the previous two. Things were looking up. But not for long.

4) Drunk, violent and nasty, high on drugs to boot. I got covered in his blood as well as mine as I tried to stop him killing both himself and me, before the police turned up and looked after him. Things were looking grim again. 

5) Drunk, unconscious and very seriously injured after a high speed impact with the road. Definitely grim. Grim for me, as it was pouring with rain, but that's nothing. It's much more grim for him. He's probably going to die, assuming he hasn't already.

I'm back at work in a few hours. The night after the night before. I hope it's a better one. For everyone.

Trademark

As predicted, there was no answer when I rang the doorbell. Patients calling and claiming to be unconscious tend to be a little like the outer door I was facing - unhinged. I stopped the car one house up from the address leaving room for the ambulance to park up right outside, and left my trademark orange beacon flashing on the roof. A light was switched off in a front room confirming that the patient wasn't unconscious as they'd tried to tell the call-taker. Instead, they were probably drunk and up to mischief. 

The crew, a very friendly Little and Large, arrived a few minutes later.

"We knew it was you!" It's always nice to be greeted with a smiling pair of faces, especially in the dead of night.

"What gave it away?"

"First, the orange beacon. Secondly, this call sounds a bit crazy. It's got you written all over it!"

"Yeah, can't argue that one..."

We stood by the porch door, eventually working out that we could open that one and get to the front door itself. Just in case the patient hadn't already heard us, we knocked on that door too, shouting through the letter box for good measure. The upstairs light had stayed off for some time, so we had no option but to ask for the police. It took them a few minutes before they screeched up the road like a scene from a movie. 

"You know you've left that orange beacon on, don't you?" Asked one of the officers as they stepped out. 

"Ye-e-e-s-s-s...?" 

"You'll end up with a flat battery, you know!" They seemed to find the whole thing amusing. 

"Never happened yet. Anyway, it's my trademark. Warns the crews that they're about to face the madness..." 

Little explained the situation, whilst Large and I each tried to shift the blame for the call onto the other by giving each other's call signs to the police. After a few attempts at the traditional knock-at-the-door-ring-the-doorbell-shout-through-the-letter-box methods, they opted for the big red door key. One gentle tap later with the weighty battering ram and we were in. 

Our patient was sitting at the top of the stairs, a cocktail of drink and drugs making him unsteady both of body and mind. It took the combined efforts of police and ambulance to coax him downstairs and into the truck. Whether he'd overdosed was difficult to tell, but he was certainly drunk and very incapable, so leaving him at home was not an option. Lacking the energy to fight, he finally crumpled in a heap onto the trolley bed and the police left us and returned to their duties. 

It took us a few more minutes to check vital signs and make sure our patient co-operated. Just as the ambulance was about to leave, there was a knock at the door. A sheepish looking police officer stood there. 

"Errr, g-u-u-u-y-y-y-s..."

"Y-e-e-e-s-s-s..." 

"You know your trademark orange light that we laughed at?"

"Y-e-e-e-s-s-s..."

"Well, we take it back."

"Y-e-e-e-s-s-s..."

"Do you, just by chance, have any jump leads?" 

The Other Look

It's the look. The look of someone totally unaware of their surroundings. The room is filthy, a pile of dirty clothes here, cat litter-tray there, drug paraphernalia everywhere. Rena, his girlfriend pretended to be concerned but at the same time seemed totally disinterested. On the floor of the back room, in amongst the filth and grime, lying unconscious on the sticky carpet, we found Dan. 

Dan's face was pale, the colour drained totally from his face. His breathing was slow, shallow, barely enough to sustain his life. 

"What have you been doing today?" I asked Rena.

"Dunno." She shrugged her shoulders for good measure.

"Where have you been?" 

"Here. Didn't go nowhere." 

"Has he had anything to drink?"

"Maybe." 

"Has he taken anything else?" 

"Dunno. Don't care."

Her acting as the concerned girlfriend didn't last very long. 

"I only called you lot 'cos I didn't want no cops coming round." 

Too bad, I thought, they came with us anyway. 

Dan's pupils were tiny, pinpoint sized, leading us, alongside all the other evidence, to an obvious conclusion. We'd guessed it anyway, for once jumping to the right conclusion as soon as we'd walked into the flat. When we asked Rena if she's had the same stuff, she denied knowing what "stuff" we were talking about. In the meantime a bag and mask were helping his breathing as we prepared the injection that would reverse the effects of the heroin and bring him back to life. 

Moments later, already strapped in to the wheelchair, Dan started coming round. The look in his eyes changed, the life returned, and as we wheeled him to the ambulance, he began to respond in earnest. 

"What're you doin'?" 

"Taking you to the hospital. You overdosed and nearly stopped breathing. They need to keep an eye on you for a while." 

"Did you give me that damn injection again?" 

"If by damn injection you mean the drug that saved your life, then yes. We did. "

"I hate you. That gear cost me money!"

"Well, no money in the world would have helped you if you were dead!" 

"I don't give a damn. I might not be dead - but I hope you die instead!"

That look in his eyes, the one so recently changed from death to life, turned suddenly from life to hate. 

Matching Description

Disused, misused, abused.

Once a proud London family home, now a squat for all and sundry.

A solitary ray of light fights its way through the boarded-up windows.

Tiny flecks of floating dust flicker as they pass through the beam,

Disappearing as quickly as they came to life.

The call came from a mobile.

Gave an address, "I think she's dead!" the only scream,

before cutting off the call and turning off the phone.

We arrive, police and ambulance, and all step tentatively into the house.

Not a sound, not a soul, no response to our calls.

Glass breaks underfoot, floorboards creak,

needles shimmer in the torchlight.

Two flights of stairs, rooms on every floor,

each deserted,

dark,

cold,  

unloved.

In the furthest room, in the darkest part of the house,

surrounded by filth, and blood, and human waste, we find her.

Curled up in a corner.

Deserted.

Dark.

Cold.

Unloved.  

And matching exactly the caller's description.

Next Time

I hear myself say it out loud,

voicing the thoughts of two hundred people,

friends, teachers, paramedics alike.

"Breathe, damn you, breathe!"

The school playground is cleared of kids,

but nervous, inquisitive eyes stare out from every window.

For all their teenage bravado, they're still kids, and they're scared.

Green uniforms work in a frenzy of organised chaos,

whilst blue uniforms ask questions, keep the peace.

His heart beats, but his lungs are still and silent.

The eyes, the windows into his soul, are glazed, the pupils tiny.

The mask breathes for him, oxygen rushing into the bag and then pumped into the lifeless body.

Cannulas, drugs, oxygen, more oxygen.

And then, suddenly, as the drugs and oxygen nudge into his brain,

he finally breathes on his own.

Minutes later, on route to hospital,

he's sitting on the bed, asking what happened.

We tell him.

And warn him.

And threaten him.

Next time, if there is a next time, he might not be in the playground.

Next time, if there is a next time, he might be all alone.

Next time, if there is a next time,

He might not be so lucky.