Five o’clock in the morning and the sky has a fuzz of blue about it that marks The Change. I can feel it in me, too, as if my blood and bones are orientating to the same rising point. I’m through the three o’clock subsea numbness, that dead or alive slump that makes shift work so difficult. The only way is up.
I knock again. There are lights on through the house, but all the curtains are closed and nothing moves.
We’ve been called here to help with a lift. Apparently a crew was dispatched to pick a large woman off the floor, and Control has sent us, too, pre-empting a request for help, and because we happened to be passing.
No reply.
I knock again whilst Frank steps across the flower bed and bangs on the window.
The first crew’s ambulance is parked right outside, so I can’t think that we have the wrong number.
‘Maybe they’re mid-manoeuvre and can’t come to the door,’ says Frank, goose-stepping over a desiccated lavender bush. ‘Or trapped under a heavy piece of furniture.’
Just as I reach out to knock again, the door is yanked open. Rich, an EMT from out of town, stands there looking hot.
‘Resus,’ he says, and then turns to go back inside. We follow close on his heels. He gives us the main facts over his shoulder: Ninety year old female. Husband thought she’d fallen over when she got out of bed to go to the loo. Rang for an ambulance to help get her up. Didn’t do any CPR. Doesn’t know how bad she is. Took us twenty minutes to get here. Asystole since we started. No cardiac PMH.
We follow Rich into a room where a woman is lying on her back, rolled flat by the cataclysm that has been visited upon her. Two single beds have been pushed together and a table and chest of drawers piled on top to make space. The woman is naked, her nightie cut in two, flowing out either side of her like trampled wings. Sophie is kneeling beside her, compressing her chest.
‘Here. Let me take over that,’ I say to her.
‘Thanks, mate,’ she says, stiffly getting to her feet. ‘God. My knees are so creaky these days.’
Rich takes over the ventilations.
‘How long have you been going now?’
‘What is it? Ten minutes?’ says Rich.
Frank goes back down the stairs to fetch his para bag; Sophie goes with him to chat to the husband.
‘How’s he taking it?’
‘I don’t think he really understands what’s happened.’
Rich wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.
‘Christ, you know – we weren’t expecting any of this. It came through as an assist back to bed. She was crammed over against the wardrobe. We had a hell of a job to get some space cleared and get her on her back.’
The woman’s body shifts beneath my compressions with lifeless passivity. I hear Frank clumping back up the stairs with his gear.
‘They didn’t tell us this was a resus,’ I say. ‘We were sent by just in case you needed a hand.’
‘That’s lucky, then. We were just about to call for back-up…’
All the drugs and extra equipment are to no avail. The woman is beyond rescue. After more than twenty minutes, we all agree that nothing more can be done. We tidy the woman up, lift her into bed and make her presentable, restore the furniture as best as possible and stuff all our rubbish into a yellow bag. Whilst Rich finishes off, we head off back down the stairs. We stop off in the living room to say goodbye.
An elderly man in tidy blue pyjamas and a dressing gown tied at the waist, is sitting forward on a floral-patterned armchair with his arms resting on his knees, staring down at his hands. Behind him on the wall is a generous spread of framed photographs: weddings, holidays, formal family portraits, a dog looking out from a garden – many of the photos looking leached out now, further away, their greens and yellows and reds and blues drawn up and ghosted by all the bright sunlight this window must have let in over the years.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
this glamorous life
We are looking for number three of a row of bungalows set back from the road by steel-railed pathways, a discrete enclave of disability amongst the bullish and bullying tower blocks that surround them on this estate. I wonder if they pre-date everything else; they seem so corralled by the pragmatic stack of life here.
There are men standing by cars, chatting, smoking, not sponging down paintwork, shouting at kids on bikes, looking about. One of them makes a gesture to me – do I want him to move? I thank him as I climb out.
There is a strikingly beautiful carer dressed in black t-shirt and jeans standing waiting for us by the front door. She could be waiting for an appointment with a modelling agency, but rather than a portfolio of shots in her arms she has a yellow folder with the patient’s details.
‘Sorry to be calling you quickly,’ she smiles. ‘Sorry I no pick Frank from floor by myself only.’
She moves inside, leaving just enough room for us to squeeze past a mobility scooter the size of a red tank and into a bedroom where Frank is lying on his side on the floor with a garishly coloured fleece thrown over him. His greasy yellow hair sticks up on his head in distinct rows, like corn in a field.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he shouts. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Sorry it took us a while to get here, Frank,’ says Frank. ‘My name’s also Frank – and this is Spence.’
‘What do you mean? I’m Frank. What are you playing at? Help me up.’
The carer smiles down at us as we crouch beside him. She mouths what I think is: very difficult person. Her lips are full and dark. She has a smudge of lipstick on her teeth.
‘We’ll get you up in just a second, Frank. We just need to find out what happened, whether you’ve hurt yourself.’
Frank wrests his head off the floor and tries to get a look at us. ‘I’ll sort you jokers out,’ he says.
‘Whoa – don’t be like that, Frank. Just calm down, and tell us how you came to be on the floor’
Frank produces a fist from underneath the fleece. ‘I’ll land this on you,’ he says, his toothless mouth slack with rage.
‘I think he just slipped from bed,’ says the carer. ‘He got little bit blood on side of his head and some on his finger, but I not think his badly hurt.’
‘Get me off the floor, won’t you?’ says Frank, in a more pleading way, pistoning his legs ineffectually, trying to sit up.
We realise we’re not going to be able to keep him still and examine him like this. Frank concedes defeat and says: ‘Okay mate. Let’s have you up then.’
He is so frail and thin, it’s like re-righting a scarecrow that’s been blown over in the wind. We place him on the corner of the bed.
‘Let’s have a look at you then, Frank,’ says Frank.
The first thing that strikes us is his breathing. Now that he’s upright, Frank quietens right down, subdued by the effort of getting air into his lungs. Each in-going breath sounds like something heavy being dragged along a gravel drive.
‘Oof. How long’s Frank had that?’
The carer looks through the notes.
‘Antibiotic for one week chest infection.’
‘Any other medications?’
‘No. Just cream for leg.’
He’s in a poor state. Cellulitis makes both his legs look like two cured hams on the bone; he is emaciated and sallow; his chest hardly moves – all the effort of breathing comes from his withered stomach.
‘I’m not - going to - hospital,’ he growls.
‘Frank. Don’t be like that. We just want what’s best for you – and that, right now, is coming with us to hospital to see a doctor. It might not be for long. But we can’t just leave you here.’
‘Leave – me – alone!’
He retches, and a rope of phlegm snakes out of his mouth and nose. The effort of expulsion racks his frame.
‘Get a chair for us, Spence,’ says Frank, wiping the old man’s face with a wad of kitchen towel the carer gives to him. ‘How could we leave you here like this?’
I go to fetch the carry chair.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the carer.
‘Scusi,’ she says, busy pulling some information sheets from the folder.
The chair feels only slightly heavier when Frank is loaded onto it. He is so frail, I have no idea why he has such an enormous mobility scooter, but it makes negotiating the hallway quite a problem.
‘That’s a beast, your scooter’ I say to him, but he does not hear above the spitting and crackling of the nebuliser we now have him on.
Outside on the vehicle we run our usual tests. It looks like Frank may have suffered a heart attack this morning, along with everything else. We treat him quickly and set off, alerting the hospital of our arrival.
I wave goodbye to the carer standing over by the front door with her little black shoulder bag and her document folder.
She waves cheerfully back.
Honestly. I feel like I’m on a motorboat leaving a quayside in Monte Carlo.
There are men standing by cars, chatting, smoking, not sponging down paintwork, shouting at kids on bikes, looking about. One of them makes a gesture to me – do I want him to move? I thank him as I climb out.
There is a strikingly beautiful carer dressed in black t-shirt and jeans standing waiting for us by the front door. She could be waiting for an appointment with a modelling agency, but rather than a portfolio of shots in her arms she has a yellow folder with the patient’s details.
‘Sorry to be calling you quickly,’ she smiles. ‘Sorry I no pick Frank from floor by myself only.’
She moves inside, leaving just enough room for us to squeeze past a mobility scooter the size of a red tank and into a bedroom where Frank is lying on his side on the floor with a garishly coloured fleece thrown over him. His greasy yellow hair sticks up on his head in distinct rows, like corn in a field.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he shouts. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Sorry it took us a while to get here, Frank,’ says Frank. ‘My name’s also Frank – and this is Spence.’
‘What do you mean? I’m Frank. What are you playing at? Help me up.’
The carer smiles down at us as we crouch beside him. She mouths what I think is: very difficult person. Her lips are full and dark. She has a smudge of lipstick on her teeth.
‘We’ll get you up in just a second, Frank. We just need to find out what happened, whether you’ve hurt yourself.’
Frank wrests his head off the floor and tries to get a look at us. ‘I’ll sort you jokers out,’ he says.
‘Whoa – don’t be like that, Frank. Just calm down, and tell us how you came to be on the floor’
Frank produces a fist from underneath the fleece. ‘I’ll land this on you,’ he says, his toothless mouth slack with rage.
‘I think he just slipped from bed,’ says the carer. ‘He got little bit blood on side of his head and some on his finger, but I not think his badly hurt.’
‘Get me off the floor, won’t you?’ says Frank, in a more pleading way, pistoning his legs ineffectually, trying to sit up.
We realise we’re not going to be able to keep him still and examine him like this. Frank concedes defeat and says: ‘Okay mate. Let’s have you up then.’
He is so frail and thin, it’s like re-righting a scarecrow that’s been blown over in the wind. We place him on the corner of the bed.
‘Let’s have a look at you then, Frank,’ says Frank.
The first thing that strikes us is his breathing. Now that he’s upright, Frank quietens right down, subdued by the effort of getting air into his lungs. Each in-going breath sounds like something heavy being dragged along a gravel drive.
‘Oof. How long’s Frank had that?’
The carer looks through the notes.
‘Antibiotic for one week chest infection.’
‘Any other medications?’
‘No. Just cream for leg.’
He’s in a poor state. Cellulitis makes both his legs look like two cured hams on the bone; he is emaciated and sallow; his chest hardly moves – all the effort of breathing comes from his withered stomach.
‘I’m not - going to - hospital,’ he growls.
‘Frank. Don’t be like that. We just want what’s best for you – and that, right now, is coming with us to hospital to see a doctor. It might not be for long. But we can’t just leave you here.’
‘Leave – me – alone!’
He retches, and a rope of phlegm snakes out of his mouth and nose. The effort of expulsion racks his frame.
‘Get a chair for us, Spence,’ says Frank, wiping the old man’s face with a wad of kitchen towel the carer gives to him. ‘How could we leave you here like this?’
I go to fetch the carry chair.
‘Excuse me,’ I say to the carer.
‘Scusi,’ she says, busy pulling some information sheets from the folder.
The chair feels only slightly heavier when Frank is loaded onto it. He is so frail, I have no idea why he has such an enormous mobility scooter, but it makes negotiating the hallway quite a problem.
‘That’s a beast, your scooter’ I say to him, but he does not hear above the spitting and crackling of the nebuliser we now have him on.
Outside on the vehicle we run our usual tests. It looks like Frank may have suffered a heart attack this morning, along with everything else. We treat him quickly and set off, alerting the hospital of our arrival.
I wave goodbye to the carer standing over by the front door with her little black shoulder bag and her document folder.
She waves cheerfully back.
Honestly. I feel like I’m on a motorboat leaving a quayside in Monte Carlo.
Monday, February 23, 2009
late for the party
There are two things we have to step over as we go into the flat: an empty bottle of JD and a pink, iron piggy bank of the same size.
‘He’s in here.’
The man who let us into the flat seems magnified by his concern; even his height strikes me as an expression of anxiety.
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Friend.’
He wears a rucksack, bulgingly heavy. It rattles as he walks.
‘What’ve you got in there? Beer?’
‘It’s my mum’s birthday. I’m supposed to be there, not here. She’ll kill me.’
He leads us into a small sitting room filled up with a double bed, a sofa, and a couple of racks of plain wooden shelving stacked with metal pigs of all sizes and colours.
Paul is lying on his back on the sofa, his arms straight along his sides and his legs crooked over the end of the seat. He is wearing outdoor clothes – a fleece zipped up to the chin, baggy green trousers and rotten trainers. He looks as if someone had dressed him in an outfit then lain him aside whilst they sorted something else out.
‘Paul. Paul.’
He isn’t unconscious. His eyes flicker behind his eyelids, even before I touch his eyelashes. I prise them open and shine a light across. They seem fine.
‘Paul. Come on. Talk to us, mate.’
I pinch his shoulder. When there is no response I pinch him a bit harder. Nothing.
‘Paul. Come on. We need you to talk to us.’
‘He’s taken all these pills,’ says the friend, handing an empty bottle of Temazepam to Rae.
‘Whose prescription is this, then?’
‘His wife’s. His ex-wife’s. They got divorced recently. Hence…’ He shifts his weight uncomfortably, then shucks off the rucksack and dumps it on the bed. ‘I’m supposed to be at my mum’s.’
‘Give her a call.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Come on, Paul. We’re not going to leave you alone until you talk to us, so you might as well open your eyes.’
I roll out my repertoire of painful stimuli, keeping myself in a position where I can either dodge or sit on a rising fist. I try The Supra-orbital Notch. The Rolling Pen on the Nail Bed. The Sternal Rub. He’s so thin it’s like running my knuckles over a cycling helmet.
Some wincing, but the eyes remain flutteringly closed.
‘Come on, Paul. Don’t make me carry on with this. It’s stupid and pointless. Why won’t you talk to us?’
Nothing.
I roll out the big guns. I give him The Mastoid Dig. He tries to smack my hand away.
‘Leave me alone,’ he growls, opening his eyes a crack.
‘We can’t leave you alone. What sort of people would you think we were if we did that? Come on, Paul. Just sit up and we’ll see what’s happened today.’
Inert, as before.
‘Let’s sit you up.’
We haul him doll-like into a sitting position. He lolls his head back and begins a half-hearted attempt at pseudo-fitting.
‘Jesus,’ says his friend, taking a step back.
‘It’s okay. He’s not having a fit. It’s just – the situation, that’s all.’
Paul has a long, pushed-back kind of face. With his large eyes slightly off to the side and a prominent pair of yellow incisors, he looks like a giant rabbit.
‘Let’s get you down to the ambulance,’ I say.
Even though I’m sure he can walk, we have to lift him into the chair.
‘Can I come along, too?’ his friend asks.
‘Sure. Maybe you could give us a little more information.’
Paul sits in the chair, passively uncooperative, flopping his arms and legs about and leaning his head back onto my chest.
‘Come on, Paul,’ I say, to no effect. I put a blanket between me and his greasy hair. We set off for the lift.
On the ambulance, nothing has changed. He doesn’t even respond when I cut his jacket sleeve off to take his blood pressure. All his obs are fine, but he will not talk to us.
‘Let’s just go,’ I say to Rae.
Just as she opens the door and jumps out, two police cars come hurling round the corner, pulling up behind and in front of the ambulance.
‘Oh, really?’ I say.
Four police get out. One of them waves at us in a massively friendly fashion and strides across to the vehicle.
‘Hi, chaps,’ he says. And then to the friend of the patient, ‘Would you mind travelling up in one of the police cars, mate? Only I think I’d better travel in the back. Okay? Thanks.’
The friend hauls up his rucksack again.
‘What’ve you got in there?’ says the policeman. ‘Beer?’
‘It’s my mum’s birthday today.’
‘Oh. Well. Many happy returns to your mum,’ he says as they pass, and smiles at me as he climbs inside. The ambulance drops an inch.
I want to step outside the vehicle with him and find out what all this is about, but I can’t leave Paul on his own. The policeman positions himself at the front of the ambulance with his back to the hatch. He pulls on a pair of leather gloves. Then, securely behind the line of sight of the patient, he canters through an emphatic mime, mouthing the significant words:
Points to the patient – psycho – bashes a fist into a hand, makes a stabby-stab motion – very violent – winces and shakes his head – nasty piece of work. Then says out loud, quite pleasantly: ‘Paul was posted as missing today, by his family. They were worried about him. So we’ve come along to make sure everything’s okay.’
I look at Paul. He lies on the trolley bed as lifelessly as he was back in the flat.
I look at the policeman and he smiles as benignly as before.
‘Well – let’s go to the hospital, then’ I say.
When we get there, the triage nurse displays her own techniques for painful stimuli, surrounded by police.
‘Come on, Paul,’ she says resolutely.
Everyone leans in.
‘He’s in here.’
The man who let us into the flat seems magnified by his concern; even his height strikes me as an expression of anxiety.
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Friend.’
