Siren Voices

spelling bee

2012-01-28T18:51:00.000Z

Orange street lights on frosted tarmac. A crescent moon hooked up in the sky like a suture needle.
I press the button on the intercom, a pause, then the squall of a voice through the speaker.
I lean in.
‘Ambulance.’
Buzz.

Mr O’Fallon is standing in his hallway, the subsiding wreck of a fifty year old, propped up against the wall, smiling soggily like a Halloween pumpkin left out in the rain.
‘S’ah. M’gon et ma goh sum’air mate. Eh? S’ah there to, innit.’
‘What’s that?’
He sighs.
‘S’ah. M’gon et ma goh sum’air mate. Eh? S’ah there to, innit.’
‘What’s happened tonight, Mr O’Fallon? Mr O’Fallon?’
He reaches down, grips his left hip, then swipes at the air with his free hand. I prop him back up.
‘Did you fall? Have you hurt yourself?’
He grinds his gums, laughs, then speaks.

When he talks, his Belfast accent, lack of teeth and many cider litres – many years of cider litres – all these things act like the layers of a perverse filtration system: he thinks of a response, pours it in at the top, it filters down through each layer, all the nuances of communication absorbed and lost, until all that’s left to come out of his mouth is a kind of primitive proto-language, the essence of the thing he wanted to say, lukewarm, with just a taint of the original sense.
‘Sorry?’
He says it again.
‘It’s hard to understand what you’re saying,’ I tell him. ‘Seeing as you’re on your feet, shall we get you out to the ambulance and check you over there?’
He makes some sounds. I interpret them as Can you get my jacket? When I fetch his jacket down from where it hangs on the back of the door, he nods as if that wasn’t what he meant but it’ll have to do.
We stagger out to the ambulance.

***

Mr O’Fallon is sitting on one of the ambulance seats. Frank takes his blood pressure and temperature whilst I try to get the basic details. We’re only round the corner from the hospital, so I need to do it whilst the ambulance is parked up.
‘What’s your first name, Mr O’Fallon?’
He makes a sound.
‘What?’
He makes the sound again, louder.
‘Spell it for me.’
‘Or’
‘R?’
‘Or! F’Orse.’
‘Oh! O!’
‘A’s roi, neh. Or.’
‘Okay. Next letter.’
‘Ay’
‘A?’
‘Ay. Ay! Fer Aynjin. Ay.’
‘I. For Indian. I for Indian.’
‘Ay. Ay.’
‘Okay. O, then I. Then what?’
‘Ass.’
‘Arse?’
He shakes his head – so hard it almost falls off onto the trolley.
‘Ass! Fer fer’s say. Ass!’
‘Yep. Got it. So that’s O, I and S – then what?’
‘Ay.’
‘I?’
He frowns. Then immediately raises his eyebrows.
‘On.’
‘On?’
‘On. Fer Nut’n. On.’
‘N! Okay – great. So that makes O.I.S.I.N.’
He shakes his head again, and leans right back in the chair.
‘So how do you pronounce that?’
He laughs, with his awful, craterous, old dog’s mouth.
‘Osheen,’ he says, the name wafting out in a hang of fumes.
He leans forward and slaps me on the knee.
‘Ay ‘us shah boy de Oy Uh Ray,’ he says.
‘You were shot by the IRA?’
Frank takes the cuff off his arm.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘They’re not as patient as us.’

get cracking, mate

2012-01-26T17:34:00.000Z

Mr Abbott is lying on the ITU bed, a corrugated tube connecting his mask to the oxygen supply, a tangle of chest leads running out to the ECG monitor, a blood pressure cuff round his arm, a SATS probe clipped to his finger, the ports of a central line dangling from his neck, and a urine catheter running out to a bag on the side of the bed. He is asleep when we roll into the department with our trolley; the nurse wakes him up.
‘Come on, Paul. Shake a leg. We can’t have you lazing around here all day. What do you think this is, a holiday camp?’
He opens his eyes.
‘I’m sure you do it on purpose,’ he says, his dry voice only just distinguishable above all the hushing and beeping and buzzing. ‘What do you do – hide in the cupboard until you see I’ve dropped off, then jump out? You’re a sadist, you are.’
‘Charming. I don’t know why I bother. Just because I wouldn’t give you any of my Kit Kat.’
‘You can keep your bloody Kit Kat,’ he says, then goes to fold his arms. He seems surprised to find that he can’t do it, so lays them down again.
‘Hello, Paul. I’m Spence, this is Frank. We’ve come to transfer you to the other hospital. How are you doing?’
‘Great. Thanks. Bloody marvellous. Who did you say?’
‘Spence and Frank.’
‘There you go,’ says the nurse, stuffing all his notes in a grey plastic bag. ‘I told you they wouldn’t be long. Your own private taxi. How’s that for service?’
‘Lousy.’
We help prep him for the transfer to our trolley.
‘Nice bed you’ve got here,’ I say, looking around. There are two chintzy pictures on the wall facing him – a Thames barge in sail, and a cottage on a country lane. I wonder how long he’s been staring at those pictures, what they’ve come to mean to him.
‘Ready, set – slide.’
‘Now don’t you go complaining too much,’ says the nurse. ‘I know what these guys are like. They’re not nice like me. They’ll fly-tip you in a lay-by.’
‘I only complain when there’s something or someone to complain about.’
But he reaches out to her, and when she puts her hand in his, he squeezes it affectionately.
‘Thanks for all you’ve done,’ he says.
‘Paul – you’re very welcome. Get better soon.’
We wheel him out.
‘And don’t come back!’ she says.

***

It’s difficult to chat to Paul on the ambulance. The motorway falls away beneath us like a river in flood, and the wind booms around the metal sides of the truck.
‘I suppose you’re retired now?’ I say to him.
‘Retired? Oh god, yes. Years ago.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was an engineer. Telecoms. I was the guy they use to send in when no-one else could sort it out. I’d pitch up, they’d point me to a big room full of wires and relays and transformers, all higgledy-piggledy, and they’d say “There you go, mate. Get cracking.” And do you know what, when I walked out of that room, everything’d be back in its place and the air would be humming sweetly. And that’s what I did for a living.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘It was good. I went all over the world. Japan, Africa, the Middle East. Always the same thing. “There you go, mate – sort it out.” And I would.’
He pauses, and struggles to adjust his position on the trolley.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m all right. I just get a bit – sore, you know?’
I reposition the mask on his face and tuck him up again.

A moment passes.

‘D’you know – there was a woman in the bed opposite me,’ he says. ‘Not good. Not good at all. I’ve no idea what was wrong with her, but it wasn’t good. She’d cry quietly to herself. Felt like hours. I could hear her, especially when it was quiet and the visitors had gone. She had lots of people come to see her. You could tell it was bad because they didn’t say much, just sort of hung about. And when they went she’d cry quietly like that. The nurses did what they could, but it was awful.’
He turns his face to look at me, and his eyes are shining.
‘I couldn’t do nothing,’ he says. ‘What do I know about any of that? All I could do was lie there and listen.’
I hand him some tissue. He wipes his face and blows his nose, then re-settles the mask on his face.
‘And that was the worst thing. I had no idea what was wrong. I couldn’t do nothing. I just had to lie there. And listen.’
The ambulance rocks from side to side. He closes his eyes to compose himself.
We turn off onto the slip road and take the exit towards town.

haute cuisine

2012-01-21T22:11:00.000Z

The estate rises around us in the darkness like a ruthlessly illuminated housing machine. Layer upon layer of regularly spaced squares fitfully lit by plasma screens, measured out in a grid of walkways. But despite the scale of the place there’s no-one around, not even a dog walker or a posse from the clubs; no sign of life at all, just a skin of frost over the parked cars and the grass, and here and there faint wisps of steam rising from vents.

Ellie is waiting for us in one of the entrance halls, staring out at us through the scratched Perspex of the front door. Her eyes are so wide and dark they make the hall lights flicker.
‘Can we come in?’
She doesn’t answer, but relaxes her hold on the door and turns to walk back inside.

Her flat is clean and warm, the laminate floor clear of anything but a pair of dog slippers and a scattering of empty pill packets. Ellie goes over to turn off the TV – a cooking competition - and puts her feet into the slippers.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Frank. We were told you might have taken an overdose tonight. Is that right, Ellie?’
She nods, gathers the lapels of her pink towelling robe around her, knots the belt more tightly.
‘Are these the tablets you took?’ pointing to the packets on the floor.
She nods again, and goes to pick them up.
‘It’s all right, Ellie. I’ll get them. Were these all full when you started?’
‘Mostly.’
‘There’s quite a few here. I’ll do the counting up on the ambulance. What we need to do now is take you to hospital for some treatment. Is that okay?’
‘I’ll get my bag.’
‘And your keys? Good. Okay – let’s go.’

***

She lies back on the trolley, folds her hands neatly across her stomach and closes her eyes. She’s only twenty one; her face is as clear and unmarked as a sleeping alabaster angel in a church.
I calculate the number and size of the pills she’s taken, dropping the counted packets into a spare vomit bowl. The tally is dreadful, a shopping list for the damned. I put everything aside and feel the pulse at her wrist.
‘Did you take any alcohol with these pills, Ellie?’
She opens her eyes.
‘A glass of wine.’
I picture her alone in the flat, sitting on the edge of the sofa, taking little sips with each mouthful, tipping her head back, watching the chefs battle it out on the TV.
‘How long ago?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘Good. And how are you feeling now?’
She rests her head back on the pillow and closes her eyes again.
‘My tummy hurts,’ she says.
We turn up the slope to the department.

***

The Charge Nurse looks at the name on my sheet and then glances down the corridor to where Frank is waiting with Ellie.
‘Oh yeah. Yep. She was in about a month ago. What’s she taken this time? Whoah!’
She signs the board, hands it back to me, then asks one of the other nurses to come over.
‘Best crack on with this,’ she says. ‘Although why the hell she’s still got all these meds hanging around is beyond me.’
I go back to the trolley to help push her into a cubicle. Her dog slippers are poking out of the bottom of the blanket, so I pull it down a little to cover them.
‘The nurse will be with you very shortly,’ I say to Ellie as we move along. But I can see the nurse is already there waiting for us, smiling, a bottle of charcoal in her hand, shaking it.

double take

2012-01-20T10:52:00.000Z

Despite Mrs Henty’s thirty-year aversion to doctors, hospitals, medication or intervention of any kind – other than homeopathy – she feels so ill she allows herself to be helped into our chair and carried out to the ambulance. Her daughter is with her, relieved that after two months of these sudden episodes something has changed – serious though it might be – sufficient to force her in to see a doctor. We settle Mrs Henty on the trolley and whizz through our observations.
She has no pain, her oxygen saturations are good, her blood pressure, temperature and so on. But her heart rate is irregular and she looks poorly. When we do a twelve-lead ECG, the result is clear: Mrs Henty is having an anterior MI. We telex the result to the catheter lab, and blue light her in for treatment.
‘Apparently the new protocol is we go to the lab via A&E’ I shout to Frank through the hatch. ‘Last time I went in the old way, but I’m pretty sure I can find it.’

We make it in good time. Mrs Henty’s daughter is a nurse herself – at a different location, but sufficiently au fait with procedure to know what we’re doing and to be useful. She even carries some kit for us as we hurry in through the main A&E doors.
‘Mind your backs! Coming through!’
The department is packed out, as usual, but we bully a passage through to the corridors the other side.
‘Just head for what used to be the medical assessment unit,’ I tell Frank.
But in the six months since I was last there, the department has been reorganised. Partition walls put up, painted and signed for day surgery, a waiting room with lines of pristine blue chairs, posters on walls that used to be open space.
‘Through those doors,’ I tell him.
A porter carrying a rubber mattress is heading in our direction.
‘Is this the right lift for the cardiac catheter lab?’ I ask.
He puts the mattress down on the floor and rests his arm on it.
‘The cath lab?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Only if it’s an emergency.’
I nod and widen my eyes.
‘Yes, then. Through them doors.’
He picks up the mattress again. But I have a sudden loss of confidence.
‘Can you take us there?’ I ask him.
He puts the mattress down again.
‘To the lifts?’
‘Uh huh.’
He props the mattress against the wall – prodding it a couple of times to make sure it won’t fall – then shuffles ahead of us through the new department. He opens a couple of swing doors, then stands in front of a pair of lifts.
‘Okay?’ he says, sighs, and walks off.
The lift door opens. Inside is an enormous man and woman with an equally inflated toddler in a stroller. In their shiny black PVC puffa jackets they could be a family of gigantic beetles heading out for the day.
‘This isn’t level six,’ he says. The woman frowns.
‘I’m really sorry guys but I’m going to have to ask you to clear the lift. Our patient’s not very well and we need to get her upstairs as quickly as possible. Thanks. Thanks for your help. Sorry. Thanks.’
Reluctantly they leave the elevator. We haul the trolley inside and I push the button to go up.
When the lift opens again we leave quickly and turn left for the lab as we always do.
It’s only then that we realise we’re a floor short, having started from a lower level. But the lift has closed now, so we have to call it again.
A moment later the doors open.
Inside are the family in the puffa jackets.
There’s nothing else to do but brazen it out.
‘Sorry guys. Sorry. I’m going to have to ask you to leave the lift. We’ve got to get our patient upstairs as quickly as possible. Thanks very much. Thanks.’
They shuffle out with a stunned expression and turn to look at us as we pass. As the doors close I see the woman turn to the man, raise a finger to point in our direction and say “Didn’t we just ...?”

We ride the final floor in silence, until Mrs Henty’s daughter shakes her head.
‘I think this is what they call a learning opportunity,’ she says. And then leans forward to read the name on my shirt.

a cat called keith

2012-01-19T09:54:00.000Z

Sheila and Deidre became friends sometime in the Cretaceous period. They’ve been friends so long they fit together seamlessly, every nod and smile, every laugh and cough, hair-net pat and handbag hug all slickly co-ordinated, their conversation scooting along like a canoe with two paddles.
‘We didn’t take him in so much as he adopted us.’
‘Barbara up the road’s got five cats and couldn’t handle another.’
‘He just turned up one day and stayed on.’
‘They know the easy life when they see it.’
‘Not like dogs.’
‘Dogs – eurch – crashing about, wanting attention’
‘His name’s Keith.’
‘It was actually Chief but we misheard.’
‘He’s twenty something.’
‘Pick him up, there’s nothing to him.’
‘Just rag and bones.’
‘But he does all right.’
‘He’s got some bad habits.’
‘He likes to sit any old where.’
‘He was on the bread board this morning.’
‘Not very hygienic.’
‘But what can you do?’
‘And vomiting.’
‘From high up.’
‘Apart from that he’s all right.’
‘Yowling. Padding around the place, yowling.’
‘Especially when he wants something.’
‘You put down some biscuits and say “Here you are Keith.”’
‘So he takes a sniff then turns his nose up and walks off.’
‘So we have to give him chicken.’
‘Not a bad life.’
‘He can’t go on much longer.’
‘Bit like me.’
‘Don’t say that, Sheila.’
‘Well, look at me.’

Sheila rests back on the trolley and closes her eyes. After a moment or two Deidre leans forward and reaches out her hand.
‘Sheila?’
‘What?’
‘Just making sure you’re still with us.’
‘We’ve got another cat, of course.’
‘Dexter.’
‘He was already called that when we got him.’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘He must be getting on for eighteen or so.’
‘But you’d never think it.’
‘All his own teeth.’
‘Mostly.’
‘They work in cahoots.’
‘There’s nothing they won’t do for a bit of attention.’
‘He came from Barbara as well.’
‘Can you blame him?’
‘Are we there yet?’
‘Five minutes,’ I say.

Deidre hugs her bag and smiles at me.
‘Do you have any pets?’ she says.
‘Two dogs and a cat. Our cat’s getting on a bit. Same age as Dexter, by the sound of it.’
‘Where did you get her from?’
‘She came free with a sofa. The sales assistant just said it as an afterthought. She was handing us the receipt and she said “I don’t suppose you’d like a kitten as well, would you?” So here we are, eighteen years later. Outlasted the sofa, that’s for sure.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Kasha. Which apparently is a kind of Eastern European porridge’
‘Kasha. Hmm.’
Deidre closes her eyes on the trolley again.
‘Keith’ she says. ‘Whoever heard of a cat called Keith?’

wolves and eagles

2012-01-16T20:59:00.000Z

Charlie has been found lying on his side on the pavement. The caller said he’d been fitting, but when we arrive on scene he’s up on his feet and trying to light a roll-up. We help him on to the ambulance to check him over.
‘My son works in IT,’ he says, as we put an inco pad down on the seat and he assumes it happily like we’re laying out a table for him in a restaurant. ‘He had a baby the other week. Which makes me a granddad. Apparently.’
‘Congratulations.’
He nods, crosses his legs, hugs his right knee and rocks backwards and forwards on the chair.
‘Yeah. Well.’
His beard is patchy and rough, like he splashed his chin with glue and dipped it in a Hoover bag. Red pock marks crater his skin; there is a grimy fuzz of alcohol about him, and his clothes are waxy and black with dirt.
‘My mum killed herself on the twenty-third of August, nineteen eighty,’ he says, out of nowhere, and formally, like a schoolboy in an exam.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Charlie.’
‘She killed herself on my Dad’s birthday.’ He looks down, picks something off his lap and says more quietly: ‘The twenty third of August, nineteen eighty.’
‘Oh.’
Charlie looks up again.
‘He found the body.’
‘That’s tough.’
‘I haven’t seen him for about ten years. He’s not really that bothered.’
I take the blood pressure cuff from his arm. He rubs the spot for a second then says:
‘I’ve been writing a book.’
‘Oh yes? What’s it about?’
‘It’s called A Consideration of Wolves and Eagles. It’s about the life lessons you can learn by comparing human life with the natural world.’
‘That sounds interesting. Why wolves and eagles, particularly?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you writing a book about wolves and eagles?’
‘I don’t tell the others in the hostel about it because I don’t want them to think I’m – you know – clever.’
‘No.’
I test his blood sugar level.
‘So why wolves and eagles?’
‘Wolves?’ he says, sucking the blood from his pricked finger before I get a chance to sample it. ‘I don’t know. They’re just out there, y’know.’ He widens his eyes and grimaces. ‘They’re just wild. And eagles? Someone once said…’ he uncrosses his legs and sits a little straighter… ‘Someone once said: The eagle has landed. Well – it won’t be going anywhere soon.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What?’
‘Why won’t the eagle be going anywhere soon?’
Because the eagle has probably only landed because it wants something to eat – it’s prey - and if that something happens to be a rabbit - well. Some of those rabbits can be pretty big. And if the eagle isn’t all that, it stands to reason it’s going to be there a while. That’s what I think, anyway. These are some of the things I try to explore in my book.’
‘I see.’
‘Can I go now? Only this thing’s not going to smoke itself.’

a quiet one

2012-01-14T17:53:00.000Z

Dragging our sorry tails back to base, exhausted, a long and loveless day of heavy lifts, emotional traumas, disturbed meal breaks, disturbing rumours. But with ten minutes and two miles to go, it’s not looking good. All-calls are spraying out of the radio like spores from a rotten fruit. We’re praying for the night crews to sign on in time to pick them up and get us off the hook, but there are so many calls now we know we can’t possibly make it back on time. I lean back in the attendant’s seat and put my knees up on the dashboard, affecting an ease I do not feel. But the Fates aren’t so easily fooled; the screen lights up at the same time as Control calls us. A choice of two – neither good, but one a mile or so closer.
‘Let’s go.’
Frank dives down a wormhole of flashing blue. We make it in minutes.

A wide, tree-lined street, shining in the wet winter darkness. A woman waiting with her arms folded at the top of the stoop.
She doesn’t smile as we stride up the stairs with our bags.
‘Top flat,’ she says, and leads us up.

Anna’s husband Pavel is naked except for Calvin Klein boxers, face down beneath a coffee table. As we walk in through the door he snorts and thrashes, knocking the table over and scattering little finger bowls of pretzels and nuts across the room. The rug is smeared with dark, brown stains and fresher blood from his abraded knees.
‘This I find from vork,’ she says, lighting a cigarette. ‘With note who say I kill myself. With tablet and whiskey.’
Anna gives me the note, but it’s in Russian, so I hand it back.
‘What’s he taken?’ I ask, squatting down beside him.
She shrugs, and nods at a pile of empty blister packets – anti-depressants, pain killers and blood pressure pills. Pavel is pretty much unconscious, snoring as he struggles to keep his airway open. I tilt his chin up to clear it and open his eyelids to assess his pupils as Frank backtracks to get a chair.
‘Can you write your husband’s name on my form with his date of birth, his doctor and so on? That’d be really helpful.’
She does it, quickly, neutrally, as if she were signing for receipt of a package.
‘Has he done this before?’ I ask, putting in an airway. Pavel gags a little but takes it without vomiting. His SATS are good, but we need to get him in quickly.
Anna shrugs. ‘Once before. But he drink all the time. Is he bad?’
‘Bad enough.’
She blows smoke.
Frank crashes back in with the carry chair and a couple of blankets.
Pavel must be at least six feet tall, heavily built. Strictly speaking it should be a four man lift, but we know that asking for a second crew at this time of night, with so many calls stacking, it would be a while before our back-up came. So we top and tail him into the chair, bundle him up in blankets, and head for the door.
‘Could you put all those pills into a bag?’ I say to Anna, ‘And carry the clipboard down for me? Thanks.’
She follows us as we grunt down two flights and out into the street. When we make the ambulance she puts the bag and clipboard down behind me and watches as we roll him onto the trolley, sort out his positioning, rig him up to the oxygen, the ECG, the BP machine and everything else. A set of obs done we make ready to go.
‘Are you coming?’ I ask her.
She doesn’t say anything, but gives me a look as coldly swept as the street.
Frank slams the door.
We go.

***

Despite the ASHICE there is no team to meet us. Instead, Carol, one of the nurses, is frantically rearranging trolleys and stuffing used equipment into red bags. She pauses and looks at me, and it could be two doomed sailors on the deck of a sinking ship taking a second to smile at each other, at the hopelessness of it all.
‘It’s been mad,’ she says as I help her move a trolley up. ‘I can’t...’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Who’s this?’
‘Pavel, thirty eight. OD pills and alcohol. GCS about nine. SATS good on air, fine on O2. Other obs okay. A bit tachy. Past medical history unknown.’
‘Christ – look at him. I’ll get a doctor.’
We slide him over onto the trolley whilst Carol hurries away.
She comes back a moment later and starts connecting him up.
‘The doctor’ll be here in a second,’ she says. ‘Jesus Christ. What a day. We even had to use the quiet room as a temporary morgue.’
Frank is backing out of resus with our trolley.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘ I don’t suppose they’d be noisy.’

the pharmacy stairs

2012-01-10T21:38:00.000Z

There is a handwritten sign taped to the pharmacy window: Closed for staff emergency. Will reopen as soon as possible. Sorry. Barbara unlocks the door without a word and shows me in, determinedly avoiding the frowns of the early morning customers already queuing outside. She quickly closes and locks the door again, and leads me through the empty store to the back, where Jenny is posed in the dispensing zone, standing formally with one hand on the counter and one hand down by her side.
‘Hello, Jenny. I understand you fell down the cellar stairs,’ I say.
She nods.
‘I’m all right. I didn’t want the ambulance. I’m perfectly fine.
‘Would you mind if I had a quick chat, though? Just to make sure everything’s okay? Is that all right?’
She nods again, without shifting her position, as easy as a witness on the stand.
‘Before I go any further, I just have to check a few important things, Jenny. In any long fall, I have to make sure the person hasn’t hurt her neck. If I press here... or here... does that feel okay? Any sharp pains, any discomfort?’
‘No.’
‘And very gently – can you look to this shoulder? Good. And this one. Good. Any pins and needles? Numbness? Visual disturbance?’
‘No.’
‘Were you knocked out?’
She shakes her head.
‘Any pain?’
‘A little – in my shoulder. My leg.’
‘Excellent. And why did you fall, do you think?’
‘I had to go down into the cellar to get some things. I caught my sleeve on the safety gate and fell down.’
‘All the way down?’
She nods.
‘Quite a way, then.’
‘I’m fine. I really didn’t want anyone to call the ambulance.’
‘Why don’t you have a seat, Jenny? I’ll do what I normally do and then get out of your hair? Is that all right?’
She takes a seat and folds her hands in her lap. Barbara moves off, gliding away to tend a shelf of cold remedies. The store manager has been taking a call out back with the area manager, but now that I’m on scene he finishes the call and comes over to say hello.
‘I told you not to ring for the ambulance,’ says Jenny.
‘You fell down the stairs,’ he says, then smiles at me, a terse, precisely ruled affair. ‘You don’t take a fall like that and just carry on as if nothing had happened.’
‘It is a long way, Jenny,’ I say.
‘I’m fine.’

***

I check her over, take her details.
‘I don’t want to go to hospital,’ she says, rolling down her sleeve.
‘You don’t have to, but it might be as well – just to get checked out by a doctor.’
‘I don’t want to go to hospital.’
‘Fair enough. But if you suffer any of these symptoms – a headache unrelieved by analgesia, persistent vomiting, visual disturbance, pins and needles or other neurological symptoms, blackouts – anything unusual, in other words – then don’t hesitate to get yourself down to the hospital. Or call an ambulance. Just because you don’t want to go in now, doesn’t mean you can’t call us again. It’s not like that.’
‘No.’
She signs the disclaimer.
I pack up the kit and get ready to leave.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I say.
She nods.
I head for the door.
‘Could I have a word – before you go?’ says the manager, striding over from the back of the store, where Barbara is watching with a box of pills in her hand.
‘Oh – okay.’
‘In private.’
He opens a door to a consulting room and when I have stepped inside, follows me in and closes the door.
‘I’m extremely worried about Jenny,’ he says.
‘In what way?’
‘She didn’t fall. I saw the whole thing. She deliberately threw herself down the stairs and said we’d pushed her.’

***

‘I’ve no idea what to do,’ he says finally, rubbing his hands, a flush of anxiety across his cheeks. ‘She can’t stay in the store. I’m worried she’ll hurt herself – or us. And as far as making up the scripts for the customers...’ He shakes his head. ‘Forget it. It’s just not safe.
‘It’s complicated. If you’re saying you want her off the premises, that’s a police matter. But if you’re saying you’re worried about her mental health, that’s something else entirely. I could persuade Jenny to come to the hospital, and she could talk to someone there. Or maybe you could persuade her to go home and see her doctor. Maybe we should all have a chat about it in the open, so everyone’s clear about the situation. That’s probably the best thing.’
The manager looks unconvinced, but reluctantly opens the door again and stands aside.
‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘I know you’re busy. I know you’ve got better things to do.’
‘Don’t worry. It takes as long as it takes.’
I go with him to the back of the shop again and put my bag on the floor.
‘Jenny?’
She frowns at me.
‘I’m not going to hospital. I’m fine. I’ve told you.’
‘I’ve just been having a chat to Doug, and he’s explained a little about what’s been going on.’
As soon as I start on my preamble, Jenny’s composure dissolves. Her face creases up and her hands come up into a tangle.
‘It’s not fair! I’m perfectly all right! I knew I shouldn’t have said those things. I should’ve just kept quiet about the last seven years, and then maybe none of this would’ve happened. I’m being victimised. Barbara did it. She’s been poking me, laughing at me, calling me names. I’m perfectly fine. All I want to do is work. Please don’t send me home. I’m on a final written warning. If you send me home, what’ll happen next? It’s not my fault. I haven’t done anything. Please. Please just let me carry on. I didn’t mean anything. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
She starts to bow in the middle, rocking backwards and forwards.
‘Please. I won’t go. You can’t make me go. You hate my husband. When he turns up to take me home you say he makes you feel threatened. You’re frightened of my husband and what’s he ever done? All I want to do is work. Please let me work. I promise I won’t say anything more. I promise. Just let me stay.’
Barbara has collapsed onto a step; the manager has folded his arms and is leaning back against the counter. The heat of Jenny’s anguish has melted them away like so many wax figures.
‘It’s not like that, Jenny,’ says the manager, hoarsely. ‘But you’re not well. We just want you to be well.’
In the heavy pause that follows, before I try to sum up and direct proceedings, I look between the three of them, caught in that pressurised, low-ceilinged atmosphere of the little pharmacy, seven years on in a bitter work dispute, an hour behind on the morning’s scripts, a half dozen patients massing outside the shop window, and the stair gate swinging open on the precipitous descent to the cellar.
‘These work situations,’ I say, finally. ‘They’re complicated.’

what happens now

2012-01-10T17:00:00.000Z

Michael the Scheme Manager is on the phone outside the property. He raises a hand when he sees us turn into the close, then hurriedly finishes his conversation. He is hugging his clipboard as we walk up the concrete path.
‘I got no reply when I did my morning ring-around, so I knew something was up,’ he says. ‘The poor man’s past any help, lads. Even I can tell, and I’ve no experience of these things. This is my first one, in fact.’
He pauses, as if he wanted to say something else. But the thought turns into a deep breath instead; he gives himself a little shake, and turns round.
‘He’s just as I found him,’ he says, and leads us into the maisonette, up a narrow, plainly carpeted staircase onto a bare hallway. He gestures with his clipboard to an open door.
‘Through there.’

Gerry is lying on his back on the bed, the duvet rucked up around his legs. With his half-opened eyes, his slack mouth, his arms crooked up and his hands curled over just below his chin, he could be an old man cruelly mimicking a sad child. But the chilly lack of movement, the waxiness of his skin, the tide line of post-mortem staining – all these things darken the image.
‘He’s been dead a little while,’ says Frank, gently lifting the body at the elbow. The whole body moves, as fixed and frozen as a dummy.

‘Poor fellow,’ says Michael. ‘I’ll get you the folder with the details.’ You can hear his mobile go off as he clumps down the stairs.
‘Hello? Yes – No, I’m afraid not…’

The room is clean but bare, a magnolia cell with flowery curtains permanently pegged over the windows and a naked eco bulb hanging down from the middle of the ceiling, ruthlessly illuminating a varnished pine chest of drawers with a bottle of Irish liqueur, a shot glass and a tidy stack of medication blister packs on top; a small television on a low table with a chair drawn close up in front of it, a pair of glasses resting on a TV guide with the remote control; half a dozen empty beer cans neatly lined up on the floor to the right of the chair, a pair of outdoor shoes and a pair of slippers to the left; four linen shirts next to a couple of black trousers, all on wire hangers hanging from the picture rail, and two round kitchen clocks, both telling the right time, both on the floor and leaning against the wall either side of the chest of drawers.
Michael comes back up the stairs with a yellow folder.
‘I know he hasn’t spoken to his brother in twenty years,’ he says, thumbing through it. ‘All we know is he lives up North somewhere. I don’t know if we’ve even got a number.’
But after a while he stops looking, closes the folder and hands it to Frank.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Here you are.’
He folds his arms back around his clipboard again, and stares at Gerry on the bed. At one point he even rocks on his heels and gives a little nod, as if he was agreeing with something the dead man was saying. But then he draws himself in a little tighter.
‘Shame,’ he says. ‘He was no bother. Anyway. So. What happens now?’

a golden, laughing boy

2012-01-08T16:52:00.000Z

Jean is enthroned on a scallop-backed silver chair, her bandaged right leg resting on a footstool, her arms placed either side of her. Her son William, an efficiently thin man of sixty, gives us a précis of the action: arrived back at the house after a day out – wind caught the door and slammed it on Jean’s leg – deep cut - walked on it to the house – put a bandage on the wound – elevation and cetera.
‘I don’t want any fuss,’ says Jean. ‘I don’t like hospitals.’
‘Join the club,’ I say, kneeling down in front of her. If she drew a sword and lay it on my shoulder I wouldn’t be surprised.
‘Mum is terribly anxious about being carted off,’ says William.
‘That’s understandable.’
‘I’m ninety two,’ she says. ‘I’m past all that.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
The wound is a full thickness laceration, a brutal laying open of Jean’s calf.
‘I know how you feel about hospitals,’ I say, dressing the leg again. ‘But this is quite a serious injury and you really need to go in.’
‘If you think so,’ she says, ‘but I’m very anxious about it.’
‘Don’t worry. They’re experts at this kind of thing, and if I say you’re worried, they’ll take extra special care.’
‘I’ll follow in the car,’ says William, scooping up the keys from the sideboard.
Jean flinches.

***

On the ride in to hospital, to take Jean’s mind off the coming treatment, I chat to her about this and that.
‘I couldn’t help noticing the photos on the wall. Who’s that distinguished man in uniform?’
‘My husband, Denis. He was a Major in the army. It was his whole life. Conscripted during the war, stayed on afterwards, retired after forty-odd years. We had such a lovely life together. To be honest, I still can’t quite believe he’s gone.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘Sixty two years. It went so quickly.’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘I was lucky. But then I was always lucky in love.’
‘Really?’
‘Well. Sort of. I was married twice.’
‘Twice?’
‘The first time was to this boy from Devon. One of those golden, laughing boys. We met at a dance and got married about five days later.’
‘So what happened?’
‘He was a merchant seaman and got torpedoed in the North Atlantic the following month. I met Denis just after the war when I was demobbed.’
Jean reaches out to me with her right hand.
‘What will they do to me when we get there?’
‘I’ll tell them you’re worried,’ I say, resting my hand on hers and giving it an encouraging squeeze.
But against the warmth of the blanket, her hand is so cool and slight you’d hardly know there was a hand there at all.

a villa with a lemon tree

2012-01-05T18:41:00.000Z

The only thing out of place in Elizabeth’s flat is Elizabeth. She is lying on her left side on the hall floor, her head on a pillow and her body covered with a duvet.
‘She wouldn’t let us get her up,’ says her son. ‘We did try, but she started getting distressed so in the end we thought we’d better err on the side of caution and call you chaps. Sorry to drag you out on such a filthy night.’
Even taking into account the passage of sixty years or so, you would never believe that such a tiny, bird-like woman could ever have given birth to such a vigorous man as Thomas. He fills the hall, a casting director’s dream of a mad professor, the dome of his forehead dangerously close to the ceiling, his bass voice a rumble through the floor.
Thomas gives us space to move and retreats to the sitting room end of the hallway, filling the doorway there, relaying the information so far to his wife, who discretely turns the volume down on Casualty.

Elizabeth is talking in a garbled whisper. Disconnected from the present, she produces a constant, random sequence of words and sounds, the conversational equivalent of pretend writing.
‘Is this normal for your mother?’ I ask Thomas.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Ever since her stroke a few weeks back she’s been suffering from confusion and dysphasia. The consultant doesn’t think there’s much chance of a recovery. But she’s ninety-two, of course.’
‘I don’t think she’s injured herself. We’ll get her up and run through a few checks.’
In fact, getting Elizabeth up is as easy as standing up ourselves. Her wizened figure is so slight, you could probably just think about getting her up and she’d rise into the air. She doesn’t show any signs of pain, any loss of mobility; we guide her slowly back into the sitting room, and make her comfortable on the sofa. Thomas’ wife makes space for her there, and retreats to sit on a rocking chair in the corner.

The room is beautifully kept. Along with displays of photos and pictures, there is an ornately carved armoire set in pride of place against the wall.
‘Been in the family generations. My grandfather used to keep his whiskey in it,’ says Thomas, standing next to it, draping an arm across the top and stroking the front. ‘Lovely, isn’t it? Seventeenth century.’

All Elizabeth’s observations are good.
‘Now - what to do?’ I say.
‘We’re in your hands.’
‘I’ll just fill in the paperwork and then we’ll have a chat about the options.’
‘Fine.’

