I lead him to the ambulance and get him on board and wash his ear, which has a tiny scratch on it, with shaking hands and take his pulse. He doesn’t seem unwell otherwise but is obviously drunk. My crewmate looks on silently, her face a mask.
—Shall we head off? she says.
If we don’t take him to hospital now, he’ll phone back later with ‘chest pains’ or ‘suicidal thoughts’ or something. He likes going to the hospital, and he’ll keep phoning back till we take him. Might as well get it over with. This is the way it works with some people, though I don’t know this yet.
So off we go to hospital. Fatima stares at me.
—Why you bring him here? Nothing wrong with him.
It turns out he’s a regular visitor to the hospital, usually drunk, complaining of self-inflicted injuries or no injuries at all. But I’ve got him to hospital alive, and therefore done my job, and survived myself, and so we’re up and running.
I even took his blood pressure on the way in to hospital.
—You did what? Denise asks.
—I took his blood pressure.
—You bloody idiot. It’s Billy Watts. You might’ve got your stuff dirty.
That was my first A&E job. Hardly exciting.
It was still useful, though. It taught me to expect the unexpected – there’s a lot of unexpected in this job. And you learn there are a terrifying number of Billy Wattses in the world. People with little or nothing and blowing whatever they have.
People watch Holby City or Casualty and think every job is life-threatening and involves a plane crashing on to a train which ploughs into an orphanage, all on Christmas Eve. And you’re trying to do the job thinking about splitting up with your partner or having a sex change or whatever. It isn’t always like that. If it was you’d end up in a lunatic asylum. Or like Billy Watts.
In the airline trade you get people who are called ‘frequent flyers’, successful business people racking up the air miles attending conferences and going to meetings and whatnot. Successful, respectable, nice.
In the service we have frequent flyers too. But they are not always so nice. And they don’t smell quite so good. People who call 999 for the wrong reasons, or no reasons, sometimes hundreds of times.
Some are in a desperate state. Some aren’t.
Probably the most astonishing fact about the service is the degree to which it’s abused by them. Some have worked out that if certain buzz phrases are used – ‘chest pains’ or ‘short of breath’ – the service gets all Pavlovian and sends an ambulance to check them out, no matter what. Even if they’ve called hundreds of times before, this might be the one time they’re genuine. Each area has what is called its ‘regulars’ (like a pub) who sometimes call every day. I heard one elderly lady in our area had had a total of something like £400,000 worth of ambulance visits over a few years. At anything up to £400 a call-out, that means she’s called an ambulance over a thousand times. And we still go to her.
Another thing you learn is that ambulance crews have a slightly ambivalent attitude to them. Yes they make us angry. But we also talk about them a lot in the crew room, swapping horror stories, like exasperated parents.
Almost as if we’re fond of them.
They may be bastards, as Len might say, but they’re OUR bastards.
Dave
The king of the frequent flyers in the area where I used to work was Dave.
Usually violent, abusive and drunk, Dave was a legend, the top of the charts, the big cheese. He was the Elvis of the frequent flyers. And a right royal pain in the arse.
Friday afternoon.
Called to a male, forties, chest pains.
He’s living in a filthy unkempt flat in the poorer area of town, with an enormous dog in the kitchen, who luckily appears quite friendly. We say hello. Dave’s lying on the sofa, drunk but reasonably coherent, surrounded by empty bottles and full ashtrays. The bottles are huge blue cider bottles. I look at the nearest one. It says ‘Sharing Bottle’ on it. Do me a favour.
—I’ve got chest pains. I need to go to hospital.
—Oh really.
Over the course of the next ten minutes we ascertain Dave’s chest pains (if they exist at all) are provoked by a cough and certainly not cardiac. They’re more likely to be related to the million cigarettes he smokes every day. None of his other observations point to anything cardiac. We advise him to see his doctor and leave.
Five minutes later we’re called back to the same address. Male, forties, chest pains. Back we go. Again we wire him up to the ECG but it still shows nothing – just a normal heartbeat. Again we advise a visit to the GP and leave.
I notice a packet of Diazepam on the sofa amongst all the fags and bottles.
—You know, Dave, if you keep mixing those with booze, one day you’re going to fall asleep on that sofa and just stop breathing.
Five minutes up the road the call comes pinging through.
Male, forties, not breathing.
I stare at the screen.
—I just told him that! I just told him! And if he’s not breathing how come he’s managed to phone a sodding ambulance?
—Bastard! screams Val.
Back we go.
Same old story. He’s still claiming chest pains and wants to go to hospital. It’s obvious there’s nothing the hospital could do for him. All he would do is sit there, swearing at the nurses. He’s done it a hundred times before. Once again we leave, and once again, five minutes up the road he calls again. Male, forties, short of breath. This is the fourth call.
Back we go. As before there’s nothing wrong with him that a bath and a bullet in the head wouldn’t cure. But he keeps calling, and we keep sending. While Val diverts his attention I pick up the phone he uses to call us. I take it through to the kitchen and offer it to the dog, hoping he’ll chew it up. The dog isn’t interested. I can’t really stamp on it, so I take it back through to the front room and slip it down the side of the sofa cushion so it’s not in view. Then, finally, we say goodbye and get out of there.
He doesn’t call back.
Micky
People can get that Holby City or Casualty impression of the job. But sometimes you do get a job that sounds like it’s straight off the telly.
It’s near the end of an unremarkable shift on the car and then something comes over the computer which makes me prick up my ears.
Female, thirties, on ground and covered in blood, CPR being performed. CPR? This doesn’t sound good. There’s lots of other stuff as well. Patient lying on grass outside house, caller distressed, screaming.
Jobs like this you go like fuck. Drive it like you stole it.
Which is what I proceed to do. The job’s eight miles north and I nearly kill at least one person on the way there. The Critical Care Paramedic is coming up from ten miles south and he probably nearly kills two. The patient’s down a windy road through a housing estate, and I scream down it red-lining the engine and stamp on the brakes and turn the corner to find …
… nothing. Zilch.
The square root of fuck all.
It’s a hoax. There’s a paramedic truck already there and a police car and not much else. The caller’s a local nutter who does it all the time – the police recognise