He wears a rucksack, bulgingly heavy. It rattles as he walks.
‘What’ve you got in there? Beer?’
‘It’s my mum’s birthday. I’m supposed to be there, not here. She’ll kill me.’
He leads us into a small sitting room filled up with a double bed, a sofa, and a couple of racks of plain wooden shelving stacked with metal pigs of all sizes and colours.
Paul is lying on his back on the sofa, his arms straight along his sides and his legs crooked over the end of the seat. He is wearing outdoor clothes – a fleece zipped up to the chin, baggy green trousers and rotten trainers. He looks as if someone had dressed him in an outfit then lain him aside whilst they sorted something else out.
‘Paul. Paul.’
He isn’t unconscious. His eyes flicker behind his eyelids, even before I touch his eyelashes. I prise them open and shine a light across. They seem fine.
‘Paul. Come on. Talk to us, mate.’
I pinch his shoulder. When there is no response I pinch him a bit harder. Nothing.
‘Paul. Come on. We need you to talk to us.’
‘He’s taken all these pills,’ says the friend, handing an empty bottle of Temazepam to Rae.
‘Whose prescription is this, then?’
‘His wife’s. His ex-wife’s. They got divorced recently. Hence…’ He shifts his weight uncomfortably, then shucks off the rucksack and dumps it on the bed. ‘I’m supposed to be at my mum’s.’
‘Give her a call.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Come on, Paul. We’re not going to leave you alone until you talk to us, so you might as well open your eyes.’
I roll out my repertoire of painful stimuli, keeping myself in a position where I can either dodge or sit on a rising fist. I try The Supra-orbital Notch. The Rolling Pen on the Nail Bed. The Sternal Rub. He’s so thin it’s like running my knuckles over a cycling helmet.
Some wincing, but the eyes remain flutteringly closed.
‘Come on, Paul. Don’t make me carry on with this. It’s stupid and pointless. Why won’t you talk to us?’
Nothing.
I roll out the big guns. I give him The Mastoid Dig. He tries to smack my hand away.
‘Leave me alone,’ he growls, opening his eyes a crack.
‘We can’t leave you alone. What sort of people would you think we were if we did that? Come on, Paul. Just sit up and we’ll see what’s happened today.’
Inert, as before.
‘Let’s sit you up.’
We haul him doll-like into a sitting position. He lolls his head back and begins a half-hearted attempt at pseudo-fitting.
‘Jesus,’ says his friend, taking a step back.
‘It’s okay. He’s not having a fit. It’s just – the situation, that’s all.’
Paul has a long, pushed-back kind of face. With his large eyes slightly off to the side and a prominent pair of yellow incisors, he looks like a giant rabbit.
‘Let’s get you down to the ambulance,’ I say.
Even though I’m sure he can walk, we have to lift him into the chair.
‘Can I come along, too?’ his friend asks.
‘Sure. Maybe you could give us a little more information.’
Paul sits in the chair, passively uncooperative, flopping his arms and legs about and leaning his head back onto my chest.
‘Come on, Paul,’ I say, to no effect. I put a blanket between me and his greasy hair. We set off for the lift.
On the ambulance, nothing has changed. He doesn’t even respond when I cut his jacket sleeve off to take his blood pressure. All his obs are fine, but he will not talk to us.
‘Let’s just go,’ I say to Rae.
Just as she opens the door and jumps out, two police cars come hurling round the corner, pulling up behind and in front of the ambulance.
‘Oh, really?’ I say.
Four police get out. One of them waves at us in a massively friendly fashion and strides across to the vehicle.
‘Hi, chaps,’ he says. And then to the friend of the patient, ‘Would you mind travelling up in one of the police cars, mate? Only I think I’d better travel in the back. Okay? Thanks.’
The friend hauls up his rucksack again.
‘What’ve you got in there?’ says the policeman. ‘Beer?’
‘It’s my mum’s birthday today.’
‘Oh. Well. Many happy returns to your mum,’ he says as they pass, and smiles at me as he climbs inside. The ambulance drops an inch.
I want to step outside the vehicle with him and find out what all this is about, but I can’t leave Paul on his own. The policeman positions himself at the front of the ambulance with his back to the hatch. He pulls on a pair of leather gloves. Then, securely behind the line of sight of the patient, he canters through an emphatic mime, mouthing the significant words:
Points to the patient – psycho – bashes a fist into a hand, makes a stabby-stab motion – very violent – winces and shakes his head – nasty piece of work. Then says out loud, quite pleasantly: ‘Paul was posted as missing today, by his family. They were worried about him. So we’ve come along to make sure everything’s okay.’
I look at Paul. He lies on the trolley bed as lifelessly as he was back in the flat.
I look at the policeman and he smiles as benignly as before.
‘Well – let’s go to the hospital, then’ I say.
When we get there, the triage nurse displays her own techniques for painful stimuli, surrounded by police.
‘Come on, Paul,’ she says resolutely.
Everyone leans in.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
one man and someone else's dog
There is light flickering out from around the upstairs curtains, but downstairs is dark, nothing moves and no-one comes to the door. I knock again, more loudly, and step back. There are no obvious neighbours to rouse; all the places round here look hollowed out and neglected. The call is a Cat A breathing difficulty. The patient could be unconscious on the floor – in which case, my next move will be to kick the door in. Just as I’m about to put the resus bag down and foot the door to see what locks he has on, there is the sound of heavy snuffling beneath the door, followed by a voice calling down: ‘Just a minute.’
And it is a full minute before a light snaps on in the hall and we hear heavy, uncertain footsteps descending. Then a latch is turned, the door swings open, and a Staffordshire bull terrier like an overstuffed, animated white footstool launches itself off the step in the direction of my trousers.
‘Down!’ I tell it, whilst at the same time the man says: ‘Don’t mind him. I’m looking after him for a friend. Come in.’
He turns and starts back up the stairs. I follow immediately behind with the dog glued by the nose to my leg.
‘Careful…’ I say to the man, but it’s too late. He steps squarely into a pile of dog crap curled neatly on the third or fourth step up. ‘What?’ he says. He seems pissed.
‘You’ve stepped in some dog crap.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
He carries on walking. I look at Frank. He shakes his head and bends down to fuss the dog behind the ears, his blue gloves contrasting strangely with the nubby white head. The dog transfers its devotion.
After picking our way up the stairs РI scan the treads with a hand torch just to be safe Рwe finally emerge into a boxy front room, the clich̩ set of yet another play about social deprivation.
‘Could you turn the TV off for a moment?’
‘What? Yeah. Go on then.’
Frank steps across the carpet like he’s being sent across a minefield. He pushes the button. The enormous screen blinks off, and the room darkens by a hundred candles, quietens by as many decibels.
‘And can we have some lights on?’
Frank obliges. The man and the dog scrutinise us from the sofa.
‘And would you mind putting your cigarette out? Only we don’t smoke, and we’ll just end up stinking the rest of the night.’
The man stubs it out, smashes it right up, scattering dead cigarettes and ash from out of the ashtray to make room for it.
‘Thanks. Sorry to be a nag. So – what’s the problem tonight?’
‘I can’t breathe,’ he says.
I look at him.
‘Forgive me for saying so, but you’re not really coming across as someone who can’t breathe. Their chests are usually heaving, they can’t speak, or only very little, they might look a terrible colour, even quite blue. They don’t usually smoke and move about. Generally speaking they’re struggling to cope. So when you say you can’t breathe, what do you mean?’
‘I’ve got a cough.’
‘And how long have you had a cough?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Have you seen your doctor?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Even the dog looks at him at this point.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Any health problems normally?’
‘Nope.’
‘Diabetic?’
‘Nope.’
‘Take any medication for anything?’
‘Quetiapine. S’it.’
He leans forward and takes a sip from a filthy pint glass. It is a third full of a viscous, whiskyish liquid. I want to tell him not to drink anything whilst we’re here, but I’ve already made a few demands and I don’t think there’s room for another.
He looks like Action Man after a harrowing tour of duty, except our patient’s eyes are flatter, less humane. There’s a ridge to his forehead so pronounced you could step up onto it. His hands are lumpish and stained, the fingers all gnawed up.
‘What I’ll do is give you the once over, see what your temperature is, your blood pressure, that kind of thing, and we’ll talk about what to do next.’
‘Whatever.’
He places the pint glass back on the table, and a little skip of ash rises around it.
I put a Sats probe on his finger.
‘Good. Your oxygen levels are fine.’
He nods as if he knew that, and abstractedly runs the knuckles of his left hand up and down his right forearm. Janine 2002 in a Gothic script.
I put the probe back onto my belt, and then wrap a BP cuff around his arm.
‘Whoa,’ he says, suddenly stiffening up. ‘What the fuck’s this?’
‘It’s the blood pressure cuff. Don’t worry. I inflate it a bit – it’ll feel a bit tight – then I let it down and see what your BP is? Is that ok?’
‘If you say so, chief.’
I start to inflate it.
He stands up and yanks back his arm.
‘What the fuck….? What’re you doing?’
He stands there, swaying slightly, his legs apart, one arm bent slightly, the other one raised up in the air with the cuff swinging from it.
I step up to him, unwrap the cuff – because although he looks ready to fight, I bought this kit myself – grab the resus bag and say ‘Actually, I think what we need to do is just go.’
And then to Frank: ‘Come on, mate.’
We walk out of the door without another word, even in retreat still careful to light the stairs for crap. Outside in the truck Frank drives us to safety round the corner. I phone Control to let them know the situation. I especially don’t want a single responder pitching up alone there tonight.
Frank says: ‘Can I smell something?’
I look at him. He looks at me.
Anyone passing along that street at one in the morning would have seen two ambulance men either side of their truck looking at their boots.
And it is a full minute before a light snaps on in the hall and we hear heavy, uncertain footsteps descending. Then a latch is turned, the door swings open, and a Staffordshire bull terrier like an overstuffed, animated white footstool launches itself off the step in the direction of my trousers.
‘Down!’ I tell it, whilst at the same time the man says: ‘Don’t mind him. I’m looking after him for a friend. Come in.’
He turns and starts back up the stairs. I follow immediately behind with the dog glued by the nose to my leg.
‘Careful…’ I say to the man, but it’s too late. He steps squarely into a pile of dog crap curled neatly on the third or fourth step up. ‘What?’ he says. He seems pissed.
‘You’ve stepped in some dog crap.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
He carries on walking. I look at Frank. He shakes his head and bends down to fuss the dog behind the ears, his blue gloves contrasting strangely with the nubby white head. The dog transfers its devotion.
After picking our way up the stairs РI scan the treads with a hand torch just to be safe Рwe finally emerge into a boxy front room, the clich̩ set of yet another play about social deprivation.
‘Could you turn the TV off for a moment?’
‘What? Yeah. Go on then.’
Frank steps across the carpet like he’s being sent across a minefield. He pushes the button. The enormous screen blinks off, and the room darkens by a hundred candles, quietens by as many decibels.
‘And can we have some lights on?’
Frank obliges. The man and the dog scrutinise us from the sofa.
‘And would you mind putting your cigarette out? Only we don’t smoke, and we’ll just end up stinking the rest of the night.’
The man stubs it out, smashes it right up, scattering dead cigarettes and ash from out of the ashtray to make room for it.
‘Thanks. Sorry to be a nag. So – what’s the problem tonight?’
‘I can’t breathe,’ he says.
I look at him.
‘Forgive me for saying so, but you’re not really coming across as someone who can’t breathe. Their chests are usually heaving, they can’t speak, or only very little, they might look a terrible colour, even quite blue. They don’t usually smoke and move about. Generally speaking they’re struggling to cope. So when you say you can’t breathe, what do you mean?’
‘I’ve got a cough.’
‘And how long have you had a cough?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Have you seen your doctor?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Even the dog looks at him at this point.
‘Don’t know.’
‘Any health problems normally?’
‘Nope.’
‘Diabetic?’
‘Nope.’
‘Take any medication for anything?’
‘Quetiapine. S’it.’
He leans forward and takes a sip from a filthy pint glass. It is a third full of a viscous, whiskyish liquid. I want to tell him not to drink anything whilst we’re here, but I’ve already made a few demands and I don’t think there’s room for another.
He looks like Action Man after a harrowing tour of duty, except our patient’s eyes are flatter, less humane. There’s a ridge to his forehead so pronounced you could step up onto it. His hands are lumpish and stained, the fingers all gnawed up.
‘What I’ll do is give you the once over, see what your temperature is, your blood pressure, that kind of thing, and we’ll talk about what to do next.’
‘Whatever.’
He places the pint glass back on the table, and a little skip of ash rises around it.
I put a Sats probe on his finger.
‘Good. Your oxygen levels are fine.’
He nods as if he knew that, and abstractedly runs the knuckles of his left hand up and down his right forearm. Janine 2002 in a Gothic script.
I put the probe back onto my belt, and then wrap a BP cuff around his arm.
‘Whoa,’ he says, suddenly stiffening up. ‘What the fuck’s this?’
‘It’s the blood pressure cuff. Don’t worry. I inflate it a bit – it’ll feel a bit tight – then I let it down and see what your BP is? Is that ok?’
‘If you say so, chief.’
I start to inflate it.
He stands up and yanks back his arm.
‘What the fuck….? What’re you doing?’
He stands there, swaying slightly, his legs apart, one arm bent slightly, the other one raised up in the air with the cuff swinging from it.
I step up to him, unwrap the cuff – because although he looks ready to fight, I bought this kit myself – grab the resus bag and say ‘Actually, I think what we need to do is just go.’
And then to Frank: ‘Come on, mate.’
We walk out of the door without another word, even in retreat still careful to light the stairs for crap. Outside in the truck Frank drives us to safety round the corner. I phone Control to let them know the situation. I especially don’t want a single responder pitching up alone there tonight.
Frank says: ‘Can I smell something?’
I look at him. He looks at me.
Anyone passing along that street at one in the morning would have seen two ambulance men either side of their truck looking at their boots.
Monday, February 16, 2009
viewpoint
The docks are lit up with arcs of hard white light. Two great LPG containers stand side by side, laddered and banded with steel hoops, vents of steam drifting upwards from their sides like stubby little rockets on a launch pad. A ship stands at the quayside, chaotic squares and jabs of light along its bulk. The dock looks busy, but there’s no one about and nothing moving apart from a radar arm turning, a flag flapping, steam rising.
The flat we want is in a block overlooking the docks.
‘Great view,’ says Frank, blowing his nose whilst I ring the buzzer.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I know he’ll think I’m being sarcastic, too, but I wouldn’t mind living opposite the docks. I’d sit at the window for hours, watching the timber being unloaded, or a sailor smoking against a rail. At least I think I would.
A young woman skips down the concrete steps into the hallway and opens the door.
‘Hi,’ she says. Her demeanour hangs from her like her dress: bright, but fading after repeated use. ‘He’s upstairs.’
We follow her up two flights and into a flat that smells of dog and toast and sickness. There are two huge metal dishes on the sticky floor of the galley kitchen, both of them the size of mixing bowls.
‘However big are your dogs?’
‘Huskies.’
‘They’re well behaved. They haven’t made a sound.’
‘They don’t bark. The worst they do is mumble.’
She leads us into a sitting room dominated by a deep leather sofa and a widescreen TV. There is a Guitar Hero controller propped against it, and a pile of other games stacked neatly alongside. On the wall there are posters tacked up, arty blue prints of American Indians in profile, dreaming of wolves, forests, galloping horses and low moons.
There is a groan from another room.
‘He’s on the toilet. He’s been there for hours.’ She shows us through. As we turn the corner she gives a vapid little spread of her fingers and says: ‘Ta-dah!’
Her partner is sitting on the toilet, bent forward at the waist and supporting the weight of his skinny torso with his hands flat on the floor. His legs and arms are so long and thin, the angles so oddly inhuman, it could almost be a giant insect cramped up over there. A pile of vomit lies between his hands that someone – presumably his girlfriend – has draped over with a square of plain white kitchen towel. He looks up briefly, gives us a pale smile, then tucks his head down again.
‘I hope I don’t get it,’ she says, then walks back into the sitting room to let us check him over.
When we rejoin her in the sitting room she’s standing smoking a spitty little roll-up by the window.
‘I’ve only been going with him a year,’ she says, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue. ‘Well? Is he going to live?’
I tell her that he has a bout of diarrhoea and vomiting – unpleasant, but nothing that needs hospitalisation. As the vomiting has been going on for a while, we’ll ring for an out of hours GP to come and assess him, maybe even give an anti-emetic. Other than that, the best thing is to let it take its course, keep drinking fluids, start back on little amounts of plain food when he’s ready.
She listens, and re-lights her cigarette.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yep. That’s it.’