The TV programme has changed. Now it seems to be a wildlife programme – footage of penguins, and seals, a whale sliding through the blue. To make conversation, I look across to Thomas’ wife and say: ‘You know, when I phoned up my mum the other day and asked her how her Christmas was, she said: Oh – lovely. Mick took us for a ride out to the coast. We walked Kes on the beach, saw the whale, went for a coffee in that funny little cafe ...” and I had to stop her and say “What? What do you mean? You saw the whale?” So she says “Yes – there was a sperm whale washed up on the beach. Quite a crowd – you know. People taking photos. I was a bit worried about Kes taking a bite, so we didn’t stay long.” A whale!’
Thomas’ wife smiles at me, rocking gently backwards and forwards.
‘We went whale watching, once,’ she says. ‘A long time ago now. Nova Scotia.’
‘Fantastic.’
I smile, then write some more on the form.
‘Almost done,’ I say.
‘I saw some porpoises once,’ says Frank. ‘I was swimming in the sea in Cornwall, and I saw these lovely black fins breaking the water out in the bay. So I got all excited and when I came back in I said to the lifeguard “Nice porpoises” and he says “What – you mean the triathletes?’ It wasn’t fins – it was the curve of their arms in black lycra.’
‘Can I get you a coffee? Tea? Gin and tonic?’ says Thomas. ‘It’s no bother.’
‘No. Thank you. We’re good to go, now. We just need to figure out what’s to do. I don’t think Elizabeth needs to go to hospital.’
‘I agree. We’re perfectly happy to keep an eye on mum here in the flat.’
He pushes his hair back from his face and takes a breath.
‘ We’ve been staying here ever since mum had her stroke, actually. We live in Portugal now.’
‘Portugal?’
‘We have a beautiful villa out there – you must come and stay sometime.’
‘Thanks. It sounds lovely.’
‘It really is. Lemon trees in the courtyard by the fountain. A pool, a grove of olive trees. Lovely little village down the ways. Heaven, really. We’ve suggested that Mum comes to live with us. She’d have her own little cottage. She’s stayed there before lots of times and really loves it. But her health’s suddenly given out as you can see, and she’s not in a position to make it clear that that’s what she’d like. She can’t speak, she can’t write or even nod particularly if you ask her a question. Which is so frustrating. We’ve been having a health visitor the last few days. He doesn’t do much – mostly just seems to tick boxes on endless forms. Perfectly well meaning but absolutely hopeless. I told him about this plan and he said quite flatly it was out of the question. He said it would be tantamount to abduction. But honestly I don’t know what to do. We can’t stay here indefinitely, but Mum’s too frail to cope on her own.’
‘I think I’d rather live out my last days in a villa with a lemon tree.’ He stands and gathers the bags together. ‘It’s just a crying shame there isn’t a box on his form marked common sense.’

perks of the job

2012-01-04T18:01:00.000Z

The first earthworks were thrown up on top of Allenbury hill two and a half thousand years ago. Now, the only other mounds and dips surrounding the hill are recreational – an eighteen hole golf course, with fine views of the town if the sea frets that haunt the area get blown further inland.
No chance of that today. The spongy mist is flecked with rain; we may as well be climbing out of the ambulance in a car wash.
‘Bloody hell!’ says Frank, gathering his jacket more tightly around him. ‘What hole did they say?’
‘Fourth.’
‘Christ!’
To make things worse, no one has thought to unlock the height restriction gate. We walk up to the club house, overtaking a couple of golfers like doomed explorers determined to play on despite the polar bears and floes.
‘Aye aye,’ says one, his face as mottled as a chorizo sausage. ‘Someone poorly then?’
‘Not for me, is it?’ chips his friend. ‘I thought I was a bit below par, but I’m not that bad, honest.’
‘You’re off your stroke, mate.’
‘You’re having a stroke, mate.’
We leave them to it and hurry on up to the clubhouse where a man in a pointy knitted hat is smoking a fag.
‘Fourth hole,’ he says, nodding off into the gloom, exhaling a lung’s volume of extra fog.
‘We need the key to open the gate,’ I say. ‘We can’t get in.’
‘Fair enough.’
He grinds out his fag and disappears into the clubhouse.
‘I’ll carry on over to the hole. Can you fetch us out some splints and a buggy to bring him back?’ says Frank.
The man reappears with a key on a giant fluorescent tab of plastic.
‘Don’t lose it,’ he says.
‘Maybe I can use it to guide the helicopter in,’ I say, waving it over my head.
He stares at me grimly. ‘Like I say. It’s our only copy.’

Once I’ve got the ambulance up to the clubhouse, I gather all the kit I think we’ll need and call Pointy Hat out again.
‘I’ll need a buggy,’ I say.
He stares at me. ‘A what?’
‘You know. One of those golf carts.’
He frowns. ‘I don’t know about that. They’re dangerous things, they are.’
‘Really? A buggy?’
No response.
‘I’m used to taking risks,’ I say, slapping my hands together. But it doesn’t warm my hands up any and it certainly doesn’t warm up Pointy Hat.
‘I’ll have to speak to the manager,’ he says, and disappears back inside.
A couple more golfers drag themselves past the clubhouse, toting such a bristling array of clubs I wouldn’t be surprised to see an RPG in there.
‘Lovely weather,’ I say as they pass. They wave and smile with the slightly deranged look of sports addicts everywhere.
‘Use the yellow balls.’ But the fog has already swallowed them up.
Pointy Hat comes back.
‘No,’ he says.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Well how do you suppose we’re going to fetch your man in? You know – dislocated knee? Hypothermia.’
‘Have a word yourself if you don’t believe me.’
‘Okay. I will.’
‘Good luck.’
I go into the clubhouse, a haven of overstuffed chairs, shining optics, golfing supplies and Frank Sinatra, with the fog pressed close up against the window like nothing else exists in the world now.
‘Can I speak to the manager, please?’
The barman stops cleaning his glass and gives me a quarter gill look of disbelief.
‘Is she in?’
Unless Pointy Hat has been lying. A man in a hat like that could be capable of anything.
The barman backs away and disappears momentarily out through the bar door. After some hushed whispering he reappears behind an intense looking woman as friable as her hair. She has a sheet of paper in her hand.
‘Nobody told me about this,’ she says. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’
The barman quietly steps to the side and puts the glass down without a sound.
‘Tell me what’s happened,’ she says.
‘As far as I know, one of your golfers has dislocated his knee.’
‘Well how did he do that?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him yet. My colleague has gone on ahead to the fourth hole, but I need a buggy to bring the patient back.’
She frowns.
I picture Frank out in the awful weather. I imagine the language. I feel a surge of annoyance.
‘It’s up to you. The alternative is to drive the ambulance over there. I don’t mind.’
She straightens about a mile and puts the paper down flat on the bar.
‘Neil,’ she says. ‘Please take a buggy and drive this gentleman over to the fourth hole.’
He smiles at me and grabs his jacket.

The seat of the buggy is soaking wet so I put an inco pad on it before I sit down. The splints and blankets go in a carrier on the back and we’re set. He spins the buggy around with the flat of one hand on the wheel, and a second later we plunge off the patio and out across the green.
Neil puts the pedal flat to the floor. At one point he glances a wheel width across the lip of a bunker and almost topples us over. But I lean to counter balance and we rattle on through the mist, passing strange figures that coalesce and diminish in the grey.
‘I’ve never ridden in one of these before,’ I say. ‘It’s like a ghost train.’
‘Perk of the job,’ he says. ‘That and golf.’

big bird

2012-01-02T13:31:00.003Z

There are three distinct voices coming through the battered black door of the flat. Rae’s modulated appeals; a drunken wail, and a loud, male monotone. We go in and find Rae standing with a middle-aged woman behind a sofa. Rae has her gloved hand on the woman’s arm to hold her upright, whilst the woman – her thick grey hair flattened with blood across one side of her head – furiously points and waves with her hands, almost pitching herself back down on the floor again. The object of both their attention is a thin young man in his twenties, pacing about the room. He has an extravagant mass of curly black hair and as he walks he jabs forwards with the blade of his nose. In his fake fur jacket, scarlet V-neck and drainpipe jeans, he could be a giant, exotic bird scavenging for food. And as he walks, he talks, lurching from affection to spite.
‘You know I love you like my own mother. You know I’d do anything in the world for you, Mary. Anything. You name it, I’ll do it. You know that.’
‘I want you out!’ she says. ‘Get out!’
‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ he carries on. ‘I’ll lock up. I’ll switch off the lights, take care of everything. I’ll even wash up. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll set everything right. Then I’ll come and visit you in the hospital.’
‘Out! Out! I want him out!’
‘Though God knows why I bother, the shit you give me. Nobody else would. Nobody does. You’ll die here alone and no-one will care.’
Frank tries to guide the man out of the flat.
‘You’re not helping, are you? If you really care about Mary you’ll let us get on and treat her. Yeah? Okay – so just get your coat and give us some space.’
‘Don’t you come near me,’ says the man. Beneath the floppy fringe of his hair his eyes are tightly closed, and for a second in the smoky light of the flat it almost seems as if the skin has healed across them. He turns his beak from side to side, sensing the emotional currents in the air. ‘I’m not going until I’ve got all my things,’ he says. ‘I’ve got my dog in the next room. I’m not leaving him here. He’s six months old, a Staffordshire blue if you want to know. I’m not leaving him here all by himself. She wouldn’t look after it.’
‘Okay – so get your dog and go like Mary says. She’s perfectly entitled to ask you to leave, and I think you should respect that.’
‘And I’m not going without my vodka.’
‘That’s my vodka!’ screams Mary. ‘I bought that – for me – with my money.’
‘No. You’re wrong about that. I bought that vodka and I’m not leaving here without it.’
‘Mate – seriously. Just come back another time for the vodka. Mary needs to come to hospital to get her head treated, and you’re just getting in the way.’
‘That’s my vodka. I spent thirty quid on it. A reputable brand. I’m not wasting thirty quid’s worth of vodka on a deadbeat like her. You might as well pour it down the drain. Look at her.’
‘Get out!’ screams Mary.
‘He’s been dreadful,’ says Rae. ‘He picked up the phone, called her son and told him she was dead.’
The man has his eyes firmly closed, but he lifts his head and sniffs the air in Rae’s direction.
‘I hope all your children are still born,’ he says. ‘I hope you get cancer.’
‘Lovely. Thanks for that.’
‘That’s it. Out you go mate,’ says Frank.
But he’ll have to physically grab Joe and throw him out, and even Frank hesitates. I call Control and ask for police back-up.
The man stands there for a second or two more, then grabs a harness off the back of the door.
‘Fine. I love you, Mary. I love you like a son. You’re the mother I never had. So don’t worry about a thing. I’ll make sure the flat’s safe. I’ll lock up for you and keep it nice.’
‘Get out! Get out!’
He opens the bathroom door and a shy little staffy comes out, flicking its eyes around the scene, keeping its head low. The man slips the harness over the dog and stands ready to go.
‘And you can keep the vodka,’ he says to Mary. ‘Why don’t you stick it between your legs, you old witch. You’ve done nothing for me.’
‘Just go,’ says Frank. ‘And good luck for the new year. I think you’ll need it.’
The man strides out of the flat onto the landing, the dog jogging along behind him.
‘Nice,’ says Rae, then: ‘Thanks for getting here so quickly.’
‘Sorry it wasn’t sooner.’
‘Has he gone?’ says Mary. ‘Good. Now – get me my slippers.’

the saviour of the streets

2011-12-28T19:35:00.001Z

Control make it plain.
‘Operation Wipeout is now declared. Multiple red calls stacking without any resources to assign. Please would all crews clear up as quickly as possible. Control out.’
They’ll sit on less urgent calls until the situation eases, but for now it’s looking grim.

Which makes it all the harder to deal with a drunk on a bench.
‘He’s not unconscious,’ I tell the man standing next to him. ‘Look. You can tell by the way he’s holding his eyes shut. His blood sugar is fine, so he’s not having a hypo. All his obs are normal. He’s faking it, I’m afraid.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why would he do that?’
I step back and let Frank torture the guy with a discrete but dreadful range of painful stimuli whilst I talk to the patient’s friend.
‘Let’s start with his name.’
‘I don’t know this. I only met him in morning. We stay at same hostel. He thrown into street for being too much drunk.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘He came with me here – okay - sat on benches. Okay. Then he ask me call for ambulance and lay down like this.’
‘Do you know if he suffers with anything?’
‘What is this “suffers”?’
‘Does he have anything wrong with him?’
The man shrugs. ‘I met him in morning. I don’t know this things.’
I hear an irritated growl and see the man batting away Frank’s hand.
‘Leave me alone!’ he spits through gritted teeth.
‘Come on, mate,’ says Frank. ‘Sit up and be nice. It’s a busy night. There are people out there who actually need us.’
‘I’m sorry if I waste time,’ says the man. ‘I didn’t know what to do. He says “call ambulance” so I call ambulance. Why he pretend is sick?’
I shrug.
‘If he was thrown out of the hostel for being drunk, he might just want a comfortable bed for a few hours.’
‘Like this?’
‘It happens.’
‘Oh’
Despite Frank’s best efforts, the man lies as inertly as before, flopping out an arm so that to the late night shoppers passing by he looks dead. They frown at us as they hurry by, wondering why we’re not busily getting our stretcher out, giving him oxygen, doing the ER hustle.
‘The next step is the police,’ says Frank, prodding the guy in the shoulder. ‘Drunk and disorderly. Is that what you want?’
No reaction, so Frank unclips his radio and requests police attendance.

The friend watches the whole thing with his hands buried in the pockets of his jacket and his head on a disappointed tilt.
‘You’re a good friend to him,’ I say. ‘He doesn’t deserve you.’
‘I am from Armenia,’ says the man. ‘I am classical pianist come Great Britain to work. Kitchen, pubs and things. Just to get place, you know? To get a-started. But in my travels through Europe I seen much violence, much unhappy. I don’t like this thing, of course, but I help if I can.’ He shrugs again, but keeps his hands firmly in his pockets. ‘What else to do?’

The police arrive. I explain the situation to them. The Armenian offers them his name and what he knows; they thank him, then go over to the drunk on the bench.

Just then another figure appears on the scene - a tall, well-dressed man in a three-quarter length herring bone tweed coat. His face has a slack and aggressive pallor, as if his big night out turned into an emotional filleting. Without saying or offering anything, he comes and stands close up behind one of the police officers. She immediately turns and holds out the flat of her hand to him.
‘Could you not stand behind me, please, sir? I don’t have eyes in the back of my head.’
‘What? What the fuck? What have I done? Jesus – some people! You have a real problem, lady. A real problem.’
I want the police to deal with the drunk quickly so we can get away and help out with the stacking red calls.
‘Do you know anyone here?’ I ask the man.
He shakes his head.
‘Well in that case could you just keep out of the way? You’re not helping, and it’s really none of your business.’
He stares at me vacantly, then shuffles back to have another look.
‘Seriously – what is wrong with you?’ I say to him, grabbing him by the shoulder and turning him round. ‘Just back off!’
Both police officers turn their attention on the man.
‘Move away now. Now! I’ve told you – don’t stand behind me. So move!’
He shuffles a little way off and then stands in the road, swaying from side to side. And although I know it’s because of the alcohol, it could just as well be the blurring effects of his disdain. He stands there, sneering and cursing, spitting into the road.
I look from the drunk on the bench – who is getting up now, swearing horribly and straightening himself up – to the strange man in the herring-bone coat in the street, and then to the Armenian guy who stands taking it all in with his hands buried warmly in his pockets. It’s strangely comforting to see him there, standing neutrally, a traveller with an instinct for kindness, helping despite needing help himself, doing his best to make things come out right.
‘Thanks for your help,’ I say to him.
He shrugs. ‘What else to do?’ he says.

criminal crackers

2011-12-24T09:31:00.001Z

SK: (to man hyperventilating on trolley) Would you say you’d been particularly stressed lately?
He nods
SK: Anything in particular?
MAN: The Witness Protection Programme

***

YOUNG GIRL: My eldest sister’s coming back from university tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to doing the usual Christmas things – opening presents, eating loads, playing games…
SK: Oh yeah? What kind of games?
YG: Newmarket, Rummy, Cluedo, Monopoly. Cluedo’s a favourite. Which is funny ‘cos my sister’s away studying Forensic Psychology. She always loses, though. I think she’s so busy profiling Colonel Mustard she forgets to mark her cards.

2011-12-22T20:38:00.000Z

Thanks so much for reading this year. I must say I think you all deserve a medal or at least some kind of certificate for wading through some of these descriptions...

Anyway, have a great Christmas - and here's to 2012!

SK

more bigger magic

2011-12-18T22:04:00.003Z

The logo for the Woodfield housing estate is an oak tree powering up between the D and the F to spread its canopy right and left over the word. But if the keywords of the logo were maybe ‘shelter’ and ‘protection’, the architects have fixated on the ‘protection’ and translated it into a spread of buildings with the charm of a bunker, the openness of a castle and the joie de vivre of a prison. Three blocks to the Woodfield housing estate, then, each with a sylvan name, each rising up in a generous slab of brick, and each with a parallel sequence of walkways running their length, between stairwells that rise up to the flat roof like gun turrets. And if the logo is based on an oak, it’s not a species that’s been seen round here recently. Nature has retreated to an embattled straggle of drought resistant plants in the flower beds that edge the car park, everything meanly bitten down, strewn with takeaway cartons and drink cans.

We go to buzz the intercom at the bottom of the furthest stairwell, but the door’s held open by a traffic cone so we go up unannounced. The familiar stairwell ambience. You could bottle it. Squaleur by Givenchy. I can imagine the advert – a glamorous model running down the stairs two at a time, shirt undone, chased by the paparazzi. Something like that. As credible as the tree logo, anyway.

Mrs Po lives here with her son, Chen, in the middle flat on the top floor. He meets us at the door, a slim, powerfully built twenty year old soberly dressed in a dark blue suit.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he says, giving us a polite bob of the head and shoulders and then moving some stuff so we can get in the door. ‘Mother’s upstairs in the bedroom. I’m afraid she’s been unwell for a few days now. She’s diabetic and can’t afford to be sick like this for long. I rang the doctor and he said you’d be coming.’
‘Let’s go and say hello.’

Mrs Po is shivering under a mountain pile of duvets, knitted covers and coats. In fact any layer that might possibly give any warmth has been dragged onto the bed. There is a litre bottle of mineral water and a plastic bucket down on the carpet; around the bed, tacked up on the walls, are a disparate spread of Chinese prints, scroll poems, 3D pictures of the Last Supper and out of date calendars.

Chen talks to his mother in Cantonese, and after a pause, she slowly pokes the top of her head above the layers. Chen kneels onto the bed and helps sit her up.
Mrs Po is a petite woman made completely round by wearing just about every article of clothing she owns. It makes me think of how we used to make snowmen – rolling a snowball so that it grew fatter and fatter the more layers of snow it accumulated.
‘I feel hot just looking at you,’ I say. Chen translates. Mrs Po swipes the air dismissively.
We check her over. She has a temperature. Frank sets up the chair and we help her out of the bed and onto it. She agrees to take off some of her coats, but insists on putting on an extraordinary hat – something like a waste paper basket knitted out of turquoise rope and finished with a spray of plastic flowers.
‘Her lucky hat,’ says Chen, moving more stuff so we can manoeuvre out of the bedroom. He wheels aside a tall, rectangular box on wheels.
‘That’s the weirdest shopping trolley I’ve ever seen,’ I say.
‘It’s for my drum kit. It’s got all my stands and sticks.’
‘Cool! A drummer!’
‘Not for much longer. I’m thinking of giving it up. I’m getting tired of hauling all this shit up the stairs.’
‘Have you thought about the harmonica?’ says Frank, putting Mrs Po’s meds into a plastic bag.
‘Often,’ says Chen. ‘Oh. By the way. Sorry about the smell.’
‘What smell?’
‘Tiger Balm. I’m afraid mother is mad about tiger balm. She thinks it will cure all her ills. She uses it for her rheumatism, her asthma, her migraines - everything.’
‘I like the smell.’
‘Really? I suppose I’ve forgotten what it’s actually like, I’ve been around it so long. Mother used to make me wear it to school. It’s even good for exam results, apparently. Although not so much in my case.’
‘Bit like ginseng, is it? A magical herb?’
‘More bigger magic,’ says Chen, holding the door open for me as I wheel Mrs Po out towards the stairwell. ‘And I suppose you can’t have too much of that.’

jason's mum

2011-12-15T11:39:00.000Z

‘He’s round the back having a fag.’
It’s five in the morning, but the teenage girl has a chemical vibrancy about her that jars with the low-tide silence of the street. There are screams and shouts further along just out of sight, and she straightens like an animal caught standing too long.
‘Don’t take him to hospital’ she says, and then, just before she runs off, ‘He don’t like needles.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Jason.’
She shakes her tangled hair out then sprints away, the sounds of her shouts blending with those of her friends, a wild call and response that echoes around the parked cars and curtained windows.
We pick our way through cardboard boxes, stacks of broken tiles and rusted engine parts to the front door of the house. It’s unfastened and swings open a little when I knock.
‘Hello? Ambulance.’
But Jason appears around the side of the house. A striking looking kid with spikes of ice-blond hair and a preternaturally wide-eyed expression. His left arm is elevated up to his shoulder in a makeshift tea towel sling, parcelled up with tightly knotted rags and strips of cloth
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Okay. We’ll get you on the ambulance and have a look at your arm there. Is your mum or dad about?’
‘My mum.’ He nods towards the house. ‘But I’m all right if you just want to go.’
‘How old are you, Jason?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘So we’ll need to speak to her about all this and have her along as well. Why don’t you go with Frank to the ambulance and I’ll go in and get her.’
He shrugs, then follows Frank through the garden.
I turn back to the house and knock again. The door swings wider onto a darkly narrow hallway with newspaper on the floor and piles of rubbish pushed up out of the way under the stairs. A low grade sweat to the air of dog, dust, smoke and reheated fat; the wallpaper has a repeating flowery motif, but in the general gloom I could swear it was the social services logo and hotline.
A woman appears at the end of the corridor, forty going on eighty, thin and stooped, her long hair almost catching on the tip of her cigarette.
‘Thank you for coming. He’s just outside.’
She speaks in that overly precise way drunk people use when they don’t want to appear drunk. She finishes speaking, and watches her words float away from her like strange balloons down the hallway. Then she nods once and shuffles off into the sitting room. I follow her.
‘Are you Jason’s mum?’
She draws on her cigarette and squints at me through the smoke.
‘I am.’
‘Well – as he’s only fifteen, we’ll need to talk to you about what’s happened.’
She steadies herself against the wall.
‘I’ll just get my bag.’
‘We’ll be outside.’

Frank has already cut off the extemporary bandaging and cleaned the wounds – a gout of flesh from the underside of his forearm, and the tip of his index finger missing.
‘He says they were play-fighting and he fell down on a broken bottle.’ Frank starts bandaging the wounds up. ‘We need to get you up the hospital, fella,’ he says.
‘I don’t want no needles. I hate needles.’
‘Don’t worry about that, Jason. They’re experts at this stuff. They do it all the time. They’ll take really good care of you. I’m not going to say it won’t hurt, mate, ‘cos it probably will. But you’re a tough kid and I’m sure you can cope.’
Jason watches as he gently dresses the arm.
‘Will I lose my finger?’ he says.
‘I don’t think so. But that’s a nasty injury to the tip. That’ll need special attention.
Jason chews his lip.
‘I hate needles,’ he says, finally.
‘Who bandaged your arm, Jason?’
He turns his wide eyes in my direction.
‘My step father.’
‘And where’s your step father now?’
‘I don’t know. Asleep?’
Jason’s mum appears at the ambulance door. She is so unsteady on her feet I have to get out and help her up the stairs. She’s of no use as a guardian, but I want her at the hospital to talk to the staff.
‘There you go!’ I say.
I settle her into a seat and she sits quietly for a moment, catching her breath, hugging a large, brown leather shoulder bag on her lap. Suddenly she frowns, opens it up and starts digging around inside, leaning over so precipitously that only the seatbelt stops her pitching head first into it.
‘Jason stayed round his friend’s house last night,’ she says, finally pulling herself up again, as if she’d just remembered the lines of a script. ‘He fell on some glass.’
Frank has finished dressing Jason’s arm. He tidies all his stuff away.
‘I think we’re set,’ he says.
‘How will I get back?’ says the mum. ‘I can’t find my phone.’
‘Bus? Taxi?’
‘I haven’t got any money.’
Frank hesitates for a second, then snaps off his gloves.
‘We’ll think of something,’ he says. ‘Okay, kidda? Ready? Let’s go.’

patrick

2011-12-12T12:22:00.002Z

I’m a hard man, me. Ex marine commando. Do you know what that means? I don’t think you understand what that means. I’m so full of – rage. D’you know?
‘Who at?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you so full of rage?’
‘Listen. Don’t you take the michael out of me, mister. I’m set to go. I’m ready for anything.’
‘You’ve no call to get punchy with me, Patrick. I’m here to help.’
‘Listen. I’ll try to explain. I’m a hard man. I’m handy with my fists, d’you understand me? Ask anyone. They’ll say – Yep, Patrick. He’s a hard man. He’ll have a go, no problem. And I will. I don’t care who it is. I don’t care what happens to me. I’m ex-army. A boxer. I’ll tell you something. I met a real famous person. Guess who it was.’
‘I don’t know. A boxer?’
His head nods back and his eyes close, like those dolls where the eyelids tip shut when you lie them down. When he raises his head up again they spring back open; he takes a gulp of air and re-orientates himself in the ambulance.
‘Patrick?’
‘What?’
‘Who did you meet? What boxer?’
He breathes heavily through a nose that’s as bulbous and pock-marked as a specimen of alien fruit. Talking is an effort for Patrick. His system is so swamped with alcohol and his senses so numbed by lying on the pavement in the rain, he has to take a series of internal run-ups to find the words and get them out.
‘Listen. I’m ex-army. Marine commando. Tough as you want. And I fancied myself too. I met this guy. He said to me – Do you box? And I said – Maybe. He said – I reckon you’re a fighter. So I said – Yep. You got it. I’m a fighter all right. And I looked him up and down, and I thought - So that’s what you’re after. And I’ll do it, my friend. I’ll take any fucker. So I said – What about you, then? You a fighter? He said – Yep. I do my share. So I said – Is that right? And he said – Yep. And there was something about him. Something – I don’t know. Handy. So we parted friends – bosh - that was that. Then I found out who it was.’
‘Who?’
‘Terry Downes. Middleweight champion of the world.’
‘Good job you didn’t start anything, then.’
‘Me? Pah! I don’t care about that. I’m ex marine commando. I don’t give a fuck what I do.’

lena and sammy

2011-12-10T20:12:00.000Z

It will be dawn soon. The night is thinning, drawing away from a scattering of lead coloured clouds low on the horizon. The streets are quiet, except for a shift worker in a fluorescent jacket pedalling home, a few cars heading out to the motorway.
Lena is waiting for us at a bus stop. She is wearing a Russian furry hat with ear flaps, and a fake leopard skin coat over her PJ’s. She makes no movement to show that the ambulance is for her, but when we pull up she wanders over to the kerb and waits there, swaying slightly, her mobile phone up under one of the flaps, but not talking into it, either listening to what the person is saying, or pretending to.
‘Are you the patient?’ I ask, climbing out.
She nods – a small movement, as if anything larger would pitch her into the road.
‘Let’s get you on board and we’ll have a chat.’
She drops the phone into her pocket and waits neutrally as I open the side door, then shuffles forwards.

Lena’s eyelashes spike out around her wide eyes like the pupils were black pebbles dropped in a pond. It takes an effort of will for her just to keep upright on the ambulance seat; she holds herself there, a prematurely aged, forty year old woman, reduced by the hour and the hard white light, her body insulated from the cold by the coat and hat just as effectively as her awareness is insulated by alcohol.
‘I want my fucking things back,’ she says. ‘I want them back.’
‘First things first, Lena. Why have you called the ambulance?’
‘I want my fucking things back. She cheated me and locked me out. She can’t do that to me. I’ll fucking kill her. I know my rights.’
‘Okay. But that’s something else, Lena. We’re the ambulance, not the police. We’re here to help you if you’re sick or you’ve hurt yourself.’
She starts to cry, with that calamitous drop into total misery you sometimes see in toddlers.
‘How dare she? I am not a piece of shit.’
I pass her some tissue, and she pushes it into her face.
‘So which one is your flat?’
She shrugs.
‘Flat? I don’t have no flat. I haven’t got nothing, mate. Except my things. Will you go and get them off her for me?’
‘We’re not the police, Lena.’
She blows her nose and then slumps back in the seat.
‘Are you unwell in any way?’
‘No.’
‘Are you in pain?’
She squeezes her eyes shut and taps at the middle of her chest with the ball of tissue.
‘What do you mean? Chest pain?’
She opens her eyes again, turns the corners of her mouth down and wobbles her head slightly.
‘That bitch broke my heart. I thought she was my friend!’
‘Okay. Have you taken an overdose?’
‘No, mate. I haven’t taken no overdose. But yeah - maybe I should. I haven’t taken any of my pills for five days.’
‘What pills are they, Lena?’
She sighs, then names a run of psych meds.
‘You know – if you stop taking those meds suddenly it can really affect your mood. It can make things seem really out of whack.’
‘They are out of whack. I’ve spent my whole life out of whack.’
She leans forward, and I have to put my hand on her shoulder to stop her falling out of the chair.
‘I was eighteen when I was pregnant with my little girl. And do you know what they said to me? They said: “She might take a while to come out”. So I said “What d’you mean? I’m having her out right now.” So I pushed as hard as I could, and she practically flew across the room, along with all my tubes. And now I’ve got pain down there all the time. And I thought Sammy cared about that, ‘cos exactly the same thing happened to her.’
Lena straightens herself up in the chair and blows her nose. I give her some fresh tissue and dump the old. And as if blowing her nose was all she needed to do to put herself in a better mood, she folds her arms across her lap and smiles.
‘She’s a good girl, Sammy. You know the first time I went to stay with her I asked if I could borrow her razor and she said “No – I’m Hep C positive.” She didn’t have to say that, but it just goes to show.’
‘That is considerate.’
‘She’s very considerate, Sammy is. And she’s been through it. She’s had it all happen to her. She was raped. Only I was gang raped. When I was eighteen. And do you know what they did to me after they were done? Do you know what they did after they’d finished and I was crawling around in the garden? They threw food at me. Food! Sammy’ll tell you. She’s been through it. I lived with a man for twenty years and he beat me every single day. He beat me and used me and kept me as a prisoner. But what do you do? What do you do when you love someone like that?’
‘They’re terrible things to have happened, Lena.’
‘They were terrible. And now look.’
She straightens her hat and stares at me.
'I want my fucking things back. Are you going to go and get them for me or what?’

looking for helen

2011-12-09T12:14:00.000Z

The storm has grown in strength as the day retreated and now it holds dominion, raging along the lane, thrashing through trees and bushes, shivering lampposts to the root, tearing on into the dark in a panic of leaves and twigs and anything else without attachment to the world. It snatches the gate out of my hand when I lift the catch, then bullies on ahead through stands of lavender, a scattering of pots, and up through the pergola of wild rose that frames the little porch of Myrtle Cottage. A police officer in a yellow jacket is sheltering there, directing the beam of his torch along the path.
‘Good timing,’ he shouts. ‘We’re just about to break in.’

A cause for concern. Helen had rung NHS Direct complaining of feeling unwell. But before the call taker had time to give her advice or find out more, there was the sound of a scream and the line went dead.
‘She had a fall the other day. Nothing serious. Given some pain meds and discharged. That’s all we know,’ I tell the officer, leaning in so he can hear.

A dog barks from deep inside the cottage.
‘I think they’re in,’ he says. Moments later, a bolt is thrown and the door opens.

The other two police officers have turned on whatever lights they could as they came through, illuminating a low-ceilinged honeycomb of a building, eerily undisturbed. For a moment or two we stand together in the kitchen and the tiny hallway. Even the dog – an elderly Airedale with a disappointed expression – stands with us, tolerating an encouraging scratch behind the ear from one of the police officers. He looks round at the quiet house as bemused as the rest of us.

We split up to search the place.

Helen? Helen?

Myrtle cottage must at one time have been at least two or three buildings, but in the hundreds of years since the floor plan has changed endlessly. Now it is a muddled affiliation of rooms and annexes, staircases and walk-in cupboards, outbuildings and attic studies.

Helen? Helen?

Leading on with the torch. It’s impossible to predict the depth of space behind each door. Patting for switches that aren’t there or don’t work. Probing ahead, and the torchlight plays across a furry bed cover crumpled at the foot of a bed; a giant teddy on a rocking chair; a dressing gown hanging from a hook; a reflection of light from a framed photo; a glass of water on a side table; across shelves bowed with a weight of books; tables strewn with notebooks, baskets, ornate boxes, saucers of trinkets, little ceramic trays of make-up. Checking the bathroom (the bath). The airing cupboard, the linen closet. At any moment expecting to hear something, to see something – someone.

Helen? Helen?

Nothing upstairs.

Out into the garden, where the storm chases its tail around the house.
The coal shed, a garage converted into a studio, with more shelves of books, musty boxes of children’s toys from the fifties, a clear area at the back with a table set for spraying and stencilling.

Helen? Helen?

The summer house, locked and dark. The torch through the patio doors – Bugs Bunny in a rictus of astonishment, propped up against a stack of spotted chair cushions, a folded umbrella. Round to the greenhouse, the overgrown path at the side of the house, the log pile, the tool shed, a muddled stack of logs, a rusted barbeque equipment, an extension at the back – another studio, with a chair and a desk of papers, a lamp, a book on astronomy, a mug, a plastic kettle.

Helen? Helen?

Nothing found, we all re-group in the kitchen.

Whatever may have happened here, there’s no sign of Helen and no patient to treat. Our best guess is that the call-taker misinterpreted the scream. Perhaps she put the phone down for some other, more innocent reason, and simply left the house to get help or do something unconnected.
‘We’ll stay here and try to find out more,’ says the first police officer. ‘We’ll talk to neighbours, make some calls. The door needs securing too, of course. But thanks for coming out. Sorry it was a waste of time.’
The Airedale accompanies us to the door. I catch a last glimpse of him staring glumly out as we leave. And maybe it’s because the house seems so thick-walled and low and sheltering, with its tiny windows glowing in the dark, but when the old door shuts behind us, the storm seems wilder, ready to jump down hungrily and snatch us up before we make the ambulance.

tea?

2011-12-08T21:42:00.000Z

We’re sitting in the rec room. One of the older paramedics has got on to the subject of elderly drivers and their adventures in automatics.

‘I remember we went to this job,’ he says. ‘An elderly couple, just back from the shops. His wife gets out and goes to unlock, the husband puts the car in reverse to put it away in the garage. But something happens – who knows what – his foot gets stuck or something. Anyway, the car shoots back, crashes through the garage door, out through the garage wall, ploughs across the garden, through a washing line, the flower beds, on through a brick wall and out into the street behind where it smashes into a passing van. When we get there the guy is still in the driver’s seat looking a bit shaken up but not too bad, considering. He mentions about his wife, but there’s no sign of her. So we put him on a back board and get him on the ambulance. After a little while there’s a knock on the door and there’s a firefighter standing there. “You’d better come and look at this” he says. So I leave the guy with my mate and I follow him back over to the car. The firefighter points to it and says “Have a good look under there, mate, and tell me what you see.” Well there’s a ton of shit like you might expect – rubble, soil from the garden, a rose bush, all sorts. And then I notice a pink slipper. “Can you figure it out yet?” he says. And that’s when I realised what it was – the guy’s wife was wrapped up under the car, her legs over here… her arms over there… but so caught up in everything you could hardly tell it was a person at all.’
I lean forward in my chair. ‘Was she all right, then?’
‘Of course she wasn’t all right!’ snorts Earle, a new paramedic, boots up on a stool, the labels still stuck on the soles. ‘She’s just been run over by a car, mate! What do you think?’
A pause, and then Frank stands up and saves me with his mug.
‘Anyone for tea?’ he says.

the time or the place

2011-11-30T20:46:00.001Z

We’ve been standing outside the ambulance station since six o’clock. The sky is lightening now, but heavy grey clouds keep appearing overhead and soaking us. We cradle our mugs to keep warm, shuffle from foot to foot, wave at the cars that hoot as they pass. Three hours already. The march through town is next. It’ll be good to move.

It was fraught at first. Despite the friendly tone, there was still a discernible charge of something between the crews that were reporting for duty in uniform, and those that had decided to strike.
‘It’s a question of conscience, mate. You can only do what you think is right.’
Everyone knows it. But this business of being in uniform, or out of it – the difference is more than just clothing.

People have been passing all morning, and we’ve chatted to some. About how the public sector is being throttled, the cost of living going up, the pay freeze, the pension hike. A cameraman arrives in a blacked-out van. He waits until the current shower passes, then wanders over to take mood shots of our flags. We wonder when the interviewer will come over to ask us some questions, but nothing happens. The cameraman gets back in his van. They drive off.
The march from a nearby hospital is due to pass by soon and we’re getting ready to tag along, when a shabby looking guy in a hunting cap and combat trousers, a black bin liner over his shoulder, pauses by the entrance, and makes a show of reading the signs. Then as if something he read there has interested him, he walks up and sets his bin liner on the wet tarmac in front of us.

‘Have you heard of *** (a minor celebrity)?’ he says. ‘Yeah? We used to hang out together. He was a mate of mine. Twenty years ago he was up on a murder charge. Did you read about it? It was in all the papers. I gave him his alibi. I lied for him so he didn’t go to jail. Then a few years later I was in trouble myself and I asked him for a loan. Ten thousand pounds. That’s all it was. Ten thousand pounds to set me straight. And him a millionaire and everything. But he was like he didn’t know me. Couldn’t care less. Set his monkeys on me. And now I haven’t got nothing. What do you think about that, eh?’
Frank folds his arms.
‘Mate – I’m sorry, but this is a picket line. We’re striking about our pensions and jobs. I don’t think this is really the time or the place for all that other stuff.’
The man shrugs his shoulders.
‘Okay. Fair enough.’
He picks up his bin liner and walks off.
I finish my tea and tip the dregs out onto the grass verge.
The hospital crowd is coming down the hill, whistling and hooting. We pick up our flags and join them.
The man with the bin liner watches from the other side of the road.

