It's so easy to be dismissive, so easy to drive along, thinking that this is just going to be yet another one of those calls. A young girl, in her twenties, complaining of the ambulance service's number one call. Abdo pain. Another twenty-something, self-entitled, all-deserving, all-demanding twenty-something who can't be bothered to take any pain killers and like most people, wait for the pain to go away.
It's so easy just to assume another late night out, another curry gone bad, another Chinese take-away with more after-effects than the alcohol it was meant to be soaking up, another case of food-poisoning victim seeking a non-existent magic cure.
But with only half a story, it's so easy to be wrong.
The tear-stained face, the look of real pain, the blood-soaked trousers, the shocked and saddened eyes, tell the other half of the story. A story, a history, of broken hearts and shattered dreams, of hopes raised and dashed time and time again. Through sobs and tears, she looks at him, she shrugs, she says We'll try again, neither of them really knowing if they have the strength.
Twenty two weeks, the furthest she'd ever got. But once again, for the fifth time in as many years, it just wasn't meant to be.