There is another groan from the toilet.
‘And how much longer do I have to put up with this?’
‘It’s hard to tell. It could be a few more hours. But like I say – we’ll get a doctor out to help with his sickness and give you some more reassurance.’
‘It’s not reassurance I want, it’s a bigger flat.’
Back outside in the truck, Frank sits leaning forward with his arms folded on the steering wheel whilst I finish the paperwork. Suddenly there is the sound of a great whumping crash from the docks.
‘Oops,’ he says. ‘There’s our next job.’
But nothing comes on the radio, and no-one comes running. The lights blaze on as before, and the white vapour drifts up from the tanks, and the arm of the radar on the ship at anchor spins slowly, round and round and round.
The flat we want is in a block overlooking the docks.
‘Great view,’ says Frank, blowing his nose whilst I ring the buzzer.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I know he’ll think I’m being sarcastic, too, but I wouldn’t mind living opposite the docks. I’d sit at the window for hours, watching the timber being unloaded, or a sailor smoking against a rail. At least I think I would.
A young woman skips down the concrete steps into the hallway and opens the door.
‘Hi,’ she says. Her demeanour hangs from her like her dress: bright, but fading after repeated use. ‘He’s upstairs.’
We follow her up two flights and into a flat that smells of dog and toast and sickness. There are two huge metal dishes on the sticky floor of the galley kitchen, both of them the size of mixing bowls.
‘However big are your dogs?’
‘Huskies.’
‘They’re well behaved. They haven’t made a sound.’
‘They don’t bark. The worst they do is mumble.’
She leads us into a sitting room dominated by a deep leather sofa and a widescreen TV. There is a Guitar Hero controller propped against it, and a pile of other games stacked neatly alongside. On the wall there are posters tacked up, arty blue prints of American Indians in profile, dreaming of wolves, forests, galloping horses and low moons.
There is a groan from another room.
‘He’s on the toilet. He’s been there for hours.’ She shows us through. As we turn the corner she gives a vapid little spread of her fingers and says: ‘Ta-dah!’
Her partner is sitting on the toilet, bent forward at the waist and supporting the weight of his skinny torso with his hands flat on the floor. His legs and arms are so long and thin, the angles so oddly inhuman, it could almost be a giant insect cramped up over there. A pile of vomit lies between his hands that someone – presumably his girlfriend – has draped over with a square of plain white kitchen towel. He looks up briefly, gives us a pale smile, then tucks his head down again.
‘I hope I don’t get it,’ she says, then walks back into the sitting room to let us check him over.
When we rejoin her in the sitting room she’s standing smoking a spitty little roll-up by the window.
‘I’ve only been going with him a year,’ she says, picking a piece of tobacco off her tongue. ‘Well? Is he going to live?’
I tell her that he has a bout of diarrhoea and vomiting – unpleasant, but nothing that needs hospitalisation. As the vomiting has been going on for a while, we’ll ring for an out of hours GP to come and assess him, maybe even give an anti-emetic. Other than that, the best thing is to let it take its course, keep drinking fluids, start back on little amounts of plain food when he’s ready.
She listens, and re-lights her cigarette.
‘Is that it?’
‘Yep. That’s it.’
There is another groan from the toilet.
‘And how much longer do I have to put up with this?’
‘It’s hard to tell. It could be a few more hours. But like I say – we’ll get a doctor out to help with his sickness and give you some more reassurance.’
‘It’s not reassurance I want, it’s a bigger flat.’
Back outside in the truck, Frank sits leaning forward with his arms folded on the steering wheel whilst I finish the paperwork. Suddenly there is the sound of a great whumping crash from the docks.
‘Oops,’ he says. ‘There’s our next job.’
But nothing comes on the radio, and no-one comes running. The lights blaze on as before, and the white vapour drifts up from the tanks, and the arm of the radar on the ship at anchor spins slowly, round and round and round.
Friday, February 13, 2009
quiet, elephants
Geoffrey is sitting on a carved hardwood stool just by the front door. His wife Gwen, a square-jawed woman, the determined set to her mouth undermined by the wateriness of her eyes, stands aside to give us some room in the hallway. Geoffrey is wearing a curious, native silk wrap, its bright pattern complicated by bloodstains. There is a constantly replenished drop of blood trembling and then falling from the end of his nose.
‘Dreadfully sorry, chaps,’ he says, and then clears his throat, hawking up a clot of blood and spitting it into a sodden facecloth. ‘I just can’t seem to get it to stop.’
I show him where to pinch his nose, and tell him not to tip his head back.
‘It’s been like this since yesterday,’ says Gwen. ‘We’ve reached the end of our tether.’
‘Let’s just see if this works,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll give it fifteen minutes. If not, I’m afraid we’ll have to take you to hospital.’
‘It’s awfully kind of you to come - out like this,’ says Geoffrey, retching on a consonant.
But his nose will not stop bleeding.
‘I’m afraid we will need to go in, now,’ I say, tying a bolster to the end of it. Gwen has already put a little bag of things together.
‘Should I come, too?’ she says.
‘No, darling. It’s late. You stay here and get some rest,’ says Geoffrey. There is a steadying, old-school timbre to his voice, an amused set to his old gray eyes, that counteracts the effect of the ludicrous dressing on his face, the whole bloody affair. ‘I’ll only be dozing at the hospital. You’re better off here.’
‘If you’re sure.’
He walks out to the ambulance, shuffling along in a pair of hand-stitched leather sandals. A tall man now, he must once have been a striking figure. Six foot six, broad shouldered. I can imagine him striding out into the wilderness with a big forked stick; now, he leans on an aluminium walking aid.
The moon is full in a sky thrown with stars. It is glassily cold.
‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘That’s much better.’
On the truck he sits on a forward facing seat, resting his hands on the handle of the stick that he places in front of him. The bolster is sodden with blood so I change it for a fresh one. We set off for the hospital.
‘You’d never think to look at me now,’ he says, ‘but I used to run a game reserve. Out in Tanganyika. I had been working for an oil company in the middle east, doing all right, you know, but really looking for something different. Well I heard via the friend-of-a-friend route about a place going in Tanganyika, as it was then, middle of nowhere, nothing at all, was I interested? So we headed out there, built a house out of mud and straw, and lived there ten years. Amazing place. Incredible. You could walk for two hundred miles across what was actually the crater of a defunct volcano and not see anyone at all. Just animals – the most extraordinary range. One thing that always struck me: how quiet elephants are. There you were, sitting outside your hut, busy fixing something or other, you’d hear a faint little snap of a twig or some such, you’d look up idly – you know – hardly aware you were doing it – and there you were, face to face with an elephant.’
‘Dreadfully sorry, chaps,’ he says, and then clears his throat, hawking up a clot of blood and spitting it into a sodden facecloth. ‘I just can’t seem to get it to stop.’
I show him where to pinch his nose, and tell him not to tip his head back.
‘It’s been like this since yesterday,’ says Gwen. ‘We’ve reached the end of our tether.’
‘Let’s just see if this works,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll give it fifteen minutes. If not, I’m afraid we’ll have to take you to hospital.’
‘It’s awfully kind of you to come - out like this,’ says Geoffrey, retching on a consonant.
But his nose will not stop bleeding.
‘I’m afraid we will need to go in, now,’ I say, tying a bolster to the end of it. Gwen has already put a little bag of things together.
‘Should I come, too?’ she says.
‘No, darling. It’s late. You stay here and get some rest,’ says Geoffrey. There is a steadying, old-school timbre to his voice, an amused set to his old gray eyes, that counteracts the effect of the ludicrous dressing on his face, the whole bloody affair. ‘I’ll only be dozing at the hospital. You’re better off here.’
‘If you’re sure.’
He walks out to the ambulance, shuffling along in a pair of hand-stitched leather sandals. A tall man now, he must once have been a striking figure. Six foot six, broad shouldered. I can imagine him striding out into the wilderness with a big forked stick; now, he leans on an aluminium walking aid.
The moon is full in a sky thrown with stars. It is glassily cold.
‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘That’s much better.’
On the truck he sits on a forward facing seat, resting his hands on the handle of the stick that he places in front of him. The bolster is sodden with blood so I change it for a fresh one. We set off for the hospital.
‘You’d never think to look at me now,’ he says, ‘but I used to run a game reserve. Out in Tanganyika. I had been working for an oil company in the middle east, doing all right, you know, but really looking for something different. Well I heard via the friend-of-a-friend route about a place going in Tanganyika, as it was then, middle of nowhere, nothing at all, was I interested? So we headed out there, built a house out of mud and straw, and lived there ten years. Amazing place. Incredible. You could walk for two hundred miles across what was actually the crater of a defunct volcano and not see anyone at all. Just animals – the most extraordinary range. One thing that always struck me: how quiet elephants are. There you were, sitting outside your hut, busy fixing something or other, you’d hear a faint little snap of a twig or some such, you’d look up idly – you know – hardly aware you were doing it – and there you were, face to face with an elephant.’
Thursday, February 12, 2009
pink pills
These are the thin and early hours, when your spirit pools, leaches from your heels, runs off down the drain and leaves you cracking your jaws with enervation. Even the streetlamps lean. As we pass along the street I watch whole building frontages thin, the glass in their windows spreading outwards, infecting the brick, until great horizontal lines of bodies are revealed, asleep in mid-air. We splash beneath them, the ambulance dutifully steering itself, along and up to the young guy over by the phone box who is leaning out into the road and hailing us like a cab.
We pull up.
We get out.
‘Hello,’ Rae says. ‘What’s up?’
‘Well I went to Camden, knocked around there for a bit, fell asleep on the train and ended up in Birmingham. When I was in Birmingham I went to the toilet and amongst some needles and cans and shit on a little shelf I found a sachet of pink pills, about sixty of them. I thought they were ecstasy, so I put them in my pocket. I came down here to see a friend. We had a bit to drink – let’s see: Jack Daniels and coke, about ten of those, half a bottle of vodka with orange juice, and then I helped him finish off a bottle of port at his flat. Then he went out and I felt a bit down, like I wanted to kill myself? Then I remembered the pills. So I swallowed them.’ He looks at us. ‘But I regret it now. That was about half an hour ago.’
‘Why did you take the pills?’
He looks at her, frowns, then says: ‘I couldn’t find a razor.’
He pushes up a sleeve of his raincoat and displays a sequence of angry cuts up his arm. ‘Otherwise that would’ve been my preference.’
Rae straightens. ‘Do you have a blade on you now?’
‘No. Like I said – I couldn’t find one. I must admit I am feeling a bit strange.’
He has a lumpy, scrunched-up look about him, as if the laptop bag hanging from his shoulder is filled with the heaviest substance in the universe. His greasy black hair lies in spikes across his forehead, and the t-shirt beneath his raincoat is artfully torn in places. There is a raw, thimble sized hole in one of his earlobes.
‘Let’s get on the ambulance and talk a bit more about these pills,’ says Rae. I slide the door open for them.
‘Thanks,’ he says, sighing and settling himself down in a chair, placing his laptop neatly on his knees like a commuter. ‘I don’t think they were ecstasy, though.’ He retches a little, and does a dyspeptic little pardon-me mime by tapping his fist lightly on his chest. ‘They certainly don’t feel like ecstasy.’
At the hospital, I park up and walk round to the door. When I slide it open, the man is in mid-monologue.
‘…I’m just crazy, me. I like to get out and about and have adventures. I like to take off and go wherever – I don’t care where. I didn’t want to call you people out because I know you have your work cut out for you, what with people dropping down dead or jumping off buildings and the rest. But I didn’t know what else to do. I feel so stupid and I’m very grateful.’
I help him off the ambulance. He steps down with the exaggerated care of Neil Armstrong stepping off the Lunar Module.
‘There!’ he says, readjusting the laptop on his shoulder. ‘Made it!’
Rae goes on ahead whilst I walk with him. We pass behind the back of another ambulance, its door open. There are two of my colleagues busy in the back, tidying up. The patient stops and looks in.
‘Hiya!’ he shouts. ‘I thought it was you! Last time I saw you, you were oiled up and naked between two Turkish hunks! Well – got to go. See you later!’
‘That’ll get some rumours started,’ he says, turning away. He smiles smugly, closing his eyes, and I have to steer him away from walking into a post.
We pull up.
We get out.
‘Hello,’ Rae says. ‘What’s up?’
‘Well I went to Camden, knocked around there for a bit, fell asleep on the train and ended up in Birmingham. When I was in Birmingham I went to the toilet and amongst some needles and cans and shit on a little shelf I found a sachet of pink pills, about sixty of them. I thought they were ecstasy, so I put them in my pocket. I came down here to see a friend. We had a bit to drink – let’s see: Jack Daniels and coke, about ten of those, half a bottle of vodka with orange juice, and then I helped him finish off a bottle of port at his flat. Then he went out and I felt a bit down, like I wanted to kill myself? Then I remembered the pills. So I swallowed them.’ He looks at us. ‘But I regret it now. That was about half an hour ago.’
‘Why did you take the pills?’
He looks at her, frowns, then says: ‘I couldn’t find a razor.’
He pushes up a sleeve of his raincoat and displays a sequence of angry cuts up his arm. ‘Otherwise that would’ve been my preference.’
Rae straightens. ‘Do you have a blade on you now?’
‘No. Like I said – I couldn’t find one. I must admit I am feeling a bit strange.’
He has a lumpy, scrunched-up look about him, as if the laptop bag hanging from his shoulder is filled with the heaviest substance in the universe. His greasy black hair lies in spikes across his forehead, and the t-shirt beneath his raincoat is artfully torn in places. There is a raw, thimble sized hole in one of his earlobes.
‘Let’s get on the ambulance and talk a bit more about these pills,’ says Rae. I slide the door open for them.
‘Thanks,’ he says, sighing and settling himself down in a chair, placing his laptop neatly on his knees like a commuter. ‘I don’t think they were ecstasy, though.’ He retches a little, and does a dyspeptic little pardon-me mime by tapping his fist lightly on his chest. ‘They certainly don’t feel like ecstasy.’
At the hospital, I park up and walk round to the door. When I slide it open, the man is in mid-monologue.
‘…I’m just crazy, me. I like to get out and about and have adventures. I like to take off and go wherever – I don’t care where. I didn’t want to call you people out because I know you have your work cut out for you, what with people dropping down dead or jumping off buildings and the rest. But I didn’t know what else to do. I feel so stupid and I’m very grateful.’
I help him off the ambulance. He steps down with the exaggerated care of Neil Armstrong stepping off the Lunar Module.
‘There!’ he says, readjusting the laptop on his shoulder. ‘Made it!’
Rae goes on ahead whilst I walk with him. We pass behind the back of another ambulance, its door open. There are two of my colleagues busy in the back, tidying up. The patient stops and looks in.
‘Hiya!’ he shouts. ‘I thought it was you! Last time I saw you, you were oiled up and naked between two Turkish hunks! Well – got to go. See you later!’
‘That’ll get some rumours started,’ he says, turning away. He smiles smugly, closing his eyes, and I have to steer him away from walking into a post.
the dressing gown
Mr Clarke is sitting on the floor of the hallway with his long spindly legs stretched out in front of him and his face in his hands.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly,’ he says in a conversational tone as I peer round the door. ‘Really, that was most quick.’ He puts his hands down either side of his blue boxer shorts, and feebly tries to shuffle backwards a little. The bright overhead light exposes a body slack with age and illness.
‘Have you hurt yourself, Mr Clarke?’
‘What? No, no. I’m fine. I banged my head a little but nothing really. I just need a hand getting back up.’ Then – quite unexpectedly – he leans forwards, puts his face in his hands again and gives a muffled sob. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I really don’t.’
I crouch down next to him.
‘Come on Mr Clarke. Let’s get you off the floor and sitting comfortably. Then we’ll have a chat and see what’s what.’
Frank finds a white metal perching chair, positions it behind Mr Clarke, then we help him to his feet.
‘So tell me how you came to be on the floor?’
He looks straight at me.
‘I haven’t slept a wink. There are people in the flat. Horrible people. They’re terrorising me.’
‘What people? What do you mean?’
‘They’re up all night playing spiteful tricks and games. They run around, tip me out of bed, trip me up. I can’t go on like this. I can’t get any rest.’
‘But there’s no-one else in the flat, Mr Clarke. Who are these people?’
He studies me carefully.
‘I say people. More like creatures, really. Oh I know what you’ll think. But - see that dressing gown over there?’
He nods towards a pale cream gown draped over the arm of a chair in the sitting room.
‘Any clothes like that, dropped on the floor or around. These filthy creatures come in the night, and any discarded clothes they wriggle into and bring to life. It’s the clothes – the clothes with the creatures inside them. That’s what’s doing all the damage. And I can’t go on!’ He covers his face again. ‘Am I losing my mind?’