***

In the middle of town. The protest has swollen now, the tributaries of the smaller marches converging into an impressive river of banners, whistles, drums and chants. People hang out of office windows, wave from doorways, the pavements and shop doorways. The atmosphere is good-natured, accommodating.
A man with unlaced boots, a woollen cap tweaked up into a cone on the back of his head, a rucksack on his back, appears next to me.
‘Smash Macdonald’s windows!’ he shouts. ‘Corporate fascism! Batter the police!’
Then he turns to another protestor and says: ‘I’m an anarchist, me. This is all a bit tame, isn’t it?’
His influence is so unsettling it’s hard to think what to do other than blank him out and pretend he wasn’t there. But before we change our mind and summon the courage to confront him, he scuttles on ahead, lacing through the crowd in a curious, loping kind of crouch.

***

When the march reaches the common I listen to a couple of speeches, then hand my flag to a young kid - ‘Cool! Thanks. That’ll go with my collection! - and make my way back to the car. I sit behind the wheel for a minute or two. Another shower of rain rattles across the roof and windscreen. I let my mind drift across the day, trawling for something definite, some article of faith I could hold on to that was as light and clear and tangible as that flag.

It’s just before one.
I put the news on to hear how things went across the country, and turn the engine over.

out into the square

2011-11-28T18:47:00.000Z

Lena is stretched out on the stairs, having what would at first glance appear to be an epileptic seizure. But there is something about the way her arms and legs drum up and down, her head nods forwards and back, her teeth clench and then release again, that make us think it’s psychogenic.
‘Slow your breathing down, Lena. Nice and slow.’
She still has the phone in her hand; I take it from her, tell the call taker on the other end we’ve arrived, then hang up.
‘Let’s sit you up and see what the problem is, shall we?’
Together we ease her forward. Her shaking subsides, and she seems to find a measure of control again.
‘What’s been going on, Lena?’
She talks in short bursts, snatched from the tics and jerks that still run through her body.
‘I have – a – movement disorder,’ she says. ‘Here – are some – papers.’
She hands us a wad of folded computer sheets, printouts from a website dedicated to neurological problems.
Frank glances over them, but I can tell he’s thinking the same as me: cyberchondriac.
‘I – have an – appointment soon,’ she says as we hand her back the papers.
‘Let’s get you sat more comfortably on a sofa, Lena, then we’ll have more of a chat about all this,’ says Frank. We help her up. It’s noticeable that when her attention is distracted, either by speaking or doing something – even something small, like reaching out to hand us the papers – her twitching subsides. She walks unsteadily though, her slight frame debilitated by months of these episodes.

Once Lena is sitting down on the sofa, she stiffens up and starts to shake again, drumming her legs up and down so the whole laminate floor vibrates, thrashing her arms on the pillows beside her, spasms twisting in her face, squeezing her eyes open and closed. It’s all strangely comprehensive, the kind of thing you might expect if you asked a member of the public to do an impression of a fit. But then, the difference is that their intention would be clearly readable; with Lena, it’s more complicated than this.
Frank carries on talking to distract her attention.
‘Where did you put that appointment letter, Lena?’ he says. ‘It’d help if we could have a read of it.’
She reaches over to the side of the sofa and pulls her handbag across. The letter is inside – a top neurological hospital. The logo stirs a memory – didn’t my father spend some time there? Is that right?
Frank quickly skims the letter then hands it to me. It’s a full account of her condition – a functional problem, with every other possible cause ruled out, from tardive dystonia as a reaction to meds, to a range of tumours and metabolic disorders. She’s being admitted for a course of botulinum injections to dampen down the tremors, and CBT to address the central cause, a complex and unconscious ‘learning’ of inappropriate physical responses to emotional stress.

Eventually Lena calms down to the level of tremors and shakes she normally copes with. There’s nothing more we can do for her other than take her to hospital, but given that her admission to the neurological centre is just days away, she elects to stay at home and self-manage until then.

We see ourselves out.

***

That evening I write an email to mum. I mention the neurological hospital, and ask her if I’m right in thinking Dad had been an in-patient there. Even as I write it I’m not at all sure I could have remembered it correctly. Wouldn’t something as significant as that be more clearly rooted in the family history? Maybe this memory of mine is more like déjà vu, my own kind of processing error – the kind that mistakenly dumps short term scraps straight in the long term file.

But it felt so real.

I send the email.

When mum emails me back she says that yes, Dad had been an in-patient there, back in the fifties. He had woken up one morning unable to move his legs, a paraplegic. Eventually, after lots of tests, they took him up to the neurological hospital for three weeks. A difficult time for her – three toddlers to look after, Dad’s mum sick with cancer, no clear ideas about what was wrong with him, no sense of how long it might last.
‘I suppose he must have had a nervous breakdown, looking back at it. John and Ollie used to drive me over there every day. It was a very difficult time which I’ve tried to forget.’
I immediately want to know every last detail about what happened, but then I don’t want to stir up painful memories. Instead I sit back in the chair and try to imagine what it must have felt like to be Dad, walking again, out onto the steps of the hospital, holding onto Mum’s arm (is that what he did?), looking out across the square. I try to imagine what Mum must have felt like standing next to him, the hospital behind them, the rest of the day, the weeks and months and years ahead, so traumatised they could never speak of it again.

out of it

2011-11-27T13:13:00.000Z

Bernie has fallen out of the loft. She slid down the ladder head first, scrabbling with whatever limb she could to slow her progress, then crash landing on the wooden floor on the point of her elbow to save her face. She got herself up, hobbled downstairs to the kitchen, sat on a chair to get her breath. Her parents phoned for an ambulance.
Frank was first on scene in the car. He put a collar on Bernie, then stood behind her holding her head whilst he waited for us in the truck.

When we come into the kitchen he greets us with his usual shtick.
‘Here they are, the cavalry. Sorry to roust you out of bed, Spence. He’s such a grouch when he doesn’t get his eight hours, Bernie.’
‘Whatever.’
‘So – guys. This is Bernie.’ He tells us the story of Bernie and the Loft.
‘Wow! That’s quite a way to fall.’
‘It’s no biggie. I’ve done it before.’
‘Any neck pain? Back pain? Numbness? Pins and needles?’
Everything checks out, apart from her elbow. But because of the height she fell and the distracting injury, we play safe and go for a full immobilisation.

Ten minutes later she’s trussed up on the floor and we’re ready to go. I’m with Frank at the head end, Rae at the feet.
‘On your call, Frank.’
We’re crouched down, ready to lift.
He starts to count.
‘On three. One.... two...’
The next thing, he’s pitching forwards, head first into Bernie’s lap. I just have time to put out a hand to deflect some of his weight off to the side. I look into his face which is white and slack. ‘Frank? Frank? Are you all right?’
‘Huh?’
He staggers about, but I manage to get him away from Bernie – who apart from a little shriek when he began to go seems incredibly stoical about the whole thing.
‘Jeesh!’ she says, looking upwards with her eyes. ‘This is hysterical.’
‘Are you okay, Frank? What happened?’
‘I – erm – I’m not sure.’
‘Sit down for a minute and get your bearings. Have you got any pain?’
‘No. I’m fine. I think it was a postural.’
‘Let’s get Bernie out to the truck, then we’ll come back for you, Frank. She’s no weight. We can manage just the two of us. Then we’ll get you on board and wire you up.’
‘Sure.’
He sits on the floor with his head in his hands. We carry Bernie out, then whilst I check her over and settle her in, Rae reappears with Frank in tow. She runs through the usual checks. Everything seems fine.
‘He can have the trolley,’ says Bernie, wriggling in her straps. ‘I’m not that fussed.’
‘Are you going to be okay, driving back to base?’ I say to Frank. ‘We can always get someone running.’
‘No. I’ll be fine. I think it was just bending down too suddenly.’
‘Take the rest of the shift off, though. Get some rest.’ I squeeze his shoulder. ‘I’ll write you a note.’
It’s a shock to see him like this, vulnerable, pale, objectified. A patient.
‘Thanks guys,’ he says, ripping off the ECG dots. ‘Sorry to be a pain.’
‘And you’re sure you’re okay to drive back?’
He nods.
‘It wasn’t nearly so exciting last time I fell out of the loft,’ says Bernie, squirming in her collar and blocks. ‘Last time I just got a spoonful of Calpol and a telling off.’

right

2011-11-25T16:23:00.002Z

A key worker buzzes open the door to the lobby. He seems surprised to see us. He leans out on the bottom half of the reception door, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a Snickers bar in the other. A portable TV is playing loudly on a desk behind him; he pushes himself back up, stuffs the rest of the Snickers bar into his mouth, flips the wrapper across the office, then turns the TV down.
‘Just when I was getting into it,’ he says. ‘It’s weird – but pretty good. The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Four hours long, though.
‘I’d rather be transported,’ says Frank, yawning, leaning back against the security glass. ‘But given the current climate, that’s probably on the cards anyway.’
‘Who’ve you come for?’ says the key worker pleasantly, fetching a polythene-covered list from a tray and smoothing it flat on the door ledge in front of him.
‘No name, unfortunately. Room ninety five’s all we have. Twenty six year old female with abdo pain. That’s it.’
He looks over the list.
‘Ingrid,’ he says. ‘Figures. I think she was up the hospital a week ago with K cramps. I’ll take you up there.’
He unhooks a bunch of keys, swings the lower portion of the door open and then locks it behind him.
‘Just to give you a heads up,’ he says, ‘Ingrid’s a sex worker and heroin user. She’s doing her best, but she’s on a last warning at the moment. Just so you know. It might be germane to your cause.’
‘Thanks.’
He leads us up the back stairs to the fourth floor. The hostel is a strip-lit, municipally signed seventies’ accommodation block with a moribund air of chlorine products, cigarettes and damp shoes. With the green paint, alarm consoles, pin boards, extinguishers, posters for activities, emergency hotline adverts, rules and announcements, it feels like an approved foothold on the side of a dreadful decline.
‘Here we are.’
The key worker knocks on ninety five and opens it with his key.
‘Ingrid? The paramedics.’
He steps aside and waves us in.
Ingrid’s room is lit by a desk lamp on the floor. A clutter limited only by the size of the holdall it spilled out of, lies strewn across a plain wooden chair and the open door of a closet. Ingrid is sitting on an unmade bed, with a laptop, a pack of cigarettes and a pack of baby wipes next to her. She is a pretty woman, frail and pinched. In her shot blue silk nightdress and white towelling robe, she has a strangely abstracted look about her, a socialite who lost her way to the bathroom and ended up in a flophouse. She ignores the fact that we have come into the room, and carries on staring down at the mobile in her hand.
‘Hello Ingrid. I’m Spence. This is Frank. What’s been going on tonight?’
She looks up slowly, without expression. Absently, as if her free hand belonged to someone else, she starts kneading her tummy and rocking forwards gently.
‘Ingrid? It’s the ambulance. How can we help?’
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she says, her voice as delicate and indistinct as the trail of glitter above her right eye.
‘Do you have any pain?’
‘What’s wrong with me?’ she says again, then looks back down at the phone.
‘Ingrid? Try to tell us what the problem is. I understand you have some abdominal pain. Is that right?’
She stands up, turns her back on us and walks over to the other side of the room.
‘Ingrid?’
The phone lights up. She puts it to her ear, seems to lose the call, then fiddles around with the buttons to get it back.
‘Ingrid? We’ve come here to help you. But we can’t do anything until you tell us what the problem is. Can you come and sit down again and we’ll see what’s going on? Ingrid?’
She drifts back to the bed and sits down again.
‘Okay. So do you have pain in your tummy?’
She nods.
‘Can you point to where it hurts the most?’
She squeezes the middle of her abdomen again and leans forward.
‘What will you do?’ she whispers.
‘What I suggest is we go down to the ambulance and have a look at you there. We can do a few checks, and then run you up to the hospital so you can see a doctor. You’re obviously in some pain. Ingrid? Will you do that, Ingrid?’
She stares at her phone.
‘Come on, Ingrid. Let’s get a bag together – your keys, money, phone.’
But she ignores me, flicking through the contacts on her phone. If we left or stayed, it would make no difference to her.
‘Ingrid?’
‘Okay,’ she says, and stands up.
‘Good! You don’t need much. Here are your keys, look. So let’s go.’
To say she follows us out of the room is to overstate the way she moves. It’s an abstracted thing, a dream of movement. If there was a heat sensor up there instead of a security camera, it would pick up three blurry red shapes and something else, something trailing behind, a wraith-like ripple of blue sliding along the corridor.

She stops when we get outside.
‘I’m not going to hospital,’ she says, and wraps her dressing gown around her.
‘Come on, Ingrid. You’ve got this far. I really think you should come with us and get checked out.’
A car pulls up. A dented silver Micra with the backseats flat beneath a dump of possessions. The driver, a pouchy middle aged man in a black suit gets out and stands with one hand on the door and the other on the roof. Ingrid slips her phone away into her pocket and walks over to him.
‘Ingrid?’
But she doesn’t look back. She opens the front passenger door and gets in. The man doesn’t even acknowledge us. He sits back behind the wheel and they drive off, both looking straight ahead.
‘So what d’you reckon?’ says Frank, folding his arms. ‘Right or left at the end of the road?’
They turn right.

life on earth

2011-11-24T17:40:00.002Z

Alan is waiting for us by the taxi rank, leaning on a cab window chatting to the driver, a grim faced man whose abstracted image is trapped in the glass of his windscreen, staring straight ahead, both hands on the wheel, engine running. Alan looks smarter than normal. In his PVC leather-style bomber jacket, starched white shirt and chinos, Ferrari cap and white trainers, a visitor from outer space who based his earthly disguise on a bad seventies cop show. When he sees us pull onto the forecourt, he taps the cabbie on the arm, straightens up and strides over.
‘It’s Alan,’ I say to Frank.
‘Uh huh.’
I climb out of the cab.
‘Hello Alan,’ I say.
He walks with curious, bobbing little movements, like an alien adjusting to new gravitational environments, with trainers made of sponge.
‘Hello,’ he says. ‘I was assaulted.’
‘Let’s have a chat on the back, then.’
I lead him on board.
‘So what happened?’
‘I was in this club, yeah? When this guy, yeah? He threw this plastic cup at me and it hit me here, on the back of the head. And now I can’t move my neck. It’s gone all numb. And my arms and legs feel weird. So what I did, yeah? I drank a double JD and coke – a Jack Daniels. A double. Straight off – like this. To numb the pain, yeah?’
‘And how long ago did this happen, Alan? Given that it’s now half past four in the morning?’
‘I don’t know. An hour?’
‘A plastic cup?’
‘Yeah. He threw it, and it hit me here, right in the back of the neck.’
‘Well I can’t see anything there, Alan.’
‘What d’you mean?’
He has that affronted slack about his face, an expression I’ve seen on him every one of the half dozen times I’ve seen him this year. His brown eyes narrow, drawing a flush of temper up over his jaw line to pulse at the bulb of his nose. ‘What are you going to do?’ he says.
I pause, and in that moment the weight of the long night shift rings around the shell of the ambulance as hard and blue-black as the morning.
‘It’s up to you, Alan,’ I manage to say. ‘If you want to go to hospital, we’ll happily take you. But if you’re complaining of neck pain, we’ll have to put you in a collar and immobilise you on the stretcher.’
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t go?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the patient. You’re the only one who can say how you feel.’
‘You think I’m making this up?’
I fold my arms, cross my legs, lean forwards and support myself there. It’s comfortable. I could sleep like this for a thousand years. You could dry me out and put me in a glass case. Put me on display with all the other mummies. So long as I didn’t have to do anything.
‘Do you remember the last time we met, Alan?’
‘What?’
‘It was about the same time of day. Dawn, I think. Over at the fish market. You were on your bike. You said you’d had a crash and you’d hurt your neck.’
‘I remember.’
‘The police were there, do you remember? You got really cross. They took you in the back of the car. But then they got another call, and let you out again a little bit further up the road.’
He stands up.
‘What do you want?’ he says.
‘I’m in your hands, Alan. It’s very simple. If you want to go to hospital, we’ll take you to hospital. So, Alan – do you want to go to hospital?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You don’t have to go, Alan. You can just go home and rest.’
‘You tell me.’
‘Yes or no, Alan? Do you want to go to hospital?’
He stands up, pulls his cap more firmly down on his head, turns and jumps off the ambulance.
‘You’re useless,’ he says. ‘You don’t do nothing.’
‘Go home and rest, Alan. Where’s your bike?’
But he doesn’t answer. He backs away from the ambulance, and stands watching from a little way off. When I close the cab door it nips off his curses.
I settle into the seat, and push the button to call Control.
The taxi moves off from the rank, but I can’t see anyone in the back.

technical assistance

2011-11-21T15:18:00.000Z

Mrs Randall is sitting on the carpet, leaning back against an Ercol sofa, her legs in an outstretched V. She looks up at me as I come in to the lounge.
‘I hadn’t fastened the strap on my slipper,’ she says. ‘I’m all right, but I just can’t get up.’
I’m on my own, but the heaviest thing about her is probably that tartan skirt. I lift her up and help her into the nearest chair.
‘Not that one,’ she says, dabbling her feet on the carpet, something like the dance seagulls do when they’re teasing up worms. ‘That one’
I guide her over to a chair of exactly the same height. She sighs when I lower her into it, and places both hands on the table.
‘Now what do you want?’ she says.
‘I just need to get a few details.’
‘What?’
‘I say I just need to get a few details.’
‘You say what?’
We look at each other.
‘Do you have a hearing aid?’
‘What?’
‘DO YOU HAVE A HEARING AID?’
Every time I talk, her eyes drop down to look at my mouth, and her jaw bobs up and down. It’s disconcerting. I feel like a crazy ventriloquist shouting at his dummy.
‘Here,’ she says at last, scrabbling about under a pile of papers and drawing out a lump of misshapen pink plastic. She licks her index finger and thumb, moistens two prominences, then shakily raises it up to her left ear.
‘Just a minute,’ she says, scrunching up her face as she screws the thing into place. ‘There!’
I expect to hear the usual squeal as it comes alive, but nothing happens.
‘Is it working?’
‘Do what y’say?’
‘IS IT..... I DON’T THINK IT’S WORKING.’
‘It’s not working,’ she says, pulling it out again and dumping it back down on the table. ‘The battery’s gone ‘orf.’
She starts trying to open up the battery compartment, but I tap her gently on the arm and take it from her.
‘ALLOW ME,’ I say.
‘Don’t break it.’
‘I won’t.’
There is a fluted glass ashtray amongst the clutter on the table. In it, amongst the paperclips, pennies and drawing pins, a spare battery. I put that next to the aid, then carefully prise open the hatch. It’s stiffer than I expected. I change my grip, apply a little more force – the hatch flips off completely, and the battery that was inside pings off across the room.
‘Let me do it!’ says Mrs Randall, rising about an inch off her chair in alarm.
‘Perhaps you’d better.’
She takes the hearing aid in one hand and holds it up to her face. ‘What have you done?’ she says, putting her left eye right up to the tiny interior.
‘It’s okay. It just needs a new battery putting in.’
She doesn’t say anything, but flicks her eyes to me without moving her head.
‘I hope you haven’t broken it,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
I slide the ashtray towards her. She dabbles around, but her fingers are so gnarled and thickened with arthritis it’s like watching someone trying to pick up a pea with a hand of bananas.
‘I can do it’ I say to her.
‘What?’
‘I SAY – I CAN DO IT. I’LL BE MORE CAREFUL.’
‘Don’t break it,’ she says. ‘I haven’t got another.’
I take it back from her.
It’s a horribly old specimen. The mechanism for loading the battery is a strange affair – a flimsily constructed hatch like a hinged J, that carries the battery down into a compartment that doesn’t appear to have any terminals to receive it.
‘Just put the battery in the little door and close it. That’s all you’ve got to do,’ she says. ‘It’s not difficult.’
‘This way round?’
‘Do what?’
‘THIS WAY ROUND?’ I shout, carefully placing the battery in the door and offering it up to her.
‘The other way’ she says. ‘I’d better do it.’
‘No, no. You’re all right.’
‘What?’
I give her the thumbs up with my other hand, carefully turn the battery over in the little hatch, then gently close it. As soon as it’s shut, there’s an ominous rattle. I hand it back to Mrs Randall.
‘There’
She frowns, sensing my anxiety, but doesn’t say anything. She licks her thumb and forefinger again, wets the two prominences, screws the aid into her ear. She looks at me for a full minute.
‘Is it working?’ I say.
‘Do what?’
I raise my eyebrows and wait a second or two longer.
‘It’s not working,’ she says. ‘What have you done?’
She takes out the hearing aid and puts it on the table.
I undo the little hatch and look inside.
‘It’s not seated properly,’ I say. ‘I’LL GIVE IT ANOTHER GO.’
‘I knew I should’ve done it,’ she says.
But the battery will not come out. I shake it, tap it, prod it with the point of a pin. I make a probe with a tiny roll of tape and try to drag it into position. I use the tip of a knife, a canula. I try forceps. I rattle it, shake it, drum on it with my fingers. I lie back in the chair so I’m almost horizontal, and like a mechanic lying beneath the smallest pink car in the world, I coax the reluctant battery with infinitesimally patient movements to come to the hatch in such a way that it will drop out and let me try again.
‘I’ll get a needle,’ says Mrs Randall, dragging her three wheeler towards her chair and shuffling off to the kitchenette.
I rattle it, flick it, vibrate it, make little circular hopping movements in the air.
‘Come on. Come on.’
I hear Mrs Randall digging around in a kitchen drawer. ‘I hope you haven’t broken it,’ she says. ‘That’s the only one I’ve got.’
Just as I turn to look at her, and for no apparent reason, the battery drops out into my lap.
‘Yes!’
I retrieve the battery from where I caught it between my knees. But when I look back at the hearing aid, I see a tiny little blue and white wire with a microscopic gold terminal hanging out of the opening.
I put it back on the table with the battery, and sit upright.
Mrs Randall comes back from the kitchenette, both hands gripping onto her three wheeler, a fat bamboo knitting needle poking out from the left.
‘This any good?’ she says, stopping at the edge of the carpet.
But even from over there she can read from my posture and comedy wince that something unspeakable has happened. She sighs, then guides her three-wheeler towards me like a tank.

mandy's cat

2011-11-16T11:30:00.000Z

‘I could break the code.’
‘What code’s that then, Mandy?’
‘The street code. The code of honour. I could break the code and blow this city apart. I know every dealer, every smack head, prostitute, bent police. I know where they work, I know where they live. I could take you right there. I could solve every fucking crime that’s ever been committed in this dump if I wanted to.’
‘Okay. But first let’s sort out the cat.’

***

Eight o’clock in the morning. The plane trees along the street have dumped most of their leaves now; the dark pollarded stumps bristling with shoots make them seem like filter feeding animals at high tide, dragging their filaments in the run of air above the houses.
Mandy is sitting in the back of a patrol car with a tabby cat on her lap. Mandy is as strung out as the cat is inert; it sleeps peacefully, accepting the bangle-jangling strokes of its mistress.
‘I aint doing nothing without my cat.’
‘She can’t go up the hospital though, Mandy,’ says the police officer. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we dropped her back indoors?’
‘What do you care? You weren’t there when I needed you. You didn’t answer my call.’
‘We responded as soon as we heard you were in trouble, Mandy. I don’t know about the other time – let’s talk about that later and focus on what’s happened just now.’
‘Like you fucking care.’
‘We do care, Mandy. We’ve arrested someone; we’re here with you, and we’ve got three other units working on the case. I think that shows a reasonable level of commitment.’
‘A reasonable level of commitment,’ she spits, and strokes the cat a little harder.
I’m standing by the open door of the patrol car.
‘Mandy? Come on. Let’s put the cat back in the flat and get you on the ambulance.’
When she talks she looks up and off to the side, her face slack. There’s a hostility to her, something hard and bitten down, as if she had spent years fighting something so terrible it could never be looked at straight. In her white cowboy boots, buckskin skirt and plaid blouse, she has the raddled look of a rodeo girl ten years too long on the circuit.
I squat by the open door. ‘Just tell me what happened again.’
‘He held a knife to my throat, yeah? He punched me unconscious, kicked me out cold. So I chased him outside and followed him back to his place.’
‘That’s the flat we attended,’ says the police officer. ‘The flat where you were staying. Is that right, Mandy?’
She nods, strokes the cat a little harder, then flares again.
‘Like you were there when I needed you. I had a knife to my throat, yeah? They cut me – look. They beat me bad – here, here, here. Like you fucking care.’
The only sign of trauma I can see on Mandy are three cat-like stripes on her forearm.
‘Let’s get the cat back indoors and then check you over properly,’ I say to her again. ‘You don’t have to come to the hospital with us, but if you don’t it’s against our advice.’
‘I’ll come,’ she says, passing me out the cat, smiling in its sleep as if it were dreaming of flying with all four paws hanging down. ‘No thanks to the fucking police. And I don’t want her coming with me, neither.’

***

On the ambulance travelling in to hospital. Mandy is sitting on a side seat, digging around in her handbag or biting her nails, one bare and mottled leg crossed over on the other, a cowboy boot tapping in mid-air, kicking the trolley from time to time. She ignores my questions, but uses them instead as bizarre points of connection to a shapeless and general misfortune. The police officer – a colleague of the first, a woman who has been sitting on the seat behind Mandy with a look of emotional ballast about her - sighs and folds her arms.
Mandy snaps her head round.
‘Just ‘cos you know me doesn’t give you the right to judge me,’ she spits.
‘No one’s judging anyone, Mandy. Just answer the paramedic’s questions, can you? We’re all here to help.’
Mandy turns back again.
‘Fucking police,’ she says. ‘Only get involved when it suits. I know how things are. You think you know it all but you don’t know nothing. I could tell you stuff but I wouldn’t dirty myself. I wouldn’t piss on you.’
‘And mind your language,’ says the police officer
Mandy stares off to a spot just beyond my right shoulder. Her volatility is a strange thing. It’s not that she calms down so much as she suddenly forgets what it is she’s angry about, and drifts on.
‘You’re a paramedic,’ she says softly. ‘You know about suicide, right?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘My mum died,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah. Well. Not as sorry as me.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘Drink and drugs. Do you think it was suicide?’
‘I don’t know. It depends whether she meant to do it or not. Do you think she did?’
She shrugs.
‘Did she leave a note?’
‘Yeah.’
Then as if she had suddenly remembered why she was sitting there, she tips back her head.
‘He cut me. He held a fucking knife to my throat. Here.’
I lean in. But there’s no sign of anything at all.
She lowers her head again, gives a little shiver, then begins to unbuckle her seatbelt.
The police officer sits up.

basic obs

2011-11-12T21:40:00.000Z

We had found Rachel collapsed in a shop doorway, her legs folded beneath her in an uncomfortable, zigzag way, like something heavy had been dropped on her shoulders. She was moaning softly, rocking backwards and forwards, pushing her face into her hands, her long black hair hanging straight down so I had to hook it aside to look at her. Once we had Rachel on board the ambulance the extent of her distress became clear: extremely high blood pressure, a searing, left-sided headache that travelled back into her neck, numbness in her extremities, visual disturbance. We made her as comfortable as we could and rushed her in.

***

At the hospital a little later, Caroline, one of the nurses, walks out of the department to have a cigarette. Seeing us leaning up against the railings, she pauses to light it, takes a long pull, then comes over to join us.
‘So,’ she says, leaning back, draping her left arm across her stomach to support the elbow of the right. ‘At what point did you find out Rachel was a transsexual?’
‘So she is! I thought she was. But I wasn’t a hundred percent certain, and it’s not the kind of thing you want to get wrong. It was all such a rush.’
Caroline nods and taps off some ash.
‘Take it from me. Transsexual.’
She blows out more smoke and obliterates the moon.
‘Was it a bleed?’
‘Sub-arachnoid.’
‘Bad?’
‘Bad enough. But I’ve seen worse. They’re taking her up to neuro in a minute.’
She leans forwards, laughs suddenly, then settles back down against the railings. She smokes hungrily; the cigarette crackles. Another ambulance rolls up the slope. It flashes its lights at us.
‘At least you’ve got the excuse it was dark,’ she says. ‘I had no idea, even when I was doing the ECG. I said “Is there any chance you might be pregnant?” “It’s unlikely” she said. Then she pulled her gown up and showed me her penis. “Oh” I said. “I think you’re probably right” But honestly – apart from the package, you’d never have guessed.’
She flicks her stub away in the direction of the oxygen stack.
‘And I’ll see you girls later,’ she says, and strides back inside.

basement horror

2011-11-11T20:22:00.001Z

In the mid-nineteenth century, the terrace in Aspern Road was put up to take the workers on the railway that was cutting in across town at the top. The railway is still there – a quieter, commuter-driven line – but the road has grown in stature. Now, the terrace sits back and up from it, a decrepit, ad-hoc levee, the whole thing threatening at any moment to lose its foundation and pitch face first into the traffic. One more passing truck and the whole thing’ll go - the rubbish bags and buckled bikes, the dried out window boxes, the no hawkers or canvassers signs, the peeling railings and buddleia bushes – the whole, red-bricked ruin of it crashing down into the road. And as the last satellite dish disappears downstream, a metro supermarket will sprout in the gap.

Edward is lying in bed in his basement flat, pale and oversized, like a subterranean urban grub. The room is green, a cavern at low tide, its wallpaper bubbled and spotted with mould. There is a miniature set of three shelves on the wall above the headboard, holding a battered Bambi figurine, a discoloured photo in a pewter frame and a snowman cake ornament, its yellowing face turned inwards to smile at the portrait. The facing wall is a shrine to the Spice Girls, a spread of posters and photographs, the brash poses of the women eerily out of place in the gloom.
‘It hurts’ he says, then yawns, stump-toothed.
‘Show me.’
He pulls back his t-shirt.
Edward has a stoma. The plastic circular patch of it riding on a kind of gross abdominal hump that bulges out like the head of something pressing against the skin to listen. The stoma site looks infected.
‘We need to take you in, Edward,’ I say to him. ‘Can you walk?’
He nods and yawns again.
‘I’ll call my cousin about the budgie,’ he says. Then stares at me, awaiting direction.

boxes

2011-11-10T15:04:00.000Z

Through the band of shaded glass along the top of the windscreen, the moon is a tarnished penny, but Venus hangs clear beneath it. Maybe it’ll come down. Maybe it’ll land here soon, touchdown in that back garden, nuzzle in to a heap of leaves and sit there, shivering its light through the hedges, the greenhouse glass and cucumber stems, along concrete slabs and the ribbed backs of slugs, through a stand of bins, the spokes of a rusted bike, the handle of a fork buried in a heap of leaves, to the upstairs window, and the cautious pulling aside of a curtain.
‘Here they come.’
A police car crawls up the road and comes to a stop where our patient lives. Frank puts our lights on and drives the short distance over to join them.
Two police officers, one as short as the other is tall, stand by the gate that leads round the side to the garden.
‘If I have to come back to this guy one more time...’ says the small one. The tall one has his hands buried deep in the armholes of his stab vest and looks down on us all with no comment.
‘We’ve been called because he’s taken an overdose,’ I tell him, holding the gate open for Frank.
‘Sounds about right.’
‘And he’s living in a shed?’
‘Yep.’
We each use a torch, except the tall police officer, who lights his way with five hundred watts of disdain.
At the bottom of the garden is a shiplap tool shed, the felt roof adrift and hanging down, chicken wire over a plastic sheet window and a muffled voice talking on a mobile coming from under the door.
The small police officer pushes open the door.
‘Hello? Malcolm?’
Malcolm is sitting bunched up on a dirty mattress.
‘Yes. They’re here now. I’ll say bye bye, then. Bye bye.’
He finishes the call and then shields his eyes as he looks up.

