We all stand down as the CCP turns up, smoke coming out of his wheel arches and his ears. Not happy.
I’m just glad the call’s got me off on time. My car stinks of burnt clutch for days afterwards.
We go out to all sorts of unfortunate people, but in a way the ones I tend to feel for aren’t those that have died of a heart attack, or smashed themselves up in a car crash. I sometimes feel sorriest for people like Billy, Micky and Dave. It’s not how you die that’s important. It’s how you live.
4
One of the problems, or tragedies, about the modern NHS is that the wartime generation, that defeated Hitler, never complained and never called an ambulance because they didn’t want to make a fuss, is dying out. To be replaced by today’s me-generation – products of the Welfare State from cradle to grave, who call an ambulance at the drop of a hat because they’ve scratched their finger opening their dole cheque. (A bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture.)
This can occasionally catch you out. There are still patients who should be much more frequent flyers …
Bob and Mildred
Evening.
We’re down in a dormitory town which is, to be frank, a bit of a dump, with more than its fair share of welfare scroungers, druggies and alkies. We get a call to a male – no age given. Has picked a spot and it’s still bleeding.
—Oh for fuck’s sake, says Val. ‘Picked a spot and it’s still bleeding’? You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?
I shake my head and we drive off to the job in the ambulance and a cloud of disgust.
I don’t spot the early warning signs. The house is in one of the town’s ‘respectable’ enclaves, neat and well cared for, and when I knock the door is answered by an elderly lady, white hair, just like your lovely grandma.
—Hello dear.
—Hello, my love. What’s the problem?
—Oh he’s in the back, through there. Thanks for coming. Sorry to get you out. He’s picked a spot and there’s a bit of blood.
—OK my love, let’s have a look at him.
I go through to the back room, still slightly peeved but determined not to show it, but that feeling doesn’t last long.
The back room is a bloodbath, claret all over the floor, sprayed up the walls in places, all over a chair. The claret’s previous owner (or container) is an elderly gent, Bob, presumably the lady’s husband, lying flat on his back, white as a sheet.
Bloody hell.
He’s still conscious, though only just, and when I even try to sit him up, let alone stand him up, he faints dead away. I lie him back down on the floor, put an oxygen mask on him, and put his feet up on a chair, to get what little blood’s left in him up to his heart and brain.
He hasn’t picked a spot. He’s nicked an artery in his leg, and because it’s an artery the blood has pissed out all over the place. There must be literally pints of it all over the floor, and he’s in shock – basically there isn’t enough blood left in his body for his heart to pump it up to his brain and keep him conscious if he sits or stands up.
It’s serious but manageable, with the right treatment. Without it, he could die. I get a dressing on the wound, though it’s not bleeding much any more, and call for backup. He needs a paramedic to put a line in so we can get fluids into him, and he needs to go off to hospital lying flat, so the leg can be fixed.
He’ll probably need a blood transfusion as well, he’s lost so much.
We get him packaged up and off to hospital, and I stay behind to try and clear up a bit of the mess on the floor, and call someone to come and be with the wife so she’s not left alone terrified. True to form, she doesn’t seem that worried anyway.
—Sorry to call you out again, darling. Would you like a cup of tea?
I tell her to sit down. I’ll make the tea.
Enid
After qualifying, the next stage in your progress in ambulance life is working on your own, in a fast-response car. You’re supposed to get to the job first and assess it and stabilise it.
You’re ‘it’.
And I’m doing it for the first time tonight. No Val to hold my hand. Or anyone else.
This is hard-core stuff. You make the decisions. You have nobody to fall back on, nobody to help. At least without calling up on the radio. Some people in the job decades longer than me still don’t like doing the car.
I’m shitting myself. I go over the thing with a fine-tooth comb, making sure all the equipment is there. There’s lots of it, the car’s groaning with it – looks like I’m off on holiday. Only I’m not.
Luckily, the dispatcher is a friend of mine, so I call him and tell him it’s my first night, and he promises to be gentle with me. And he is, bless him.
First job of the night is an elderly lady in a restaurant, cut leg.
Not too frightening. She’s a lovely old dear, being taken out for an evening meal by her family in the pub. And she’s hungry.
In the restaurant she’s sitting at the table, studying the menu. She’s nicked a varicose vein in her leg and the blood’s pouring out over her foot and the floor, while her family look concerned. I bandage the wound up with a pressure dressing. She needs to go to the hospital but she doesn’t want to go.
—I’ve been waiting for this for ages. I’m hungry. I’m not going to hospital.
—Please Mum, your leg’s bleeding. You need to go.
—No I don’t. I need a prawn cocktail and a main course. And pudding. What’s everyone else having?
It takes an age for them to persuade her to go.
Elliot
Midnight.
It’s been the usual horrendous Saturday night.
Mainly following the police around from job to job. Drunks fighting, so they’ve got minor facials and the police want them ‘checked out’ in the hope we’ll take them off their hands and down the hospital. Or drunks unconscious, in which case the police refuse to have them in their cells and insist we take them down the hospital. The ambulance service gets on a lot better with the police than with the fire brigade – the police are as busy as us. But sometimes the relationship’s a bit like an old married couple.
Anyway, around midnight, we get called to the multi-storey car park in the middle of the town’s shopping complex, to an elderly male, jumped off the roof.
Elliot.
We’re only at the hospital, two minutes up the road.
An elderly black gent, speechless and wearing a high-visibility jacket – some sort of security guard – meets us and leads us around the corner and onto a piece of bushy grass next to the building. I glance up at the car-park wall beside me. It’s at least four storeys high. Maybe 60 feet.
Shit.
The patient is lying on the grass on his back, unconscious but still breathing, legs twisted under him. We get a collar on him and some oxygen, and the paramedic gets an IV line into him. This sort of impact will almost certainly have caused massive, probably fatal, internal bleeding. Me and my crewmate are getting the truck as near as we can and unloading the equipment