‘Well, it sounds to me as if you’re suffering hallucinations for some reason. I think you should come with us to hospital so you can see a doctor and get the once over.’
I take his temperature – a point up. He says his urine has been stinging lately, so I tell him that urinary tract infections can play havoc with your sense of what’s real or not. It seems to calm him. He blows his nose on some kitchen towel and waits with me whilst Frank goes to fetch our carry chair. Occasionally he throws an uneasy look over to the dressing gown, as if he expects it to jump up and run at us.
There are two large pictures on the wall facing us, both aerial photographs of London and Venice. Next to them, amongst a spread of family photos, gappy school prints, faded letters and graduation mementoes, there is a group of three little studio portraits of Mr Clarke, all apparently taken at the same time. I flick between them, trying to spot the difference, but each appears to be identical: the study of a middle-aged man in three-quarter profile, his full black hair clipped, greased and combed, his mouth slightly parted and his even white teeth on display, looking out onto the world with professional containment.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly,’ he says in a conversational tone as I peer round the door. ‘Really, that was most quick.’ He puts his hands down either side of his blue boxer shorts, and feebly tries to shuffle backwards a little. The bright overhead light exposes a body slack with age and illness.
‘Have you hurt yourself, Mr Clarke?’
‘What? No, no. I’m fine. I banged my head a little but nothing really. I just need a hand getting back up.’ Then – quite unexpectedly – he leans forwards, puts his face in his hands again and gives a muffled sob. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. I really don’t.’
I crouch down next to him.
‘Come on Mr Clarke. Let’s get you off the floor and sitting comfortably. Then we’ll have a chat and see what’s what.’
Frank finds a white metal perching chair, positions it behind Mr Clarke, then we help him to his feet.
‘So tell me how you came to be on the floor?’
He looks straight at me.
‘I haven’t slept a wink. There are people in the flat. Horrible people. They’re terrorising me.’
‘What people? What do you mean?’
‘They’re up all night playing spiteful tricks and games. They run around, tip me out of bed, trip me up. I can’t go on like this. I can’t get any rest.’
‘But there’s no-one else in the flat, Mr Clarke. Who are these people?’
He studies me carefully.
‘I say people. More like creatures, really. Oh I know what you’ll think. But - see that dressing gown over there?’
He nods towards a pale cream gown draped over the arm of a chair in the sitting room.
‘Any clothes like that, dropped on the floor or around. These filthy creatures come in the night, and any discarded clothes they wriggle into and bring to life. It’s the clothes – the clothes with the creatures inside them. That’s what’s doing all the damage. And I can’t go on!’ He covers his face again. ‘Am I losing my mind?’
‘Well, it sounds to me as if you’re suffering hallucinations for some reason. I think you should come with us to hospital so you can see a doctor and get the once over.’
I take his temperature – a point up. He says his urine has been stinging lately, so I tell him that urinary tract infections can play havoc with your sense of what’s real or not. It seems to calm him. He blows his nose on some kitchen towel and waits with me whilst Frank goes to fetch our carry chair. Occasionally he throws an uneasy look over to the dressing gown, as if he expects it to jump up and run at us.
There are two large pictures on the wall facing us, both aerial photographs of London and Venice. Next to them, amongst a spread of family photos, gappy school prints, faded letters and graduation mementoes, there is a group of three little studio portraits of Mr Clarke, all apparently taken at the same time. I flick between them, trying to spot the difference, but each appears to be identical: the study of a middle-aged man in three-quarter profile, his full black hair clipped, greased and combed, his mouth slightly parted and his even white teeth on display, looking out onto the world with professional containment.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
passing through
I take the large green nylon rucksack, Frank takes the wicker Moses basket and a couple of carrier bags stuffed with clothes, books, coats. The mother, a frail young woman who holds herself perfectly upright in the way that dancers or medicated people do, blows her nose into a chequered handkerchief. The father picks up the child’s car seat with their twelve week old son bundled up in a fleecy white baby-grow.
‘I never know which way to carry these things,’ he says. His eyes are sore and red.
We decide that over the arm, like a basket, might be easiest.
We make our way to the lifts, along a quiet, aseptic yellow corridor hung with brightly coloured kites and aerial fish that stir gently as we pass. A couple of porters struggle in with an incubator. We hold the double doors open for them, and they hold them open for us. We pass through.
Outside the sky is low and blurry with snow. It falls steadily; at times it feels as if we are actually flying upwards through it. Everyone but the woman hunches over as we pick our way over to the ambulance. She moves through the snowflakes as if either they or she were not real. Frank helps stash the luggage in a safe place. We load the child seat onto the trolley and make it fast. I swing the passenger seats into position and sit the family down. Frank takes up position in the jockey seat, and I go to the cab. The traffic noses around us irritably.
‘It’s always a battle, leaving this bit of the hospital at this time of day,’ I hear Frank say in the back. But I bully out a path. A security guard stops an oncoming van; he waves, I wave.
It feels later than it is. The city is impatiently sloughing off another day of work. Cupped in the freezing hands of the snow storm, people are hurrying on to the next place on well lit buses, along slushy wet streets, swinging shopping bags, queuing at cash points, talking on phones. Everyone is heading somewhere. I follow the main road out of town, moving and stopping and moving forwards again a hundred times in five minutes. A bus brakes to leave a gap for me. He flashes me on.
The windscreen wipers slop to the left, scrape to the right, marking out the miles. I follow in the wake of the red lights in front of me. I try to get better reception on the radio but there is too much interference so I turn it off. I steal one of Frank’s mints and try to keep it going for as long as I can, but I forget almost immediately and only remember again when it’s all crunched up. The other side of the central barriers is an unbroken chain of light, but it’s not as busy our way.
The ambulance fizzes along. We could be a ship flying through space, the flakes in our lights the stars we rush amongst. But then the storm lifts. It has a leading edge that suddenly announces a clearer run. The dark motorway cedes to well lit city streets, and the traffic thickens. Buildings cluster up either side, and there are great crowds of people surging forwards at every opportunity. I haven’t driven around here in a few years, but I used to live in town, and the old routes - the lanes to take, the cute little nicks and tucks, the sense of where things lie – it all comes back to me with a nostalgic tug. Then, after twenty minutes of city driving, I’m pulling onto the ramp that leads up to the A&E department.
We help the man, the woman and their baby down from the ambulance. The man takes the baby in the car seat on his arm as before, whilst Frank and I shoulder the rest of the bags. The woman looks as if she may be sick, so we give her five minutes in the toilet just inside the entrance. When she comes out, we lead them through some heavy black rubber doors and pick up the coloured indicators for the children’s hospital out back.
The sound of a piano being played drifts towards us as we walk along a corridor. I recognise the tune; eventually I think of the words that would be sung here: Hold my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise. The music grows in volume, we turn a corner and find ourselves in the preserved foyer of the old hospital. There is a baby grand at one end. Under its raised lid I can see the face of a tortured looking guy, dividing his attention between the sheet music and the actions of his hands. He rocks about on his stool knocking out the melody with his right hand and rolling in a bunch of other notes with his left. The song resounds over everything, over the heads of the white alabaster scientists on their plinths along the edges of the space, around the dark marble pillars and the tessellated floor. An elderly man is sitting on a wooden pew with his eyes closed, both hands resting on the crook of a walking stick upright in front of him, his cream trilby hat angled back on his head. On a table next to him, a couple of young executives are shuffling through papers and examining spreadsheets. Everyone else is hurrying on in all directions. We follow the signs to the children’s wing, and pass through.
We follow the colour coded lines on the floor along a corridor lined with a series of preserved tiles illustrating scenes from children’s books. One of the panels shows Little Red Riding Hood. She is standing by a fat and twisting oak, her basket slung over her arm, talking to a wolf. He is standing upright, dressed in a sheepskin coat and flowerpot hat, supporting himself on a staff, with his front paws draped over the grip. He reminds me of the old man in the foyer. We can still just about hear the music drifting back from there towards us. The father shifts the weight of the baby seat on his crooked arm.
‘Nearly there,’ says Frank.
He leads us up to a set of doors that open onto a lit pathway and up to an automatic glass cylinder that opens to admit us.
The new children’s hospital is built around a cavernous foyer, its vaulted space a web of white tubular steel and glass. We walk to the central lift bank, looking around us like country mice. The lift zooms us up to our floor, disgorging us efficiently onto a mezzanine. A nurse intercepts us, leads us with a warm handshake past units and rooms to a station where a more senior nurse takes over. She accepts the paperwork and shows the couple to a neat little cot, discretely stood about with complicated machinery. She takes the little baby out of the child seat and puts him into the cot, stripping him down, as we shake the couple’s hands and turn to go.
On the way back to the ambulance I ask Frank what the situation was with the baby.
‘PKD. At that age, there’s nothing to be done. Palliative care only, I’m afraid.’
Outside we stand behind the ambulance so Frank can have a cigarette.
The city has never looked so big, so energised, so renewing. There is another massive block going up. There are cranes half way up the cylindrical building, illuminated with a warm orange glow that seems to draw its power not from the ground but from the belly of the snow front, massing darkly above us.
‘We’re going to get some of that on the way back,’ says Frank. He blows out a quantity of smoke as we both look about us, and the smoke turns and thins to nothing on the chill night air.
‘I never know which way to carry these things,’ he says. His eyes are sore and red.
We decide that over the arm, like a basket, might be easiest.
We make our way to the lifts, along a quiet, aseptic yellow corridor hung with brightly coloured kites and aerial fish that stir gently as we pass. A couple of porters struggle in with an incubator. We hold the double doors open for them, and they hold them open for us. We pass through.
Outside the sky is low and blurry with snow. It falls steadily; at times it feels as if we are actually flying upwards through it. Everyone but the woman hunches over as we pick our way over to the ambulance. She moves through the snowflakes as if either they or she were not real. Frank helps stash the luggage in a safe place. We load the child seat onto the trolley and make it fast. I swing the passenger seats into position and sit the family down. Frank takes up position in the jockey seat, and I go to the cab. The traffic noses around us irritably.
‘It’s always a battle, leaving this bit of the hospital at this time of day,’ I hear Frank say in the back. But I bully out a path. A security guard stops an oncoming van; he waves, I wave.
It feels later than it is. The city is impatiently sloughing off another day of work. Cupped in the freezing hands of the snow storm, people are hurrying on to the next place on well lit buses, along slushy wet streets, swinging shopping bags, queuing at cash points, talking on phones. Everyone is heading somewhere. I follow the main road out of town, moving and stopping and moving forwards again a hundred times in five minutes. A bus brakes to leave a gap for me. He flashes me on.
The windscreen wipers slop to the left, scrape to the right, marking out the miles. I follow in the wake of the red lights in front of me. I try to get better reception on the radio but there is too much interference so I turn it off. I steal one of Frank’s mints and try to keep it going for as long as I can, but I forget almost immediately and only remember again when it’s all crunched up. The other side of the central barriers is an unbroken chain of light, but it’s not as busy our way.
The ambulance fizzes along. We could be a ship flying through space, the flakes in our lights the stars we rush amongst. But then the storm lifts. It has a leading edge that suddenly announces a clearer run. The dark motorway cedes to well lit city streets, and the traffic thickens. Buildings cluster up either side, and there are great crowds of people surging forwards at every opportunity. I haven’t driven around here in a few years, but I used to live in town, and the old routes - the lanes to take, the cute little nicks and tucks, the sense of where things lie – it all comes back to me with a nostalgic tug. Then, after twenty minutes of city driving, I’m pulling onto the ramp that leads up to the A&E department.
We help the man, the woman and their baby down from the ambulance. The man takes the baby in the car seat on his arm as before, whilst Frank and I shoulder the rest of the bags. The woman looks as if she may be sick, so we give her five minutes in the toilet just inside the entrance. When she comes out, we lead them through some heavy black rubber doors and pick up the coloured indicators for the children’s hospital out back.
The sound of a piano being played drifts towards us as we walk along a corridor. I recognise the tune; eventually I think of the words that would be sung here: Hold my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise. The music grows in volume, we turn a corner and find ourselves in the preserved foyer of the old hospital. There is a baby grand at one end. Under its raised lid I can see the face of a tortured looking guy, dividing his attention between the sheet music and the actions of his hands. He rocks about on his stool knocking out the melody with his right hand and rolling in a bunch of other notes with his left. The song resounds over everything, over the heads of the white alabaster scientists on their plinths along the edges of the space, around the dark marble pillars and the tessellated floor. An elderly man is sitting on a wooden pew with his eyes closed, both hands resting on the crook of a walking stick upright in front of him, his cream trilby hat angled back on his head. On a table next to him, a couple of young executives are shuffling through papers and examining spreadsheets. Everyone else is hurrying on in all directions. We follow the signs to the children’s wing, and pass through.
We follow the colour coded lines on the floor along a corridor lined with a series of preserved tiles illustrating scenes from children’s books. One of the panels shows Little Red Riding Hood. She is standing by a fat and twisting oak, her basket slung over her arm, talking to a wolf. He is standing upright, dressed in a sheepskin coat and flowerpot hat, supporting himself on a staff, with his front paws draped over the grip. He reminds me of the old man in the foyer. We can still just about hear the music drifting back from there towards us. The father shifts the weight of the baby seat on his crooked arm.
‘Nearly there,’ says Frank.
He leads us up to a set of doors that open onto a lit pathway and up to an automatic glass cylinder that opens to admit us.
The new children’s hospital is built around a cavernous foyer, its vaulted space a web of white tubular steel and glass. We walk to the central lift bank, looking around us like country mice. The lift zooms us up to our floor, disgorging us efficiently onto a mezzanine. A nurse intercepts us, leads us with a warm handshake past units and rooms to a station where a more senior nurse takes over. She accepts the paperwork and shows the couple to a neat little cot, discretely stood about with complicated machinery. She takes the little baby out of the child seat and puts him into the cot, stripping him down, as we shake the couple’s hands and turn to go.
On the way back to the ambulance I ask Frank what the situation was with the baby.
‘PKD. At that age, there’s nothing to be done. Palliative care only, I’m afraid.’
Outside we stand behind the ambulance so Frank can have a cigarette.
The city has never looked so big, so energised, so renewing. There is another massive block going up. There are cranes half way up the cylindrical building, illuminated with a warm orange glow that seems to draw its power not from the ground but from the belly of the snow front, massing darkly above us.
‘We’re going to get some of that on the way back,’ says Frank. He blows out a quantity of smoke as we both look about us, and the smoke turns and thins to nothing on the chill night air.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
connected
The access road that leads down to the hostel is only a shallow incline, but the snow is so thick I park at the top. The last address we went to was a similar gradient, and the only way we made it back up was by tacking like a yacht. It took us half an hour.
Rae fetches out the yellow bag, I lock the truck up, and we both scrunch down the slope.
The air is brittle and white beneath a silence so deep it is as if the snow is a drug that has put the whole world, its people, their pets and machines, into a deep hibernation.
Ours are the only tracks in the snow. The yellow path lights illuminate a sequence of tall chain-link fences, site safety notices, arrows and logos. The old hostel is being replaced by a spread of chalet blocks. Some look finished and occupied – at least, the scaffolding is down, there are potted plants in the entrance hallways. Other parts still need to have roofs put on, but the snow has puffed over the slats, rounded off the gaps, giving every block the look of a Swiss mountain chalet.
The path leads us round and down to a long, green portakabin. There is a light in the grilled window, and a notice on the door giving the office hours and the numbers to ring in case of emergency. Rae knocks on the door and we wait.
There is the sound of a chair being scraped back, resounding footsteps, a chain rattling off its track, and then the door cracks open. A man looks out at us, holding the door partially closed for as long as it takes him to register our uniforms, our yellow bag, then he relaxes and nods and opens the door fully.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve had a call here. One of the residents.’
‘A call?’
‘This is The Hostel? 21 Ashington Grove?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you mind if we came in for a second. Out of the cold.’
‘Of course.’
We stamp the snow off our boots and step up into his office.
There is a small portable TV up on a filing cabinet. The Superbowl is playing, the commentary rattling out through the tiny speakers. The night manager turns it down, and then stands looking at us. There is a drowsy, overstuffed feel to the air, the smell of sugared coffee and biscuits, oil-filled radiators, computer printers. There are two large pin boards feathered over with notices, lists and scraps of paper, but the rest of the room is bare. There is an open text book on the desk by the window, and a phone.
‘We had a call here to an overdose. Any idea who that might be?’
‘No. But I wouldn’t necessarily know. The new blocks have their own phones, so it’s probably someone over there calling for themselves.’