***

Malcolm sits on the ambulance seat and stares at me as I go through the paperwork. A middle aged man as derelict and malodorous as the shed he’s been sleeping in.
‘A lot of boxes,’ he says, folding his arms and settling back in the chair.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
He rolls his face back over his gums like a contestant in a gurning competition.
‘So. Malcolm. Have you done anything like this before?’
‘Like what before?’
‘Taken an overdose.’
‘Oh yes. Lots of times. And hung myself. And walked into the sea.’
‘Okay. And tonight – did you take this overdose to hurt yourself?’
‘Me? I just wanted to end it all – you know, the usual. Dad died this year.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I went to prison. When I came out I moved back in with mum. But we don’t get on, really. We row a lot. She says she doesn’t want me in the house, so I’ve been sleeping in the shed.’
‘Isn’t that difficult?’
‘What? Sleeping in a shed?’
‘Well – with your mum in the house the other side of the garden?’
‘It’s all right. I sneak out in the early hours, and then back in again at night. But sometimes she comes down the garden and we have a row. She says I don’t understand this and that. I don’t understand how much she loved my dad. He may have beaten her now and again but she’s lost without him and what have I ever done? That kind of thing. She goes back in. You know.’
He leans over and frowns at the clipboard.
‘Where’s the box for that?’ he says.

behind the mirror

2011-11-07T13:00:00.000Z

Mr Ellis is waiting for us in the driveway of his house, his soft, elderly frame picked out against the darkness by the flare of a halogen porch light. He stands completely still, his arms straight down by his sides, a garden statue dressed in a knitted jumper and slacks. He doesn’t say anything as we walk quickly towards him, but turns on the spot and leads us through the entrance at the side of the house. We follow him into a broad kitchen-dining room, everything set for dinner, a cooking clutter of saucepans neatly stacked in the sink, two plates of partially-eaten food either side of a sweetly laid table. But the domestic scene is ominously undercut by the bleep-bleep-bleep of a defib metronome through an open door at the far end.
‘She’s in the hallway,’ says Mr Ellis. ‘Is she dead?’
‘We’ll just go and check with our colleagues, then I’ll come straight back out and tell you what’s happening. Are you okay out here for a minute, Mr Ellis? I know this is very upsetting for you.’
‘I’m all right. Do what you can.’
Out in the hall the first crew on scene have been working for three or four minutes. Mrs Ellis is lain out between them, her blouse and bra cut down the middle and spread left and right, a tube tied off in her throat, a cannula in her arm, two pads on her chest, as fallen and exposed as a vivisected angel.
‘This is Mary. Eighty years old. Haven’t got a PMH yet, but fit and active. Was out doing some kind of community work, came home for dinner. Half way through she got up saying she felt breathless. Came out to the loo, was gone a while. Her husband heard her cry out. Found her collapsed. Dragged her out into the hall, phoned us. Was doing some CPR when we got here. So down about ten, I’d say. We’ve been going – how long is it? – six. Asystole throughout.’
Frank stays to help whilst I go back into the kitchen to talk to Mr Ellis.
‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ he says.
‘I’m afraid so. Mary’s heart has stopped working. We’re doing everything we can to get it going again. We’re breathing for her, and giving her all the drugs and techniques we know of to keep her alive.’
‘I see. Thank you.’
‘And you know – the team with Mary now are about the best you could get. If there’s anything at all that can be done, they’re the ones to do it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Have a seat, Mr Ellis. John, isn’t it? I need to ask you a few questions, John. To help my colleagues. I’m sorry to have to ask you these things at a time like this, but it might help.’
‘Fire away.’
We run through Mary’s medical history, how she’d been that day, her medications. He tells me that apart from a few minor aches and pains, she’d been perfectly fit. She’d come home to have dinner, and was due to go back out to her next call.
‘I’d better ring Mrs Napier and tell her she’ll be late,’ he says. He pauses as he picks the phone up, frowns, gives his head a little shake, then dials the number.
I go back out into the hall to get an update.
A plain, oval mirror - the kind you might check before leaving the front door – has been taken off the wall, and the picture hook used to hang up a bag of fluids.
Frank checks the timing on the defib, preps some more syringes. They swap around, the bagging, the compressions. There’s a settled, hopeless look to the whole scenario.
Back in the kitchen, John is leafing through a notebook.
‘So many people to ring,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Have you any relatives in the area who could be with you?’
‘My son’s on the way. He should be here in about an hour.’
‘Anyone sooner than that?’
‘He’ll be here in an hour.’
‘Okay. Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?’ I ask.
‘No. Thank you.’ He puts the notebook down and looks around.
‘We were just having dinner, you see,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
He pauses, and the beeps from the metronome measure out the length of it.

poppy

2011-11-02T14:01:00.002Z

Mr Neuberg stands in the doorway of his house, clutching a heavy blue cardigan around him like the figure for anxiety in the psychiatric version of a weather clock.
‘Come in, guys. Come in. I’m so sorry to call you but I was cold and shivering and I just couldn’t warm up. So I started to panic – I know I was panicking – I shouldn’t do it but it just got ahead of me. I’ve taken my medication but look at me! And I feel so cold. And clammy. Feel me! Look. Could the medication do that? Or maybe I have an infection? I took my temperature and it’s low. Thirty-five it said. That’s hypothermia, isn’t it? Can you have an infection and not a temperature? I don’t know these things. I just don’t know. My god. I’m sorry but I couldn’t cope. My girlfriend’ll kill me. Close the door. The rabbits.’
‘Rabbits?’
‘In there.’
He nods towards the front room where two tiny rabbits are busily inspecting the back wheel of a bicycle.
Two weeks ago I would have had no idea, but now I’m able to say with some authority: ‘Holland Lops?’
Mr Neuberg grimaces.
‘Holland lops? Dwarf Lops!’
He hurries on ahead, squats down at the bottom of the staircase and hugs his knees. A quivering gantry of a man, he tucks himself up into as small a space as possible, rocking a little backwards and forwards. On the wall to the side of the staircase is a giant canvas – a still life of sweet jars on a chequered tablecloth. On the opposite wall, a toy moose head. The eyes on the moose are small and dark and glassy with a hint of a spiral twist – much like Mr Neuberg’s.
‘You won’t tell my girlfriend, will you? Please. She’ll kill me.’
‘No. But let’s worry about that in a minute. Just tell us what’s happened today.’
‘Just lately I haven’t been getting much sleep. Or eating. I haven’t been eating. I lost my appetite and I shed seventeen pounds. Look at my arms. Look at that. They used to be out here, but now this. Some of that’s thyroid, I know. And I’m due some investigations for – you know. And that’s a worry. But I’m active. I move around a lot. Which is probably just as well because the house is so damned cold. Does it feel cold to you? I think it’s really cold. My girlfriend doesn’t think so. She won’t have the heating on during the day. She says it’s not the time of year. But I don’t know. What do you think? So anyway. I was sitting at my computer and I started to freeze up. My hands. My face. I got the shivers and shakes. So I put on loads of jumpers and t-shirts – layers, you know? I went for a walk in the sunshine. But nothing made any difference. I just could not get warm. So I started to think something was the matter. And I know I shouldn’t but I couldn’t help it and I just got more and more anxious. I couldn’t break out of it, which is when I called you guys. And I’m so sorry ‘cos I know you’ve got better things to do with your time and I do appreciate you coming out. But please don’t tell my girlfriend about this. Please. She’ll kill me.’
‘Let’s do a few checks, get a few details, then think about what to do next. Okay?’
‘Sure. I’m in your hands. You’re the experts.’
I get out my thermometer. When I put it into his ear Mr Neuberg frowns and swivels his eyes in that direction.
‘It goes in your ear? The one I got goes in your mouth. Look. I only bought it the other day. It cost eight pounds, so it should be accurate. It said thirty-five degrees. What’s yours say?’
I show him the little screen.
‘Thirty-seven? But that’s normal, isn’t it?’
‘Yep. Bang on normal.’
‘Mine said thirty-five. Look. I’ll show you.’
He pops it into his mouth and opens his eyes wide, as if he were trying to inflate a very thin balloon. I take advantage of him being still to take his blood pressure.
‘Normal,’ I say, folding the cuff back up.
Mr Neuberg takes out the thermometer.
‘What did I tell you. Thirty-six. Well – it’s gone up a bit but it’s still low. And you’re saying thirty-seven?’
I shrug.
He looks at his thermometer, gives it a shake, like an old mercury model, then looks at it again.
‘That’s going back,’ he says.
Suddenly the phone rings on the step next to him. Mr Neuberg leaps up and looks at it in horror. He leans in, checks the number on the receiver, blanches, carefully picks it up, then just before he presses the answer button, sights us both along the bony blade of his nose and raises his index finger in the manner of a Judge commanding silence. Only then - when he’s absolutely certain we have understood what’s expected of us - only then does Mr Neuberg answer.
‘Hi Poppy.’
His voice is completely changed. The hyper-anxious patter of the last five minutes has been replaced by the sweetly insipid tone of a man calling home in his lunch break.
‘What? No – I was in the bathroom. Yeah, I’m fine. How’re you? .... No – I ate already. Yeah - I finished off that salad. With some crisps and the rest of that seedy bloomer. I wasn’t all that hungry. Who? Oh - yeah – y’know. Fine. Fine.... No, I won’t.... I won’t....’
He holds his finger up and frowns at us again, as if he thinks we’re becoming restless.
‘Okay, Poppy? I’ve got to go. What? No – you know. The usual. Okay, Hun? Yeah. Okay? Love you. Love you too. Take care. Oh – and Poppy? Could you get some pellets on the way home? Okay? Thanks sweetheart. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye.’
Very gently he squeezes the phone off, then deflates about an inch.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘That was Poppy.’

true story

2011-10-31T17:46:00.007Z

Shortly after starting in the job I was sent on relief to work with Charlie, an old paramedic in a station the other side of town. A crotchety piece of work with a crumpled, disappointed look to him. I remember his face, waxy as a burned out candle.
It was a quiet start. I watched telly; Charlie read an old book, sighing every now and then.
It was going to be a long night.
Eventually we copped a job, a smoke inhalation down in Whitby Street. Fire brigade attending. Even though he was a lardy old duffer Charlie seemed to move pretty quick. He was in the cab waiting for me with his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest.
‘You drive,’ he said.
When we got there we found a woman in the house on her own with two kids. Seemed pretty freaked – said she could smell burning, something electrical, but she’d been all through the house and not found a thing. That’s when she’d called the brigade, and we’d been sent along as standard.
We had a quick look round. I say we. Charlie just stood there in the cellar - a nice enough kitchen conversion, lots of beech and pine - kind of drinking it in. But I was keen then. I wanted to do stuff. I couldn’t smell anything, and to be honest I thought maybe she was having a bit of an episode. To humour her, though, I had a good nose around, upstairs and down. Nothing. Back down in the kitchen, Charlie was still standing exactly as before, almost asleep on his feet.
Great, I thought. Brilliant.
The fire brigade arrived. Three hulking great uniforms coming down the stairs. I told them the story and they took it all very seriously. The Captain sent the Under Captain back to the truck to get a bit of kit – an infrared heat sensor.
‘If it’s electrical, it could be in a cavity behind a wall,’ he said.
Your man came hurrying back downstairs with the sensor – a camera-like thing in the middle of a steering wheel. The Captain held it out and started wandering round, steering himself as he looked through the lens, examining walls and floors and what have you.
‘I’m afraid I can’t find a thing,’ he said to the woman. ‘Maybe it’s coming in from the sewers outside. We’ll go out and check.’
Just before they went back upstairs I asked if I could have a look at the sensor. I’ve always liked kit.
‘Knock yourself out,’ he said.
So I took the sensor in my hands and began steering the lens around the kitchen. The flare from the Aga. Hot spots around water pipes. The woman and her children, hugging each other like beautiful lava people by the cold blue of the kitchen table.
And then I came to Charlie.
Held the sensor there a moment.
Looked over the top of it to check
Pointed it back.
I pointed it straight at him.
And there was nothing. There was nothing there at all.
I lowered the sensor.
He was standing there, like before.
Only this time he was smiling.

straight to voicemail

2011-10-25T17:07:00.002Z

On summer nights the beach is spotted with little fires, groups of drinkers, dancers by moonlight, dogs in the water, couples dreaming at the strandline – a soft panorama of beach life running out into the dark from the shouts and the racing neon lights of the pier. But the summer has gone now; the pier closes early, the night is thick and dark, and a sharp wind is blowing in off the sea. Only the breakers stand out in the gloom, rough ribs of foam tumbling in with a roar.
‘There!’
Half way out across the shingle, a huddle of people faintly illuminated with a rectangle of light.
‘Whatever sort of torch is that?’
A little closer, and we can distinguish a huddle of three people kneeling, squatting and standing around a figure lying between them. The standing one is leaning in above the others, lighting the scene with his laptop. A couple of them have taken off their jackets to wrap around the patient. They’re relieved to see us.
As Frank checks the patient – conscious, breathing – a young woman gives us her account.
‘He was standing right at the water’s edge. I thought it was a bit odd, because his feet were getting wet and he didn’t seem bothered. Then he started running up and down, shouting – I don’t know what, I couldn’t really hear – and he started tearing his clothes off and throwing them down. By the time everyone caught up with me he’d stripped down to his boxers and run into the water. He was screaming and crying and thrashing around in the waves for a bit. Then he fell over, went under for a minute but not any longer. And that’s when Billy pulled him out.’
‘I’m okay. I’m okay,’ says Billy, pre-empting a fuss. His hair is spiky and wet.
‘Anyone know his name?’
‘No – but we retrieved his clothes and there’s a phone in his pocket.’
Frank sits back on his heels.
‘There’s nothing obviously wrong with him. He’s deliberately keeping his eyes shut, though – don’t know why. We need to get him on the truck, get him warmed up and have a better look in the light. Let’s get him in the chair and be off.’
‘We’ll help you carry him.’
‘Great.’
Everyone working together makes light work of loading the patient onto the chair and carrying him up the shingle beach to the promenade.
‘We’ll take it from here,’ says Frank. ‘Thanks for your help.’ The man shuts his laptop, they swap jackets around so they’re back to normal, and wave as we haul the patient up the steps to the ambulance.
On the truck, we can find nothing obviously wrong with him. But although he’s conscious, he still refuses to co-operate, flopping his arm out in the grand style.
I flip through his iPhone contacts and come across ICE – In Case of Emergency. A man’s name, and a number.
‘Shall I call it?’
‘Call it.’
‘Or shall I let the hospital take care of it?’
‘Call it.’
Straight to voicemail.

what he'll say

2011-10-22T20:27:00.000Z

Ellen is waiting for us in the bedroom, so ravaged by cancer, her body so cadaverous, you would think a thousand year old woman had risen from the tomb, put on a fluffy white towelling bathrobe, and sat herself down at the dressing table to reapply her make-up. The skin of her face is tight across her skull, jaundiced and papery, her dry lips drawn back from teeth which seem too big for her head. She sits serenely, blessed by Zomorph, smiling on her family - her husband in a wheelchair, her daughter sitting on the bed, her son-in-law in the hallway, letting us in. We step inside and introduce ourselves.
She’s ready to go, her medications, clothes and things in two bright green plastic bags and a small, black wheeled suitcase with a handle. The daughter wants to travel with her in the ambulance, but Ellen says no, she’d rather they all followed in the car. They watch as we carry her out and make her comfortable on the trolley, then turn back inside to get ready to follow.

***

‘I’m sorry the ambulance rocks about so much, Ellen.’
‘Oh don’t worry about that, darling. They don’t make them comfortable because they don’t want people to like riding in them. But I don’t mind. I don’t mind a bit. So long as I’ve got someone to talk to and a hand to hold, I’m all right.’
‘I liked that photo in your bedroom, the one with the dog.’
‘Barney? Oh I miss Barney. He was a lovely dog. Lovely.’
‘What was he? An English Bull terrier?’
‘No! He was just a scrap of a thing – a Jack Russell! He just pushed his nose up against the camera and ended up looking bigger than he was. But he always was like that. Getting into mischief. He was a lovely dog. He’d curl up in his basket and wait until the lights were out, then he’d sneak on the bed and cuddle up. And Bill’d say “Can’t we do something about that dog, Ellie?” And I’d say “Well what do you suggest?”. He was a lovely dog. If I’m talking too much, just say.’
‘No. It’s nice to chat.’
‘I think so. I like to chat.’
The morphine takes her away to another place for a while and we travel in silence. But then she moves her head and carries on talking as if nothing had happened.
‘Do you have children?’
‘Yep. Two girls. Six and ten.’
‘Two girls! How lovely.’
‘I’m outnumbered. The only other male is Buzz, our oldest dog, and even he’s been done.’
‘Even he’s been done! Lovely. Still. I expect you’re all right.’
‘Yeah. I’m all right.’
‘I lost my first child.’
‘Did you? I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘She was lovely, lovely. I had her, and then she was gone. You never get over something like that, you know. But I had her for a little while, and that was something.’
She rests her head back on the pillow as the ambulance tips and sways.
‘Can I get you some water, Ellen?’
‘No dear. No - I was just thinking. About a cousin I had once. A long time ago now. He was lovely. Lovely. All the girls loved him. And you know – after he loved them back ...’ She walks her fingers slowly across the blanket. Her fingers are so thin, it seems to perfectly animate the stroll of a man into the distance. ‘And then of course he was off for good. Australia. And we never saw hide nor hair of him again.’
She flattens her hand on the cover, smoothes out a crease there, pats the spot, and then holds her hand out to me. When I take it, she looks at me, and her eyes are dilute and indistinct.
‘Of course Bill will be there at the hospital’ she says. ‘And I know exactly what he’ll say when you open the doors.’
‘What’ll he say?’
She leans forward an inch, squeezes my hand and gives it a little shake.
‘He’ll say “How on earth did you put up with her? I’d have thrown her out at the traffic lights.”’

the wrong hotel

2011-10-21T13:27:00.001Z

Three o’clock in the morning, parked by the side of a deserted street. Dozing in the low-lit box of our cab whilst the belly of the moon bumps the roof and the ambulance freezes around us. If I half close my eyes, I can turn those streetlights into diatoms of colour; they ripple and stretch and fly apart in strands, swimming through the low voices of the radio.

But then something hooks me back from the brink of sleep: an estate car pulling up to the side of the road in front of us. A man gets out. I watch him as he goes round to the back, opens the boot and pulls out a silver chair. He sets it on the pavement, then goes back into the boot again. I wonder if he’s some kind of street artist ready to perform a bitterly ironic piece – Standby – about the despair of men paid to sit by the side of empty streets at night for no reason. But it turns out he’s just re-arranging the boot. He puts the chair back inside when he’s done, and drives off.

A job comes up on the screen.
Overdose, outside a hotel.

Frank groans, unfolds back into a driving position yawns like Chewbacca as he turns the engine over.
‘Back the other side of town,’ he says, reading the notes. ‘So that was worth sending us here, then.’

***

The night porter doesn’t wave as we approach. He hugs his arms around his mop and watches us without expression as we pull up.
‘Cold night’ I say.
As if that was all he needed to hear, the night porter unfolds his arms and bends down to pick up the bucket. He holds both – mop and bucket – in one hand, raising the other arm up and out as a counterbalance.
‘Was there a guy sitting out here? Rang for an ambulance? Something about an overdose?’
The night porter sighs.
‘Threw up all over the steps and fucked off. Is that who you mean?’
‘Could be.’
‘I’ve cleared it up.’ He stands there, frowning as if he thinks the whole thing was probably our idea, then turns to go back inside.
‘Speak to Mrs Adams.’

On the Reception desk, Mrs Adams has come out of the back office. She stands with her arms planted across the register like a priestess drawing power from a book of spells.
‘He left as soon as I said the ambulance was on its way,’ she says. ‘He said he’d taken an overdose because he had a row with his girlfriend. She wasn’t with him.’
‘What does he look like?’
She pauses, staring out across the empty lobby.
‘Tall. Thin. Gloomy.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Anything else I can help you with?’
‘No. Thanks very much. Good night.’
‘Good night to you.’
‘Don’t look back’ says Frank as we walk back across the lobby. But I do. Mrs Adams waves. I wave back, and almost end up in the same segment of the revolving door as Frank.

***

Control ring us up. Police are on scene with the patient at the Cumberland.
‘Who is this guy? Some kind of fucked-up hotel inspector?’
We drive round the corner and park up behind one of the patrol cars out in the street. As we climb out of the cab again, a police officer comes over.
‘What it is – this fella had a fight with his girlfriend and took some pills she had on her. Went away, came back, punched out a glass door in the lobby. He’s in there sitting on the naughty step with cuffs on. His girlfriend is being a bit difficult at the moment, but you should be all right.’

The Cumberland is a good but less expensive hotel than the first. Some of the letters are out on the name, the doors are thickly painted, whilst in the lobby, a chintz war rages between the repro tables, gilt mirrors, flowery prints and flock wallpaper. A handful of tourist pamphlets and glass shards are scattered across the runner.
Four police officers fill the hallway. Two are with the patient, who sits with his arms cuffed behind him at the bottom of the staircase at the far end. Two more are with the girlfriend, a young woman of twenty who seems even from this distance to have the same darkly wrought intensity as the wallpaper.
‘Don’t you lay a hand on me,’ she says. ‘You’re being completely horrendous. All I want is to make sure Jimmy’s okay. I can’t believe you’re not letting me.’
‘The paramedics are here,’ says one of the officer, glad to have some new angle. ‘Let them do their job, and we’ll see where we go from there.’
As we pass she leans out in front of us.
‘We had a row,’ she says. ‘He took six anti-psychotic pills I’d confiscated off a friend who shouldn’t have been taking them. I’m a reflexologist so I know about this stuff. He’s had some alcohol, he’s been sick a number of times. I’m worried he might go unconscious or have a fit.’
The police officer gently steers her out of the way.
‘Please!’ she says.
‘Let them do their job,’ he says.
‘Let go of me!’
‘Just give us a moment,’ says Frank. ‘It’ll be all right.’

Jimmy barely looks up as we approach. If it wasn’t for the early hour, the handcuffs, the police officers, the flashes of blue from outside, the buzz of radios and the loud protestations of his girlfriend, he could be a disappointed tourist waiting to go back to the airport.
‘How are you on your feet?’ says Frank.
Jimmy stands up, utterly neutral. We walk him out to the truck.
‘I’ll be there in a minute, baby,’ says his girlfriend, touching him on the arm as we pass. ‘Check his blood pressure and heart rate. And check in the manual for side-effects. I’m here baby. I’m here for you.’
‘Just a second,’ says one of the officers. ‘Who’s got the keys to your room?’
‘I know. I know where they are,’ says the girlfriend. ‘They landed in the big ceramic pot to the right of the sofa.’
‘What sofa?’
‘The sofa by the window.’
We all look in that direction.
‘Not this hotel. The other one,’ she says.
Everyone seems to tense up.
Jimmy discretely tests the slack of his cuffs.
‘Let’s get you out to the truck,’ says Frank.

little rabbits

2011-10-18T09:24:00.001Z

Alan’s flat is tucked round the side of the main house. Everything is nicely ordered – the roses have been pruned back early, the bark chippings on the soil swept back from the path, the fallen apples from the neighbour’s tree picked up and put in a plastic crate. Alan looks tidily put away, too. He sits waiting for us on an armchair in the centre of the room, a view of the garden off to the left, a large TV to the right. A low bookcase neatly filled with DVDs – Jarhead, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Good, The Bad & the Ugly. To the left of the armchair beneath a picture window is a large wire cage with two tiny rabbits, whose ears hang straight down like the flaps on a winter hat.
‘Did the doctor leave a letter?’ asks Frank. ‘Or was it done on the phone?’
‘On the phone. He said we shouldn’t mess about.’
‘Fair enough.’
I go back out to fetch a chair.

***

The hospital is as busy as ever. Whilst Frank stands and waits his turn to handover at the desk, I wait alongside the trolley with Alan. He watches the chaos with the same taut readiness as one of his rabbits; I half expect him to leap off the trolley and scamper out the door if I cough or shift my position unexpectedly.
‘So your carer will look after the rabbits?’ I say.
‘She’s very good. I couldn’t manage without her.’
‘How often does she come in?’
‘Every other day.’
‘Do you manage to get out much?’
‘A little. To the corner shop.’
‘How long does that take you?’
‘Half the morning. It’s a major expedition.’
‘I bet.’
Frank waves to us from the desk, then leans back into a semi-conscious slump. I’ve never seen so many nurses, doctors, junior doctors, porters, police, patients, relatives – it’s like a casting call for a disaster movie.
‘Busy today, isn’t it?’ says Alan, studying me intently with his dark eyes.
‘Sorry it’s taking so long.’
‘That’s okay. I’ve got time.’
As if to illustrate the point, he folds his hands neatly on the blanket and sighs.
‘So – tell me about your rabbits,’ I say.
‘What about them?’
‘Erm – they look like baby rabbits.’
‘No. They’re actually quite rare. They’re Holland Lops, a dwarf breed. House trained, of course. Great company. They’ll wander about, then all of a sudden do a complete flip in the air.’
‘I’m glad you’ve got two. I think rabbits get a rough deal sometimes. Kids want them, but they get bored and the rabbit ends up banished to some lonely old shed.’
‘Oh no. Mine are great company. They help me undress.’
‘They help you undress?’
‘Yes. I slip my shoes off, they take a sock each and tug.’
‘Wow.’
‘They they climb up on my shoulder and we watch a film together.’
‘And what do they eat? Popcorn?’
‘No. They have special pellets that my carer gets. Looks exactly like their poo, but they seem to enjoy it.’
Frank comes over.
‘Sorry it took a while. But we’ve found you a space.’

Mind your backs, please! he calls, Mind your backs! And we nudge the trolley slowly forwards like an ice-breaking ship.

about charlie

2011-10-15T20:45:00.000Z

‘I think he’s had a stroke.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I know he’s had a drink or two, fair enough. But look at him. He can’t speak proper. He’s leant over to the side, his mouth’s all weird.’
‘How well do you know Charlie?’
‘Really well. I’ve not seen him like this before, man. I mean – sure he’s had a drink. But this is different, you know?’
Charlie is slumped over to his right on the bench. He has vomited – so productively, it would be easier to believe that Charlie, bench and rucksack had been swallowed whole by some urban monster who’d raged around town for a while then staggered back and thrown up man, bench and bag right back where it ate them.
A recycling truck pulls up on the street side and two council workmen jump out to haul a paladin of empty bottles to the hydraulic arms at the side. One of them stares over at us, laughs and says something to his friend, who carries on with barely a glance. The noise of the glass as it tips from the paladin into the maw of the truck is colossal, overwhelming.
‘Charlie?’ I shout and pinch his shoulder. ‘It’s the ambulance, Charlie.’
He opens his eyes; a second or two later he senses danger and bunches his fists Popeye-style.
‘I’ll fuck you’s,’ he says. ‘I’ll bust you up.’
‘What’s happened to you, Charlie? Do you have any pain?’
He swipes the air.
‘Calm down, Charlie. We’re here to help.’
‘Don’t think I won’t,’ he says.
I straighten up.
‘Trolley – blankets – pads. This is going to take some careful packaging.’
‘Do you think he’s had a stroke?’
‘I don’t know. It’s possible. It looks that way.’
‘I’ll ring and tell the hostel what’s happened.’
‘Thanks.’

***

At the hospital later that day, I ask the Charge Nurse about Charlie.
‘Was it a stroke?’
‘Oh – yeah. Thanks for bringing that one in. I owe you.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. He was a bit messed up.’
‘A bit messed up? I don’t think a bit messed up comes anywhere close.’
‘Sorry.’
‘And no, it wasn’t a stroke. He had a BAC of point three something or other, so no, it wasn’t a stroke. Jesus – if I ever have that much to drink just drop me over the side with a bunch of flowers and be on your way.’

the haunted hotel

2011-10-13T09:47:00.003Z

The manager of the hotel, a brisk woman with administrative hair, is waiting for us just the other side of the revolving doors.
‘We do provide shower mats,’ she says, leading us across the lobby to the lift. ‘I don’t know why she didn’t use it.’
She explains that Jean had rung the desk first thing to ask for a taxi to take her to the hospital. When they asked why, she said she’d fallen in the shower last night and hurt her side.
‘How does she seem to you?’ I ask her as the ancient metal doors of the lift slide shut. ‘Badly hurt?’
‘She has a lot of pain in her side. I should imagine she’s cracked a rib or something.’
The lift gives a little shake, slowly winds upwards, then after some false stops gives an arthritic judder and the doors open again. We step out onto a boxy landing with a warren of lopsided corridors leading off in all directions.
‘Even I get lost sometimes,’ says the manager, scurrying off ahead of us, dusting the low-ceiling with her hairdo as she goes.
‘Maybe the hotel ghost can show us out,’ says Frank.
She gives him a stern look over her shoulder, as if he’s letting out a secret she’d rather keep from the guests.
‘It’s over four hundred years old,’ she whispers. ‘It’s seen a lot in that time.’
She strides on, her tights swishing and the old boards creaking.
‘Here we are,’ she says at last, standing outside a door so tiny it wouldn’t look out of place in the side of a toadstool.
She knocks twice and we follow her in.

Jean is sitting in a wicker chair, leaning over to her right.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, hen,’ she says. ‘I didn’t want to get the ambulance out but the staff here insisted.’
‘What’s happened to you, Jean?’
‘Ach – it’s stupid. I feel so cross with myself. I was taking a shower late last night and when I went to get out the floor was so slippery my feet just went and I landed on my side, here.’
She puts a hand to her left side and flinches with the pain. ‘It took me an hour to get up and dry and away back into bed. And then in the morning I could hardly move. I come down to see the family and look what I go and do.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Lifting up her pyjama top reveals a pattern of livid bruising.
‘Nasty. I think you might have fractured a rib or two, Jean. We should definitely take you up the hospital for some decent pain relief, and to make sure there’s no underlying tissue damage.’
‘Oh – bless you, hen,’ she says, patting my hand. ‘Bless you. I don’t want to be a trouble to you, but I know I’ve got to go. Eighty-two years and not a thing wrong, so I’m not doing so bad. I used to work for the hospital m’seln. And then we were over in Romania with the poor wee orphans. So now it’s my turn, I suppose.’
‘Do you think you can walk, Jean? We can get a chair if not.’
‘Ach – away with your fuss! I’m no getting carried out. Here – gis’ a hand up and let’s be on.’
The manager is standing in the bathroom holding a shower mat.
‘It was here, but someone had draped it over the rail for some reason.’
I half expect her to hand out witness statements and disclaimers, but instead she puts the mat down on the bathroom floor and opens the door for us.
‘I’m pretty sure the lift’s this way,’ she says, hurrying on.
‘I’m amazed they’re still allowed a ghost,’ whispers Frank, holding out his arm. 'Come on, Jean. Let's get you down to the ambulance.'

getting about

2011-10-12T19:13:00.000Z

When Geoffrey laughs – and he laughs a lot - he hangs it on the air in front of him like the cartoon of a man providing his own speech bubbles. If he were a cartoon, it would be something grimly ironic, an urban fairy tale about a ruined Santa retired from the trade through years of overwork and ill health, off his legs in a riser chair, his feathery beard plucked back to the stubbly butt of his chin, a cave of verminous yellow teeth, man boobs and a scurfy paunch spread above a giant nappy.
‘My father had no luck either. He used to hide his money in a little tin box he’d stick up inside the chimney. One day he came back unexpected and caught my mum with her hand up there. They had a fight and she pushed him backwards out the window. Three floors and that was that. Yur-hur-hur-hur.’
Geoffrey’s carer, as clipped and contained as his patient is exposed, puts some things together in a bag.
‘Now what else do you think you’ll need, Geoffrey?’
‘That clock,’ he says, pointing to an unfeasibly large alarm clock on the breakfast table. ‘ I want to take my clock with me. I want to know when my time’s up, yur-hur-hur-hur.’
‘Well you can’t very well take the clock, Geoffrey. There’ll be plenty of people around you can ask for the time. And I wouldn’t take your sticks, either. They’ll walk.’
‘I don’t mind,’ he says, contentedly draping his arms across his belly and linking his fingers in the middle like a gigantic buckle. ‘They can have it all as far as I’m concerned. I don’t need much.’
We managed to fit the trolley in the lift. I clear a space in the flat and Frank wheels it in from the corridor. He parks it alongside Geoffrey’s chair.
‘Whoa!’ he says. ‘Bloody ‘ell! Who ordered that?’
‘Your carriage awaits,’ I say, putting the back up and lowering the side.
‘You want me in that thing? You’ll be lucky, yur-hur-hur-hur.’
We fuss around him like elves.
‘Mind your language,’ says the carer. ‘And don’t forget, not everybody wants to hear your dreadful confessions.’
‘No? I haven’t even got started. Take my cousin, for instance...’
‘Please, spare us,’ says the carer.
‘...my cousin did twenty years. His wife came home unexpectedly and found the next door neighbour roped to the bed and my cousin on top of him. Yur-hur-hur-hur.’
‘That’s one punch line I think I missed,’ says Frank, negotiating the head of the trolley through the doorway. ‘Thankfully. Think thin, mate,’ he says.
‘But I come from good stock,’ says Geoffrey happily. ‘Especially with regard to legs. I used to cycle everywhere, you know.’
‘How do you mean? Getting to work?’ I say, grunting with the effort of moving the trolley.
Geoffrey smiles at me.
‘France, Germany, Russia...’
‘Russia?’
‘...Belgium, Holland – and what’s that place just near Gibraltar?’
‘I don’t know. Spain?’
‘North Africa!’ he says. I used to love getting about on the old bike, yur-hur-hur-hur.’

doctors

2011-10-06T12:49:00.000Z

Mrs Appleton is neatly arranged on her bed, a halo of silver hair on three plump and freshly laundered flowery pillows, legs straight out, arms by her sides. Her husband, a man as pale and soft as a button mushroom, ushers us into the room.
‘I’ve got these pains here – and here – all up here,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve been sick and dizzy with it.’
‘Sick and dizzy,’ echoes Mr Appleton. ‘Shall I get the diary?’
‘The doctors will want to see it,’ she says.
‘Okay, Mrs Appleton,’ Frank says, putting his bag down. ‘What’s been going on?’
‘Let me put you in the picture,’ she says, pushing herself a little further up onto the pillows and then sinking back into them and folding her arms across her chest. ‘In nineteen fifty five....’
‘No, I meant today. What led you to call the ambulance today?’
‘Well I had another episode.’
‘Of the sickness and dizziness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any chest pain?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Do you have any chest pain now?’
‘It’s more over this way. And round here. And here, but not so much.’
She hovers one of her hands across her middle, then places it quietly back beside her again.
‘Any shortness of breath?’
‘I’m always short of breath.’
‘Any pins and needles or numbness in your arms or hands or anywhere else?’
‘I do get that from time to time.’
‘How would you describe the pain? Is it a cramping sort of pain? A sharp stabbing thing? An ache?’
‘I couldn’t really say. But it’s there all right. On and off.’
‘And more in your abdomen than your chest, would you say?’
‘What do you mean by abdomen?’
‘I mean around here.’
‘Yes.’
‘What were you doing when it came on?’
‘Nothing. Just quietly lying here. Waiting for bed.’
Mr Appleton comes back in holding an old school exercise book.
‘Read this,’ he says. ‘It’ll explain everything.’
I briefly open the book. Its pages are stiff, crinkled up with age and the mass of close writing that covers them top to bottom, margin to spine. Diary entries, the first one back in the early seventies, detailing every ache and pain, giddy moment, bowel movement and vomiting episode.
‘There are more, but that’s the most up to date,’ says Mr Appleton. ‘Shall we take it with us?’
‘Yep,’ says Frank. ‘I know the doctors will be keen to see it.’
‘They’re wonderful,’ says Mrs Appleton. ‘Do you know – I called mine up the other day, just to tell him how well I felt.’
Frank raises his eyebrows and nods.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.

***

Outside in the A&E car park, we lean back against the safety railing like two glum, green birds roosting on a branch.
‘Did you know – of all the health professionals – doctors have the highest rate of alcoholism?’ says Frank, swallowing the last of his coffee, then tipping the dregs out onto the ground. He sighs, then stands to put his cup in the bin. ‘Any bleeding wonder.’

the last hot night of summer

2011-10-05T11:09:00.001Z

An older part of town, where narrow streets of tall, bow-fronted houses and shops lead south from the high street and fade into complicated tributaries of mews cottages and alleyways. It has a backwater feel of silt and settlement, where the bones of scavenged bikes lie chained to streetlights, and railings are encrusted with thick black paint like the coral growth on a sunken ship.

A woman is standing by the entrance to some basement steps, clutching a cordless house phone.
‘Do you want me to go down with you?’ she says.
‘No. It’s probably best if you stay up here and wait for the police.’
She looks relieved.

A flight of worn stone steps pitch down at an alarming angle to the mossy flagstones of the courtyard below. A pile of detritus in an alcove, opposite a front door which, by the look of the temporary wooden batons and splintered panels, has obviously been put in several times before. It stands open.
‘Hello? Ambulance.’
Frank pushes through and I follow.
A long, dimly lit hallway, three rooms off to the right, a closed door at the end.
‘Hello?’
The smell of neglect – a wretched, spongy sweetness that thrums up from every surface, from the ragged Persian runner, the little wooden bookshelf of cassette tapes and books and empty bottles, the piles of magazines. The walls themselves have a Gallery of the Damned feel: an arrangement of family photographs, an intensely coloured portrait of a dog, a figurative line drawing, a gig poster from the seventies, torn articles from magazines, maps, a mandala – a disparate throw of images, some framed, some simply taped to the wall, all of them slowly cooking, curling and spotting in the fetid air.
A voice from the room at the end.
‘I’m in the kitchen.’
‘Can we come down and see you?’
He doesn’t answer, but we go anyway.
The sudden, sharp smell of white spirit as we near the door.
Frank knocks and carefully pushes it open.

Paul is sitting at the kitchen table with his back to us, his arms resting on his knees, his damp head bowed. Half a bottle of white spirit at his feet.
‘Hello Paul. My name’s Frank and this is Spence. How are you doing?’
He looks up.
‘I’m not a bad person. I’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’
‘No. I know – I can see that. But what’s happened tonight, Paul?’
‘I’m not a bad person. The man upstairs said he was going to smash me. He said he was going to sort me out. But he can’t – I can’t – it’s not fair. These people. These people, in the world. And I’m not a bad person. I’m not.’
‘Paul? First of all – it smells really strongly of white spirit in here. Have you poured some over yourself?’
He nods.
‘I poured it over me.’
‘Why did you do that, Paul?’
‘I want to kill myself. I want to burn.’
‘Paul? Would you mind if I just moved that lighter away from you? Only I’m a bit worried about it. I know you don’t want to hurt us…’
‘I don’t! I don’t want to hurt you! I would never hurt you.’
‘I know that. So do you mind if I just… there we go … that’s better. Now I feel a bit safer. Thanks.’
Frank gives me the lighter. Whilst they talk, I’m glancing around the kitchen for a towel or something to throw over him should he go up. Just behind me to my right is the doorway to the bedroom. Maybe I could grab a blanket from there.
‘Paul? Can I ask you another favour? It’s just the smell in here’s so strong I can’t think straight. Would you mind coming out to the ambulance and having a chat there? It’d be so much nicer – you know, with the fumes and everything. A bit of fresh air. Would you mind? Only I’m getting such a sore throat.’
‘What’s the point?’ says Paul, leaning back down again.
I try to see if he has any other lighters within reach but his hands stay slack.
‘What’s the point? They all think I’m useless. They all think I’m a piece of shit. That man upstairs, he said he wanted to smash me, but it’s not fair! I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘You wouldn’t even have to come on the ambulance,’ says Frank. ‘We could just sit on the basement steps. It’s lovely out tonight. Isn’t it Spence? Really warm. I expect we could all use some fresh air.’
‘If you think,’ says Paul. ‘I don’t care. I just want to kill myself. I nearly did. I will. Just leave me. You can all read about it later.’
‘Come on, mate. Come outside for a chat. Have you got your keys?’
He stands up, a tall, stooped, middle-aged man in filthy denim.
‘This way,’ I say, as if he’d never walked outside down his own hallway before.

