Emergency Admissions: Memoirs of an Ambulance Driver. Kit Wharton

morphine sulphate, a powerful painkiller of the type given to patients with things like terminal cancer.

      —I found this on the roof.

      The poor sod. It turns out he was sitting in his office on the ground floor when he saw the old man come into the car park and go to the staircase. He wondered what he was doing here – maybe he was lost or confused. So he followed him up the stairs, looking in on each floor to see where he’d gone. Eventually he got to the roof and found him there on the edge. When he approached to see if he could help, the man jumped.

      There are no private houses immediately around here. So he’s either walked a while to get here, or perhaps got out of the hospital up the road. Maybe the morphine is because he’s got a terminal illness, and just wants a quick way out.

      In which case, sadly, he may well get it. He’s still breathing on the ambulance, but when we push on his pelvis, there’s a grating feeling. This is called crepitus, and it’s the feeling of broken bone ends crunching together – his pelvis is smashed, and at his age he’s unlikely to survive that, never mind what’s gone on inside.

      But he’s still with us, so we leave the poor security guard for the police to take care of and we scream off up to the hospital.