‘How many blocks are there currently occupied?’
‘Five or so.’
‘Would you mind if I used your phone to call our Control, then? They’ll have to ring the caller back and get some better directions.’
‘Be my guest.’
I go over to his desk and tap in the number. The text book beside it is ‘Business Management Systems’.
‘This looks heavy going.’
‘Great if you can’t sleep. Terrible if you need to stay awake.’
He looks at Rae.
‘Would you like tea or anything?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but..’
There is a fuzzy cheer from the TV; the commentator is reaching superlative meltdown. The night manager studies the screen intently, but turns the volume down one more notch.
Control picks up the phone just as there is a knock on the door. Rae stands aside, and the night manager goes over to open it. He exchanges a few quiet words through the gap, then opens it fully.
A man walks up the steps. His anxiety is so profound it seems to be an animal thing quite separate from him, hurrying ahead into the room, riffling off into the corners of the office, checking for danger. The man is about thirty, desiccated and pale, his jeans and jacket hanging off him like the skin on last year’s fruit.
‘Are you the patient?’ I ask him. He nods, then abstractedly raises a hand to his mouth and starts gnawing on a thumb.
I turn back to the night manager. ‘That solves that one, then,’ I say. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘No worries.’
He looks at the patient, gives him a narrow, assessing smile, then reaches over to the TV to turn the volume back up. There is another loud cheer as we leave the portakabin; the thunk of the door closing behind us emphasising the still and quiet of the night.
We all scrunch our way through the snow, back up to the ambulance.
‘I’m sorry we’ve got a little bit of a walk. We didn’t want to risk getting stuck driving down here. Anyway - my name’s Spence and this is Rae,’ I say to him. He walks by my side, as close as a spooked dog. ‘Can I ask your name?’
‘Pete.’
‘So what’s happened tonight, Pete? We were told you’d taken an overdose of something. Is that right?’
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
‘What have you taken?’
‘Two times three hundred milligrammes Amisulpride, four times eight milligrammes Clonazepam, two times three seven five milligrammes Venlafaxine.’
‘And are these medications prescribed to you?’
He nods sharply, once. ‘I’m a schizophrenic,’ he says. ‘Since I was eighteen.’
‘And when did you take these pills?’
‘Midnight.’
‘And how are you feeling now?’
He gestures across the front of his chest. ‘I feel tight across here. But that might just be anxiety. I get that as well.’
‘Any other strange feelings?’
‘I feel like I’m going to fly away. I don’t feel – connected.’
Pete has a disconcerting habit of looking straight in front, talking, then glancing out of the corner of his eyes without moving his head. He talks quickly and quietly, and he holds his mouth slightly open when he finishes a sentence, giving everything he says a naïve, astonished quality.
Rae has the door open and the step down ready for us. Pete scuttles on to the truck and sits down on the furthermost seat. We stow the bags and shut the door. The ambulance feels overly bright and closed in. Pete seems to shrink back from the perceived pressure of it.
‘I just need to do a few simple checks. Then we’ll get off to the hospital.’
‘I don’t want to go to hospital. Do you think I really need to?’
‘To be honest, yes, I do, Pete. It doesn’t sound as if you’ve taken a terribly dangerous dose, but I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how these tablets might interact with each other. Plus there’s the reason you took them in the first place. It’s worth going in just to get to speak to someone about that.’
‘How am I going to get home?’
‘There are ways and means.’
The reality is that he’ll have to find his own way back, which, in the early hours, and in this weather, is by no means an easy task. But Pete sits back in the chair.
‘I haven’t seen my brother for six years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He doesn’t want to know.’
Pete flicks me another look, then peels another tiny piece off his thumb. His face is narrowed and pale. He has a feral twitchiness about him; his scalp and chin bristle with short black hairs.
‘Do you think mental illness runs in the family? Do you think my brother’s mentally ill?’
‘I don’t know, Pete. I think there is often a tendency for these things to crop up more than once in a family. But I really wouldn’t like to say. I hope not, anyway.’
He stops chewing his thumb and stares directly at me. I hold his gaze for a second, but the intensity is such that I am forced to look away.
‘Have you ever done anything like this before?’ I ask him, using the clipboard as a diversion.
‘Two weeks ago. I took sixteen times five hundred milligrammes Paracetamol.’
I write that down.
Rae fetches out the yellow bag, I lock the truck up, and we both scrunch down the slope.
The air is brittle and white beneath a silence so deep it is as if the snow is a drug that has put the whole world, its people, their pets and machines, into a deep hibernation.
Ours are the only tracks in the snow. The yellow path lights illuminate a sequence of tall chain-link fences, site safety notices, arrows and logos. The old hostel is being replaced by a spread of chalet blocks. Some look finished and occupied – at least, the scaffolding is down, there are potted plants in the entrance hallways. Other parts still need to have roofs put on, but the snow has puffed over the slats, rounded off the gaps, giving every block the look of a Swiss mountain chalet.
The path leads us round and down to a long, green portakabin. There is a light in the grilled window, and a notice on the door giving the office hours and the numbers to ring in case of emergency. Rae knocks on the door and we wait.
There is the sound of a chair being scraped back, resounding footsteps, a chain rattling off its track, and then the door cracks open. A man looks out at us, holding the door partially closed for as long as it takes him to register our uniforms, our yellow bag, then he relaxes and nods and opens the door fully.
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve had a call here. One of the residents.’
‘A call?’
‘This is The Hostel? 21 Ashington Grove?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you mind if we came in for a second. Out of the cold.’
‘Of course.’
We stamp the snow off our boots and step up into his office.
There is a small portable TV up on a filing cabinet. The Superbowl is playing, the commentary rattling out through the tiny speakers. The night manager turns it down, and then stands looking at us. There is a drowsy, overstuffed feel to the air, the smell of sugared coffee and biscuits, oil-filled radiators, computer printers. There are two large pin boards feathered over with notices, lists and scraps of paper, but the rest of the room is bare. There is an open text book on the desk by the window, and a phone.
‘We had a call here to an overdose. Any idea who that might be?’
‘No. But I wouldn’t necessarily know. The new blocks have their own phones, so it’s probably someone over there calling for themselves.’
‘How many blocks are there currently occupied?’
‘Five or so.’
‘Would you mind if I used your phone to call our Control, then? They’ll have to ring the caller back and get some better directions.’
‘Be my guest.’
I go over to his desk and tap in the number. The text book beside it is ‘Business Management Systems’.
‘This looks heavy going.’
‘Great if you can’t sleep. Terrible if you need to stay awake.’
He looks at Rae.
‘Would you like tea or anything?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but..’
There is a fuzzy cheer from the TV; the commentator is reaching superlative meltdown. The night manager studies the screen intently, but turns the volume down one more notch.
Control picks up the phone just as there is a knock on the door. Rae stands aside, and the night manager goes over to open it. He exchanges a few quiet words through the gap, then opens it fully.
A man walks up the steps. His anxiety is so profound it seems to be an animal thing quite separate from him, hurrying ahead into the room, riffling off into the corners of the office, checking for danger. The man is about thirty, desiccated and pale, his jeans and jacket hanging off him like the skin on last year’s fruit.
‘Are you the patient?’ I ask him. He nods, then abstractedly raises a hand to his mouth and starts gnawing on a thumb.
I turn back to the night manager. ‘That solves that one, then,’ I say. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘No worries.’
He looks at the patient, gives him a narrow, assessing smile, then reaches over to the TV to turn the volume back up. There is another loud cheer as we leave the portakabin; the thunk of the door closing behind us emphasising the still and quiet of the night.
We all scrunch our way through the snow, back up to the ambulance.
‘I’m sorry we’ve got a little bit of a walk. We didn’t want to risk getting stuck driving down here. Anyway - my name’s Spence and this is Rae,’ I say to him. He walks by my side, as close as a spooked dog. ‘Can I ask your name?’
‘Pete.’
‘So what’s happened tonight, Pete? We were told you’d taken an overdose of something. Is that right?’
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
‘What have you taken?’
‘Two times three hundred milligrammes Amisulpride, four times eight milligrammes Clonazepam, two times three seven five milligrammes Venlafaxine.’
‘And are these medications prescribed to you?’
He nods sharply, once. ‘I’m a schizophrenic,’ he says. ‘Since I was eighteen.’
‘And when did you take these pills?’
‘Midnight.’
‘And how are you feeling now?’
He gestures across the front of his chest. ‘I feel tight across here. But that might just be anxiety. I get that as well.’
‘Any other strange feelings?’
‘I feel like I’m going to fly away. I don’t feel – connected.’
Pete has a disconcerting habit of looking straight in front, talking, then glancing out of the corner of his eyes without moving his head. He talks quickly and quietly, and he holds his mouth slightly open when he finishes a sentence, giving everything he says a naïve, astonished quality.
Rae has the door open and the step down ready for us. Pete scuttles on to the truck and sits down on the furthermost seat. We stow the bags and shut the door. The ambulance feels overly bright and closed in. Pete seems to shrink back from the perceived pressure of it.
‘I just need to do a few simple checks. Then we’ll get off to the hospital.’
‘I don’t want to go to hospital. Do you think I really need to?’
‘To be honest, yes, I do, Pete. It doesn’t sound as if you’ve taken a terribly dangerous dose, but I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how these tablets might interact with each other. Plus there’s the reason you took them in the first place. It’s worth going in just to get to speak to someone about that.’
‘How am I going to get home?’
‘There are ways and means.’
The reality is that he’ll have to find his own way back, which, in the early hours, and in this weather, is by no means an easy task. But Pete sits back in the chair.
‘I haven’t seen my brother for six years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘He doesn’t want to know.’
Pete flicks me another look, then peels another tiny piece off his thumb. His face is narrowed and pale. He has a feral twitchiness about him; his scalp and chin bristle with short black hairs.
‘Do you think mental illness runs in the family? Do you think my brother’s mentally ill?’
‘I don’t know, Pete. I think there is often a tendency for these things to crop up more than once in a family. But I really wouldn’t like to say. I hope not, anyway.’
He stops chewing his thumb and stares directly at me. I hold his gaze for a second, but the intensity is such that I am forced to look away.
‘Have you ever done anything like this before?’ I ask him, using the clipboard as a diversion.
‘Two weeks ago. I took sixteen times five hundred milligrammes Paracetamol.’
I write that down.
Friday, January 30, 2009
hands
The house is easily identifiable. There are two police cars and a fire truck outside, the focus of all the neighbours in their front gardens and driveways. Although this focus is a shifting thing, turning inwards to chat, or shuffling about in the cold to keep warm, or looking up at the sky, or laughing and pointing at something, or simply watching, these are the eddies and swirls of a river flowing in one direction, an irresistible pull towards the open door we now walk briskly towards.
A bulky fireman burdened with equipment struggles out of the doorway before we reach it. He smiles and nods: ‘Hello, mate. All right to go in.’
A narrow hallway leads us through to the kitchen out back. I can feel a strong through-draught of cold air running along the floor, and by the afternoon light tipping in through an opened patio door ahead of us we see a policeman leaning over the figure of a man stretched out on his back on the floor. The policeman has the man’s left arm upright in both his hands. He looks our way and shouts: ‘Through here.’
My first thought is ‘What’s happened?’, but the second is even more specific: ‘Where can I stand?’ The man is lying with his legs up on a toolbox, surrounded by a large pool of blood which someone has tried to cover with kitchen cloths, towels – anything absorbent. I pick my way over to the policeman.
‘Let me take that,’ I say to him.
‘Thanks. I’m starting to cramp up.’
‘So what’s the story?’
‘He’s called Eddie. Forty-odd. His wife came home, found him like this. He’s cut his arm with a razor and by Christ there’s a lot of blood. Check the sink!’
Eddie is barely conscious, shivering beneath us, waxy, breathing hard.
There’s no room to get a trolley in; there’s barely room for us.
‘Chair please, Claire’, I say, then ask the policeman to help set some oxygen running.
‘Look on the side there,’ he says, fumbling with the strap around the back of Eddie’s head. There is a Leatherman on the kitchen counter, next to a green plastic safety razor. The blade has been torn out.
‘That’s what he used.’
‘And what’s the story about a gas leak?’
‘Yeah – he set that going, too.’
There is a boiler cover dumped on a plate rack, its white metal surface smeared with blood.
The mass of extemporary bandages around Eddie’s arm is stained through, but it’s not getting worse. When Claire comes in the with chair I get her to wrap a couple more bandages around the site just to be sure, then between us we haul Eddie up and on to the chair. He flops about, in this dreadfully emptied and unstrung state the purest measure of his weight. We hurry him out to the truck.
When he’s on the trolley, it’s a simple calculation: the time it would take for a paramedic to get here and set some fluids running, compared with a straight run to the hospital. I choose the latter.
The policeman comes to the door of the truck with his arm guiding a thin young woman who has a mobile pressed to her ear.
The policeman asks me: ‘Are you all right with Cheryl in there? Or do you want me to follow up with her in the car?’
I look at her. Her narrow face seems emptied of everything but a frown, a dark line low across the top of her eyes. She looks to the side, as if the phone is some independent, alien thing offering bizarre advice.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she says. ‘We’re going to the hospital. No, the other hospital. I can’t talk now.’ She lowers it to her side without seeming to hang up. The policeman helps her up the steps, then with a wave is gone. She sits down.
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s still conscious, he looks strong, so I’d say he’s got every chance.’
I can hear Claire putting the ASHICE through in the cab.
‘I’ve got to ask you a few questions, Cheryl.’
‘Ready to go?’ shouts Claire through the hatch.
‘Yep.’
‘What do you want to know?’
The ambulance sways violently as we drop down off the curb, and we’re away. I check that everything’s okay with Eddie, then sit down and reach for the clipboard. Cheryl moves forward in her seat so she can take Eddie’s hand in hers. I think of the policeman, and how he had stood crouched over him, with his upper arm clamped in his hands.
I start in with the usual questions: date of birth; past medical history; allergies; GP. Cheryl is crying now, but despite her grief there is still a part of her that is able to tell me everything I need to know.
‘Sorry for asking you all this.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘Has he ever done anything like this before?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe ten years ago. Before I knew him.’
‘How was he this morning?’
‘Fine.’
‘No suggestion he might do anything like this?’
‘No.’
‘So tell me exactly what happened?’
She makes a small, forward and backward rocking motion in her chair, urging the ambulance on.
‘I left for work, usual time. I was meant to be out till three but I came home early. There was a note on the door saying Keep out / gas. The chain was on the door and I couldn’t get in. I rang the police, and they broke in. We found him in the kitchen.’
She kisses his hand, touches it to her forehead, kisses it again, holds it in front of her, closes her eyes, starts in on a low, choked-up prayer, with the little red ball in the mask valve clicking up and dropping back, and the sats probe flashing, and the siren drawing and wailing and spinning away from us, flying out, falling across town like a furious, glassy blue web.
A bulky fireman burdened with equipment struggles out of the doorway before we reach it. He smiles and nods: ‘Hello, mate. All right to go in.’
A narrow hallway leads us through to the kitchen out back. I can feel a strong through-draught of cold air running along the floor, and by the afternoon light tipping in through an opened patio door ahead of us we see a policeman leaning over the figure of a man stretched out on his back on the floor. The policeman has the man’s left arm upright in both his hands. He looks our way and shouts: ‘Through here.’
My first thought is ‘What’s happened?’, but the second is even more specific: ‘Where can I stand?’ The man is lying with his legs up on a toolbox, surrounded by a large pool of blood which someone has tried to cover with kitchen cloths, towels – anything absorbent. I pick my way over to the policeman.
‘Let me take that,’ I say to him.
‘Thanks. I’m starting to cramp up.’
‘So what’s the story?’
‘He’s called Eddie. Forty-odd. His wife came home, found him like this. He’s cut his arm with a razor and by Christ there’s a lot of blood. Check the sink!’
Eddie is barely conscious, shivering beneath us, waxy, breathing hard.
There’s no room to get a trolley in; there’s barely room for us.
‘Chair please, Claire’, I say, then ask the policeman to help set some oxygen running.
‘Look on the side there,’ he says, fumbling with the strap around the back of Eddie’s head. There is a Leatherman on the kitchen counter, next to a green plastic safety razor. The blade has been torn out.
‘That’s what he used.’
‘And what’s the story about a gas leak?’
‘Yeah – he set that going, too.’
There is a boiler cover dumped on a plate rack, its white metal surface smeared with blood.
The mass of extemporary bandages around Eddie’s arm is stained through, but it’s not getting worse. When Claire comes in the with chair I get her to wrap a couple more bandages around the site just to be sure, then between us we haul Eddie up and on to the chair. He flops about, in this dreadfully emptied and unstrung state the purest measure of his weight. We hurry him out to the truck.