We walk up the basement steps.
The neighbour has gone.
The pub opposite seems even more active than before, its light and vitality spilling out across the street. A man is leaning against the wall, talking on his phone and smoking. He watches us as we lead up from the basement, along the pavement and onto the ambulance.
‘I’ll keep the back door open, so we get some air and you don’t feel hemmed in,’ I say.
Frank puts a seat down.
‘I’m not a bad person. I’m not,’ says Paul, sitting down, then combing and re-combing his bitten fingers back through his hair, shining with the damp of the white spirit.
Frank takes a seat at one end of the trolley; I crouch down at the foot of it. We all sit quietly for a moment, a strange triangulation, whilst out through the open door of the ambulance, the last hot night of the summer moves on.

twenty four weeks

2011-10-04T10:07:00.000Z

Below the curtain window a lava stream of traffic nudges along the front. The curtains hang straight down, already exhausted by the day. The hotel room is so thick with heat I wouldn’t be surprised to see a tray of uncooked pizzas pushed through the window.
The room is economically arranged with a double bed set between an en-suite and a wardrobe of equal size. At the foot of the bed, a plasma TV flashes with news images – protests in hot streets somewhere else on this hot planet – whilst an urgent strip of headlines scrolls along the bottom.
Svetlana stares at the screen. She is propped up on pillows, the sheets rucked up around her, the metallic blue sheen of her silk nightdress picked out by the light from outside.
Her husband leads us into the room. He turns the volume down on the TV, then stands over by the window. I expect him to take off his rock star bottle-black sunglasses, but he leaves them on and folds his arms.
‘What is matter with me?’ she says. ‘I woke up in this sweating. I have the pains here and here. I feel – erm – like…’ She pats her throat, then lays her palm forwards, almost like the signing for speech, but probably a mime for nausea.
‘I understand you’re pregnant?’
‘Erm – yes. I am having baby now twenty four weeks.’
‘All good so far?’
‘Yes. Is good so far. Normal.’
‘And do you have the pain now?’
‘No. No pain now. I am just feeling hot and – erm – not good.’
‘In what way not good?’
‘Is just not good. Erm – is werry tired and werry – erm - floppy.’
Her husband unfolds his arms and goes to pull some documents out of his pocket. I expect him to be Russian, too, but when he speaks it’s with a London accent. He carries himself quietly, carefully, like a man trying to walk through a forest without snapping any twigs.
‘The hotel gave us a number to call for a doctor to come and visit,’ he says. ‘But they said it would be a couple of hours.’
Svetlana sits up.
‘Two hours! Is that what you said? Two hours? Do you think that is appropriate? Is that what you want for your sick wife and baby? Two hours?’
‘No. I was just trying to explain..’
‘You were just explaining. Yes. Go on. You just explain. Let’s hear it.’
But he keeps quiet. Eventually, and without breaking eye contact, she settles back down on the pillows.
‘I am sick, he wait two hours,’ she says. ‘What good he is?’
We examine her, but all her observations are normal.
‘These sweats,’ I say. ‘In some ways you can understand it. What with the exceptional heat, and being pregnant. But you haven’t actually got a temperature.’
‘Then why I feel like this?’
‘Well. I don’t know. If you want to go to hospital, we can take you. Or you could wait to see a doctor.’
She sighs and rubs her swollen belly.
‘Where doctor? In hospital doctor?’
‘Or at a walk-in centre, as you’re not registered here.’
‘Walk-in centre? What is this walk-in centre?’
‘There’s one up by the station.’
The husband puts his mobile and wallet in his pocket.
‘I think I know where it is,’ he says. ‘We could get a taxi.’
‘You want put mother of your child in taxi cab? Is that it? Put her in taxi cab and take her to station? My God. Yes. This is brilliant idea for me, the pregnant woman sick with sweating and everything pain and you want to put me in taxi cab? I can’t believe how stupid this man is.’
‘Or we could just take you up the hospital,’ I say, hugging my clipboard.
She looks at me and the change is immediate.
‘Okay,’ she says, as solemnly as a little girl with a sick doll. ‘I think you take me to hospital.’
She swings her legs out to the side and scurries about looking for a dressing gown and slippers. Her husband has the slippers; she snatches them from him.
‘How long I wait for doctor in hospital?’ she says as she puts them on.

I smile at the husband and raise my eyebrows.

***

In fact, the hospital is a baked hive only Hieronymus Bosch could draw inspiration from. I stand at the back of a ragged queue of trolleys with Svetlana by my side. I watch her anxiously for any sign of fire, but she seems calm enough. Her husband had been sent off for water; whilst he is away she sighs and waits as steadily as a train in the sidings.
‘I think I call my parent,’ she says. ‘This is no good. I not happy.’
‘Oh?’
She turns to face me.
‘He said he have nice flat but his friend give nice flat to different friend and now we have bad flat. He promise he fix it up nice but is not nice.’
She faces forward again, chews her lip and bleakly surveys the hospital scene. ‘Is box,’ she says finally. ‘Is old broken box. With the door. You know?’ She smiles at me, and scans my face to see if I understand. ‘A box,’ she says, ‘no window, no light, just old door that go flap.’
She turns back to face forwards, and her eyes are shining.
Eventually she whispers: ‘I not give birth to baby in box.’

a grinding

2011-09-24T14:18:00.003Z

‘Does your son have far to come?’
‘No. He lives just the other side of town. He said he’d be over right away.’
‘That’s good.’
‘He is good. I’m lucky.’
Peter stands in the doorway of his lounge, next to the portrait his son made of him back in the Seventies: a sombre, charcoal and chalk three-quarter length study of a monolithic figure meeting the future in an open neck shirt. It’s a close resemblance; apart from a certain hollowing and softening over time, it’s still the man himself framed in the doorway now, looking straight at us.
‘So. Have you got everything you need, Peter? Did you want to put a jacket on?’
‘No.’
Peter has taken an overdose of paracetamol. We’ve had so many of them lately, it’s like we’re standing in a field trying to hold back a rag-tag militia whose shuffling advance is beaten out on a big white drum marked 500mg.
‘I talked to Simon,’ he says. ‘He’ll meet us there.’

***

The ambulance tips and sways. The bright morning light cuts in through the window blinds and rakes the interior. Peter sits neatly in his seat, making only the smallest, most economical compensations to maintain his balance.
‘I just wanted to sleep,’ he says, resting his eyes on me. ‘I’m tired of all the effort. You know – getting up, eating breakfast…’ he breaks off, faced with a great channel of despair. Then he sighs and links his fingers neatly in his lap. ‘Let’s just say I was tired,’ he says.
‘Are you getting any help?’
‘Everyone’s been more than kind. I couldn’t have had better support. And Simon, he’s wonderful. But really – at the end of the day – what can anyone say? If it’s not working, it’s not working, and with the best will in the world there’s not anything anyone can do about it.’ A band of light scans his face; he closes his eyes and lets it. ‘I’m a disaster area,’ he says, opening his eyes as we suddenly move into the darker zone of an underpass. ‘Everything I touch falls to pieces.’

***

‘We’ll be there in five minutes.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
He sits quite still and contained, despite the massive dose of paracetamol, the years that led to it, the hours he lay staring up at the ceiling from the early morning to the moment he picked up the phone and called his son – despite all these things, he maintains an impressive air of competence.
‘What line of work were you in before you retired?’ I ask him.
‘I was a diamond cutter,’ he says.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I’ve met people from about every other profession I can think of, but you’re my first diamond cutter.’
‘It’s a specialised field.’
‘I bet.’
I remember an article on the news recently about the discovery of a planet on the furthest reaches of the galaxy, a little planet so densely packed with carbon a good part of it must be pure diamond. I hesitate to mention it, for some reason.
‘So. How do you cut a diamond? I suppose you’d have to use another diamond.’
‘Diamonds do cut diamonds,’ he says. Then, after a pause: ‘But of course much of the process would be better described as a grinding.’

only me

2011-09-21T09:55:00.002Z

Veronica’s flat is round to the side. There is a discrete number to guide us there – a metal square held out on a bracket, picked out in white and black. An aggregate concrete path, where the breeze block wall on the right has broken down over the years, yielding to a steep drop and a scrub patch of garden. At the front of it, a circle has been cleared and flattened with black plastic sheeting, weighed down with gravel like dried peas on a pie crust ready for baking, a deckchair in the middle of it all, screened from the road by a wild and straggling buddleia.
Veronica opens the door after a few minutes of persistent knocking. She stands holding onto the handle, dreaming us.
‘Can we come in and have a chat?’ I ask her.
She considers the question, but at last the door seems to answer for her, shucking her hand away, releasing her to drift back into the gloom. We follow her inside - a cramped flat with just enough room in the hallway to make the turn you require: sitting room, bedroom, bathroom. Veronica has come to rest in the galley kitchen; she leans against the worktop with her arms folded.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Frank. We were told you may have taken an overdose. Of paracetamol. Is that right?’
She nods.
‘How much did you take, Veronica?’
But I can see for myself. Across the worktop is a scattering of torn pill envelopes, the large, soluble kind, and over in the sink, an empty bottle of vodka.
‘Did you take all these?’
She gives me a Stan Laurel look, a sad little thin-lipped, loose-necked waggle of achievement.
‘We need to take you down the hospital to get some treatment for this, Veronica. You’ve taken quite a bit.’
A shrug that almost puts her on the floor.
‘Let’s get your shoes and coat and things and head out to the ambulance, shall we?’
She shakes her head.
‘No. They don’t want me there. They can’t do nothing.’
‘Yes they can, Veronica. But one thing at a time. Let’s get your stuff together and go out to the ambulance. When did you take all these pills?’
‘I didn’t take enough.’
She starts to rip open another pack and I reach over and take it from her.
‘When did you take these, Veronica?’
‘Just now. An hour, maybe.’
‘OK. So the sooner we go the sooner we can get things started. All right? Let me get your bag for you.’
‘Don’t rush me. Okay? Just don’t – rush me.’
She pushes herself clear of the worktop and drifts downhill out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. When she bends over to grab a pair of shoes from under the bed it’s a miracle of gravity that she keeps her feet.
‘Easy there, Veronica,’ says Frank. ‘Here’s your phone, look.’
‘Thanks. Thank you.’
We help her sit on the bed. Suddenly she looks absolutely defeated. She points to a flowery brass frame with a sepia photo of a smiling young girl.
‘Tha’s my mum, that is,’ she says. ‘She died at Christmas.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I miss her.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘And my dad’s just gone in to a home.’
‘You’ve obviously had a tough time of it, recently.’
‘What?’
‘It sounds like you’ve had a lot to deal with. A lot on your plate.’
‘I have. I have had a lot on my plate.’
She bends forward to pull on a shoe, but we prop her up again.
‘Let me get that for you,’ says Frank. ‘I used to work in a shoe shop. There. Try that on. We sell a lot of those.’
Veronica shakes her head.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says. ‘I know you’ve got a lot better things to be doing.’
‘Nope. You’re our patient now. That’s all we’re worried about. There. Let’s get you up and out to the ambulance.’
But she stays sitting.
‘I’ve got two brothers,’ she says. ‘One younger, one older, both equally useless. Do you know what? Not one of them will change one little thing about their lives to help. They haven’t even been to see Dad yet and he’s been there a month.’
‘That’s no good,’ I say. ‘They’ve got to do their share.’
Veronica shakes her head.
‘It’s just me,’ she says, smacking her lips drily. ‘Only me.’
She puts her hands down flat either side of her and closes her eyes. The room ticks quietly. A sudden void of silence opens up around her, and even though the double bed almost completely fills the space, the walls of the little bedroom fly out, and the floor and ceiling spin away, and the bed drops into a great black pit of nothing, with Veronica the centre of nothing, a breath at the vanishing centre.
We prod her awake.
‘Come on Veronica,’ says Frank. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Make sure you pull the handle up before you turn the lock,’ she says.

fag in one hand, can in the other

2011-09-16T12:43:00.000Z

I’m guessing that the window three floors above me is the window to flat fifty-one. They’d said in the notes it was difficult to understand the patient because of the loud music in the background; even from down here, his Sounds from the Seventies album is horribly clear.
Getting in should be simple: press the button, ask for access, get buzzed into the foyer, wait for the safe to be opened remotely, retrieve the pass key.
‘Hello, Red Line Remote Care Facility Jeremy speaking how may I be of assistance?’
‘Hello. It’s Spence from the ambulance here on a call to flat fifty-one. Could you let me in please?’
‘Just confirming – ambulance attendance to flat fifty one – requesting remote access. Is that correct?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
‘One moment please, Vince.’
I stand back. A series of piercing electronic squawks, until finally the door clicks and I go through.
‘Thanks,’ I shout over my shoulder.
‘You’re welcome. Anything else I can help you with this evening?’
But the door has shut behind me and I can’t reply.
I wait in the foyer for the safe to open.

Nothing happens.

Terry Jacks is playing now. I let him get as far as saying goodbye to his Papa before I give up, go back outside and press the buzzer again.

‘Hello, Red Line Remote Care Facility Jeremy speaking how may I be of assistance?’
‘It’s me again, Jeremy. The safe didn’t open.
‘Can I just confirm who I am speaking to?’
‘Yep. It’s Spence, the ambulance man from just a second ago.’
‘I see. Thank you, Vince. How can I help?’
‘The safe didn’t open. I need the key to fifty-one.’
‘Thank you. Buzzing you through now.’
‘Thanks.’
The door clicks and I go back into the little foyer.
Flat fifty-one. It’s a wonder all his neighbours aren’t massing outside with firebrands and pitchforks.
Sweet. Are you ready Steve? Uh-huh. Andy? Yeah….
The safe remains closed.
… well all right fellas. Let’s go!

I go back outside and buzz.
‘Hello, Red Line Remote Care Facility Jeremy speaking how may I be of assistance?’
‘Yeah – Jeremy? Spence. Nothing’s happening, mate.’
‘Can I just confirm…’
‘Yep. Flat fifty-one. Look - I need the key otherwise I’ll have to kick the door in.’
‘You must let the front door close properly before the safe will open. Are you doing that?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay. Sorry for the inconvenience, Vince. I’ll clear the call and re-send the signal. Try it now.’
He buzzes open the door. I walk through and close it firmly behind me.
Once the door is closed I can hear him on the intercom asking me if the safe is open, but he can’t hear my reply because the door is closed. By the time I get back to the intercom, jamming the front door open with my bag, he has gone.

I snatch up the bag and head for the lifts.

Of course the door’s open anyway.
‘Hello? Ambulance?’
The room is lit by a large plasma TV and a feeble yellow lamp on a table scattered with encrusted dishes, scattered cans and a littering of papers and letters. The air has a greasy rub to it; the floor is dark and sticky underfoot, as if he’d decided to skim the lino with burnt toffee.
‘Hello?’
A man emerges from the kitchen. He is an extraordinary sight – an adult sized chicken in a dirty parka, a can of lager in one hand, a spitty-little roll-up in the other. He has an astonished look to his face, as if a giant caterpillar had just materialised in front of him.
‘Can you turn the music off, please?’
‘What? Hurumph. I say – who?’
‘I said can you turn the music off? I need to talk to you. Look. I’ll do it for you.’

Leo Sayer, chopped off mid-need.

‘There. That’s better. My name’s Spence. I understand you called Red Line and said you needed help.’
‘Did I? Well – harrumph. Who-ha! What a turn up? Hey? Who’d have thought it?’
And he begins strutting around the bare flat, picking up his feet just exactly like a cockerel parading around the yard. Even his arms are bent and pulled back at the elbow like stubby wings. If it wasn’t for the intense set of his eyes and the grimly realistic chaos of the scene, I’d think we were being filmed.
He high-steps over to the window, rests both arms on the ledge and then raises one of his legs up behind him like a dancer warming up before a ballet about Care in the Community.
‘Who-oo! Harrumph! There. Look. Shit – what? A fag? A can? That’s a can, isn’t it? Faak! Mazing!’
I get his name from a blister pack that I exhume with my fingertips from a heap on the sofa.
‘Mick? My name’s Spence. What’s happened tonight?’
‘Wha’s happened? Nuffing’s happened? Hey? Who-ha. Harrumph. Wha?’
The TV is showing Cameron and Sarkozy in Tripoli.
‘Look at that! Wow! Mazing. Fag! Can! It’s all there. What?’
‘Mick – I’ve never met you before, but I’m guessing this isn’t normal for you. Have you got any pain at the moment?’
‘Pain? Wha’y’say? Faak n’ell. Tha’s a bit of luck, mate. Who?’

He carries on striding about. He reminds me of a music hall turn – someone like Max Wall, with the same kind of intonation, lopping off his words with an under bite, cluttering his dialogue with random questions, non sequiturs, and a periodic amazement that he should find himself here, now, in this flat, with a fag in one hand and a can of lager in the other.
‘Do you have a CPN, Mick?’
‘What? Mm? A CPN? Yes mate. Harrumph. I’m CPN’d up to here, mate. Lovely. Who? Ah-hum. They smoke hookahs, don’t they? Faak.’
‘Who do?’
‘The Arabs’
‘Mick? Did they give you a number you can call when things get a bit out of hand?’
‘Out of hand? Harrumph. Ah-hoo. Tell you what, mate …’
He struts over and stands right up close, his globe grey eyes flickering slightly like miniature versions of the TV behind me. He looks stage right, stage left, then smiles, spins around and chickens it back over to the window.
‘Fag in one hand. Can in the other. Faak. What? Harrumph.’

mrs norbutt

2011-09-15T12:00:00.001Z

Mrs Norbutt can’t cope at home. Despite a small militia of carers, district nurses, physio and occupational therapists, a CPN and a social worker, she still keeps falling out of her wheelchair. Another bout of respite care is arranged, with a view to something more permanent.
‘My neighbour will look after the house whilst I’m gone. If she remembers. If I ever come back,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget my bags.’
Mrs Norbutt sits like a ball of imploded matter, a dark star of misfortune. Being in her presence for any amount of time is like being an astronaut fighting with the controls of his ship to escape the Event Horizon of her gloom.
‘It’s a beautiful day today, Mrs Norbutt.’
‘Is it? I suppose it might be if you can enjoy that kind of thing.’
‘Have you been getting out much?’
‘Out much? If you mean tipping out onto the floor, then yes.’
‘Have you had lunch today?’
‘They came round. Late again.’
‘What did you have?’
‘I haven’t got much of an appetite. I had some toast.’
‘I love toast. It really hits the spot sometimes. What did you have on it? Jam? Marmite?’
‘Nothing,’ she says.
I wheel her outside.
The air is brisk and bright with an autumnal zest to it. A scattering of golden leaves across the lawn. On the other side of the road, a man is affectionately soaping down his car. He stops and waves in our direction; Mrs Norbutt sinks lower in the chair.
‘What’s he want?’ she says.
Frank is waiting with the ramp down. He’s met Mrs Norbutt before, and treats her with professional circumspection.
‘All right, Mrs Norbutt?’ he says. ‘Up we go.’
‘Mind my leg,’ she says. ‘I’ve got enough trouble as it is.’
‘Right you are.’
We help her out of the chair – not an easy thing, as she insists on doing it her way, which means no brakes, footrest turned in, wrong angle, wrong height.
‘It might be better if you…’
‘I think I might know what I’m doing by now, don’t you?’
She makes it into the ambulance seat and folds her arms.
‘I can’t do the seatbelt.’
‘Allow me.’
‘How long will this take? I get sick.’
‘Not long, Mrs Norbutt. It’s a busy time of day, though.’
‘Typical.’
‘Still – lovely day for a drive.’
‘You can’t see out.’
‘No – but..’
‘Where are we going anyway?’
‘The Bedlington Residential Home.’
‘I prefer the other one.’
‘Which one was that?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘All set to go?’ says Frank brightly. He smiles at me as he slams the door.
‘Sorry we have to slam the door like that, Mrs Norbutt. It’s just the door sensor’s dodgy and the alarm keeps sounding.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘No.’
As we move along I try all the usual routes into conversation. Nothing works. I feel like Pollyanna on Prozac, skipping anxiously through a maze, struggling to be bright despite all the wrong turns, all the blind alleys.
I sweat, and look at my watch, but the minute hand is backing-up along with all the commuter traffic we seem to have hit along the front.
‘Where does your daughter live?’ I ask her.
‘Miles away. Too far to visit.’
‘Does she ever make it over to see you?’
‘Jenny? No. She’s not well herself.’
‘Oh? Sorry to hear that. What’s up with Jenny?’
Mrs Norbutt turns her head to give it to me straight.
‘All the nerves are breaking off her spine. It won’t be long before she’s just a jelly with a brain.’
‘Oh.’ And then: ‘That sounds bad.’
‘You have no idea,’ she says. ‘Do you mind if I put my foot up on the trolley?’
‘No. Go ahead.’
She raises it up.
‘I’d put them both up but they cut the other one off.’
‘Sorry about the traffic,’ shouts Frank from the cab. ‘Shouldn’t be too much longer now.’
‘How long exactly?’
‘Ooh - not long,’ he says.
Just then a song he likes comes on the radio, and he turns it up to sing along. I have an overwhelming urge to push myself through the little serving hatch window and bathe in the sunny warmth and vitality of the cab, but I fold my arms and smile at Mrs Norbutt instead.
‘So. Not long now,’ I tell her, breezily. I put both my feet up on the trolley. She keeps quiet, and after a moment I get the feeling she is staring at my feet. And though I try not to, I find myself pushing back into a more upright position, and slowly dropping the left one.

one under

2011-09-13T17:22:00.000Z

Ricky sweeps the door aside, strides into the crew room and drops down into a nearby computer chair in a melodramatic swoon.
‘What a day! Too tired to fuck, so you’re bang out of luck. You, boy – rub my shoulders or something and be quick about it. In fact, just rub my something.’
Ricky is so flamboyantly debauched he could have stepped straight out of a cartoon by Gillray. He’d look utterly convincing, dressed as an eighteenth century gentleman, the buttons of his frock coat straining over his gym-pumped arms, the seams of his breeches straining to hold back the playful, uninhibited exuberance of his sexuality.
‘Honestly, I don’t know how I do it,’ he says, laughing at the effect he always has on the room.
Ricky is one of an elite band of paramedics that specialise in trauma and critical care. As a result of their extra skills and experience, Control keep them in reserve until significant trauma or resus jobs come up; consequently, their trauma quotient is higher than normal. If this were a Gillray cartoon, it would feature Ricky dressed as a dragoon guard in knee length riding boots and scarlet coat covered in braid and medals, banging his knife and fork on the table as an endless line of servants hurried in from a hellish kitchen with plate after plate of crashed cars, buildings on fire, piles of corpses and other miniaturised horrors. His speech bubble might say something like: Let me assure you gentlemen, I’m sodding well good for twice whatever you can bring me! And the caption: Anatomy of a Public Servant for Health on the Front Line – or – The best place to get a decent chop nowadays.
And like Gillray, Ricky would be rampant with innuendo.
‘I just can’t seem to get it up like I used to– the website, darling, the website. I’m not talking about my cock. Did you think I was talking about my cock? Did you want me to?’
Ambulance vocabulary is often tough, its common terms of reference every bodily function, variation, degradation and perversion possible to imagine. Once you’ve worked in the field for a while, you become inured to the effect, though, and it takes more awfulness - more dreadful specifics, more refinement of awfulness - to provoke a response. But of the people guaranteed to push the limits of what you thought you could bear, Ricky is in the extreme, experimental tip of the cutting edge of the vanguard. He has an exuberant way of describing the awful jobs he’s been to, segued neatly in with the details of his own sexual adventures, that would have The Marquis de Sade shrieking for the exit.

Except yesterday.

Yesterday even Ricky seemed more subdued than normal, like a trapeze artist that for once almost failed to make the catch.
‘Are you okay, mate?’ I asked him when he walked quietly into the room and sat down in a chair.
‘Yeah – well. Jesus,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t know why they send us to these jobs. I mean – what are we supposed to do? The guy jumped off a bridge under a train. Pretty much obliterated. Nothing left to speak of. I was never very good at puzzles, anyway.’
He links his hands together behind his head and frowns at the air in front of him.
‘Still,’ he says after a long pause. ‘They won’t have any trouble identifying him.’
‘Why’s that, Ricky? Did he leave a note?’
He closes his eyes.
‘No – for some reason his face was still intact. We found it sticking to the front electric shoe.’

the little cabin boy

2011-09-12T08:51:00.003Z

Mr Stanchion is sitting on a kitchen chair, a washing up bowl balanced on his lap, vomit stains on his shirt sleeve. Mrs Stanchion scurries around in the background, stuffing essentials into a bag – wash kit, dressing gown, book of great naval battles.
‘Good gracious,’ he says. ‘It’s a while since I was sick like that.’
The two of them had been for lunch at their usual spot, The Endeavour, a pub with a rotten bay window but a view nonetheless. Mr Stanchion had plumped for the curry, Mrs Stanchion a cheese salad.
‘I think it was the curry,’ he says, then retches some more.
After we check him over we help tidy him up, freshen the bowl, make him comfortable on the sofa. We drape a fleece round his shoulders and he sits there looking like a ruined earl, pale and bilious. He doesn’t want to go to hospital, but we have no immediate concerns. Despite his eighty four years, he only takes an aspirin a day, and the whole thing looks pretty straightforward.
‘You can always call us back if you get worried,’ we say to Mrs Stanchion.
‘Lovely,’ she says, taking her coat off and settling down with The Puzzler.
‘My word,’ says Mr Stanchion. ‘Fifty years at sea and never been sick.’
‘I was five hours at sea and I was begging for someone to shoot me,’ I tell him as Frank finishes the paperwork. ‘We went five miles out to do some fishing and it wasn’t too bad, motoring out, even though it was quite rough. But when we pitched the anchor the boat started rocking like this, side to side to side, and that was it.’
‘Yes. Jolly unfortunate,’ he says, dabbing at his mouth with a kitchen towel, then taking a sip of water. ‘Luckily I was never affected. But I knew people who were. I remember we had this little Chinese cabin boy. Excellent chap, always there when you needed him. But at the start of every voyage, he only had to hear the bosun shout to cast off the dock and he was up in the fo’c’sle, heaving over the side.’
‘Didn’t Nelson used to get sick like that?’
‘A little before my time but yes, I think he did. Mind you, those days – the ships were made of wood and one shudders to think how they must have pitched about. Do excuse me. I must, erm…’
I help him to his feet, and he hobbles off to the toilet.
‘I had the salad,’ says Mrs Stanchion.

lifestyle changes

2011-09-11T16:12:00.000Z

Keith is sitting half on, half off the ambulance seat, one hand on the Entonox mouthpiece and one hand on the arm rest. When the pain in his right flank comes on strong again he bows his head, clamps down on the mouthpiece and takes several deep draughts.
‘Is this like them helium balloons?’ he says as the pain subsides. ‘Is this gonna make me go all Mickey Mouse?’
‘It lowers your voice a bit.’
‘Yeah? Well, so long as it eases the pain I don’t care what I sound like.’
‘Good. I’m glad it’s helping.’
A tall, powerfully built man in his early forties, the only thing that stopped the ambulance wheels lifting up at the front as he clumped up the back steps was the weight of his thickly gelled quiff acting as a counterbalance.
‘I’m stressed. I know I’m stressed,’ he gasps, struggling to find a comfortable position between the chair and the floor, his face pale and his eyes rimmed silver with the pain of it all. ‘Would that bring this on, d’you think?’
‘No, not really. Not if it’s renal colic or something like that.’
‘What else could it be then?’
‘Some kind of infection – don’t know. You need to see a doctor.’
He tokes on the Entonox and then studies me for a second.
‘Are you married?’ he says.
‘Yep. Married. Two kids.’
‘I was. We just split up.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘No.’
He takes some more Entonox.
‘Could it be the old Hong Kong Flu, do you think?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You know. The clap. An STD.’
‘It’s possible. Why?’
‘I saw this woman up town last week. Fifteen years, that’s the first time I done it.’
‘D’you mean a prostitute?’
‘I don’t know. I met her online. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was. Anyway, I seem to remember someone telling me it takes five days, then you can’t piss, and it feels like a donkey kicked you in the kidneys.’
‘Did you have unprotected sex?’
‘No. ‘Course not. I took a flick-knife.’
He laughs, but then the pain grabs hold of him again and he dives down into it with the mouthpiece clamped in his teeth and the demand valve hissing. When this bout ends, he slowly surfaces.
‘It’s good stuff, this,’ he says, waving the mouthpiece in the air. ‘Where can I get myself some?’
‘And it doesn’t give you a hangover.’
He hands me the mouthpiece.
‘No. You’re all right,’ I say.
‘Fair play.’
He takes some more as the ambulance moves off.
‘I’ve just changed my line of work,’ he says, shifting his position again. ‘That’s stress for you, right there.’
‘You’re not kidding. What did you use to do, then?’
‘I was in the house clearance game. Twenty years of it. It got so I could tell everything there was to know about a person, just by what they had around them in their house.’
‘I bet.’
‘I was good. I used to get all the best stuff.’
‘What about the relatives?’
‘Oh sure they’d circle overhead quick as you like. But I knew the tricky little places, you see. I knew where people liked to put things. I did all right. But it weren’t all plain sailing though. Sometimes we’d get called in to some terrible places. This couple I remember – hoarders, they were. Didn’t throw nothing away. I took three tonnes of paper out of that house. Piled up, great columns of the stuff, floor to ceiling. They’d made little alleyways – runs, you know, like rats - to move about. And of course the drains had packed in years ago, so you can imagine what the carsey was like. Hell on earth. After that job, my partner Malcolm, he burned all his clothes, shaved his head and took to wearing the strongest cologne you could imagine, but I could still smell it on him three weeks later. Made a profit, though.’
He pauses to draw on the Entonox again.
‘I could get used to this,’ he says when the pain has eased again. ‘But I know I’m stressed. I can feel it. What do you do about that, then? What do you do about stress?’
‘I don’t know. Talk to your doctor for one thing. There’s lots you can do.’
‘Like what? Pills, I suppose.’
‘Yeah – pills to help you sleep, calm you down, help you through the bad patch. But they could refer you on for some talking therapies – you know, counsellors who could help you with any lifestyle changes you might need to make.’
‘Lifestyle changes?’ he snorts. ‘Listen, mate. I’ve had enough of them already.’

why this thing happened

2011-09-09T10:54:00.000Z

I pull alongside the scene and put the side lights on. They illuminate Taz, lying on his side on the pavement, his legs drawn up, his bloodied head pillowed on his arm. A young girl is shouting and pulling at his jacket: Don’t do this to me, Taz; Come on breathe, mate. Stay awake.
A large woman in a wide brimmed hat is parked alongside on a mobility scooter. She backs up a little so her shadow doesn’t overlie the scene, then rests forward on her handlebars, smoking a fag and taking in the action with the equanimity of a frontier Marshall.
‘It was one of Sam’s in-laws,’ she says as we walk in. ‘Weren’t it, Taz?’
‘Yeah. Something like that,’ he mutters. ‘Just leave me alone.’
Frank taps the girl on the shoulder and asks her to step aside.
‘The paramedics’ll take care of you now, Taz. Let them do their stuff. They’ll fix you up.’
‘I don’t want nothing,’ he says. ‘I just want to be left alone.’
Frank squats down.
‘Keep nice and still, mate’, he says, placing his blue gloved hands around Taz’ head. ‘Just in case you’ve hurt your neck. Now – no, no, quite still – whilst we give you the once over. Tell me what happened.’
‘Fuck knows. I was coming out of the party. And the next thing I know this geezer starts battering me. I went down, and he kicked me in the head.’
‘He’s an animal,’ says the girl. ‘A fucking animal. No way he deserved that. No way.’
The woman on the scooter laughs and flicks her cigarette away.
‘I’m off home, Taz,’ she says. ‘Good luck mate. See you later.’
‘Yeah, later.’
‘Were you knocked out, d’you think?’ says Frank.
‘I’ve no idea. I don’t remember.’
‘He was completely out of it,’ says the girl. ‘I thought he was dead.’
Frank sends me back to the truck to get together the trolley, scoop, vacuum mattress, head blocks – all the kit for immobilising a trauma patient.
‘Now Taz,’ says Frank. ‘You’ve had a lot to drink, you’ve been assaulted, fallen to the floor, maybe lost consciousness. All of that means we have to keep you nice and straight for the ride in to hospital, so the doctors there can see if you’ve damaged anything. Okay?’
‘You’re joking,’ spits Taz. ‘I just want to go home.’
‘Maybe later,’ says Frank. ‘But you need some attention in hospital.’
‘He’s a paramedic,’ says the girl, ‘Don’t you give him no trouble and do what he says. I’m gonna call Sam to meet us up there.’
‘No – don’t. I’ll see her later.’
But the girl turns away with her phone.
‘Oh man!’ says Taz. ‘This is fucking unreal. I can’t believe he did that. One minute it’s all happy, happy, falling out of the party, the next he’s like a fucking mentalist. I tell you what, mate – first thing I’m doing when I leave hospital is go straight round there and rip his head off.’
‘Yeah? Well if you keep waving your head around your ripping days are over,’ says Frank. ‘So keep still. I know it’s uncomfortable, but it’s for your own good.’
‘Yeah, easy mate – whatever.’
The police are on scene now. Two of them interview the girl and some bystanders; one helps us parcel Taz up and get him onto the stretcher.
‘Fuck me,’ says Taz. ‘This is too fucking weird.’
Whilst we strap him to the trolley the police officer who helped us takes off his bloodied glove, pulls out a notebook and leans in.
‘All right, Taz?’ he says. ‘Who did this?’
‘Ask Kelly. She’ll tell you,’ he says. ‘Wanker. I weren’t doing nothing.’
‘So why did he start, then?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got no idea. I was coming out of the party, messing about, then suddenly he comes up, stands next to me and he’s like: Oh, so – that’s how it goes, is it? and he lamps me as hard as he can and I go down. He’s fucking dead, mate. I tell you that much for free.’
Frank sighs and shakes his head.
‘Who knows why these things happen?’ he says. ‘Come on, mate. A few bumps.’
We load Taz onto the ambulance. Kelly finishes her phone call, but just before she climbs up into the back she pauses and bends her leg back to look at the sole of her shoe.
‘I think I’ve stood in dog shit,’ she says.
‘Here. Put some gloves on and wipe them with this,’ I say to her.
‘Nah. Cheap Primark specials.’ She slips them off and chucks them out behind her where they clatter away into the dark street. She climbs in barefoot and plumps herself down in a seat facing the trolley.
‘Is he going to be all right?’ she says, crossing her legs, resting her phone on her knee and flicking through the screen.
‘I expect so. This is all precautionary.’
‘What d’you mean? I’m always all right,’ says Taz. ‘I’m better than superman.’
‘Show us your pants then, darling,’ she says, her laugh as light and sharp as her ear-rings.
‘I’m not showing you no fucking pants.’
‘Thank god for that,’ says Frank. ‘Now, Taz. It’ll feel a bit weird riding like this in to hospital, but it’s important we keep you flat. If you feel like you’re going to be sick, let me know and we’ll deal with it. Okay?’
‘Okay boss.’
‘Okay.’
‘This is dead exciting,’ says Kelly, flicking her fringe. ‘I’ve never been on an ambulance before.’ Then she bends back over her phone, scrolling through options, searching for something.
Frank nods to me and I turn to jump out and drive. But just as I’m pulling my gloves off, Kelly says: ‘I knew you shouldn’t have done it, Taz, mate.’
‘Done what?’ he says.
‘Booted that hedgehog.’
‘It was a joke,’ he says. ‘And anyway - what the fuck it’s got to do with him, I don’t know.’

overdose

2011-09-05T18:46:00.005Z

Barbara speaks on the intercom with a strangely conversational tone, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for an ambulance to be calling by at six in the morning.
‘Ye-es?’
‘Ambulance.’
‘I suppose you’d better come up. But please - be very careful not to slam the door.’
We trudge up a neatly carpeted flight of stairs to her front door, a single pane of security glass with a floor-length cream curtain hung behind it. Barbara meets us at the door, a pale and pouchy, middle-aged woman whose dark bob of hair seems to accentuate the bitter fall of her mouth. Despite her comfortable clothes and polite speech there is an edge to her that glimmers beneath the bright hall light.
‘Hello. Ambulance,’ I manage to say. It’s been a long night. My lips are fat and my boots dipped in concrete. Any vitality I had has been rolled flat by the relentless passage of the shift, but this must surely be our last patient. That happy thought gives me just enough power to say: ‘Can we come in and chat?’
‘Oh. Okay. If you think.’
She lets go of the door and we drift after her into the sitting room.
‘Please excuse the mess,’ she says. ‘Organised chaos. But at least I know where everything is.’
In fact, the flat is as tidy as you could want. There is a laptop on an antique pine blanket chest, a large art book on the sofa, a blue bowl of fruit as tastefully set as the charcoal and pastel study of the nude above it. From the polished brown leather sofa to the tie-backs on the floral curtains, everything has the brisk domestic sheen of a Sunday Supplement article – except it feels off, as if, despite all the care, someone had come along and spoiled the photo by writing a terrible sentence – a bad thought, a dreadful curse - in small print somewhere.
‘Please. Have a seat,’ she says, taking one herself, perching on the edge and folding her hands neatly in her lap. ‘Now. What’s all this about?’
‘I understand you’ve taken an overdose. Is that right?’
She pauses, and self-consciously moves a few strands of hair away from her face. When she does speak again, she speaks in a close, low whisper, a slightly fussy tone, like a stressed teacher counselling difficult parents. She does not look up, but addresses the carpet between us.
‘Now. This is how things are, as I see it,’ she says. ‘Please – bear with me. I’ve had an awful lot of experience in these matters, both as a patient and as a friend of mental health professionals.’
‘Okay.’
‘I – well – from the beginning, I suppose. Last night I decided, for reasons I won’t go into now, because you’ve got better things to do, and so have I, and these things are complicated enough – and I know you’ve got a job to do, and I don’t want to take up any more of your time than I already am. I am in good health. I only suffer with a couple of things, one of them being depression. As you could no doubt have guessed.’
‘That’s the information we were given.’
‘Really? Fine.’ Her mouth seems dry, and she forms her words with that overly precise articulation you get with alcohol or drugs.
‘Firstly, yes, it’s true. I have taken an overdose. I have taken a packet of anti-depressants. Yes – I told this to the people on the phone, presumably part of your – erm – network. But as I explained, there’s nothing I want from anyone. It’s a decision I have made, and I’m perfectly within my rights to make it. So I don’t know what papers you’ve been reading, or to what rule you think you might be operating. But this is my house, these are my rights, and I know exactly what I can or can’t do. Let’s be clear on this before we go any further, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.’
‘Barbara – I’ve not met you before, so I’m completely in the dark about what’s happened today.’
‘Are you? Completely? Well that’s not much use.’
‘No. So let’s start with the basics. We need to know exactly what you’ve taken, how much of it, and when.’
‘Hm. This is interesting. So you want me to tell you exactly what it is I’ve overdosed on? Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. And on what study have you based this – erm – conclusion?’
‘It’s not really based on any study, Barbara. It’s a basic fact we need to establish before we can carry on. We just need to know the nature of the overdose.’
‘Yes. I can see what you’re getting at. But before we come to that, let me just go over a few things. Because as you know this is my house and I’m perfectly entitled to do or say whatever I want in my house without fear of you or anyone else telling me what I should or shouldn’t say. Is that clear? I didn’t want you here. I didn’t ask for you to come, I didn’t want you to come. I simply phoned the helpline for some information – information that I wasn’t managing to find myself. The person on the helpline offered to send me your good selves, acting as their representative, who might be able to help me understand a few things and if not make things better, at least move things forward to a more satisfactory outcome for all concerned. Now, if you’re telling me that you’re unable for whatever reason to keep your end of the bargain, I think I would have to apologise for calling you out like this, say good morning and draw this interview to a conclusion.’
‘Barbara. Let me be as clear as I can. We work for the ambulance service.’
‘Yes. I am aware of that.’
‘Our job is to make sure you’re okay. We were told you may have taken an overdose. If you have, we need to know what you’ve taken, when you took it, and how much.’
‘Yes. Go on. I follow.’
‘But the fact is, we can’t treat you here. It’ll invariably mean a trip up the hospital.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘We haven’t the equipment or the skills to treat you for any of the harmful side effects that you might suffer.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Plus there’s the reason you took the overdose in the first place. Can I ask – was it to do yourself harm?’
‘No – it was to kill myself. I was looking up on-line at the thing to take, and that was why I phoned the helpline.’
‘Well you see, Barbara – the fact that you’re quite clear about wanting to kill yourself is another reason why we’d like to take you to hospital, quite apart from any tablets you may have taken.’
‘I am not going to hospital. I have wasted too many months of my life in awful places like that and I don’t intend to waste any more. If all you can do is threaten to cart me off to some unspeakable ward somewhere, you can forget it.’ She stands up and starts looking around for something. ‘If I’d thought that’s all you were going to do, I’d never have agreed to let you in. You’ve made me feel quite anxious and upset. I’d like you to leave, please.’
‘Of course. But Barbara – just let me say this before we go. If you were diabetic and your blood sugar was low, you’d be distressed and out of sorts, wouldn’t you? You might well struggle to stop us helping you.’
‘You’re making me extremely anxious now. What do you mean “struggle”? Just what are you planning?’
‘Nothing. I’m not planning anything, Barbara. I’m just trying to be clear and open with you. I’m trying to find an example that might help you see things from our point of view. The fact is, you suffer with depression. And depression is just as much an illness as diabetes. I don’t have a problem with you accepting or refusing help, but I do have a problem if I think you’re not making that decision rationally, because of your illness. We’re supposed to act as the advocate for your healthy self, Barbara. We’re supposed to look after your best interests. And if you’re so depressed that you’re thinking of killing yourself and taking an overdose, I’d have to say that doesn’t look like a rational decision.’
‘Please. I’d like you to go.’
‘Do you have a CPN, Barbara?’
She snorts derisively.
‘CPN! The last place I lived virtually all my friends were CPNs. And if you think I’m going to offer up my life for them to dissect and gossip about endlessly you have another thing coming. Please. I think it’s high time you were going. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.’
‘We will go, Barbara, but I wish you’d come with us.’
‘No. Thank you.’
She flashes me a look and wets her lips.
‘What will you do now?’ she says.
‘I’ll contact the out of hours doctor, tell them what happened, and leave it up to them to decide what to do next.’
‘Fine. Let them. Good bye.’
She holds the door open as we go out, then comes to the top of the stairs as we descend.
‘And please don’t slam the door on the way out,’ she says.

the real thing

2011-09-03T14:57:00.002Z

The fog has really come down now. It slides through the park, an implacable wall of grey, wiping the form and substance from everything, absorbing the shouts of the children, the muted chatter of the diners at the outside tables of the restaurant, the candles in their red glass bowls pulsing like the hearts of strange flowers with ragged petals of dark.
The ambulance thrums into place by the bins and boxes at the back of the café. A shadowy figure is there to meet it, the manager of the place, hugging his arms against the chill, smoking a cigarette.
‘He was sitting on a bench opposite for ages, then I saw him stagger off up the hill a little way and lay down on the path.’ He takes a generous pull of smoke, exhales, and for a second you could imagine here was the source of the fog. He smiles and taps the glowing end out to the side. ‘I think he must be pretty whacked out on something or other, but you’re the experts. You can just make out his shape – there!’
‘Thanks. Do you know who he is? Is there anyone with him?’
‘I haven’t seen him before and no, I think he’s alone.’
We walk up the path.
Children stop playing on the green in front of the restaurant. They stand strangely still, turning their whole bodies along with their eyes to watch us as we go.