When he’s on the trolley, it’s a simple calculation: the time it would take for a paramedic to get here and set some fluids running, compared with a straight run to the hospital. I choose the latter.
The policeman comes to the door of the truck with his arm guiding a thin young woman who has a mobile pressed to her ear.
The policeman asks me: ‘Are you all right with Cheryl in there? Or do you want me to follow up with her in the car?’
I look at her. Her narrow face seems emptied of everything but a frown, a dark line low across the top of her eyes. She looks to the side, as if the phone is some independent, alien thing offering bizarre advice.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she says. ‘We’re going to the hospital. No, the other hospital. I can’t talk now.’ She lowers it to her side without seeming to hang up. The policeman helps her up the steps, then with a wave is gone. She sits down.
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘He’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s still conscious, he looks strong, so I’d say he’s got every chance.’
I can hear Claire putting the ASHICE through in the cab.
‘I’ve got to ask you a few questions, Cheryl.’
‘Ready to go?’ shouts Claire through the hatch.
‘Yep.’
‘What do you want to know?’
The ambulance sways violently as we drop down off the curb, and we’re away. I check that everything’s okay with Eddie, then sit down and reach for the clipboard. Cheryl moves forward in her seat so she can take Eddie’s hand in hers. I think of the policeman, and how he had stood crouched over him, with his upper arm clamped in his hands.
I start in with the usual questions: date of birth; past medical history; allergies; GP. Cheryl is crying now, but despite her grief there is still a part of her that is able to tell me everything I need to know.
‘Sorry for asking you all this.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘Has he ever done anything like this before?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Maybe ten years ago. Before I knew him.’
‘How was he this morning?’
‘Fine.’
‘No suggestion he might do anything like this?’
‘No.’
‘So tell me exactly what happened?’
She makes a small, forward and backward rocking motion in her chair, urging the ambulance on.
‘I left for work, usual time. I was meant to be out till three but I came home early. There was a note on the door saying Keep out / gas. The chain was on the door and I couldn’t get in. I rang the police, and they broke in. We found him in the kitchen.’
She kisses his hand, touches it to her forehead, kisses it again, holds it in front of her, closes her eyes, starts in on a low, choked-up prayer, with the little red ball in the mask valve clicking up and dropping back, and the sats probe flashing, and the siren drawing and wailing and spinning away from us, flying out, falling across town like a furious, glassy blue web.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
136
Even though it is late there is still some light left in the sky, a watery smear of slate gray at the vanishing point where the coastal road becomes the horizon. A ripple of blue marks a spot just down from there. It swells with definition as we get closer, and then separates. A police car, with its scene lights illuminating a group of four on the pavement: a woman and a policeman sitting on a low wall; a woman and a policeman standing. Frank parks the truck. I jump out and walk over to the seated couple.
‘Hello. My name’s Spence.’
The woman is sitting with one leg hooked over the other, bouncing the foot about, resting forward on the knee, using it as a smoking prop. Steve, the policeman beside her, seems professionally relaxed. He is studying his hands, turning a wedding band round and round whilst the woman blows out smoke and smiles at me despite her eyes. I feel like I’m interrupting a couple having a discussion about the state of their relationship at a party.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, tapping off the ash from her cigarette. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Okay. Good! But you know, the message we were given was that a woman had tried to throw herself under a car.’
She laughs bitterly.
‘Oh for goodness sake. This is ridiculous. Look – I’ve had a bit to drink. Obviously. I’ve had a bad day. People do. Things were getting a little bit on top of me. I tripped on the pavement and I found myself in the road. And that – is – it. That’s all. What have I done wrong? Where’s the crime in that?’ She takes another pull on her cigarette and squints at me through the smoke.
Steve straightens up. Some policemen are burdened by their own equipment, but Steve seems lighter, more adaptable. He has the quiet self-possession of a craftsman who would only pick up a tool exactly when he needed it.
‘Hilary. We’ve been called, these ambulance guys too, because you threw yourself in front of a car. It was only your friend here that stopped you from succeeding, as well as that other guy who came over to help. They had to wrestle you to the ground. Do you remember, Hilary?’ He looks at me and says as an aside: ‘Amazing, the guy helping like that. Don’t know where he went to.’
‘But I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine, are you, though? You’ve got to admit, none of this would look fine to a reasonable person. I mean, we all like a drink. But we don’t tell the person we’re with we want to die and then throw ourselves into the road.’
‘But really. Honestly. It’s a misunderstanding.’
‘No, listen to me, Hilary. What we’re all here to do now is figure out A, what happened and B, what we need to do next. Our main concern is you don’t do yourself any harm tonight. We need to get that sorted. So - as a first step - I suggest we get off this wall, go onto the ambulance and have a chat in private, out of the cold. Okay?’
Hilary flicks her cigarette out into the road and watches where it lands. Then she leans forward to tap the side of her boot.
‘I’m fine. Really. I twisted my ankle a little, that’s all.’
Steve gets to his feet. I take one step forward to help her up. At that moment she suddenly sprints off to the side, snapping away like a dog after a stick, her handbag slipping off her shoulder and flying up, her coat opening out like wings. Steve is ready for her, though. He intercepts her in one stride, and scoops her into his arms. As soon as he has hold of her she gives up, and when they’ve both found their balance, slowing down like a couple after a drunken waltz - she stands neutrally. Steve releases his hold. She repositions the strap of her bag onto her shoulder.
‘Let’s not be silly about this, now.’
‘I don’t want to go on an ambulance,’ she says, with the glittering tones of someone explaining a faux pas. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Come on, Hilary.’
He leads her to the truck. We sit her in a forward seat, and then take up positions around her. After the damp road the ambulance smells aseptic, anonymous. The light’s too bright and the trolley creaks when the two policemen sit on it. Hilary’s friend leans forward and touches her on the shoulder.
‘You so need help, Hillie,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve seen you bad, but not this bad.’
‘And what do you think they’ll do for me at the hospital? Hey? What would they do for me? You know exactly what they’d do for me. They’d say: let’s sober you up and see how you are. Let’s keep an eye on you and keep you waiting for fucking hours. Let’s give you some diaze-fucking-pam and send you home at five in the morning. There’s nothing they can do for me. I’ve been there and done that. God knows I’ve been there and done that. There’s nothing anyone can do for me. I lost my licence because of the last time. Six months. How did that fucking help? I just want it all to end.’
And more awful than the tears that run down her cheeks is the polite smile she dredges up from beneath it all.
‘I manage a large business,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. Really. I just need to go home, get some rest. I’m always like this when I drink. I’ll be fine in the morning.’ She pats her face with a wad of tissue. ‘I’ll go to work and no-one will know.’
Martin, the other policeman, is standing at the back of the ambulance. He takes a notebook out as if he’s going to write something down, but then stuffs it back inside his jerkin. Hilary’s friend sits absolutely still.
Steve says: ‘I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Hilary. Going home tonight is not an option.’
She makes a gasping noise as if he’s punched her in the stomach, but he says: ‘Just hear me out, Hilary. It’s not an option and I’ll tell you why. Our first responsibility is to see that you don’t hurt yourself. We all care about you here. There’s no way any of us would say “Okay Hilary, off you go” if there was a real chance you’d put yourself under a car or throw yourself off a cliff, or whatever.’
‘You just don’t want it on your conscience,’ she sniffs, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands so vigorously it’s like she wants to rub them clean away.
‘It’s nothing to do with consciences, Hilary. We’re doing our jobs, and that’s it. So. The options are: you go with Spence and – who is it? – Frank, here, to hospital, and get assessed by the medical team there, or I arrest you and take you to the cells. What’s it going to be?’
‘I’m fine. This is ridiculous. I just want to go home and go to bed.’
‘Hospital or the cells, Hilary?’
She drops her chin and whispers: hospital.
Steve tells Martin that he’ll be riding up in the ambulance, and that he should follow in the car. With a timid inclination of the head, Hilary’s friend agrees to come along, too. Whilst I put a seat belt on Hilary, Frank puts the step up, shuts the door and gets into the cab to drive.
We move off.
I ask Hilary her last name. She mutters a reply, seeming more interested in picking fluff off the front of her coat. When I ask her to speak up, she raises her chin slowly and looks at me, a wide and watery look that doesn’t see me at all, but rather seems to suddenly process the fact that the ambulance is moving.
And in one movement she unsnaps the seat belt, throws open the door and makes to leap out. But Steve is already behind her, both arms around her shoulders. I grab her round the waist, and between us she screams and kicks and pushes out the door whilst the ambulance lurches to a halt, but she’s slight and drunk and desperate, and we keep her on board. I can see the reflection of the blue lights of the following police car flicker up, guarding us from the traffic.
When Martin appears at the door, Steve simply says: ‘Cuff her.’ And then: ‘Let’s do this sensibly, Hilary. Arms in front, please. And then a nice, calm walk out to the car.’ He begins to explain what will happen to her – how she’ll be taken to the cells, stripped, searched, assessed by a doctor.
As Martin unclips the cuffs from his belt, Hilary looks round at her friend and shouts: ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself.’ But her friend says nothing in reply. Instead, she stares fixedly at her hands and wets her lips with her tongue.
Then Hilary seems to weaken. She shrinks back into her seat as the black and silver bracelets clack and snap round her wrists.
Martin produces a tiny key on an extendable line, and locks the cuffs into place. He gives them a little jangle for security and comfort.
Hilary looks straight at me. Her face is radiant with despair.
‘I was only going out for a drink,’ she says. Then she presents her hands out to me, gently wagging them backwards and forwards, as if to say: ‘Happy now?’
Martin stands to the side of the door, Steve moves up behind her, and I make room for them all to leave. The night gathers in around the doorway, thick and cool with the threat of more rain. She stares out into the darkness for a moment, sighs, then glances back at me.
‘Have you any idea,’ she says, pleasantly, ‘any idea at all - how difficult it is to kill yourself?’
‘Hello. My name’s Spence.’
The woman is sitting with one leg hooked over the other, bouncing the foot about, resting forward on the knee, using it as a smoking prop. Steve, the policeman beside her, seems professionally relaxed. He is studying his hands, turning a wedding band round and round whilst the woman blows out smoke and smiles at me despite her eyes. I feel like I’m interrupting a couple having a discussion about the state of their relationship at a party.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, tapping off the ash from her cigarette. ‘Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with me.’
‘Okay. Good! But you know, the message we were given was that a woman had tried to throw herself under a car.’
She laughs bitterly.
‘Oh for goodness sake. This is ridiculous. Look – I’ve had a bit to drink. Obviously. I’ve had a bad day. People do. Things were getting a little bit on top of me. I tripped on the pavement and I found myself in the road. And that – is – it. That’s all. What have I done wrong? Where’s the crime in that?’ She takes another pull on her cigarette and squints at me through the smoke.
Steve straightens up. Some policemen are burdened by their own equipment, but Steve seems lighter, more adaptable. He has the quiet self-possession of a craftsman who would only pick up a tool exactly when he needed it.
‘Hilary. We’ve been called, these ambulance guys too, because you threw yourself in front of a car. It was only your friend here that stopped you from succeeding, as well as that other guy who came over to help. They had to wrestle you to the ground. Do you remember, Hilary?’ He looks at me and says as an aside: ‘Amazing, the guy helping like that. Don’t know where he went to.’
‘But I’m fine.’
‘You’re not fine, are you, though? You’ve got to admit, none of this would look fine to a reasonable person. I mean, we all like a drink. But we don’t tell the person we’re with we want to die and then throw ourselves into the road.’
‘But really. Honestly. It’s a misunderstanding.’
‘No, listen to me, Hilary. What we’re all here to do now is figure out A, what happened and B, what we need to do next. Our main concern is you don’t do yourself any harm tonight. We need to get that sorted. So - as a first step - I suggest we get off this wall, go onto the ambulance and have a chat in private, out of the cold. Okay?’
Hilary flicks her cigarette out into the road and watches where it lands. Then she leans forward to tap the side of her boot.
‘I’m fine. Really. I twisted my ankle a little, that’s all.’
Steve gets to his feet. I take one step forward to help her up. At that moment she suddenly sprints off to the side, snapping away like a dog after a stick, her handbag slipping off her shoulder and flying up, her coat opening out like wings. Steve is ready for her, though. He intercepts her in one stride, and scoops her into his arms. As soon as he has hold of her she gives up, and when they’ve both found their balance, slowing down like a couple after a drunken waltz - she stands neutrally. Steve releases his hold. She repositions the strap of her bag onto her shoulder.
‘Let’s not be silly about this, now.’
‘I don’t want to go on an ambulance,’ she says, with the glittering tones of someone explaining a faux pas. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Come on, Hilary.’
He leads her to the truck. We sit her in a forward seat, and then take up positions around her. After the damp road the ambulance smells aseptic, anonymous. The light’s too bright and the trolley creaks when the two policemen sit on it. Hilary’s friend leans forward and touches her on the shoulder.
‘You so need help, Hillie,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve seen you bad, but not this bad.’
‘And what do you think they’ll do for me at the hospital? Hey? What would they do for me? You know exactly what they’d do for me. They’d say: let’s sober you up and see how you are. Let’s keep an eye on you and keep you waiting for fucking hours. Let’s give you some diaze-fucking-pam and send you home at five in the morning. There’s nothing they can do for me. I’ve been there and done that. God knows I’ve been there and done that. There’s nothing anyone can do for me. I lost my licence because of the last time. Six months. How did that fucking help? I just want it all to end.’
And more awful than the tears that run down her cheeks is the polite smile she dredges up from beneath it all.
‘I manage a large business,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. Really. I just need to go home, get some rest. I’m always like this when I drink. I’ll be fine in the morning.’ She pats her face with a wad of tissue. ‘I’ll go to work and no-one will know.’
Martin, the other policeman, is standing at the back of the ambulance. He takes a notebook out as if he’s going to write something down, but then stuffs it back inside his jerkin. Hilary’s friend sits absolutely still.
Steve says: ‘I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Hilary. Going home tonight is not an option.’
She makes a gasping noise as if he’s punched her in the stomach, but he says: ‘Just hear me out, Hilary. It’s not an option and I’ll tell you why. Our first responsibility is to see that you don’t hurt yourself. We all care about you here. There’s no way any of us would say “Okay Hilary, off you go” if there was a real chance you’d put yourself under a car or throw yourself off a cliff, or whatever.’
‘You just don’t want it on your conscience,’ she sniffs, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands so vigorously it’s like she wants to rub them clean away.
‘It’s nothing to do with consciences, Hilary. We’re doing our jobs, and that’s it. So. The options are: you go with Spence and – who is it? – Frank, here, to hospital, and get assessed by the medical team there, or I arrest you and take you to the cells. What’s it going to be?’
‘I’m fine. This is ridiculous. I just want to go home and go to bed.’
‘Hospital or the cells, Hilary?’
She drops her chin and whispers: hospital.
Steve tells Martin that he’ll be riding up in the ambulance, and that he should follow in the car. With a timid inclination of the head, Hilary’s friend agrees to come along, too. Whilst I put a seat belt on Hilary, Frank puts the step up, shuts the door and gets into the cab to drive.
We move off.
I ask Hilary her last name. She mutters a reply, seeming more interested in picking fluff off the front of her coat. When I ask her to speak up, she raises her chin slowly and looks at me, a wide and watery look that doesn’t see me at all, but rather seems to suddenly process the fact that the ambulance is moving.
And in one movement she unsnaps the seat belt, throws open the door and makes to leap out. But Steve is already behind her, both arms around her shoulders. I grab her round the waist, and between us she screams and kicks and pushes out the door whilst the ambulance lurches to a halt, but she’s slight and drunk and desperate, and we keep her on board. I can see the reflection of the blue lights of the following police car flicker up, guarding us from the traffic.
When Martin appears at the door, Steve simply says: ‘Cuff her.’ And then: ‘Let’s do this sensibly, Hilary. Arms in front, please. And then a nice, calm walk out to the car.’ He begins to explain what will happen to her – how she’ll be taken to the cells, stripped, searched, assessed by a doctor.
As Martin unclips the cuffs from his belt, Hilary looks round at her friend and shouts: ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself.’ But her friend says nothing in reply. Instead, she stares fixedly at her hands and wets her lips with her tongue.
Then Hilary seems to weaken. She shrinks back into her seat as the black and silver bracelets clack and snap round her wrists.
Martin produces a tiny key on an extendable line, and locks the cuffs into place. He gives them a little jangle for security and comfort.
Hilary looks straight at me. Her face is radiant with despair.
‘I was only going out for a drink,’ she says. Then she presents her hands out to me, gently wagging them backwards and forwards, as if to say: ‘Happy now?’
Martin stands to the side of the door, Steve moves up behind her, and I make room for them all to leave. The night gathers in around the doorway, thick and cool with the threat of more rain. She stares out into the darkness for a moment, sighs, then glances back at me.
‘Have you any idea,’ she says, pleasantly, ‘any idea at all - how difficult it is to kill yourself?’
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
check for fruit
We are running out in response to a personal alarm, one of those big red buttons worn around the neck or wrist to push if you need help. It’s come through as a silent activation; meaning that Button Control has not been able to talk to the client. If the person sets the button off accidentally – and they do, all the time – Button Control can reassure themselves that everything’s okay by speaking to them over an intercom system. A silent response is invariably a bad sign.
The instructions we have been sent to gain out of hours access to this flat are complex. There is a code for the front door, a code for a safe that contains a key to another safe that holds, amongst other things, the master key for all the rooms in the block. We are also to pull a chord to let the office know what we’re doing.
But it all works. The master key is hanging on its own peg inside the safe; I grab it, we re-shoulder our bags, and haul ourselves up to the third floor.
An elderly woman shuffles past us in the corridor.
‘Good evening to you both,’ she says, pleasantly. I’m struck by the thought that had we been dressed in gorilla suits, she would have been equally indifferent.
We reach the door and I knock twice.
‘Hello. Ambulance.’
Not waiting for a reply, I use the master key and we step inside.
The hallway is just big enough to accommodate the front door and access to the bathroom, kitchenette and sitting room. The door to the sitting room stands a little open, and I push it inwards.
‘Hello.’
There is an angle poise lamp up on a writing bureau over at the far side of the room, dumping a pool of bright light onto the high-backed chair beneath it. On the chair is the lumpish figure of an elderly woman, slumped forwards, motionless.
‘Hello.’
I stride over and touch her on the right shoulder.
She jumps backwards into the chair and lets out a yelp.
‘Hello – it’s the ambulance.’
‘The what?’
The woman is clutching a pear in one hand and a little curved knife in the other.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Your button went off.’
‘I know that.’
‘People were worried about you.’
‘I heard them calling. I was on the loo. And they’d gone when I’d finished.’
‘So you’re okay?’
‘I’m having a pear.’
‘Good.’
‘Who called you?’
‘The Button people.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with me.’
She shakes the pear at me, as if that proves it.
And, I suppose, in many ways, it does.
The instructions we have been sent to gain out of hours access to this flat are complex. There is a code for the front door, a code for a safe that contains a key to another safe that holds, amongst other things, the master key for all the rooms in the block. We are also to pull a chord to let the office know what we’re doing.
But it all works. The master key is hanging on its own peg inside the safe; I grab it, we re-shoulder our bags, and haul ourselves up to the third floor.
An elderly woman shuffles past us in the corridor.
‘Good evening to you both,’ she says, pleasantly. I’m struck by the thought that had we been dressed in gorilla suits, she would have been equally indifferent.
We reach the door and I knock twice.
‘Hello. Ambulance.’
Not waiting for a reply, I use the master key and we step inside.
The hallway is just big enough to accommodate the front door and access to the bathroom, kitchenette and sitting room. The door to the sitting room stands a little open, and I push it inwards.
‘Hello.’
There is an angle poise lamp up on a writing bureau over at the far side of the room, dumping a pool of bright light onto the high-backed chair beneath it. On the chair is the lumpish figure of an elderly woman, slumped forwards, motionless.
‘Hello.’
I stride over and touch her on the right shoulder.
She jumps backwards into the chair and lets out a yelp.
‘Hello – it’s the ambulance.’
‘The what?’
The woman is clutching a pear in one hand and a little curved knife in the other.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Your button went off.’
‘I know that.’
‘People were worried about you.’
‘I heard them calling. I was on the loo. And they’d gone when I’d finished.’
‘So you’re okay?’
‘I’m having a pear.’
‘Good.’
‘Who called you?’
‘The Button people.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with me.’
She shakes the pear at me, as if that proves it.
And, I suppose, in many ways, it does.
Monday, January 19, 2009
cans & birds
The son meets us at the garden gate with a wave and then a rub of his hands.
‘Before you go in, let me warn you – it’s cold. Very cold. But that’s just how we like it. It’s not ‘cos we haven’t paid the electric. It’s our choice.’
He nods and grins, looking in all his layers of clothing like the mystery package in Pass the Parcel. Without that belt straining around his middle, he would probably explode with the pressure of extra shirts and trousers he has on. His face has that shiningly radiant scarlet you see on long-term alcoholics and rough sleepers; his metal specs glimmer icily beneath the porch light.
‘What it is, Jack’s had a bit of a turn. We’d just got back from our daily jaunt, he sat in his chair, next thing I knew his eyes had turned up in his head and he’d gone all limp. I had a job to rouse him, but then when he did come round, he acted like nothing had happened.’
‘Let’s go inside and see how he’s doing.’
He leads us inside a dark hallway, clear of any of the usual hallway ephemera. No coats hanging up, pictures on the wall, boots lined up or kicked off, no bag dumps, brolly bins or boxes of junk to go; only a line of bare boards stretching off into the gloom. We follow the son deeper into the shadows, passing a couple of closed doors. He pushes open the furthest one, and takes us into a wide, square room sparsely lit by a standard lamp in one corner, and the gas flames of a portable gas fire waggling anaemically in the middle of the room.
‘Hello chaps,’ says the elderly man sitting in a threadbare armchair by the fire. ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
‘It’s no bother, Jack. Listen – Graham here says you had a bit of a turn earlier. Can you tell us what happened to you tonight?’
He looks up at us, a vision of his son accelerated forty years into the future: the same roly-poly agglomeration of clothes, the same red face, the same crooked turn of the mouth and set of the eyes that links them as securely as the photos of them on the mantelpiece, holding up a fish, waving spanners beside a motorbike, hanging off a carousel.
‘I’m all right,’ he says. ‘I’m eighty four, you know.’
Graham sits on the arm of the chair and straightens his Dad’s cap. When they talk, they fit their words around each other as precisely as the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle.
‘Eighty four, walks fifteen miles a day.’
‘Up hill, down, back again.’
‘We collect aluminium cans from all around, you see. We take them down to Reynaud’s the scrap merchants.’
‘Everything we make we donate to the cancer charity that looked after mum.’
‘Well, we did most of the looking after. But they gave us a lot of help.’
‘At the beginning of it all they said she’d probably end up having to go into one of them special places, but we said “no, she’ll stay here, we’ll do it ourselves” – the washing and cleaning, the lot. It was difficult, but we managed it.’
‘Yep, we managed it.’
‘Lifting, washing. The whole bit.’
‘She died here, at home, and then after that, we started on the cans.’
‘And if we’re not picking up cans, we’re bird watching.’
‘You’d be amazed what you see.’
‘Blackcaps.’
‘What a song.’
‘An Arctic Tern.’
‘We think.’
‘Late heading off.’
‘On next door neighbour’s pond.’
‘We help him with his washing.’
‘The neighbour, not the bird.’
They both laugh.
And then there’s a silence, riding on the spluttering sounds of the fire. They look at us.
‘We need to find out what’s caused this little episode,’ I tell them. ‘How about we get you out on to the vehicle, do a few tests…’
‘I’m not going to hospital. I don’t need to.’
‘Well, we’re not going to kidnap you. But let’s take it one step at a time, see if everything’s okay, and take it from there.’
He insists on walking out to the vehicle, Graham one side and me the other. The sky is a glassy blue-black vault above our heads. An excoriating frost is working its way to the centre of everything tonight.
‘I don’t envy you that cold room,’ I say to Jack as we reach the vehicle and open the doors. ‘I bet it’s colder inside than out.’
He laughs. ‘All the better for it,’ he says. ‘All that central heating – it makes you ill.’
The inside of the ambulance is a sweat lodge in comparison. But the only concession the two of them make to the raised temperature is to take off their caps, which they both clutch in front of them. I wonder what experiences they’ve had in ambulances in the past.
‘Let’s have a look at you then, Jack.’
He settles himself down on the trolley.
It takes us five minutes to find our way to his chest.
‘Before you go in, let me warn you – it’s cold. Very cold. But that’s just how we like it. It’s not ‘cos we haven’t paid the electric. It’s our choice.’
He nods and grins, looking in all his layers of clothing like the mystery package in Pass the Parcel. Without that belt straining around his middle, he would probably explode with the pressure of extra shirts and trousers he has on. His face has that shiningly radiant scarlet you see on long-term alcoholics and rough sleepers; his metal specs glimmer icily beneath the porch light.
‘What it is, Jack’s had a bit of a turn. We’d just got back from our daily jaunt, he sat in his chair, next thing I knew his eyes had turned up in his head and he’d gone all limp. I had a job to rouse him, but then when he did come round, he acted like nothing had happened.’
‘Let’s go inside and see how he’s doing.’
He leads us inside a dark hallway, clear of any of the usual hallway ephemera. No coats hanging up, pictures on the wall, boots lined up or kicked off, no bag dumps, brolly bins or boxes of junk to go; only a line of bare boards stretching off into the gloom. We follow the son deeper into the shadows, passing a couple of closed doors. He pushes open the furthest one, and takes us into a wide, square room sparsely lit by a standard lamp in one corner, and the gas flames of a portable gas fire waggling anaemically in the middle of the room.
‘Hello chaps,’ says the elderly man sitting in a threadbare armchair by the fire. ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’
‘It’s no bother, Jack. Listen – Graham here says you had a bit of a turn earlier. Can you tell us what happened to you tonight?’
He looks up at us, a vision of his son accelerated forty years into the future: the same roly-poly agglomeration of clothes, the same red face, the same crooked turn of the mouth and set of the eyes that links them as securely as the photos of them on the mantelpiece, holding up a fish, waving spanners beside a motorbike, hanging off a carousel.
‘I’m all right,’ he says. ‘I’m eighty four, you know.’
Graham sits on the arm of the chair and straightens his Dad’s cap. When they talk, they fit their words around each other as precisely as the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle.
‘Eighty four, walks fifteen miles a day.’
‘Up hill, down, back again.’
‘We collect aluminium cans from all around, you see. We take them down to Reynaud’s the scrap merchants.’
‘Everything we make we donate to the cancer charity that looked after mum.’
‘Well, we did most of the looking after. But they gave us a lot of help.’
‘At the beginning of it all they said she’d probably end up having to go into one of them special places, but we said “no, she’ll stay here, we’ll do it ourselves” – the washing and cleaning, the lot. It was difficult, but we managed it.’
‘Yep, we managed it.’
‘Lifting, washing. The whole bit.’
‘She died here, at home, and then after that, we started on the cans.’
‘And if we’re not picking up cans, we’re bird watching.’
‘You’d be amazed what you see.’
‘Blackcaps.’
‘What a song.’
‘An Arctic Tern.’
‘We think.’
‘Late heading off.’
‘On next door neighbour’s pond.’
‘We help him with his washing.’
‘The neighbour, not the bird.’
They both laugh.
And then there’s a silence, riding on the spluttering sounds of the fire. They look at us.
‘We need to find out what’s caused this little episode,’ I tell them. ‘How about we get you out on to the vehicle, do a few tests…’
‘I’m not going to hospital. I don’t need to.’
‘Well, we’re not going to kidnap you. But let’s take it one step at a time, see if everything’s okay, and take it from there.’
He insists on walking out to the vehicle, Graham one side and me the other. The sky is a glassy blue-black vault above our heads. An excoriating frost is working its way to the centre of everything tonight.
‘I don’t envy you that cold room,’ I say to Jack as we reach the vehicle and open the doors. ‘I bet it’s colder inside than out.’
He laughs. ‘All the better for it,’ he says. ‘All that central heating – it makes you ill.’
The inside of the ambulance is a sweat lodge in comparison. But the only concession the two of them make to the raised temperature is to take off their caps, which they both clutch in front of them. I wonder what experiences they’ve had in ambulances in the past.
‘Let’s have a look at you then, Jack.’
He settles himself down on the trolley.
It takes us five minutes to find our way to his chest.
Friday, January 16, 2009
atticus
‘So it’s pretty much always the same then? A fuck off through the letter box? That’s what happened the other day when we got a call out here, anyway.’
‘Yep. Same old same old. I’ve been out to Miranda maybe half a dozen times last year, and every time the same. But, we’ll see.’
George adjusts his heavy glasses and writes down the incident number and address as I pull away from the station. The ambulance doesn’t seem big enough for him. As he drops the clipboard back into the plastic well that separates us, out of the corner of my eye I half expect to see a great clawed paw rather than a hand. But even though he is too big for this cab, he’s otherwise perfect for the job. Strong enough for the lifts, empathetic enough for the patients, funny enough to do stand-by with. He has a slight under bite, his lower lip forward of his upper, which, with his scraggy beard and magnified dark eyes, gives him a lugubriously tolerant air. He reminds me of Spike, the bulldog in the Tom & Jerry cartoons, but crammed into greens and fresh out of anger management class.
‘What did you do before the ambulance?’ A lame thing to ask, as hackneyed as the so, do you actually drive the ambulance question that you inevitably field whenever someone finds out what you do for a living. But still always a surprising thing to ask, for all that. The ambulance service has something of the Foreign Legion about it: a place of mixed backgrounds, from teachers, plumbers and dental nurses to photographers, soldiers and horologists. Not a blue or white collar environment so much as a grey collar affair. We’re a mixed bag, a lucky dip of talent, and all the better for it.
‘I worked for a recycling company, doing the rounds on a big electric cart. I was one of the guys standing on the back, dumping cans in one stack and papers in the other, trying to hold on whilst the spliffed up driver ambled along the streets. I enjoyed it. It was a great craic. Hard in winter, but you had a laugh. There’s only so far you can go with that stuff, though, and your hearing takes a pounding. I studied music, originally. I’m a flautist.’
We pull up outside Miranda’s bungalow. We’re here so often I wouldn’t be surprised to see a space marked out for us. George hauls himself out of the cab and I follow him up the narrow concrete path to the front door. He knocks and we wait. He’s big enough to huff and puff and blow this house down, but he waits patiently, and then knocks again. There’s a dull stirring behind the net curtains. A shadowy figure leaves the living room and moves into the hallway. Any moment now I expect the usual expletives and half-hearted negotiations through the letterbox – but, incredibly, the door cracks open and she peers around the edge.
‘What do you want?’
‘It’s the ambulance,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No of course I’m not all right.’
‘Well. Then. Can we come in and have a chat and see what the problem is?’
I half turn to go, but the door opens fully and Miranda says: ‘If you must.’
George looks at me, I look at him, and in that neutral little exchange there’s a great, psychic crashing of cymbals.
She leads us into her living room.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ she says, but the room has a measured tidiness, with magazines and papers and books forming regular margins of space that couldn’t happen by chance. Miranda takes up her position on a padded, high-backed chair, an orthopaedic throne within reach of a rack of remote controls, in front of a little plasma screen TV. There’s a DVD playing. Josh Groban in concert, singing with a curly haired sincerity that seems to be killing the audience. To the right of the TV is a sideboard of ceramic Arthur Rackham fairies, each one looking meticulously placed and dusted. Next to the sideboard is a stand of DVDs, each one concert footage, Bocelli, Bublé, Ball.
‘I want to die,’ she says.
George adjusts his glasses again and says, ‘Right.’
A scraggy black cat wanders into the room to investigate.
‘But I don’t want to waste your time.’
‘It’s no bother,’ he says, putting his clipboard to one side. ‘So what’s happened today? We were told you may have taken some pills.’
‘Temazepam. I just want to die.’
‘So how many temazepam did you take?’
She makes a vague gesture with her hand.
‘Not enough, obviously.’ Then she looks at him carefully. ‘You remind me of my son.’
‘Oh. That’s a good thing. Hopefully.’
‘He’s just like you. Big.’
‘And where’s your son now?’
‘Gone off and left me. Like all the others.’
‘Miranda? Would you mind if we checked you over? Did your blood pressure and that sort of thing?’
‘Do what you like. I don’t care.’
I get the kit out of the bag and start noting down the results. Alcohol fumes ripple off her like heat from a radiator. ‘How much have you had to drink today?’, I ask.
‘Not nearly enough.’
The cat noses around in the bag.
‘What’s your cat’s name?’
‘Atticus. Guess how old he is.’
‘Fourteen? Fifteen?’
‘He’s a hundred and twenty. Cat years.’
Atticus looks up at me as if to say I am, you know.
Miranda’s obs are fine.
George taps the board.
‘Look, Miranda,’ he says, ‘so far everything looks okay but obviously we’re very concerned. Not only that you’ve taken these pills – which may have a delayed effect – but also for the reason you took them.’