Jez is lying on his back, his right hand across his forehead. As we approach he shouts out:
‘I’m not a bad person! I haven’t hurt anyone! Please! I haven’t done anything!’
‘It’s okay. We’ve only come here because people are worried about you. What’s your name?’
‘I’m not violent! I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘No-one’s said you have. But you can understand how worried they were when they saw you lie down on the path. They think you’re not well.’
‘I’m not well. I’m mentally ill. Look!’
He bunches up the sleeves on both arms and even in this light you can make out the thickened stripes of white flesh where he’s cut himself in the past.’
‘That looks bad,’ I say. ‘You’ve obviously had a lot to put up with. But first things first. What’s your name?’
‘Jez. Jez. They know me there. They know me at the hospital.’
‘Okay, Jez. My name’s Spence and this is Frank. Our ambulance is parked just behind the café there. Will you come with us and have a chat about what’s going on tonight? It’s perfectly safe. There’s nothing to worry about. But you can’t be very comfortable down there. It’s a bit chilly to be lying on the floor.’
‘Help me up!’ he says, raising his left hand. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘Come on then.’
We help him up.
As soon as he’s upright he grimaces and pushes the heels of both his hands into his face. We both take a step back.
‘I’m not a violent person!’ he shouts. Then makes an incoherent growl of a noise, flecks of saliva playing about his small, white teeth.
‘Jez! Jez! Just try to ease off a bit, mate. Look. I believe you when you say you wouldn’t hurt anyone. But when you shout and carry on like this, you do come across as violent. I want you to try really hard to calm down.’
‘I’d never hurt you! I just want to hurt myself! I want to die!’
‘Jez. Look – there are lots of children in the park. Can you see - just about! All the children? You’ll scare them if you carry on like this. I know you don’t want to scare the children, do you? Hey?’
‘No. I don’t want to scare the children. But I’m losing my mind!’
He looks around him, a strangely melodramatic movement, sweeping his arms out and to the side, arching his back and throwing wide-eyed looks to the right and left. ‘The fog!’ he gasps. ‘It makes everything so – different!’

We manage to calm him down and head back to the ambulance. As we walk along the path, a child stops bouncing a ball and clutches it to her, staring at the strange procession. Jez twitches and makes a turn as if to shout something to her, but we discretely lead him away, all the time finding the kind of bland encouragements you might make to a jittery horse. Frank opens the side door of the truck; the bright light from within spilling out suddenly, cutting a square of yellow in the cool, grey air around us. Jez draws back.
‘It’s okay,’ I say.
He looks at me, and I feel myself tense up, anticipating an attack. But instead he smiles, puts a hand on my shoulder and starts singing: You to me are everything, the sweetest song that I can sing, oh baby. Oh baby….
‘The Real Thing,’ says Frank. ‘Nineteen seventy six.’
We climb into the ambulance, and he shuts the door as gently as he can behind us.

ruth

2011-09-02T10:54:00.001Z

The job comes through as an adult / male, hit by car, giving as the location an estate agent in the high street. We’re not far from the scene; as Frank turns into the road, we expect to catch the tail end of the jam and see flashes of blue ahead. But the traffic is flowing as smoothly as ever, and the concourses free of the usual thrill of incident. The update comes through just as we pull up outside the shop: injury longer than two days, followed by a lower grade response code. There’s no time to call Control up for a chat about this; someone is waving to us from between all the housing cards in the window.
As we cross the threshold there is a low, rumbling growl off to our right, where a man is bent over a telephone on the desk by the window. The paws and snout of a giant Alsatian poke out from between the legs of his chair. It growls again, and I can almost feel it through the floor.
The estate agent, a glossy blond efficiently packaged in scarlet blouse and grey two piece, smiles wanly and backs away to the safety of the photocopier at the rear of the shop.
‘He just - came in,’ she says, and nods towards the man.
The subject of her horror is obviously still on the phone to the call-taker. I tap him on the shoulder; he almost leaps out of the chair.
‘We’re here,’ I tell him. ‘You can hang up now.’
He lurches round and faces us from the chair. A rheumy scoop of a guy, he flicks his head as he blinks, struggling to locate the can of super strength right in front of him on the desk. His hair quivers in clumps like the last remaining feathers on a stressed fowl, and his jacket and jeans are so spattered and filthy they could have been dredged from a swamp.
‘Hello Tony,’ I say.
‘Hello Tony?’ he says, slopping the can between us. ‘Hello Tony? I’ve had an accident. I’ve been run over. And that’s all you can say, Hello Tony? I can’t walk! I’m badly injured. I was hit by a car and I can’t do anything.’
It’s always difficult to keep pace with Tony. His speech pattern is as chaotic as his appearance, lurching from one state to another, one moment the traumatised patient, the next, pleasantly conversational.
‘So, where’re you from?’ he says, crossing his legs. ‘Do I know you?’
‘Tony – I want you to slow everything down for a minute and try to concentrate. No – just listen and answer my questions. How did you get here?’
‘Well I walked, obviously. The dog’s not mine. I’m looking after her. And now this! Don’t do this to me. Please. I’m badly hurt. I can’t feel my legs.’
He dry-cries, and then pushes the can up into his nose.
‘Let’s have that,’ I say, taking it off him. I hand it to Frank, who smiles and hands it back to the woman, who takes it with two fingers and arms a mile long in the direction of the bin.
‘Tell me about the accident, Tony.’
He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a crumpled square of yellow card.
‘Ring Sheila. There – that number. She knows what’s what.’
‘Yep, I will ring her, Tony but first I want you to tell me why we’re here. What’s all this about you being hit by a car?’
He leans forward and puts his face in his hands.
‘Why won’t you listen?’ he moans. ‘You don’t care. You’re heartless and horrible. I’ve told you everything I know. What do you want from me? Why won’t you do anything?’
‘When did you have this accident?’
‘Yesterday. The day before. I can’t remember.’
‘Did you go to hospital?’
‘No.’
‘Did you have the ambulance out to you?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Look I just need help but you don’t seem willing to give it for some reason. I can’t walk and someone has to get the dog back home. Ring Sheila. That number – there.’
I look back at the estate agent, who has sat down at her desk and buried her head in her computer.
‘Can I use your phone?’
She looks up, nods, gives her head a little shake, and ducks back down again.
Sheila answers on the third ring. A pleasant voice, kind and calm.
‘Tony lives a couple of doors down from me,’ she says. ‘I’ve known him for years, but I must admit he’s getting worse. It’s the drinking, more than anything. Don’t worry about the accident story. It’s – how shall I put it? – one of the aspects of his problem. I expect you’ve seen him before, have you? He’s often up at the hospital. Discharges himself after an hour. I’m so sorry to waste your time.’
‘Whose dog is this, Sheila?’
‘Oh – has he got his dog, Ruth, with him?’
‘I must admit I’m more worried about the dog. We can’t take her in the ambulance with us, and he’s quite a way from home.’
‘I’d come and get her but I’m out of town working. I won’t be back till this afternoon.’
‘Never mind, Sheila. We’ll sort something out. Thanks for your help.’
I hang up.
‘Who was that?’ says Tony.
‘That was Sheila. She says this is your dog. Ruth.’
‘Of course this is my dog. I told you.’
I turn to Frank.
‘How far away are we from Mannings Crescent? I can’t remember.’
And then to the estate agent.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a map book handy, have you?’
She gives me a look that’s barely one degree warmer than the look she’s been giving Tony, and it’s only then that I notice the gigantic map of the city centre spread across the wall facing me.
‘Oh. Good. That’s handy.’
Frank reaches out and taps Mannings Crescent, about two miles up the road.
‘You ought to get yourself a saddle,’ he says to Tony. ‘She’s so big you could ride her home.’
‘Fine!’ he says, standing up and lurching off towards the door. ‘If that’s all you think I’m worth. Come on, Ruthie. Thanks for nothing.’
He clatters out of the door.

‘Sorry about all that,’ I say to the woman. She smiles and stands up.
‘I think he might have spilled a little of his beer over here, so watch out. If he comes back in, call the police.’
She reaches out and steadies herself on the computer screen.
Outside, we both look up and down the street. Tony is immediately apparent, sitting on a table outside a tatty pub a few doors along, waving his arms and talking energetically to a couple of drinkers who, even though they are as derelict as you could wish to see, are appalled at their new companion, and shift uncomfortably on their seats. Ruth is already stretched out on the pavement in front of them; Tony doesn’t see us go, but Ruth – she raises her dark and massive head, and watches us intently all the way back to the ambulance.

ghosts

2011-08-30T10:02:00.001Z

Two o’clock in the morning, and Nerys is outside resus, standing by a trolley piled with equipment, scrubbing a head block. The department is strangely quiet, a vista of empty trolleys beyond her, and despite some quiet movements and murmurings from the cubicles, not a person in sight.
‘Hey Nerys. What’s up?’
She straightens and smiles. Frank goes on past her to hand over at the desk; our patient lies sleeping on the ambulance trolley, anaesthetised with booze.
She nods at him.
‘They’ll be starting to come in now, I expect.’
‘Yep. So it begins.’
She smiles again, but seems pale and wrung out, her eyes as blue as her tunic.
‘Are you okay?’
She puts the block down.
‘I just saw a ghost,’ she says.
‘A ghost? What – literally? Where?’
She glances behind her at the swing doors of the resus room, absently wiping her gloved hands with the cleansing wipe as she talks.
‘It was so weird. Resus is empty - which god knows is weird enough. I thought I’d take advantage and catch up on some cleaning. I was half way through when I felt this wash of cold go through me. I looked up because I thought the doors must have blown open, and saw this shape moving through the room.’
‘What sort of shape?’
‘Definitely a person, but just a blurry outline. I don’t know – it’s difficult – like if you press too hard when you do a drawing and it comes through underneath. All I did was just stand there and say ‘Hello?’, and watch it pass out of the room.’
‘Through the doors do you mean?’
‘Well – kind of the gap between them, actually. I was so freaked I brought all my stuff out to work in the corridor.’
She smiles thinly and picks up another head block.
‘Maybe I’m going crazy,’ she says.
‘I don’t think you’re crazy. Maybe you did see a ghost.’
‘Have you ever seen one?’
‘Me? No. Well – not that I know of. I try to talk myself out of all that stuff because I know I’d freak out if I let myself believe in it. I get so spooked out when I hear stories like this. Look at these goose bumps.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So how did the ghost seem to you, Nerys? Sad? Evil?’
She raises her eyebrows and thinks about it for a moment. Eventually she sighs and says:
‘I don’t know. Lost. Like it had somewhere to go but couldn’t remember where.’
Suddenly a deep, slurry of a voice speaks between us.
‘Ghosts exist all right,’ it says.
My heart twitches, but in that same instant I realise it’s just my patient, who has woken up and raised himself on one arm to look at us both. He closes an eye and drills the corner of it with a filthy finger, smacks his lips together, then wriggles about to make himself more comfortable.
‘Are you all right?’ I say to him, but smile at Nerys because I can see he made us both jump.
‘I had this job in an off licence,’ he says when he’s settled. ‘Part of a big old building, used to be a bakery in the nineteenth century. Apparently the baker murdered his wife and bricked her up in the cellar. Anyway, when I got the job the manager was walking me round the place telling me about this and that, you know, the alarms, the toilet, what the job was, you know, when he slips it in all casual-like about the ghost. “What do you mean? What ghost?” I says. “Oh, don’t mind her,” he says, “but she’s got some rules and it’s as well you know about them.” “Okay, fine, what rules?” “Well, for a start, she doesn’t like anything hidden, so don’t bother trying. The last guy was supposed to set up a Hamlet cigar display in the shop, but he didn’t like it so he hid it under some boxes in the cellar and locked the door. When he came back in the morning the door was still locked, but the display was sitting right in the middle of the shop.” “Okay,’ I says to him, “What else?” “Well,” he says, “She throws things around sometimes if she’s in a strop, so just don’t piss her off.” The first day I worked there I was just finishing locking up the back when the bell rang at the front. I thought whoever it was would go away when they saw we were closed, but the bell rang more persistent like, so in the end I went out. But there was no-one at the door and the street was empty. Then the bell goes down in the cellar. All I thought was, someone messing about, kids or something. Anyway, I went down there and opened the little door that leads out into the back yard, but that was deserted too. Then I remembered about the ghost. So I just stood there and said out loud I know it’s you, ghostie. It’s nice to meet you and everything. I’m new here, I want to make a go of it, but I don’t want us to start off on the wrong foot. I’ll be around all day, but you can have the run of the place at night, and that way we’ll get along just fine. If there’s anything else you need, just let me know and I’ll do my best. And from that day on I didn’t have any trouble, apart from the usual ‘footsteps on the stairs’ and ‘cold shivers’ and ‘floating bottles’ and stuff. But I didn’t mind. It was a bit of company.’
‘Floating bottles? What do you mean?’
Suddenly he begins coughing, an eruption of rattles and dinks, like someone shaking a bag of marbles. I sit the back of the trolley up. He dredges a gloop of dreadful matter and flops it into the bowl. I hand him some tissues. When the moment has passed, he carries on.
‘I was doing a stock take when suddenly a bottle of Old Plymouth slid off the shelf and hung there in front of me, in mid-air. I just looked at it. A good couple of minutes it was hanging there, all shivery in the light from the window, and I couldn’t understand what the hell was going on. Then suddenly it fell to the floor and smashed. “Great” I thought. “You know who’ll get the blame for that.” I’d just fetched the dustpan and brush out and was starting to clean it all up when the door burst open and Carrie came running in. She was always running in with one thing or another, but this time she goes: “You won’t believe the news.” “Oh yeah? Try me” I say. “They’ve just found Old Nellie Ellington dead in her flat,” she says. Then she looks down at the floor and sees all the mess and says “Blimey. What happened here?” And it suddenly made sense. And I said to her: “It’s the ghost. I think she’s trying to tell us something about Old Nellie.”

MOI

2011-08-27T20:43:00.000Z

Mrs Rickson is lying in the hallway, her head propped up on pillows.
‘How did you come to be on the floor?’ asks Frank, crouching down beside her like an Indian scout reading the trail in a corny western.
‘What?’
‘My wife’s not got any short term memory,’ says Mr Rickson, leaning in and laying a hand gently on Frank’s shoulder. ‘She’s under the doctors for it – waiting on a scan.’ He withdraws discretely and folds his hands in front of him.
‘I see,’ says Frank. ‘Do you have any pain at the moment, Mrs Rickson? Any new pain?’
She winces and reaches round to the small of her back.
Frank looks up at the husband, who closes his eyes and shakes his head a little.
‘Always has pain there,’ he says. ‘Nothing new. When I saw she was going I helped her down gently. Nothing jarred.’
‘Good,’ says Frank. ‘That’s good. Now – is there anything else I should know about before we move you?’
Mr Rickson leans in and touches Frank on the shoulder again.
‘She has a lot of trouble with that,’ he says, pointing to her leg. ‘She’s had all kinds of work. Pins and whatsits. Operations – you know.’
‘Oh? What happened there, then?’
‘It’s a long story,’ says Mr Rickson, extending his jaw forwards to free it from his starchy collar. ‘She did it the same time as she did her back. We were driving on the motorway.’
‘Ah!’ says Frank. ‘An RTC.’
‘A what you say?’
‘A crash. You had a car crash.’
Mr Rickson frowns.
‘No. No – we were driving on the motorway when Dorothy said she was desperate for the loo. I said to her I said “Can’t you hold it? We’re almost there”, but she said she couldn’t. So I pulled over. Onto the hard shoulder.’
‘Ah. Right. So - you got hit by a car on the hard shoulder.’
‘No.’
‘A trip, was it?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Did she trip when she was getting out of the car?’
‘No. No. She got out of the car, quite safely, and she was looking around for somewhere to go, because as I say, she was desperate. And she saw this bush just a few yards from the car, so she decided to go behind that.’
‘Right.’
‘Except it wasn’t a bush – it was the top of a tree. She fell twenty feet into a gulley, and the fire brigade had to fish her out.’

bikes

2011-08-25T12:09:00.001Z

The morning has grown in stature until it stands warm and wide and cloudless blue with everything before it. Even the sun wears shades; it pushes them further up its nose and leans in to scrutinise the bustling summer commerce of the city below – the cars and vans, bikes and buses, the pedestrians, joggers, buggies and wheelchairs, the skateboarders and bikers on the ramp, the early picnickers through the trees, the tennis players, toddlers, dog walkers and street sweepers, and that ambulance, like a wedge of pure sunshine, indicating to move over into the lane that leads to the park.
Inside the cab, Frank reads out the latest job to come through.
Man fallen from bike.
‘Not another one,’ he says. ‘How many of these are we going to do today?’
‘It’s the nice weather, Frank. Everyone gets their bike out.’
He writes the incident number on the sheet and tosses the board onto the dash.
‘If you ever see me on a bike,’ he says, ‘It’s not me. Call the police.’
But then the update comes through and he straightens in the chair.
‘OK. That would explain it. Cardiac arrest.’

Luckily we’re just a few streets away. As I pull round the corner we can see a group of people leaning over a figure in the road. I park up just beyond and protect the scene with the truck; Frank jumps out and when I join him he’s already giving CPR. As I stick on the defib pads Frank is asking the distraught woman leaning over him what her relation is to the patient – wife – what happened – he complained his arm had gone numb then he pitched off the bike – what he suffers with – angina. He tells her that her husband’s heart has stopped working but we’re doing what we can. I nod at the man who made the call, and he gently leads her to one side to give us more room.
‘VF. Hands off.’
Frank lifts his hands.
‘Clear.’
I deliver a shock. The man’s body gives a convulsive shudder, then Frank is straight back on the chest.
Another crew turns up to help.
A minute further and we shock the man again. This time a viable rhythm settles in to the monitor. A pulse at the neck, increasingly effective breathing. We cluster round the man’s attempt at life with the care of primitives tending a flame. Every bit of kit that could possibly keep the fire going is out on the road now. Until finally, incredibly, it seems as if his condition has stabilised sufficiently to package him up and load him onto the truck. The second truck tidies up and follows with the patient’s wife. At hospital he is stabilised further in Resus, then taken to the cath lab. He finishes the day in CCU.

‘Like I said,’ says Frank, taking a sip of his coffee and studying the sky, the light needling from the rims of his dreadful seventies sunglasses, ‘If you ever see me on a bike...’

fact / fiction

2011-08-23T18:07:00.003Z

Roger leans back in his computer chair and half of his pastry disappears in one convulsive mouthful. He stares at me as he chews and swallows, then with the remaining half poised to follow the first, says: ‘I suppose you just believe everything you’re told, do you?’ He hangs for a second more before snapping it down, crumpling up the greasy bag and tossing it in a perfect arc across the room into the bin. He sucks his fingers clean. ‘Do you?’
Roger loves an argument as much as a fruit Danish.
He turns back to the computer.
‘Me?’ he says. ‘I like to make my own mind up.’
I can’t help being drawn in. I’m like that Danish, helplessly poised over the abyss.
‘Based on what? The internet?’
He swivels round to look at me again.
‘Based on facts, fella. Facts that are out there, if you know where to look. Straight from the coal face, people like you and me. Who live this shit, day in, day out. Come on! You’re not scared of the internet are you? Because there’s nothing they’d like more. They’d love you to think it’s the bogeyman and stay quietly in your corner. But you know it’s just another way for people to talk to each other. And at the end of the day, what’s more dangerous than that? It’s what governments spend billions trying to stamp out. The thing about the internet is it doesn’t have anything to sell. Well, the heart of it doesn’t. The soul of it. The soul that’s still intact despite all their best efforts to rein it in. Basically it’s a window out onto the world, Spence. Where you can find stuff out. From real people, working people who couldn’t give a shit about the bottom line or the mission statement or any of the rest of that poisonous stuff the management like to shovel out. Open your eyes, Spence. Look around. It’s all there for you, if you’d only let yourself see it. You’ve just got to read with a bit more of a question in your heart. And I don’t mean all the official bullshit they put out, the newspapers, the TV – all that sterile, boneless crap. What do you think they’re going to say? Do you think they want you to know the real reason they do stuff? All they want is that you keep doing what you’re doing, pulling on the oars and looking out the window whilst they bang the drum and keep their eye on the real destination.’
There’s a smoothly pulsating rhythm to Roger’s speech that’s completely sedating. I am Mowgli, caught in Kaa’s coils, staring into the concentric circles of his eyes.
I try to snap myself out of it.
‘At least with the stuff you read in books and newspapers you get to see who wrote the thing,’ I say, squirming. ‘At least there’s a chance you could hold them to account.’ As soon as I say it I realise what a fraud I am. Who writes a blog? Who uses a pseudonym? But Roger doesn’t know about any of that. I’m a worm in the apple of his tree.
‘Yeah? So how long has it taken a big fancy paper like The Guardian to bring News International to account? How easy was that for them, with all their money? How easy would it be for you, do you think?’
I shrug.
He turns back to his computer again.
‘I can’t believe you’re so naïve, fella,’ he says, perfectly pleasantly. I don’t reply, and after a while I become conscious of the hum and drone of the servers. Roger surfs a few sites, then logs off and folds his arms.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard about the ambulance X files, then?’
‘The what?’
‘The ambulance X files. All those jobs that are so devastating they’d blow your little world apart if you heard about them.’
‘And where did you hear about them? On the internet, I suppose?’
‘No. This was even better. I got this from a friend of a friend who knows one of the crew. Over East way.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Apparently, they got sent to a possession. A young girl, possessed by the devil. That’s how it came over on the notes. So of course they rang Control straight back but didn’t get anything different. You know, assess and advise. And they were giving it all the usual chat on the way over. Yeah, right. Possession, blah, blah. The usual lines from The Exorcist. But when they pulled up outside the house they felt terrible, like some dread hand had been lain across their soul. And when they went into the house it was dark, and completely trashed, and colder than a fridge. And there was the girl, standing in the middle of the room smiling at them. And then suddenly the door slammed shut and a sofa – a sofa – flew across the room and flattened them both. They screamed their heads off and got out as fast as they could, even though one of them had a broken leg. Months off work. Months. Therapy, the works. And they were forbidden to tell anyone anything on pain of their jobs.’
‘That’s a good story, Roger. I like that one. How did you hear of it?’
‘Frank told me.’
‘Frank?’
And just at that moment he walks in the computer room.
‘What?’ he says.

mrs ramstein

2011-08-19T11:58:00.002Z

An ancient woman opens the door to us. She is smiling serenely, perfectly insulated from the buffetings of the world in a full length, bottle green quilted house jacket.
‘Are you the patient?’ I ask her.
She shakes her head and moves sideways without a sound; her coat is so long, you would think she was on casters.
‘Upstairs,’ she beams.
The house is so perfect it’s like we’ve been miniaturised and put inside a Regency dolls house. At the foot of the stairs is a white door. I open it, and we go up.
‘Ambulance,’ I call ahead.
A fierce voice answers.
‘For Gott’s sake, here, here, bitte. How long must you be in the coming? In here. Why do you take so long about it?’
‘Okay. Almost with you.’
We follow the sound of intense muttering, and find another elderly woman sitting on a lounge floor in her nightie, both legs straight out in front of her, supporting herself on her arms. She looks straight at us as we come in the door, a savagely uncompromising squint.
‘What is the matter with you? Can you not see the trouble I’m in? Look. Qvick. I tell you what to do and you help me because I’m in such pain.’
‘First things first. My name’s Spence, this is Frank. What - ?’
‘I don’t care who you are. Why won’t you listen? I’m telling you what to do. Now. Move that chair. Come here.’
‘I need to know your name, though.’
She sighs explosively and sinks an inch. After a murderous pause she fixes me with her eyes again and says: ‘You will address me as Mrs Ramstein.’
‘Mrs Ramstein. Thank you. Now. How can we help?’
‘How can we help he says. Mein Gott, if you would only listen you would know. I have fallen down onto my sitting bones and I am unable to stand. Now. If you would both take hold and give me assistance, I can get off the floor and in to bed. Do you think it is comfortable here? Do you?’
‘Why did you fall, do you think?’
‘I fell because I fell! What is this nonsense you are asking?’
‘Was it because you lost your balance, or did you pass out?’
‘Come on. Enough. Take my arms. This is ridiculous.’
‘Okay. But let’s quickly see if you’ve hurt yourself.’
‘I’ve already told you I hurt myself. I fell down on my sitting bones and I have brrr-oosed them.’
‘Can you just lift this leg for me?’
‘I know what you are thinking, but let me tell you, I have forty years a nurse been. Do you think I do not know what is the difference between a fracture, a dislocation, a haematoma or some simple brrr-oosing? Now will you stop all this nonsense and get me up.’
‘Sure.’
We help her up.
‘There,’ says Frank. ‘Good as new.’
‘Good as new,’ spits Mrs Ramstein. ‘What do you think? How many years you been ambulance?’
‘I’ve lost count,’ says Frank. ‘It’s all a pleasant blur.’
‘Well let me tell you something. In all my years I have never met such incompetence. Now. You will help me to the bedroom and I will rest on my bed. Not that way – this way. More slowly! Mind that!’
We help her into her bedroom – a forensically tidy space, with starched and ironed squares of pure white linen draped over the brushes on her dressing table, the books and pill packets on her trolley, and even over the top half of a cheval mirror.
‘On to the bed. No! Pull the qvilt to one side first. Not like that. In half, neatly, down the middle. Who taught you to make beds?’
‘Come on, Spence, sharpen up,’ says Frank.
‘There. Now. Gently down. Gently…gently….ahh.’
She stretches out, closes her eyes and folds her hands across her stomach.
After a moment – in which you would think she had fallen instantly to sleep – I dare to speak again.
‘We just need to do some basic observations, Mrs Ramstein, then we’ll leave you to rest.’
The eyes snap open.
‘Be qvick,’ she says.
Frank writes out the ticket as I canter through some obs.
‘Never in all my years have I met such incompetence, she says, but her voice is easier now – albeit the ease of a sated lioness. As I check her over I cannot resist finding out a little more about her.
‘So. Are you from Germany, Mrs Ramstein?’
The lioness roars.
‘Germany? No! I am Austrian. I would have thought you would have known that, at least? Are you really that stupid?’
Around us on the walls are some family photos – recent colour pictures of young women graduating; older, more faded photos of family groups with a stout blond matriarch in the background; a black and white photo of an athletic blond woman in a bathing suit waving cheerfully by a lake, and a dim, sepia photo of two dark figures posing side by side.
‘My mother-in-law’s German,’ I say.
Frank smacks his head and hides behind the clipboard.
‘German? I’ve already told you – I am not German, I am Austrian! What will it take to get through to you? You seem completely unable to understand anything.’
But she is frowning at me like a ferocious beast whose interest has been piqued by an unexpected titbit. As I finish taking her blood pressure and unwrap the cuff she says: ‘Where for in Germany is this mother-in-law from?’
‘Prussia.’
‘Where for in Prussia?’
‘Stolp. Well – used to be Prussia.’ And I add as an afterthought, as if someone had been careless: ‘They moved the borders.’
‘Stolp?’
‘Stolp.’
‘I have not heard of Stolp.’
I put the cuff away. ‘Everything checks out,’ I say.
‘Is your mother in law there now?’
‘No. She left in 1939. Well – I say left. She escaped with her life. She’s Jewish, you see.’
Frank groans.
Mrs Ramstein adjusts her position and examines me more closely from the bed.
After a pause she sighs and says: ‘They were difficult times. Terrible times. I was just a girl. I expect your mother in law was the same. It is terrible the things that happen in the name of politics. I escaped with my life also. From the Russians. I came to this country after a while here and there. A woman at the hospital was kind enough to get me some training. How is your mother in law?’
‘Yes – she’s good. Health problems, but an incredibly resilient and resourceful woman.’
‘You had to be. We all were. It was the times. Terrible times. You wouldn’t believe.’
The moment passes. Even Frank seems a little more comforted, more confident. He hands me the clipboard, then notices a cat peacefully grooming out on the landing. He squats down, puts his hand out and makes kissy kissy noises.
‘Hello mate,’ he says. ‘You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?’
Mrs Ramstein’s eyes blaze.
‘Jessie! She must not be up here! Who let her up? You must have left the door open! My Gott – has she come up? Quick. Take her down. Take her down.’
Jessie looks up disdainfully, then carries on licking her paw.
Frank moves towards the cat to pick her up.
‘No! Don’t pick her up!’ shouts Mrs Ramstein. ‘If you just simply walk she will run ahead. Drive her out! And make sure you shut the door so she doesn’t come back.’
Frank disappears with the cat.
‘Anything else we can do for you tonight?’ I say after a while.
She relaxes into the bed. ‘No. You have done qvite enough.’
Frank comes back into the room.
‘Jessie has left the building,’ he says, then picks up the bags ready to go.
‘Pull the quilt over me a bit more. That’s it. Now I sleep.’
And with her eyes closed she says: ‘You know, till recently I would get up at six and go schwimming. But now? I am fit for nothing.’
‘Maybe you could do with a little more help. We could sort something for you. At least get the wheels in motion.’
She opens her eyes.
‘There is one thing you could do perhaps,’ she says. ‘And that is make sure I don’t wake up in the morning.’
‘Well – that’s a little beyond our remit, Mrs Ramstein.’
‘Ach!’ she spits. ‘Hopeless ambulance.’

***

As we shut the white door carefully behind us, the sweet old lady who greeted us is standing in the hallway.
‘Everything all right?’ she says.
‘A little brr-ooosing, but she’s resting in bed now.’
‘Good!’ says the woman. Behind her on an immaculate Regency chair, Jessie looks up from a busy grooming of her tail with her back leg in the air, and I could swear the expression on her face was the same as the expression on the face of the old woman in the housecoat.
‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she beams.

spiderman

2011-08-17T23:06:00.001Z

Midnight. My skin feels as waxy as the leaves on this umbrella plant in the humid night air.
I reach out, ring the bell and we wait.
Only Mr Rendell has lights on; the rest of the houses in the street are shut up, utterly still.
Frank unclips his radio to call Control for advice when Mr Rendell shuffles slowly into view behind the striped glass panels of the door. ‘Ambulance,’ I say. The rattle of a bolt. It opens.
He stands there a moment, staring out at us. He moves an inch, winces and crumples slightly on his right side.
‘How can we help?’
He regards us with a baleful expression.
‘You’d better come in.’
He releases the door, turns and pads solemnly into a bright and neatly ordered kitchen.
Frank helps him move a chair so he can sit.
‘I understand you’ve had a fall,’ I say, taking a seat opposite. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I have this fear,’ he says, his voice as thin and gray as a night sweat. ‘Well. A little more than that. A phobia, actually.’
He pauses, his eyes glisten and for a moment I think he might cry.
‘Okay,’ I say, as softly as I can. ‘What kind of phobia?’
His jaw drops, like someone gagging on an unpleasant taste. Finally he is able to say: ‘I can’t bring myself to use the word. So I hope you understand me when I say Arachnids.’
He hesitates again, and the horror of the subject percolates through him, scalp to slippers. Finally he gathers himself sufficiently again to tell us the rest of the story.
‘I had got myself ready for bed and was just settling down to read my book when I noticed a dark shape sitting on the wall by the chest of drawers. A disgusting, massive thing. Well. Normally my wife would take care of it for me, but she’s away visiting relatives, so it’s just me on my own. I had to force myself, even though I felt really sick and panicky.’
‘Take your time, Mr Rendell. Let me feel your pulse whilst you talk. That’s it. So. What happened next?’
‘I got out of bed - as carefully as I could - came downstairs, found some newspaper, then came back up. The - erm - visitor – had gone. I looked about, and then I saw it, further up the wall, on the ceiling. I had to climb onto the bed to reach it, and I was just about ready to stretch out and get it when it moved!’
‘How awful.’
‘I’m afraid I screamed, toppled forwards and landed on a chair. I think I’ve hurt my side.’
He leans to his left and pulls his dressing gown aside to show me. A nasty looking haematoma on the lower aspect of his chest wall.
‘We need to get you to hospital to see the extent of the damage, Mr Rendell. Frank’s just going to go upstairs and have a look at how far you fell and what sort of chair it was. I’ll check you over whilst he does that, okay? But you’ll definitely need to come with us to hospital. Just to be on the safe side.’
‘If you think.’
‘For some good pain relief, if nothing else.’
‘What would my wife say?’
‘She’d just be glad you were looking after yourself.’

***

With Mr Rendell safely delivered over to the hospital, we tidy up the ambulance and then stop for a coffee.
‘I didn’t say anything at the time,’ says Frank, handing me a cup, ‘because I didn’t want to give him a stroke, but my god, you should’ve seen the size of that spider.’
‘Big, was it?’
‘Big? As big as my hand. Well – the palm at least.’
‘Yeah?’
‘God, yeah.’
‘Did you kill it?’
‘No. I’d have needed a lump hammer. So I just left it.’
He takes a sip of coffee and stares off across the empty car park. ‘With its legs up reading the newspaper.’

cosa

2011-08-15T16:09:00.001Z

Alex, the manager of the language school, meets us at the door. He waits, ministerially clutching a radio and clipboard, whilst below him on the stairs a cluster of teenagers argue about where to go tonight; they scarcely seem real, as sharp and freshly made as the office blocks, restaurants and loft-style apartments that tower above them.
‘Can we talk a moment in the office, please?’ says the manager.
The students part to let us through. Alex leads us inside.

A secretary smiles as we pass through the security point into her glass-fronted domain. Some more students wait on one side to let us through. When they show the secretary their passes, she resumes her usual demeanour, glowering through the glass, checking her list, ticking names, depressing a lever with her foot. They all try to see past her into the office as they jostle through the turnstile. A young Chinese boy stops and says: ‘You know, I’m feeling perfect tonight, Miss Angela.’ Before she can look up, he throws himself through the gate and hurries out to mass with the others in the street.

‘I want to keep this as low key as possible,’ says Alex, sighing, and putting his radio and board down on the desk. ‘Matteo is sixteen. He’s only been with us two weeks, but no trouble up till now. Here are his medications – some kind of anti-depressants. As you can see he’s not up to date. This evening when he came down for his mail he was acting a bit strangely.’
‘In what way?’
‘Going up to people – people he doesn’t know – and smiling. Right in their faces. A bit aggressive, actually. We had a special package to give him – a plane ticket, to join his father in Italy later this month. He ripped it up and scattered the pieces all around. When we tried to talk to him he was laughing and shouting, very loudly, upsetting the other students, which we cannot have. As I say, he’s only been here a couple of weeks, so I can’t say I know him all that well, but he’s certainly done nothing like this before. It’s very out of character. We didn’t want to call you, but I’m afraid in the end we had to act in the best interest of Matteo and the other students. We’re not sure what he might do, you see.’
‘Have you spoken to his parents?’
‘I spoke to his mother, briefly. She’s on a plane to Cyprus so the line went off. I’m afraid I’ve only managed to get voicemail for the father, but I’ve left a message. He’s on some kind of European business trip at the moment.’
I look at the pills container that Alex has given me.
‘Any chance you could look up on the internet and see what these are?’ I ask the secretary.
She swivels on her chair.
‘Chuck ‘em here,’ she says.
Alex folds his arms. ‘We have almost four hundred students boarding with us at any one time. We have a lot to think about. I can’t take risks with anybody’s welfare.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Anti-psychotic,’ says the secretary, leaning back from the screen and tossing the pills back to me.
‘Brilliant. Thanks for that. Shall we go and see Matteo, then?’
‘Of course.’
He leads us through a main corridor to the lifts. Whilst we wait there, a student comes up to me and asks about a sore on her eyelid.
‘Is it bad, do you think? Do I need hospital?’
‘It looks like you might have a sty coming.’
‘A sty?’
‘A sty. An eye infection. It’s not serious. But maybe you should see your doctor, anyway.’
‘My doctor?’
Alex frowns at her and shakes his head.
‘The nurse is on duty at eight thirty, Ruksana. Speak to her then.’
She shrugs and moves off with her friend, just as the lift arrives. I hear her say sty? again, and they put their heads together and laugh.

Alex leads us along to Matteo’s front door.
‘He’s probably sleeping now,’ he says, hesitating with the master key.
‘I’m afraid we have to talk to him, though.’
He nods, pauses, raps smartly on the door, calls out Matteo? then opens the door and we go in.

Matteo is face down on the bed, the uncovered duvet rucked up around him in a deep V. The way he is sprawled there, with this pattern of discarded clothes, a shoe, phone and iPod, books and empty Coke bottles right and left, he is something like a spaceship crash-landed on a foreign planet.
‘Matteo?’
A groan.
‘Matteo – we need to talk to you. Sit up, please.’
Alex reaches over and tentatively shakes him by the shoulder.
‘No history of trauma? No falls, no banging of the head or anything like that?’
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘And the only past medical history you have is of some kind of mental health problem.’
‘That’s all we have on record.’
Alex puts his radio and clipboard down on the bed and shakes Matteo by the shoulder again. When he talks to him he talks in Italian. It gets more of a response. Alex stands back as the boy slowly pushes himself into a sitting position.
‘He says he's sleepy.’
Matteo sits there on the bed, his cheeks flushed, his dark eyes shining in the hard overhead light of the room. His black jeans are ripped across one leg; he has one brown suede pixie boot on, the other foot is bare; his velvet shirt is heavily creased.
‘Matteo?’ says Alex. ‘Matteo?’
‘Can you translate for me, Alex?’ I say.
‘Of course.’
The room falls silent for a moment. Suddenly there is the sound of laughter out in the corridor, a shout, the chorus of a song. Matteo pushes his heavy fringe away from his eyes, and slowly looks up at us as the voices die away.
'Cosa?' he whispers.

lampwick

2011-08-13T16:33:00.002Z

As I walk out into the bright sunlight of the ER loading bay, another ambulance is just pulling in. It parks up, rocks about, muffled shouts and sounds from inside, then suddenly the back door is flung open and Rae jumps down, stern words from behind her. Will you stop that? Hey! No! Come on!
‘Spence. Jesus. Christ. You couldn’t help us get this guy out, could you? I’ve just about had it.’
Her partner Colleen emerges from the cab. ‘You’re going to like this,’ she says, pulling on a fresh pair of gloves.
‘You think?’
Rae grimaces and lowers the tail lift. When she swings open the main door I can see the long, lean figure of a man sprawled on the stretcher, his hands cuffed, a policewoman leaning over him from the side.
‘What’ve you got, then?’
‘A guy off his tits on something or other. The police called us to the shopping centre. I can’t tell you - he’s been such an incredible pain in the arse.’ She pushes some strands of hair back from her face with the back of her gloved hand. ‘But watch yourself, Pen. Now and again he’ll go for you.’

As I step up onto the back the patient senses the change in his environment and looks up. His blond hair stands out around his head like a sweated mane; his mouth is slack, and he rolls his head from side to side in a panic that his wide eyes cannot see the danger and he has to catch the scent of it instead. At the same time he blows air out through his loose lips, scattering flecks of white foam into the air.
‘Will you stop that?’ says the police woman, jerking his hands reprovingly.
A strong, square woman with a tattoo emerging from her shirt sleeve that looks like it was copied off an old dinner plate, she seems less like a police officer and more like a farmer controlling the stock.
‘So what’s the plan, d’you think?’ she says.
‘He's not going to walk in, presumably.’
The police woman makes a face.
‘So in on the trolley, strapped down as much as possible. I’ll control his legs.’
‘Watch out.’
On cue, the man makes a sudden wrenching attempt to break free, snatching his arms forward, kicking his legs and jerking his head up from the trolley.
‘Easy! Easy!’ says the police woman. She has one of his wrists turned back on itself, and squeezes a little more pressure on to subdue him with the pain. It takes all my strength to control the legs, gathering up the material of his trousers into a handle and using the weight of my body to smother his movement. Without the trolley straps and the handcuffs, though, he’d be smashing his way out of the ambulance.
We wait until the spasm subsides, then carefully off load the trolley and run him inside. There’s a receiving room for volatile patients just inside the door. We take him into it, and with the help of another crew and a couple of porters, we bundle him onto the hospital trolley. The policewoman repositions her cuffs, and we use some spare straps to restrain him more effectively until the nursing staff can take him in hand.
In the struggle to put him on the trolley, a wallet and passport have fallen onto the floor. Rae picks it up and cautiously goes through it.
‘Well we’ve got a name, a nationality...’ Then she pulls out a sepia coloured business card, snorts then waves it in the air.
‘And guess what he does for a living?’
‘Drug advisor?’
‘Reflexology and cranial osteopathy.’
Just at that moment the patient makes another desperate bid to break free. He writhes and arches his back, slams his body from side to side, the sweat running on his bare torso, his eyes flaring.
Horse! he screams. Horse!
He rages against his restraints, ramming and pulling and writhing, spreading his fingers wide then bunching them into fists. Horse! he screams again - and then holds himself still, and stares at his fists in horror, as if he could see them turning, curling in and down, hardening, darkening into hooves.

i love you

2011-08-09T07:57:00.002Z

Cynthia is sitting in her dressing gown on the edge of a luxurious, scallop-backed, aquamarine and corn yellow armchair, anxiously knitting and un-knitting her withered fingers. On every surface and every level around her, on bookcases, display cases, the mantelpiece, low tables, high shelves and deep window ledges, hundreds of porcelain Twenties figurines, every one a debutante, every one throwing the same coquettish backward glance over her right shoulder.
‘I’ve got tummy ache,’ she says.
‘How long has that been going on for?’
‘Months. Years.’
‘Worse today?’
‘Not really.’
‘Does your doctor know about it?’
She nods.
‘And what does he say?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘No idea what it might be, what you should do about it?’
She shakes her head.
‘Okay. Can you describe this pain for me?’
She untangles her fingers, then shakily moves her hands right and left over the lower part of her.
‘Down there.’
‘And what’s this pain like?’
‘I can’t put up with it anymore. I’m scared.’
‘Okay. Well let’s have a think about what to do.’
Frank gets back up off the sofa. ‘I’ll look for the folder,’ he says.
‘Do you have any help, Cynthia? Does anyone come in to help you with stuff?’
‘No. Not really. No.’
‘What about your family?’
‘He’s in Australia.’
‘No-one else?’
‘My husband died. I miss him.’
There’s a small framed photo on a space of wall to her left, the only real picture amongst a spread of Aubrey Beardsley posters, Art Deco mirrors and old adverts for Cartier and Coco Chanel. In the photo, a young couple: the man in a tweed suit and tie, leaning back from the camera, looking away, as if he had something more important to be doing, or was embarrassed; the young woman, holding on to his arm, leaning in to the lens, a strangely intent look on her face, as if it wasn’t exactly a photo she was expecting from this but something else, something altogether more illuminating.
‘Let’s do your blood pressure and whatnot, and take it from there. Have you had the ambulance out before?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Recently?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have any medical problems? What do you suffer with?’
‘I’m supposed to be going to a group at the hospital.’
‘Oh? What’s that for?’
‘My nerves.’
‘Okay. Well – you’re blood pressure’s absolutely fine. You don’t have a temperature or anything. So that’s good.’
‘Yes.’
Frank comes back in.
‘No folder,’ he says. ‘I found the meds, though.’
He hands me a faded plastic bag with something for AF and a couple of psych meds. In the bag is a scrap of paper – a worn kind of list, half shopping, half general notes. It’s been added to over time, in different coloured pen, starting out with patterned toilet paper, oven gloves, cake cases, then degenerating into a diffuse scattering of spidery capital letters – Ghana misspelled three times and then crossed out; Wembley, nr London, and in black and white underlined. Beneath that, a jumble of incoherent words and letters.
‘Someone’s been breaking in and leaving me presents,’ she says. ‘Things I like.’
‘Who has?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. A man.’
‘What’s he been doing?’
‘He left me a bar of chocolate. With some writing on the wrapper. I love you.’
And a shudder passes through her, from the top of her head to her feet. Her left foot stays planted on the carpet, but the right one starts to move – a curiously independent little dance, backwards and forwards along the fringed line of the armchair, toe / heel, toe / heel, toe / heel, and then back again: heel / toe, heel / toe, heel / toe. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, whilst Cynthia knits her fingers in her lap, stares at me, and waits.

the arabesque

2011-08-08T07:32:00.003Z

The foyer of the Excelsior at four a.m. has the dreary depth of an underwater cave, the dracaenas in their pots standing around like giant sea anemones, quietly filtering the thick air, waiting on the tide. There is a discrete spill of light coming from the porter’s room behind the desk, some music from a radio. He emerges, moving stiffly from the hip. He listens to the reason we are here with his eyes closed and his head tilted mournfully to one side, then points to a discrete lift set back from the rest.
‘That one,’ he says. ‘For the permanents.’ Then he turns and shuffles back into the light.

Molly is waiting for us, standing in her bra and shift in the doorway of their flat on the twenty-ninth floor. It’s surprising to see her like this, but Molly doesn’t seem at all awkward. I wonder if it’s because she’s distracted, or because she’s used to getting dressed in public. Her bra is so brilliantly laundered, so cleverly engineered it seems to be holding her whole body upright; the flesh is only slightly rolled up around the straps, with the inevitable slackness of age.
‘I’m so sorry to call you out like this but I’ve tried explaining things to him and he just won’t listen to me anymore. I’m at my wits end.’
‘Is it a relative of yours?’
‘He’s my husband. And I’m sorry I’m only half-dressed. You were much quicker than I thought you’d be.’
‘We were only round the corner.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
She leads us into a broad and modern flat, something like the bridge of a liner, with a spread of windows on two sides overlooking the city.
‘He’s in the bedroom. I can’t talk to him,’ she says, buttoning a blouse.
Gerald is sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping the mattress either side of him as if he were just about to spring up.
‘You’d be upset,’ he says as we walk in. ‘It’s not a nice thing. Not nice at all.’
‘So Gerald. I understand you’ve had a bit of a nosebleed tonight.’
Molly comes in and quietly sits in a wicker chair. ‘You’ll have to shout,’ she says, ‘He’s quite deaf.’ Then she cries quickly and cleanly into a wad of kitchen towel, a spasm of distress as surprisingly dramatic as a sneeze.
‘It must be difficult,’ I say.
Molly blows her nose and regains control. ‘I just don’t know what to do anymore,’ she says. ‘He’s got Alzheimer’s so it’s almost impossible to reason with him. He just doesn’t understand.’
‘I see.’
Gerald looks about a hundred years older than his wife. The only features about him that seemed to have escaped the ravages of time and illness are his slate blue eyes and his moustache, a tightly clipped article that rides his upper lip with parade ground precision.
‘If you had a nosebleed it seems to have stopped now.’
‘What?’
‘I say if you had a nosebleed, whatever you did to stop it seems to have worked. It’s not dripping or anything.’
‘It wouldn’t stop,’ he says. ‘I woke up covered in blood. It’s not a nice thing, you know. You wouldn’t like it.’
‘I wouldn’t. Horrible. But it’s stopped now.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Shall we check you over, Gerald? Is that okay?’
‘You wouldn’t like it.’
‘I wouldn’t. Especially late at night.’
‘What?’
‘Especially at night.’
He looks at me with utter vacancy.
‘It’s not a nice thing,’ he says, finally.
Molly beckons me into the kitchen area. When she’s quite sure Gerald hasn’t followed us, she pushes a little Tupperware box of meds towards me across the counter, then supports herself with both hands on the counter.
‘I didn’t want to call you but I couldn’t think what else to do. I know he’s all right physically. The bleeding stopped quite quickly so I’m not worried about that. I don’t want him to go to hospital, but I just couldn’t calm him down. He won’t listen to me. I can’t reassure him.’
‘Do you get much help, Molly?’
‘Oh – family and such. But they’ve got their lives.’
‘It sounds like you need more help. There’s two of you to think about. It won’t help things if you fall ill with the worry of it.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘But still. Maybe even a little respite care. Just to get things back on the level.’
‘Whatever you think.’
‘Let’s make a plan.’
She looks away across the flat to the wide, black windows and the glittering city beyond. Molly is quiet whilst I quickly write down the meds, then says: ‘I was a professional skater.’ She leads me over to a framed black and white picture on the far wall: a young woman flying towards the camera on one leg, the other stretched out in the air behind her, her arms winging out either side to the very tips of her fingers, her tutu flaring like smoke. Despite the heavy Fifties’ make-up, her smile is as brilliant as her blades.
We both look at the picture for a while, then she reaches out, and gently touches the frame.

two weeks!

2011-07-24T16:27:00.000Z

On holiday for a couple of weeks, so I won’t be able to publish or reply to any comments. But thanks so much for reading, don’t work too hard – and I’ll see you all when I get back! (And I’ll raise a nice, cool bottle of beer or three to you all…) x

something else entirely

2011-07-24T16:25:00.000Z

We force a path through the heavy lunchtime traffic heading out for the suburban reaches east of the city and the scattering of boxy white bungalows overlooking the sea. With the morning so wide and blue, the sea such a pearlescent green, it seems incredible we’re in England and not racing along a coast road high above the Aegean. Some notes come through on the job. I have to shield the screen with my clipboard to read them: son forced entry; life status questionable.
Frank turns up into a steeply sloping road. At the far end is a police car, and a gathering of neighbours nearby.
‘Is everything all right?’ one of them asks as we park and jump out.
‘Let’s hope so,’ I say, hauling out the resus and drugs bags.
A police officer stands in the garden talking into his radio. He gives us two nods as we approach – one to acknowledge, one to direct. He carries on without any kind of break in his conversation.

Inside the bungalow, another police officer is talking smoothly and quietly to a bearish man whose distraction is so profound it threatens to swallow everything – me, Frank, the policeman, the religious icons on the walls, the mirrors and trinkets, books and paintings – the walls of the house itself, every last thing – teetering on the black precipice of his grief.
‘It’s no good,’ he sobs. ‘She’s gone. She’s gone.’
‘In the bedroom, guys,’ says the police officer. ‘Just through there.’
We haul our bags past them both and go into the room.

Mrs Davis is lying on the bed, curled up on her left side, her left arm and wrist crooked up under her cheek, her right hand clutching at the bed clothes by her hip, the sheets riding up round her legs. Mrs Davis’ eyes are papery and fixed, staring out over a long, black and brackish stain that runs from the lower corner of her mouth, out across the mottled flesh of her arm, down over the pillow corner and to a dried pool on the sheets beneath.
The police officer comes in from the hallway and stands beside us.
‘When was the last time anyone spoke to Mrs Davis? Or saw her?’ I ask him.
‘The son spoke to her on the phone last night just before she went to bed. No sign of anything untoward. They were meant to be going shopping today. When he got here and found all the curtains still drawn he knew something was up and broke in.’
‘Have you checked her over yet?’
‘No, not yet. We thought we’d wait for you guys to call it, even though it’s obvious.’
‘What was her health like, do you know? Anything much wrong with her?’
‘No. The usual old age things – but actually, not too many of those, it sounds like. Active and independent.’
‘It looks like she’s had some kind of upper GI bleed, but other than that, who knows?’
‘Will you tell him?’
‘Yep.’

We walk out of the bedroom and into the lounge where the son is sitting on the sofa. He looks up.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid,’ I say. ‘Your mother has died.’
He gives a deep sigh and looks down at his hands, turning them over and moving the fingers as if they didn’t quite fit.
‘I know,’ he says.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss. Can I get you anything? A cup of tea? Glass of water?’
‘Some tea would be nice. Thanks. And one for yourselves, too.’
I leave Frank to finish off the paperwork and go through into the kitchen. The police officer waves a gloved hand when I offer him a cup; he has been joined by the officer in the garden, and the two of them go back into the bedroom.

The kitchen is meticulously tidy, everything falling to hand. There is a calendar stuck to the boiler above the fridge – a portrait of the Virgin Mary, her arms outstretched. Beneath her, the month’s events carefully written out in block capitals. On the counter by the sink, a Sudoku puzzle book lying open, a pen resting in the spine. I finish off the teas, put them on a tray, and go back into the sitting room.

Over by the window a parakeet is gripping onto the bars of its cage, jerking its head from side to side to get a better view. I put the tray down on the table in the middle of the room, hand out the cups, then find a place to sit down, as conscious as anyone of the empty armchair and its little wooden work stand, carefully laid out with a remote control, a magazine, a bundle of wool with two needles sticking out of it, and a dish of toffees.
‘She was supposed to be going on a pilgrimage next week.’
‘Oh?’
‘To Walsingham. Norfolk. She went on quite a few of those. Here and abroad. She was pretty active considering.’ He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, then puts the cup back in the saucer without making a sound. ‘That’s someone else I’ve got to ring,’ he says.
There is a pause. Frank writes a few more things down on the form. Suddenly the parakeet squawks in the cage, a fierce and rasping sound, then leaps across from one side of the cage to the other. It hangs onto the bars there, scrutinising us fretfully, whilst its little plastic mirror swings from side to side behind it. We all look at it. Finally the son says: ‘And that’s something else entirely.’
He takes another sip of tea.

mum and dad

2011-07-19T10:08:00.000Z

Guy is waiting outside in the garden. As soon as I’m close enough I ask him if he’s the patient. He nods, shifting from side to side, his hands up to his face to gnaw at the corner of his thumb, and then down, and then up again, all the while glancing along the street and shifting from one foot to the other like the film portrait of an anxious man, run through the camera at double speed.
‘Shall we have a chat on the ambulance?’
He almost sprints to the vehicle. Frank just has time to clear the blankets aside and put the back up before he clambers on.
I shut the door quietly.
‘Or would you rather I left it open?’
He nods. I open it again.
‘What’s been happening then, Guy?’
‘My heart started racing and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t breathe. I got a crackling feeling up and down my arms, my hands – I couldn’t control it. I got tight across here. I thought my head was going to explode. I’ve got these lumps. See? Here – and here. All along here. I went to the chemist and he said I’ve got lymphoma. Do you think I’ve got lymphoma? I looked it up on the internet and I’ve got all the symptoms. Jesus fucking Christ I don’t want cancer. I’m scared – d’you know what I mean? Look. Here – here. I itch all the time. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. My girlfriend’s stuck in a traffic jam because there’s been a crash. And the chemist said I’ve got lymphoma. Do you even know what that is?’
‘Guy? Just slow your breathing down. Nice and slow, like this – in through your nose – hold it – then out through your mouth. Nice and slow. You’re breathing too fast and that’s what’s giving you the funny feelings in your hands and arms and the tightness in your chest. Do you suffer with anxiety, Guy?’
‘What? What do you mean? Look. Look at these lumps. What are they?’
‘Guy – slow, slow, slow. Your heart rate’s fine. You’re getting plenty of oxygen. What you’re having at the moment is an anxiety attack. You just need to spend a minute or two slowing your breathing down. Okay? Nice and slow.’
‘But what do you think? I looked it up. On the internet. It’s all there – I’ve got all the symptoms. What about these lumps? Here, and here.’
‘Well to be honest Guy I can’t see or feel that there’s much there. I mean it’s a bit red where you’ve been scratching it, but nothing major. Maybe a mild touch of heat rash, but nothing I’d describe as lumps.’
‘But the chemist?’
‘Maybe you misunderstood. I’d be surprised if a chemist came out with a diagnosis of lymphoma over the counter.’
‘So you don’t think I’ve got lymphoma?’
‘I think it’s extremely unlikely, Guy. Have you spoken to your doctor about any of this?’
‘Yesterday. I told her I thought I had cancer.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She changed the subject. She didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Did she prescribe you anything yesterday?’
‘She gave me something to help me sleep and chill me out.’
‘And have you taken those?’
‘No. She just wants me to leave her alone. She knows I’ve got cancer and she’s too scared to do anything about it. Oh Jesus Christ!’
‘Have you ever had anything like this before, Guy?’
‘What? The lumps?’
‘No. These anxious feelings?’
‘I had a nervous breakdown a couple of years ago. I got sectioned. My mum and dad were killed in a car crash. They never came home. I ended up in a police cell. You won’t take me there, will you? You won’t take me to a police cell? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back there.’
‘We’re not taking you to the police station, Guy. But I think we’d like to take you up the hospital, just to make sure you’re okay and safe, and maybe find you someone to talk to about how you feel.’
The trolley creaks as Guy perpetually changes position, crossing and uncrossing his legs, grabbing on to the little black rails, dropping his head back to stare at the ceiling, jerking back upright again.
‘Just try to slow things down for us, Guy. Nice and slow.’
He gnaws his thumb again and stares at me. Finally he says: ‘I’ve tried ringing them but I get no answer.’
‘Who?’
‘Mum and Dad.’
And he looks away from me to the open door.

getting through

2011-07-15T20:44:00.000Z

‘Wait a minute. I’ll just give Barbara a call.’
Dorothy is holding a scrap of paper with something like runes written on it in shaky black marker pen.
‘The number’s upside down,’ says Frank, reaching across and turning it the right way up for her. ‘Would you like me to dial?’
‘No. Thank you. I can manage.’
She picks up the receiver, puts it to her ear suspiciously to check the tone, scrutinises the scrap of paper a nose and a half distant, then extends a withered finger. ‘Eight.... four....zero....’
It’s been a while since I’ve seen an old phone with a circular dial. I love the way Dorothy jabs a finger in each number hole, drags it round with that congested whirring noise inside, then pulls it out and lets the dial wind backwards with a clatter. It all seems so mechanical, agricultural. Amazing that anyone should be on the other end. And of course, they’re not.
‘Out,’ she says, replacing the receiver. ‘Still at work, I ‘spect.’
‘You can always ring them from the hospital.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes.’
She looks pained.
‘What’s the matter, Dorothy?’ says her friend Sylvie from the opposite chair. ‘What are you worrying about?’
‘Where’s my purse?’
‘In the kitchen under the monkey. Shall I get it for you?’
‘Could you, pet? And whilst you’re there, could you fetch me in my glasses? And a dress – the white cotton one, not the one with pleats. And my best slippers. And I’ll need a coat. And shut the window ‘cos I’ve left it wide open.’

Dorothy is ninety three but only looks seventy. She’s had hip pain all week, but today it’s much worse and she hasn’t been able to go outside. She could see Sylvie waiting for her on the bench down in the square, and shouted out the window for her to come up.
‘I’ve never seen her like this,’ says Sylvie, her head waggling from side to side with the excitement of it all. ‘Never. She’s normally such a fighter.’
‘Yes. Well. I am a fighter.’
‘I know.’
‘But sometimes you just run out of fight.’
To illustrate the point, she sighs, and rests her head back on the cushions Sylvie has plumped up behind her. After a second or two when everything goes quiet and nothing seems to happen, she opens her eyes and lifts her head again.
‘Oh – and while you’re in there, can you bring me my green cardy hanging off the back of the door? And a bottle of water out of the fridge?’
Sylvie smiles and crowbars herself out of her chair with her walking stick. She seems even more decrepit than Dorothy, even though she’s twenty years younger – a fact that Dorothy has emphasised at least four times since we got here.
‘It’s bad,’ says Dorothy, ‘Very bad. I’ve never known pain like it.’
‘If you had to give the pain a score out of ten, with ten being unbearable pain and nought being nothing, what would you give it, Dorothy?’
‘Well I wouldn’t say it was unbearable.’
‘So – marks out of ten?
‘It’s not too bad when I sit still like this.’
‘No – but when you move, what score might you give it?’
‘Score? I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘It’s not what I think. It’s what the pain feels like to you.’
‘Excruciating hot. Right deep in here.’
‘Does it go anywhere else?’
‘Right in deep.’
‘And what mark would you give it out of ten? You know. For the pain. Marks out of ten.’
‘Shocking.’
‘Okay.’
Sylvie comes back in with an armful of stuff.
‘Where do you want it?’ she says, breathing heavily.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ says Dorothy, holding the scrap of paper up to the light again and almost pressing it to the tip of her nose. ‘I just wish I could get through to Barbara.’

clang! pow! thunk!

2011-07-12T15:45:00.002Z

When another job appears on the screen, the student paramedic riding in the back of the truck stuffs his head through the hatch.
‘Anything good?’ he says.
I’ve been wincing so much this shift I’m developing a twitch. The student means well, but carries himself awkwardly, like a kid in dressing-up clothes pretending to smoke with a pencil. When he speaks to the patients it’s such a disaster I half expect to see comic book sounds in the air. Clang! Pow! Thunk!
To the alcoholic: ‘How many units of alcohol do you drink a day?’
‘What do you mean? Units?’
‘Well how much do you drink, then?’
‘How much do you drink?’
‘Obviously not as much as you.’
Clang!
To the woman who took an overdose:
‘What made you take the pills, then?’
‘My husband of thirty years decided he doesn’t want me anymore. He’s moved in with the lodger.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘In the room across the hall.’
‘Oh. So are you moving out, then?’
Pow!
To the old woman who just wants to die at home.
‘Let me do your blood pressure.’
‘I’m not going to hospital. I will not go to that place again. I would rather die here in my chair and be done. I’m ninety one, for goodness sake. What’s the point of dragging things out? I’ve had my time. I’ve enjoyed it – I’ve had a lovely marriage, three beautiful children, and I simply think it’s time for me to move on. All I do is sit in this chair staring out of the window. Where’s the life in that? Ouch! That cuff’s rather tight again.’
‘Well if you’d only stop talking for a moment I might be able to hear.’
Thunk!

***

Three o’clock in the morning. Six years of shift work heavy inside me like the fossilised remains of something. I can feel it sitting there, as scuffed and cold as the moon that drifts up over the sea. I climb into the cab with a cup of tea, look for my book, click on the overhead light, settle back for a five minute read.
The door opens.
‘Do we have a traction splint on the vehicle? Did you check that earlier?’
‘What?’
‘A traction splint. I need to have a look at one to get it signed off in my book.’
‘Look – I, erm – I really don’t want to be getting any kit out right now.’
‘But I need to get it signed off.’
‘It’s three o’clock in the fucking morning.’
‘It’s got to be done.’
‘Some other time, mate. The day time.’
‘I’ll ask Frank.’
He closes the door again.
‘Good luck with that,’ I say to myself, then settle down lower – much, much lower – so low it’s apparent to anyone, even to me, that I am now more chair than man.

the little details

2011-07-10T09:57:00.002Z

Miss Ellingham is lying on her side on the rough path that runs above the harbour. A woman is crouched down beside her holding a golfing umbrella to shield her from the sun; the woman’s husband stands beside them both with a border terrier straining impatiently on a lead. There is an audience of tourists outside the café, sunning themselves like seals on the ice flows of the picnic benches. They nudge each other and raise their ice creams as we approach.

‘It’s my stupid arm,’ says Miss Ellingham. ‘Or to be more anatomically precise, my wrist. I think I may have fractured it.’
‘First of all, let’s make sure you haven’t hurt yourself anywhere else.’
‘Of course. Yes. I know you have your routine. I’m a first aider myself.’

When everything looks okay, we help her into a sitting position.
‘Of course my instinct was to go onto all fours and push myself up, but that was impossible with this injury. One feels so stupid.’
The tourists nod, pointing out details to each other, enjoying the scene as much as the cones that they turn expertly round and round.
‘Thank you so much for your help,’ says Miss Ellingham, squinting up at the umbrella woman as Frank ties a triangular bandage. ‘Most kind.’
‘Are you okay to walk over to the ambulance?’ I ask her.
‘Yes. I only lay there because I knew you would expect me to. I would’ve been quite happy to have got myself up and sat on a bench. As soon as I fell I checked myself over mentally and I knew it was just the wrist. But I’m fully aware of the procedure. I’m a first aider myself you see and I’m used to giving directions. I asked this kind lady to take my rucksack off me and use it as a pillow, then lay still and waited for the emergency services to give the all-clear. Look – could you clip my hip pack back around my waist again? It’s got all my essentials and I need to have it on me at all times. I like to be ready to go. When I’m hostelling I sleep with it over my pyjamas. Well – if there’s a fire in the middle of the night and you have to walk straight out, at least I’d have my essentials. I might not have any clothes but at least I’d have my essentials. That’s why I don’t go swimming in the sea. I wouldn’t want to leave them on the beach.’
‘Come on. Let’s get you on board.’
‘Thank you.’
I half expect the tourists to clap and throw coins.

***

‘I like to get out and about,’ says Miss Ellingham. She is eighty going on twenty, her lank, grey hair cut in a youthful bob and held in place with a flowery clip. She wears an arctic fleece and walking boots so massively squared off with tread she could be trekking in the Kush. But despite her survivalist presentation she looks at us with a brittle, slightly pained expression, like an ancient girl-guide used to making the best of it.
‘I suppose it’s fractured,’ she says.
‘I think so. It looks like a Colles’ fracture. Just here at the end where your radius joins the wrist.’
‘Yes. I know. Well. What a nuisance. I suppose they’ll be putting it in a cast, then? So I won’t be able to go for my swim tomorrow. I won’t be up to much with my wing in a sling, will I?’
She smiles, a thoroughly brave affair, and then looks blankly around her as she carries out a further audit. ‘No cycling,’ she says eventually. ‘No St Johns. Baths will be tricky so showers instead. Half my clothes won’t fit. Still. When you live on your own you get used to coping with these things. I suppose many of your customers would be feeling pretty down on their luck. But what’s the point? It’s happened, there you are. Deal with it. At least it’s only my wrist. And at least I fell where there were people to help. What would’ve happened if I’d been way out on the shore? And fell more heavily, so I couldn’t get up? And my phone was broken. And the tide was coming in?’ She grimaces at the thought of that. ‘Well – I suppose I’d have got up somehow in that instance. But the important thing is I’m here, it’s done, minor injury, there you are. We’re coping. Have you got my bag?’
I point to the trolley.
‘I’ve got my essentials in my hip bag.’ She adjusts her pack with her good hand and smiles at me again. ‘You might think I’m too independent but I say there’s no such thing. I never have appreciated fuss. I’ll be eighty one in December and I’ve just learned the front crawl. I did a quarter mile the other day. John is doing his best to get me to do what he likes to call alternate breathing but I have to admit I pretty much drown if I don’t stick to the right, but I do understand what he means about balance. I’ll get there. If you set your mind to it you can do it.’

I put my hand on her shoulder and apologise when the ambulance goes over a bump, but the rough road only seems to be shaking more words out of her.

‘I’m particularly interested in geology, you see. I used to be an accountant but now I’ve got the time and opportunity to look at other things, things that really interest me, so why not? I’m doing one of those degrees at the university of the third age. Earth Sciences – how the land was formed, rocks and fossils and so forth. That’s why I like to get out, to see as much of it as I can, to see how it was all made. I’ve always liked the outdoors. It’s one of the benefits of living on one’s own. You don’t have to think about anyone else. You can just take off wherever you like and please yourself. It may sound selfish but I enjoy it. It’s how I live. It’s how I’ve always done it. You don’t suppose I could have a sip of water do you? I’ve got a sports bottle there in my rucksack?’
‘Just a little sip to wet your mouth,’ I say, passing her the bottle.
‘Thanks.’ I offer to pull the tip of it out for her but she shakes her head, bites it out, and takes a slug.
‘How long will I be in a cast?’
‘A few weeks,’ I say. ‘And then some kind of physiotherapy, maybe.’
‘Damn,’ she says, and takes another slug of water. ‘I feel so stupid. Still – that’s accidents for you.’ She pushes the tip of the bottle back into place with her chin and then hands the bottle back to me.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’ll be going home from a different train station. I wonder if they’ll honour my ticket?’
‘Oh, I’m sure they will. You’ll have your arm in a cast. You’ll have the paperwork. I can’t think they’d worry about a little detail like that.’
‘Ah yes – but you see, it’s just precisely the little details one worries about.’

investment opportunity

2011-07-05T10:24:00.000Z

A man appears at the ambulance window, raps twice, then casts a look up and down the road. When I lower the window, he discretely pulls a bundle of folded white documents from hip pocket and rests them on the edge. It feels as if we’re suddenly in a spy thriller.
The oranges will be ready early this year in Seville
Yes, but many villagers pray for rain.
Instead he says: ‘Hello.’
‘Are you the social worker?’
He nods. ‘My name’s John. Thanks for coming. I don’t know if our man is at home. We’ll just take pot luck, shall we?’
We jump out of the cab and follow him across the road.
John is a relaxed, pleasantly crumpled individual. In his loose black bowling shirt and scruffy chinos he looks as if he’s just been called away from his newspaper and espresso.
‘I don’t know if you’ve been told,’ he says, as we walk up the littered pathway to the main entrance of the block. ‘Mr Gerhardt is a Section Three. No history of violence, but won’t want to go, so be prepared for a lot of discussion. I think we can manage without the police, but of course that’s always an option.’

Mr Gerhardt’s flat looks out front onto a small swatch of grass. All the windows are shut and the curtains drawn, except for a central window that is cracked just enough to let out a hosepipe, which snakes across the patch. At the end of the pipe and spreading all around are dozens of roughly dug holes with dried sticks poked into them. By each stick is a crudely cut notice as big as your thumb, with strange characters inked out in black.
‘His flat’s filled with maps and models,’ says John. ‘He’s just started work on the main event out back. I don’t know what all these sticks mean. Part of the overall scheme in some way. He’s looking for forty million pounds to build a ship to take him to Mars, where he’s been elected to represent earth at the interplanetary Olympics. Him and Tutankhamen.’
‘Worth a punt,’ says Frank, trying to peer in at the window. ‘He could go on Dragon’s Den.’
‘Let’s see if he’s in, first,’ says John, pressing the flat number. After a few goes, he turns back to us.
‘Shall we have a look round the back?’

The C-shaped housing block has at its centre a cracked and scrubby patch of ground, more like an exercise yard than a communal garden. The yard is ringed by a rusty chain-link fence. A family sits out on their balcony as we crawl through a hole in the fence and walk over to the back of Mr Gerhardt’s flat.
‘He’s not in,’ shouts a woman. ‘He went out about ten minutes ago.’
‘You’ll have to catch him later,’ says her friend. ‘With a big net.’ But neither of them laugh. They smoke and stare, and the heat hangs over the yard like the haze on a dry griddle.
John smiles and raises his hand in thanks.
‘Oh dear,’ he says. ‘We might have to re-think.’
Just outside Mr Gerhardt’s back door is the beginnings of a large, crude structure. Planks of wooden decking, bound together at right angles with gaffer tape, and beside it, a pile of scavenged pots, boxes, tangles of string, half a skateboard and some pram wheels.
A woman comes out of the neighbouring flat.
‘Have you come to do something about Hans?’ she says. ‘Because he’s not right.’
‘Yes,’ says John. ‘We’re going to get him some help, but unfortunately he doesn’t appear to be in.’
‘He was out here all last night, moving stuff about, cursing, carrying on. I put my head out the window and I said Hans, please! Some of us are trying to get to sleep. There’re children live here, too, you know. But he just carried on like I wasn’t there. It’s about time something was done. I’m not well myself.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. But don’t worry. We’ve got things in place, now. Guys – sorry to have called you out for nothing. I’ll stand you down and we’ll have a re-think.’
The woman folds her arms and watches us as we climb back through the fence.

Outside the front of the block again, John has one last look up and down the road.
‘So what does this Mr Gerhardt look like?’ says Frank.
‘Oh – about six foot four. Powerful build. Shaven head. And a rather – I don’t know – intense look about him.’
‘I bet,’ says Frank.

a waste of a beautiful day

2011-06-29T14:47:00.000Z

The two decorators who found the body are smoking out on the stoop. The brilliant afternoon sunshine picks out the white of their overalls and the white flecks of paint in their hair and beards. There is already an ambulance parked outside; a diamond blue haze ripples around it.
‘They’re up there,’ says one, screwing up his eyes and studying us, as if he meant something more than he was actually saying.
‘Way up there,’ adds his mate, gesturing straight up at the sky with his cigarette. ‘The very top.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
We head inside. This Georgian building was converted into flats many years ago, and only a few flamboyant scraps of cornicing and ceiling rose survive. They sit like architectural ghosts, haunting the shadows beyond the alarm console, fire extinguishers, and the notice that says Absolutely NO visitors. Contravention of this rule will result in immediate eviction. The old staircase rises up in front of us like the abused backbone of a magnificent fossil, crudely over-painted, the treads shod with lino, the edges conscientiously nailed with strips of corrugated plastic.
We climb six flights until a brisk nip at the top and the staircase narrows into something more discrete, the access to a garret, presumably where servants would have slept under the roof.
Voices.
‘In here, guys.’
A tiny landing of curious angles, an open door – and lying on the floor inside, curled up on his side, the body of a man, his face congested, scrunched up, as if he died trying to push something out, and the effort overtook him, puffed him up, and turned him into the veined approximation of a person.
‘We were just about to stand you down,’ says Jack, one of the two paramedics first on scene. ‘He’s still warm but of course it’s hot up here…’ he pushes the hip at the body and the whole thing rocks ‘… it’s rigored, we’ve got pooling here, and here. So – thanks for coming, guys. And sorry for the long haul up.’
‘No worries.’
We turn and walk back down.

The hostel feels vacant. It feels as if every living thing has been carried away, leaving just a corpse upstairs and random bags of trash by the doors on some of the landings. Reaching the top of the last flight down, the fierce afternoon sunshine scours the street just beyond the doorway. The two decorators are standing at the top of the stoop now, looking in. One of them is making a phone call; the other nods and smiles as we come out.
‘The police will be here soon,’ I say to him as I pull off my gloves. ‘They’ll want a word about all this.’
‘No worries boss.’ He takes off his cap and shakes out his long black hair. ‘It was a waste of a beautiful day, anyway.’

a pretty tight ship

2011-06-25T18:04:00.000Z

June had been late coming down for the weekly trip up town, so Jack had knocked on her door. There was no answer and he thought he could smell burning, so he called Susan who had a spare key, and together they went in. They found her lying on the floor of the sitting room, her trolley tipped over on its side, drinks spilled, cushions, clothes, newspapers and address books scattered about. There were a couple of blackened poached eggs on the cooker which Jack dragged from the hob and doused with a cup of water. All in all the flat was in a riotous state. June was conscious but unable to talk; she lay there, naked from the waist down, breathing noisily, reaching up with her left hand and making blind, shaky gestures into the space between them. Susan called for an ambulance.

‘What’s wrong with her, do you think?’ Susan asks, as Frank checks her over and I clear a path to the door for the chair.
‘It looks like June may have had a stroke. Do you know her past medical history?’
‘No. Not really. I know she suffered with her joints, like we all do. Apart from that, nothing. Clear as a bell.’
‘Heart problems? Blood pressure?’
‘Oh yes, she had a few heart attacks. And her blood pressure wasn’t all that good. But apart from that, nothing to speak of.’
‘Did she have carers come round at all?’
‘No. We’re all pretty self-sufficient here. All good sturdy stock.
‘That’s good.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Any relatives around?’
‘I know she has a daughter in America.’
‘A son in Leicester,’ shouts Jack from the kitchen.
‘And a son in Leicester, apparently,’ says Susan.
We pick June off the floor and put her into the chair. She fights us, and we wrap her tightly in our blankets to stifle her struggles. I give the pink bedspread they had covered her with back to Susan.
‘Oh dear,’ says Susan. ‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘She’s not too well at the moment, but they’ll take good care of her at the hospital,’ says Frank. ‘Okay? Let’s be off.’
We pass quickly out of the flat and in to the strange lift that runs from this mezzanine to the ground floor. Once we’re outside, Frank says: ‘I didn’t get her date of birth. Once we’re on the ambulance, can you scooch back inside and get it for us, Spence?’
‘Sure.’

All the doors are shut by the time I make it back. I ring June’s flat again, and when there is no reply, about every other button I can find. Eventually someone lets me in.

Jack and Susan are still there tidying up the flat.
‘Oh. I wondered who it was ringing,’ says Jack.
‘I just needed to get June’s date of birth. Do you happen to have it?’
Jack slaps me on the shoulder.
‘Come with me,’ he says.
He leads me out into the hallway and back onto the mezzanine lift. As we travel slowly down he rocks backwards and forwards with his hands lightly clasped in front of him, smiling strangely and smacking his lips, like a vicar struggling to make small talk.
‘I’ve got everyone’s birthday. On my calendar,’ he says eventually.
‘That’s nice and organised.’
‘Yes. I run a pretty tight ship.’
‘Great.’
The lift shudders to a halt and I open the door for him.
‘Just in here,’ he says, and fiddles around with the keys to his front door. ‘Excuse the mess.’
‘I have to be pretty quick, Jack.’
‘Yes. Yes. Won’t be a moment.’
He disappears into what looks like a converted larder, and after an age of harumphing and throat clearing, re-emerges with an unfeasibly large glossy calendar. He struggles to find a clear space to put it down, then fiddles around with some glasses that hang round his neck on a chain.
‘Now then. June... June.... birthday in September, I think. Or is it July? Mm. June... June.... I know I’ve got it down somewhere.’ He looks down his nose at the calendar, licks his index finger, and slowly flips the pages.
I start to feel prickly with the need to get away.
‘Honestly. It’s okay if you haven’t got it, Jack. It was just if you had it somewhere handy.’
‘Now just a minute. I know how important these things are. June... June.... Not September – of course. That’s Sheila. Definitely not August, because that’s when mine is, and I’m almost sure no-one else here has a birthday in the same month.’
‘Honestly, Jack. It’s okay. I’d better be off.’
‘Just a minute. June... Mm. Got it! December. That’s why! I was getting her muddled up with Cynthia.’
‘Great. December the what?’
‘The what?’
‘What day in December?’
‘Tuesday.’
‘What date is that, Jack?’
‘Oh. December the fourth.’
‘Lovely. And the year?’
‘Oh – I don’t write the year down on the calendar,’ he says, flipping it shut. ‘But looking at her I’d guess she’s about eighty-two. Wouldn’t you?’

cold

2011-06-24T16:20:00.001Z

Henry, ninety-one, had been watching the tennis. When Leyton Hewitt reached for a deep pass, Henry reached for the remote and fell out of the chair. We pick him off the floor an hour later and settle him back in bed. The carers on scene - two raucous women who clean him up, smear his genitals with cream and haul on a fresh pair of pyjama bottoms, all with the bonhomie of a pair of blousy witches – flop back onto the sofa and suck busily on the teats of their energy drinks.
All Henry’s obs are fine. Frank writes out the sheet. I sit by the bed, and fetch down a photo of Henry as a young man of twenty, glaring into the camera, striding across Piccadilly with a suitcase in one hand, fag in the other.
‘Where were you off to in this photo, then, Henry?’
‘That photo?’
‘Yes.’
‘I dunno mate. China, probably.’
‘How long were you in the navy?’
‘Twenty year.’
‘Enlisted?’
‘Yeah.’
He chews for a moment, then turns his head in my direction.
‘We were up in the Arctic circle,’ he says. ‘Colder than hell. Colder than you can imagine. Everything iced-up and frozen. Equipment, men – everything. One night, I was on watch. And this fucking great shadow rolls by. German cruiser. Just like us – frozen solid. There was nothing anyone could do. You couldn’t work the guns. You couldn’t do nothing. Everything frozen solid. The only thing you could do was stand on the deck and salute. So that’s what we did. Stood to attention and saluted, as this German cruiser passes by in the night.’
He sucks his cheeks furiously for a moment.
‘Fucking hell it was cold’ he says.

trouble at the mardi gras

2011-06-24T10:33:00.001Z

There is a middle-aged woman waiting for us by the front door of the Mardi Gras bed and breakfast. She gives us a terse smile.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she says, then looks down and begins searching in her soft leather shoulder bag for something. ‘The police are in there with Emanuel. I expect you’re aware - it’s a Section Three. Twenty-five years old. Very paranoid. Thinks he’s in the SAS. He’s been on the phone to the police on a daily basis about death threats and so on. Not violent, as such.’
‘As such?’
‘So far.’
‘Right.’
The social worker has an unfortunate manner, brittle and administrative, like a harassed teacher collared by a parent when all she wants to do is get home to her cats. I wonder if it’s just the stress of this situation that’s making her so unapproachable – or maybe the deeper, longer term effects of intervening in awful situations like this. She finds the section papers and waves them briskly in front of us.
‘Okay? His mum’s with him.’
‘Is there anything medically wrong with Emanuel?’ asks Frank, as neutrally as he can. The social worker straightens an inch. ‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Because if there isn’t any medical need for an ambulance, it might be safer if he went in a police vehicle.’
‘No. Absolutely not. Sections must always travel in an ambulance. That’s the agreement.’
‘I only ask because if Emanuel’s a bit feisty and needs restraining and so on, it’ll be easier to load him onto a police van. The back’s lower, both doors open nice and wide, and there’s less equipment for him to grab in the back.’
‘No. The police are never to be used to convey. It’s inappropriate. No.’
‘Okay. I just thought I’d point out how it’s been in the past sometimes. Of course we’re happy to take the patient.’
The social worker looks at Frank with a glittering focus that reminds me of the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
‘It’s the agreement,’ she says finally, then turns and leads us inside.
Frank sighs and shakes his head. We follow.

We pass through a narrow reception area to a bare-boarded dining room. Between the neatly stacked shelves of breakfast cups, plates and aluminium tea pots, are a series of energetic paintings, as frenetic as if a carnival parade had reached a pitch of excitement, exploded and splashed against the canvases.
Emanuel is sitting at a bistro table outside on a sunny patio, smoking a filter tip cigarette and speaking urgently into a phone. Two female police officers stand in the room watching him, along with a small, capable looking woman in a blue housecoat.
‘It’s just that there are details that concern me,’ says Emanuel. ‘It doesn’t add up and I’m ringing you for clarification.’ He pauses momentarily to suck in more smoke and to throw us all a glance over the top of his purple-tinted glasses. ‘No. No. Listen to me - please. It’s vital that you understand. There are people here pretending to be the police and I believe they intend to do me harm. All I require from you is verification. Why won’t you give it to me?’
‘Immy, darling’ says his mother, holding a jacket out in his direction. ‘It’s okay, Immy. I’ll be coming with you.’
‘Come on, Emanuel,’ says one of the police officers. ‘We’ve shown you our warrant cards. Look. The paramedics are here. They’re the ones who’ll be taking you to the hospital.’
Emanuel holds up his hand. ‘Wait a moment. Just wait,’ he says. Then back into the phone: ‘Why won’t you? I am a citizen of this country and I have my rights. I’m telling you my life is in danger. I need you to reassure me that these people are in fact police officers. Because their numbers don’t add up, they have the wrong uniform, and I know for a fact that they are here to do me harm, perhaps even to kill me.’
‘Immy!’ says his mother. ‘Immy – I’ve got your jacket.’
‘Let’s go, Emanuel,’ says the Social Worker. ‘We’ve talked about this. We have to go now.’
‘No,’ he says, standing up and stepping warily into the breakfast room to be nearer to his mother. When he talks into the phone again, it seems they have hung up. ‘Wait a moment – just wait!’ he says, as the police officers move a little closer. ‘Wait! I just want to ring Control again. You have to let me ring them again. It’s my right. I just want to check something.’
‘Look. Emanuel. We’ve shown you our warrant cards and we’ve played along with this for long enough. I know you’re upset and that’s perfectly understandable. But you have to come with us now. We can’t stay here any longer.’
‘No. You can’t make me.’
‘I’m afraid we can. That’s why we’re here. You really do have to come with us to the hospital. Once we’re there, we’ll leave you with the staff. We’ll go as soon as we know you’re safe. But it’s our job to make sure you come with the social worker and the paramedics to the hospital. Okay?’
‘No. Don’t you dare come a step closer. And don’t you lay a finger on me. I just have to make this phone call. Please. Just let me make the call.’
‘No. No more phone calls, Emanuel. Let’s go.’
‘No!’
He goes to hit redial on the phone, but the police officer takes it off him.
‘That is assault!’ he says. ‘Mummy!’
‘No more phone calls.’
‘Give it to me!’
‘Come on, Emanuel. Let’s go out to the ambulance.’
‘No! You cannot take me if I don’t want to go.’
‘I’m sorry, Emanuel,’ says the social worker. ‘That’s why we’re here. You’re not well and you need treatment.’
‘No!’
‘Emanuel? Listen to me. I want you to walk out to the ambulance quietly and calmly. Will you do that for us? Come on.’
‘No! Don’t you touch me. Don’t you touch me! No. Get off. Get off.’
‘Put your hands down, Emanuel. Hands down.’
‘Please don’t fight them, Immy,’ says his mother, laying her hands on his arm. ‘Please don’t.’
‘No!’
He resists, pulling back from her, confronting the police officers with his fists clenched, and then suddenly lurching off to the side as if he had seen something he could defend himself with. The two officers jump on him, spin him face down onto a sofa that lies against the far wall, and eventually manage to turn his arms behind him using wrist locks. One of them produces a pair of handcuffs and snaps them on.
‘Nice and calm, now,’ she says. ‘Just slow it all down.’
‘You’re hurting me,’ he roars into the cushions. ‘I can’t breathe. You’re breaking my arms.’
‘Calm it down, Emanuel,’ she says. ‘As soon as you relax we’ll stand you up and you’ll feel more comfortable.’
‘I’m calm,’ he pants. ‘I’m calm. All right? Sorry. I was just upset.’
‘I know. It is upsetting,’ she says. ‘Okay? Ready to stand up, then?’
‘Yes. Please. Ow! You’re hurting me.’
Between them they help him to his feet. They are all breathing heavily, but of the three of them, Emanuel seems the most exhausted. His tongue keeps flicking out to wet his dry lips; his glasses have slid down his nose, and he scrunches up his face to try to edge them up again. He has the outraged, bedraggled look of an animal that’s been captured by vets at the zoo.
‘My baby,’ says his mother, gently stroking his face and helping him with his glasses. ‘I’m coming with you.’

***

The ambulance lurches from side to side.
‘Sorry it’s so uncomfortable,’ I say to Emanuel. He is sitting on one of the side chairs, his arms still cuffed behind his back.
‘Can you take these things off me?’ he asks the police officer.
‘No. Not until we get you to the hospital,’ she says. ‘Not long now.’
‘Please.’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘I need to make a phone call.’
‘No more phone calls.’
‘I need to call Papa and tell him goodbye.’
His mother is sitting in the chair next to him. She strokes his knee. ‘I spoke to Papa this morning, darling. He knows all about it. He’ll be coming to visit you later.’
‘I need to tell him goodbye. He’ll be upset.’
‘It’s okay. I told him all about it. He knows.’
‘Please.’
‘No. Sorry,’ says the police officer.
The ambulance lurches again and I put out my hand to steady Emanuel.
‘Almost there,’ I say.’
We travel in silence for a while, Emanuel periodically scrunching up his face and casting his eyes around above his specs.
‘Lovely little bed and breakfast you have there,’ I say to his mother. ‘Keeps you busy, I expect.’
‘Oh – in the summer it’s mad. Quietens down a lot over the winter months, though. We usually manage to get away then.’
She smiles and pats Emanuel on the knee again.
It has been raining all afternoon, but suddenly the weather lifts, and we’re riding through streets drenched in sunshine.
‘Do you know – it’s twenty years since I was last in an ambulance,’ says his mother, smoothing strands of hair away from Emanuel’s forehead. ‘Not nearly as nice as this one, though. Twenty years – imagine that. Just about to give birth to Ivan, his younger brother. All this equipment you have now. It’s amazing. Something for every eventuality, I expect.’
Emanuel tenses and looks across at the police officer again.
‘Please? Can’t I just phone Papa?’ he says.
She shakes her head.

jinxed

2011-06-19T19:58:00.001Z

The worst fears of the neighbours gathered outside on the pavement are realised: Jack is, in fact, dead. Once the door is broken in and we step inside the house calling his name, we find him sitting in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his head tilted back and his eyes half open, looking like a man pretending to be asleep so he can keep an eye on proceedings. The two police officers go back outside to tell the crowd what’s happened and to find out any more information.

I start looking for personal details – date of birth, registered doctor, medication and so on. There are hundreds of packs of toilet roll and cleaning products neatly stacked in the mahogany cabinet, the utility cupboard and over the fridge. Just as I find a Tupperware container with his medications and repeat scrips, we hear voices in the hallway. The brother has arrived. We hear the policewoman ask him to take a seat on the stairs.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,’ she says. ‘Your brother Jack has died.’
There is a ghastly, muffled sob, and the policewoman says: ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Harry. I know it’s not much consolation, but it looks like Jack died peacefully. Do you want to come in and see him?’
After a pause, the door slowly opens.
Harry stands on the threshold of the room, peering across to where his brother is sitting.
‘Let’s make a bit of room here,’ I say, and move a couple of things. Harry must have visited this room a thousand times over the years but now he shuffles uncertainly across the threadbare carpet like he doesn’t know the place at all. He stands quietly in front of his brother, and then stoops forward, as if he’s going to kiss him, but seems to change his mind, and reaches down to pat him gently a couple of times on the shoulder instead. He lets his hand rest there a moment, then turns and looks helplessly back at us.
‘I think it was quick, Harry,’ I say. ‘You can tell by the way he’s sitting. No sign of any distress or pain or anything. I’m sure he died sleeping in the chair.’
‘Yes. Well. He liked his chair.’
‘Would you like to sit down, Harry? Can I get you a drink of water or a cup of tea?’
‘No. Thank you. The taxi’s outside waiting.’
‘We’ll sort that.’
‘You’ll tell him?’
‘Don’t worry. Come and sit a while.’
‘All right.’
Frank helps him into a chair. He perches on the edge of it.
‘I came over as quick as I could. Do you think - if I’d got here sooner...?’
‘Jack’s been dead a good few hours I should think.’
‘I couldn’t get hold of him on the phone. I don’t know why I waited – I knew something wasn’t right. I should’ve come over sooner.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’
It wouldn’t surprise me if Jack suddenly gave a little snort and sat up. But aside from the obvious pooling of blood in his arms there is something else, something more unsettling - a cold vacancy, a complete absence of those myriad ticks and traces of life we subliminally read but never really notice till they’re gone.
‘He only ever used to go shopping at night,’ says Harry, and we all nod as if it explained something. ‘Fifty years as a machine operator for Cluttons in Bedale Street. We grew up together. I’ve known him all my life.’ He shifts uncomfortably in the chair. ‘Obviously.’
‘What do I do about the paperwork? You know – the certificates,’ he says.
‘The coroner’s office will give you a call tomorrow,’ says the policewoman. ‘Don’t worry about that now. Just get some rest for now.’
‘Right. And they’ll call me, will they? I don’t need to call them?’
‘No. They’ll call you. I’ve got your number.’
‘Right.’
He struggles to stand up and the policewoman gives him a hand.
‘I’ve got a taxi waiting,’ he says, then glances once more across to his brother, and shuffles back out.
‘Look at this,’ says the policewoman after a moment, pulling a wad of forms out of her pocket. ‘I’ve got all the paperwork on me already. This is my fourth in as many days. I’d stay that side of the room if I were you, guys. I think I’m jinxed.’

proof

2011-06-15T09:42:00.001Z

A wash of aquamarine draws up across the dark margin of houses and trees. There is a stunned clarity to the air - birds are beginning to sing themselves back into the world, and the sound is profoundly refreshing after the long night shift.

I ride in Frank’s wake to the front door and watch as he buzzes the intercom. After a moment the catch releases and we step into the lobby of a retirement block so perfectly squared away we could be stepping into an architect’s three dimensional plan. The lift runs us up smoothly to the third floor, the door hushes aside and we find ourselves in a hallway the exact copy of the one downstairs. If it wasn’t for the fact that an aspidistra had been switched for an umbrella plant, there’d be no proof we’d moved at all – that, and the higher numbers on the doors. As we follow them to the right, we meet a middle aged woman standing in the middle of the carpet. I feel like a sleepy mouse who turned a corner and met a Kite. She makes a smile, then tears through the facts.

‘Before we go in let me tell you about my father,’ she says. ‘It’s tricky.’
‘Okay.’
‘I got a call to come down yesterday around supper time. The cleaner found my father on the floor, confused and complaining of some vague pains here and there. My sister’s away so I came over – miles, actually – and whilst I was on my way the cleaner called you people, the first crew. They did a marvellous job because I have to warn you, he’s not the easiest of customers. They checked him over, couldn’t find any injuries from the fall, but his legs are very swollen and he’s not in terribly good shape. They got him back on his feet and sat him in the lounge – which took an hour. I got here soon after. Normally Daddy’s as sharp as anything but there’s something not right. I’ve been abroad and I haven’t seen him these past few months and I have to say he doesn’t look good. The thing is, he can’t get up on his own, can’t do the basics, but he’s refusing to go to hospital. The other crew were here for a couple of hours trying to persuade him. We tried everything. Reason, bullying, begging – everything, but nothing worked. He’s stubborn and he flatly refused to go. So your colleagues arranged for the out of hours doctor to visit, and they left. The doctor’s in there now, and it looks like he’s finally persuaded Daddy to go with you. And that’s the story so far. Except to say you’ll have to forgive him if he seems a little – abrupt. He’s got it into his head that the first crew manhandled him. So I’m sorry if he causes offence. Just please try not to rise to it. It’s taken such a huge effort to get him this far.’
‘Of course. Shall we go in and say hello?’
She shows us into the flat.

Mr Williams is sitting in the middle of a neat yellow sofa with a stick planted firmly between his legs, both hands draped magnificently over the bone handle. He is a wild and withered version of his daughter, the same raptor profile, his oiled grey hair quivering from the tension of keeping his body erect. He smacks his lips together and raps the cane on the floor like a tetchy magician trying to turn us all into birds.
‘Who are you?’
The out of hours doctor, a plump and friendly man we’ve met many times before, makes the introduction.
‘This is your transport, sir. Your transport has arrived.’
‘Transport? Transport where?’
‘To the hospital. Do you remember? We talked about it.’
‘I’m not going to the hospital. It’s far too late. I’ll make my way there on my own next week, when it’s more convenient.’
‘We discussed all this, Mr Williams. Do you remember? I’m not at all happy with your condition.’
‘My condition?’
‘Your blood pressure is very low. Your legs are swollen. You’re so weak you can’t get yourself up off the sofa to get to the bathroom or take care of yourself. You need someone to look after you.’
‘I am perfectly able to take care of myself. I just need a little time. So will you please stop all this nonsense, leave me alone and let me get to bed. Who are all these people?’
‘The ambulance, Mr Williams. They’ve kindly come over to take you to hospital. Look. They’ve even brought a special chair.’
Mr Williams shakes his head.
‘No. It’s completely unacceptable. The last lot picked me up and threw me across the table. I couldn’t believe it. Threw me – across the table. I shall be making a formal complaint.’
His daughter folds her arms.
‘But Daddy they didn’t.’
‘They did. You weren’t here.’
‘I was right here. You’re seeing things.’
But she sits down on the corner of a table in the hallway, and seems less certain.
‘I’m not crazy,’ he says. ‘I’m in full control of my faculties.’
He glances at me.
‘You. Give me the alphabet – backwards.’
‘It’s way too early in the morning, Mr Williams.’
‘Would you like me to recite it for you?’
‘Okay.’
And he does, closing his eyes and racing through the letters.
‘...E,D,C,B,A. There. As I explained. I am in complete control of my mind, and as such insist that you leave me be.’
His daughter unfolds her arms and makes a desperate gesture with her arms: Scoop him up! Put him in the chair! But the doctor picks up his briefcase instead.
‘Mr Williams. I’ve made my position clear. You need urgent treatment at the hospital and it’s not a rational decision to refuse it. My next step is to get a mental health team out to assess your capability with a view to taking you, regardless. I’m very sorry it’s come to this, but we’ve tried everything else.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘We’re going to leave you now, but the team will be in touch within the next couple of hours.’
‘Who?’
The daughter stands behind the sofa and puts her hands onto the backrest for support.
‘You mean you’re not taking Daddy now?’ She seems brittle, ready to fly into pieces. ‘You’re leaving him here?’
‘Who is?’ says Mr Williams.

the ex

2011-06-10T16:34:00.001Z

Tanya is sitting on a stub of wall outside the pub, leaning forwards with a wad of cloth pressed to the side of her face. A steady trickle of blood runs out beneath the heel of her hand, curls off the point of her chin, and falls to the pavement.

A policeman stands next to her.

‘Tanya’s been assaulted with a knife,’ he says. ‘She’s got a nasty cut to the left side of her face, but no other injuries as far as we can tell. We’ve got the guy who did it - over there…’ he says, nodding in the direction of a screaming man pinned face-down on the ground beneath a security guard and three other officers. ‘Her ex,’ he adds, then carefully peels off his gloves so he can take out his pocket book.

On the ambulance, we take a look. A grievous work of butchery, laying open the left side of her face from the corner of the mouth to the cheekbone. I clean it up as best and as quickly as I can, then cover it again with dampened gauze.
‘I told him it was over but he wouldn’t have it,’ she says. ‘He took all my stuff. My CD player. My methadone scrip. He tried to get me yesterday but I ran off. I didn’t do nothing.’
She turns in the chair to show me the jagged rip in the back of her jacket where he’d swiped at her: as she turns, the white foam stuffing rucks and rides out of the hole.

the long walk

2011-06-08T09:47:00.000Z

Bernard is standing waiting. He waves and I head the car that way, parking up as best I can in the limited space available. I’m glad he’s there to show me where to go; there are no numbers in this street, an urban ravine of workshops, garages, mews flats and studios, the shameful back exits to a dozen restaurants and shops. A kitchen porter in black and white check trousers smokes watchfully from an alcove. A loud crash and then swearing and laughter from a yard to my left. Seagulls squabbling over scraps. The smell of salt spray, diesel and garbage juice.
‘This way,’ says Bernard. He turns and leads me across a patio yard crowded with recycling bins and overalls flapping on a line to a door propped open with a metal bucket. ‘Up here. Mind your head.’ A plain grey staircase, rising steeply two storeys to an equally plain fire door. ‘He’s very drunk.’

A two room flat, divided three dimensionally like a cake: length-ways into galley kitchen and living room, height-ways by a mezzanine sleeping compartment, a metal ladder propped against it leading up to a plain mattress and a reading lamp. The room is strewn with debris – books, bottles, clothes, and face down amongst it all, Jarl, dry-crying on a sofa.
‘Jarl? The ambulance is here.’
He rolls onto his back and squints up at us both.
‘I don’t want no amb’lance,’ he says, his hand dropping from his face as abruptly as his grief. ‘What for I need amb’lance? Bernard? What you do?’
‘You’re not well. You need help.’
Jarl struggles to sit himself more upright. A bottle of vodka clumps down onto the carpet, and as Jarl reaches out a hand to catch it he almost follows.
‘Steady, mate.’
Bernard shakes his head. ‘You wouldn’t believe he was sober for six months,’ he says. ‘Weren’t you?’
‘I want rehab. You send me rehab?’
‘I think maybe that’d be a good idea, Jarl, but that’s something you’ll have to do through your GP. Anyway – look – we’ll come to that. Let’s have a chat first.’
‘No. I want rehab, not GP.’ He struggles to sit up, and when he can support himself and free his right hand sufficiently, salutes. ‘Løytnant, Norwegian Navy, my friend. Yah. Is true. The Løytnant - he says, Good Luck, nice life, and so on and so forth. Come. Sit down, have drink with me and I tell you. Come. Come.’ He bounces around on the sofa pushing magazines and ripped letters aside. Bernard quietly picks the bottle up off the floor and puts it in the sink with a nest of empties.
‘Jarl tries hard, but I’m afraid it’s still a problem,’ he says.
Somehow Jarl has found himself in a sitting position. He slumps forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and suddenly focuses on a spilled bag of Haribo bears amongst the scattered ash, letters and bottles on the coffee table. He picks one up, inspects it carefully, dusts it off.
‘The Løytnant is used to making important decisions, as you can see. Red, I think, today.’ He pops it in his mouth.
‘So. Tell me why the ambulance has been called today?’
‘He was having an anxiety attack’ says Bernard. ‘I wasn’t sure. It looked bad. But he seems to have come round a bit now. I’m sorry if I’ve wasted your time.’
‘Who is this?’ says Jarl, chewing loudly. ‘Policeman?’
‘It’s the ambulance, Jarl. Bernard was worried about you.’
He pats the air in front of his face and collapses back on the sofa. ‘Pah. All I want is rehab. Then my life can begin again.’
‘Do you mind if I take your blood pressure and whatnot? Just to make sure everything’s okay?’
He struggles up again and holds out his left arm – a lean, square-wristed limb, brown and powerful.
‘Jarl is a marine engineer, too.’
‘Really?’
He nods.
‘He’s had an amazing life. Do you know he walked here from Jakarta?’
‘From Jakarta?’
‘How long you think?’ says Jarl, finding a crooked cigarette on the sofa with his free hand and putting it in his mouth. ‘How long?’
‘From Jakarta? I don’t know. Years, I should think.’
‘Five. Five years.’
‘That’s incredible.’
I take the BP cuff off his arm. He puts the cigarette in his mouth, and then salutes again.
‘Løytnant, Norwegian navy. We can do anything.’
For the first time I notice all the pictures of yachts and sailing ships around the flat: schooners, clippers, fishing smacks, a Chinese Junk.
‘Did you work on all these?’
He shrugs, and then frowns as he struggles to bring the tip of his cigarette into the flame of the lighter.
In amongst the photos there is a picture drawn by a child – a happy man, smiling with a crazy grid pattern of teeth, waving his peaked cap at the sun with a stick arm. The paper is curled with age. Next to the picture, a map of the world.
‘He’s a clever man,’ says Bernard. ‘He’s written books.’
Jarl lies back down on the sofa.
‘What sort of books are they, Jarl?’
‘Philosophy. You think this thing. If all politician got rid of – shoom! – then every…then all the people they would come together and understand each other and would respect the culture. I’ve seen this things. I’ve thought about it a lot.’
I finish writing the paperwork.
‘You take me rehab now?’
‘No, Jarl. I’m going to refer you back to your GP.’
‘Pah. But come, please - shake. Løytnant, Norwegian Navy. With thanks.’
He almost crushes my hand.
As I turn to go I notice that the ladder isn’t fixed at the top.
‘I wouldn’t fancy going up that,’ I say. ‘Especially after a few drinks.’
Bernard laughs.
‘He’s used to ladders,’ he says.

the look

2011-05-30T15:46:00.001Z

They must be using subliminal advertising between TV shows – a micro-flash of The Happy Eater logo, an upturned pill pot, lightning pink letters: take what you have.
Everyone, everyone, is taking an overdose tonight. This is our fourth.
Such a liberal scattering, I’m thinking of adding a dustpan and brush to my kit.

The streetlamps in this side street have been partially absorbed by the plane trees, to the extent that the heavily pollarded crowns seem to glow like monstrous, irradiated asparagus tips. Frank grumbles and drives slow, sweeping each house front with the side lights.
‘What number?’
‘Twelve. There. Back up.’
A scuffed, plumped-up building. Some kind of hostel? TV on in the lounge, but no-one watching. I ring the bell and wait for someone to come, but nothing moves. We ring and wait some more. The only sign of life is a spider squaring off to a strange kind of bug on the handrail. Whilst I ring Control to advise them of the situation – the lack of response, not the insects - we crouch down and get a close-up of the action. I wonder what anyone watching us would think: There are two paramedics crouching down and looking at something. One of them’s on the radio. It looks serious.
‘This is one of those superbugs I was telling you about,’ says Frank, blowing on the two combatants. They both hunker down and look up.
‘What super bug?’
‘The one with all the spots.’
Control get back to me.
I’m afraid it just goes to answer phone. You’ll have to force entry.
You want me to kick the door down?
I’m afraid so.
Just as I foot the door to explore the lock situation, a light goes on at the top of the stairs and we hear people clumping down.
‘Fuck sake. Who is it? What do you want?’
‘Ambulance!’
‘Ambulance? Jesus Christ.’
I look back down at the insect match: the superbug has gone and the spider is glaring up at me with all his hands on his hips.
The door opens. A man stands there with the same expression as the spider.
‘What?’
‘We had a call that someone here has taken an overdose?’
‘An overdose?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Valerie somebody or other.’
‘Valerie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who’s Valerie? Do you mean Jean?’
‘Jean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Has she taken an overdose?’
‘It sounds more like her.’
‘I’d have to check that.’
‘Do you have a room number?’
‘I’ll check that too.’
‘You don’t have much do you?’
‘No.’
As I call Control again, a young woman drifts into the hallway and stands alongside the man. She takes speculative sips from a can of cider and stares at us with enormous eyes.
‘Hello,’ says Frank. She shrinks back into the can.
Control get back to me: Room number seven.
‘Number seven?’ says the man. ‘It’s empty. But Jean’s moving there next week. Maybe she’s confused.’
‘Where is Jean now?’
‘Ten B. Round the back. I suppose you want to go there.’
‘Go on, then.’
We follow him through the house, past the piles of uncollected letters, the fire notices and alarm consoles, the extinguishers and the social board fluttering with courses and help-lines. The girl ghosts after us. The man opens a back door and shows us to a beaten up old white door with 10B nailed to the centre. There is a dim light showing through the curtains and the muted sound of a radio. The young woman bites the rim of her can as the man leans between us and knocks on the door.
‘I think it must be Jean,’ he says standing back again. We all wait.
After a minute the radio shuts off. A minute more and the curtains suddenly snap aside. A sallow face looms up to the pane like an aged carp probing the surface of a pond. We all draw back.
‘Did you call the ambulance, Jean?’
‘What?’
‘The ambulance? Did you call them?’
She presses an eye against the glass. The girl almost bites her can in half.
‘No!’ she says. ‘Why?’
‘We’ve been told you took an overdose?’
‘A what?’
‘An overdose.’
The face withdraws, and the curtains fall back across the window. Before anyone can say anything, Control calls me again.
It’s number twenty three.
What do you mean, number twenty-three? We’re at number twelve.
Yeah. But she’s got a really quiet voice.
‘Sorry,’ I say to the man. ‘Wrong number.’
He wants to swear. I’d prefer it if he did. But the look he gives me instead. The look.