‘I’m not going to hospital. Last time I was there the security guard broke my jaw.’
‘Surely not.’
‘It’s true. He asked me to leave, punched me in the face and broke my jaw.’
‘Well I can guarantee that won’t happen this time.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Whatever sort of person would I be if someone told me they wanted to die, and I just turned around and left them? Mm?’
‘No. You can’t make me.’
There’s a brief stand-off. I cut in from another angle.
‘But didn’t you call the ambulance, Miranda?’
She turns to look at me. For a moment it looks like my intervention may have nixed the whole peace process. But before she flicks off the safety catch, George speaks up again.
‘Miranda? Who’s going to look after Atticus if you kill yourself?’
She turns back to him.
‘Have you got a cat?’ she says.
‘Yes. I have a twelve year old tabby.’
‘What’s she called?’
‘Kasha.’
‘Kasha?’
‘Yep. And two dogs.’
‘We used to have dogs. I couldn’t have them, now.’
‘So what are we going to do then, Miranda? Are you coming with us to the hospital?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen your doctor lately?’
‘He doesn’t want to see me.’
‘Don’t you have to see him at least to get your repeat prescription?’
‘He faxes it. He doesn’t want to see me anymore.’
‘Well – Miranda - if you won’t come to hospital, there’s nothing more we can do for you here. So if you’re absolutely sure you’re staying at home, I’ll just need you to sign my paperwork.’
‘I’m not signing anything.’
He shows her the board.
‘Will you sign?’
‘What – that you’re leaving me here to die?’
Josh Groban leans in to another ballad on the TV. She turns to look at him, folding her arms across her belly, the deep blue light of the screen reflecting in her glasses. Atticus rubs up against her leg but she doesn’t seem to notice it.
‘We’ll be going then.’
‘Suit yourself.’
We leave her sitting there, as fixed in her pose as any of the ceramic fairies on the sideboard.
Outside in the vehicle George finishes the paperwork, then gets on the phone to control to tell them everything that happened. Another crew pass us, waving and laughing and pointing. We all know it’ll probably be them sitting here tomorrow.
‘Yep. Same old same old. I’ve been out to Miranda maybe half a dozen times last year, and every time the same. But, we’ll see.’
George adjusts his heavy glasses and writes down the incident number and address as I pull away from the station. The ambulance doesn’t seem big enough for him. As he drops the clipboard back into the plastic well that separates us, out of the corner of my eye I half expect to see a great clawed paw rather than a hand. But even though he is too big for this cab, he’s otherwise perfect for the job. Strong enough for the lifts, empathetic enough for the patients, funny enough to do stand-by with. He has a slight under bite, his lower lip forward of his upper, which, with his scraggy beard and magnified dark eyes, gives him a lugubriously tolerant air. He reminds me of Spike, the bulldog in the Tom & Jerry cartoons, but crammed into greens and fresh out of anger management class.
‘What did you do before the ambulance?’ A lame thing to ask, as hackneyed as the so, do you actually drive the ambulance question that you inevitably field whenever someone finds out what you do for a living. But still always a surprising thing to ask, for all that. The ambulance service has something of the Foreign Legion about it: a place of mixed backgrounds, from teachers, plumbers and dental nurses to photographers, soldiers and horologists. Not a blue or white collar environment so much as a grey collar affair. We’re a mixed bag, a lucky dip of talent, and all the better for it.
‘I worked for a recycling company, doing the rounds on a big electric cart. I was one of the guys standing on the back, dumping cans in one stack and papers in the other, trying to hold on whilst the spliffed up driver ambled along the streets. I enjoyed it. It was a great craic. Hard in winter, but you had a laugh. There’s only so far you can go with that stuff, though, and your hearing takes a pounding. I studied music, originally. I’m a flautist.’
We pull up outside Miranda’s bungalow. We’re here so often I wouldn’t be surprised to see a space marked out for us. George hauls himself out of the cab and I follow him up the narrow concrete path to the front door. He knocks and we wait. He’s big enough to huff and puff and blow this house down, but he waits patiently, and then knocks again. There’s a dull stirring behind the net curtains. A shadowy figure leaves the living room and moves into the hallway. Any moment now I expect the usual expletives and half-hearted negotiations through the letterbox – but, incredibly, the door cracks open and she peers around the edge.
‘What do you want?’
‘It’s the ambulance,’ he says. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No of course I’m not all right.’
‘Well. Then. Can we come in and have a chat and see what the problem is?’
I half turn to go, but the door opens fully and Miranda says: ‘If you must.’
George looks at me, I look at him, and in that neutral little exchange there’s a great, psychic crashing of cymbals.
She leads us into her living room.
‘Sorry about the mess,’ she says, but the room has a measured tidiness, with magazines and papers and books forming regular margins of space that couldn’t happen by chance. Miranda takes up her position on a padded, high-backed chair, an orthopaedic throne within reach of a rack of remote controls, in front of a little plasma screen TV. There’s a DVD playing. Josh Groban in concert, singing with a curly haired sincerity that seems to be killing the audience. To the right of the TV is a sideboard of ceramic Arthur Rackham fairies, each one looking meticulously placed and dusted. Next to the sideboard is a stand of DVDs, each one concert footage, Bocelli, Bublé, Ball.
‘I want to die,’ she says.
George adjusts his glasses again and says, ‘Right.’
A scraggy black cat wanders into the room to investigate.
‘But I don’t want to waste your time.’
‘It’s no bother,’ he says, putting his clipboard to one side. ‘So what’s happened today? We were told you may have taken some pills.’
‘Temazepam. I just want to die.’
‘So how many temazepam did you take?’
She makes a vague gesture with her hand.
‘Not enough, obviously.’ Then she looks at him carefully. ‘You remind me of my son.’
‘Oh. That’s a good thing. Hopefully.’
‘He’s just like you. Big.’
‘And where’s your son now?’
‘Gone off and left me. Like all the others.’
‘Miranda? Would you mind if we checked you over? Did your blood pressure and that sort of thing?’
‘Do what you like. I don’t care.’
I get the kit out of the bag and start noting down the results. Alcohol fumes ripple off her like heat from a radiator. ‘How much have you had to drink today?’, I ask.
‘Not nearly enough.’
The cat noses around in the bag.
‘What’s your cat’s name?’
‘Atticus. Guess how old he is.’
‘Fourteen? Fifteen?’
‘He’s a hundred and twenty. Cat years.’
Atticus looks up at me as if to say I am, you know.
Miranda’s obs are fine.
George taps the board.
‘Look, Miranda,’ he says, ‘so far everything looks okay but obviously we’re very concerned. Not only that you’ve taken these pills – which may have a delayed effect – but also for the reason you took them.’
‘I’m not going to hospital. Last time I was there the security guard broke my jaw.’
‘Surely not.’
‘It’s true. He asked me to leave, punched me in the face and broke my jaw.’
‘Well I can guarantee that won’t happen this time.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Whatever sort of person would I be if someone told me they wanted to die, and I just turned around and left them? Mm?’
‘No. You can’t make me.’
There’s a brief stand-off. I cut in from another angle.
‘But didn’t you call the ambulance, Miranda?’
She turns to look at me. For a moment it looks like my intervention may have nixed the whole peace process. But before she flicks off the safety catch, George speaks up again.
‘Miranda? Who’s going to look after Atticus if you kill yourself?’
She turns back to him.
‘Have you got a cat?’ she says.
‘Yes. I have a twelve year old tabby.’
‘What’s she called?’
‘Kasha.’
‘Kasha?’
‘Yep. And two dogs.’
‘We used to have dogs. I couldn’t have them, now.’
‘So what are we going to do then, Miranda? Are you coming with us to the hospital?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen your doctor lately?’
‘He doesn’t want to see me.’
‘Don’t you have to see him at least to get your repeat prescription?’
‘He faxes it. He doesn’t want to see me anymore.’
‘Well – Miranda - if you won’t come to hospital, there’s nothing more we can do for you here. So if you’re absolutely sure you’re staying at home, I’ll just need you to sign my paperwork.’
‘I’m not signing anything.’
He shows her the board.
‘Will you sign?’
‘What – that you’re leaving me here to die?’
Josh Groban leans in to another ballad on the TV. She turns to look at him, folding her arms across her belly, the deep blue light of the screen reflecting in her glasses. Atticus rubs up against her leg but she doesn’t seem to notice it.
‘We’ll be going then.’
‘Suit yourself.’
We leave her sitting there, as fixed in her pose as any of the ceramic fairies on the sideboard.
Outside in the vehicle George finishes the paperwork, then gets on the phone to control to tell them everything that happened. Another crew pass us, waving and laughing and pointing. We all know it’ll probably be them sitting here tomorrow.
Monday, January 12, 2009
fore!
‘He’s walking funny. He’s got to be our man.’
‘I think he’s just drunk, Rae.’
‘Flash your lights.’
‘No. I honestly don’t think he’s the kiddie. If he is, why hasn’t he waved?’
‘Would you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Well – I don’t know – the golf ball stuck up his arse, for one.’
‘Who’s gonna know that?’
‘By the way he’s walking. D’uh.’
The front of the station is quiet, with a four in the morning, littery look to it. I slow down and give the man a meaningful stare, but he hobbles past without any sign, all his attention directed at staying upright, making progress.
‘Okay. So where’s our man, then?’
Rae gets back on the radio to tell them that we’ve made a couple of drive-bys of the area and not found any golfers in distress. Control says the man was a little vague and not terribly helpful, but they’ll ring him back to get a better location. I pull over and we wait.
‘So did they teach you much about fishing golf balls out of arses on the para course then, Rae?’
‘Yep. That was my most successful module. I got the golden plunger.’
‘Plunger? Too high spec for me. I like the old school, up to the elbow technique, like James Herriott.’
Control calls us back. Apparently our man is wandering up the road that runs along by the side of the station. He’ll flag us down.
I drive up that way, and half way along, opposite the great arched canopy of the station, we see a shadowy figure take a step into the road with one hand raised. I draw alongside. A curiously self-contained, drawn-out figure, with dark, razored stubble running unbroken from his head, round and down into a beard of the same length, he nods at us as we jump out of the cab, puts his mobile into his back pocket, then stands slightly stooped, perfectly still, studying the pavement.
‘So – what can we do for you?’
He looks up and to the side, and whispers something.
‘What? Sorry, I can’t quite hear.’
But instead of talking the man suddenly gives a little flap of his hand for us to follow him into the entrance of a block of flats. He pushes a button, and then smiles at us, raising his eyebrows with an awkward grimace, like we’re a group of strangers all waiting to use the same lift.
‘So – what’s been happening then?’ Rae asks him.
‘I – er – we were having sex tonight.’
‘Okay.’
‘And – er - we were using some golf balls, three – or…’ he looks up and to the right, moves his lips in a whispery little audit, then back down to the ground, then up again. ‘Yep, definitely three. Size 8s. And – er – only two came out.’
‘So it’s your partner who has a golf ball still inside?’
‘Yeah.’
The intercom crackles, and an angry sounding voice blasts out: Who the hell is this?
‘It’s me,’ says the man, quietly, his face pressed to the door. And then, as if he were checking for rot, he raps lightly a couple of times on the wood with a knuckle.
The door buzzes, he pushes it open and we follow him into a bare hallway with four doors and some concrete stairs leading up. The lock on the door straight ahead of us clunks, the door gets thrown open, and a man of about sixty years and two hundred and sixty pounds presents himself to us, rearing up like a walrus on some wild shore, a walrus dressed in a Tweety Pie t-shirt and no underpants, his pendulously fat penis swinging like a grotesque beast in a nest of silver wire. The man’s yardbrush moustache seems actually to vibrate, as he stands there shooting holes into us with his eyes and chuffing air through his nostrils.
‘What the fuck are you doing back here? And who are these people?’
‘We’re the ambulance,’ says Rae. ‘Can we come inside and have a quick chat?’
‘A quick chat? Who are these people? And what the fuck have you come back for?’
In the time it has taken the Walrus to take in the scene before him, the thin man has stepped up to the open door and insinuated himself half-way in, slope shouldered, like a dog that knows the risks.
‘Get out of my flat!’, the Walrus roars, grabbing him by the corner of his leather jacket. And then to us ‘Get him out of my flat! I don’t want him here!’
‘We’re not the police, we’re the ambulance…’
The thin man lifts his chin and says: ‘You have a golf ball inside you,’ then tries to move deeper into the flat.
‘A – what? A golf ball? Are you insane? What are you doing back here? And who are these people?’
Before we can say or do anything else, the walrus has grabbed the thin man round the neck and tried to tip him out of the flat. But the thin man spreads his legs and puts his arms out to be as awkward as possible. They stand there, wrestling ineffectually, whilst Rae says: ‘We’re just going to go outside and call the police, guys.’
We step outside, and the door closes behind us on sounds of crashing and swearing and shouting.
Ten minutes later the police arrive. We tell them what has happened so far.
‘A golf ball?’ says one of them, a policemen so young he must surely be a teenager on his way to a fancy dress party. ‘A golf ball?’
‘Well what kind of ball do you use?’
‘But a golf ball?’
His colleague steps up to the front door and presses the Walrus’ door button. It takes four or five goes before the intercom crackles alive.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s the police. Could you open up for us, please?’
There is a pause, and then the door is buzzed open.
We all troop into the hallway. The Walrus is standing at his front door as before, but this time he has a smart blue dressing gown tied securely around his waist.
‘What can I do for you, officer?’ he says.
‘The ambulance crew here tell us that a man reported you as having a – an injury. To your person. And that when you opened the door to him, you ended up having a fight. Is that correct?’
‘No.’
‘So that didn’t happen?’
‘Well – a man did come here. A friend of mine. And we had a disagreement, and some things got knocked over. But it’s all okay now, and everything’s calm, and as it should be, thank you.’
‘Can we just come in and reassure ourselves that everything is okay? We’ve been called, so we’ll need some details before we walk away.’
The Walrus pokes at us with his eyes as if he still can’t figure out who we are, then smiles at the policewoman again.
‘Of course. Come in – but just you two.’
‘Not the ambulance crew?’
‘No.’
‘So you don’t need any medical attention?’
‘Of course not. I have diabetes. But it’s under control.’
‘Something about a golf ball?’
‘A what? No. No – balls.’
He turns and leads the two police officers into his flat.
Before they disappear, the young policeman turns and gives us a wink. ‘We’ll take it from here, guys,’ he says. Then he taps the side of his nose, and treats us to a tiny little mime: Fore!
‘I think he’s just drunk, Rae.’
‘Flash your lights.’
‘No. I honestly don’t think he’s the kiddie. If he is, why hasn’t he waved?’
‘Would you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not? Well – I don’t know – the golf ball stuck up his arse, for one.’
‘Who’s gonna know that?’
‘By the way he’s walking. D’uh.’
The front of the station is quiet, with a four in the morning, littery look to it. I slow down and give the man a meaningful stare, but he hobbles past without any sign, all his attention directed at staying upright, making progress.
‘Okay. So where’s our man, then?’
Rae gets back on the radio to tell them that we’ve made a couple of drive-bys of the area and not found any golfers in distress. Control says the man was a little vague and not terribly helpful, but they’ll ring him back to get a better location. I pull over and we wait.
‘So did they teach you much about fishing golf balls out of arses on the para course then, Rae?’
‘Yep. That was my most successful module. I got the golden plunger.’
‘Plunger? Too high spec for me. I like the old school, up to the elbow technique, like James Herriott.’
Control calls us back. Apparently our man is wandering up the road that runs along by the side of the station. He’ll flag us down.
I drive up that way, and half way along, opposite the great arched canopy of the station, we see a shadowy figure take a step into the road with one hand raised. I draw alongside. A curiously self-contained, drawn-out figure, with dark, razored stubble running unbroken from his head, round and down into a beard of the same length, he nods at us as we jump out of the cab, puts his mobile into his back pocket, then stands slightly stooped, perfectly still, studying the pavement.
‘So – what can we do for you?’
He looks up and to the side, and whispers something.
‘What? Sorry, I can’t quite hear.’
But instead of talking the man suddenly gives a little flap of his hand for us to follow him into the entrance of a block of flats. He pushes a button, and then smiles at us, raising his eyebrows with an awkward grimace, like we’re a group of strangers all waiting to use the same lift.
‘So – what’s been happening then?’ Rae asks him.
‘I – er – we were having sex tonight.’
‘Okay.’
‘And – er - we were using some golf balls, three – or…’ he looks up and to the right, moves his lips in a whispery little audit, then back down to the ground, then up again. ‘Yep, definitely three. Size 8s. And – er – only two came out.’
‘So it’s your partner who has a golf ball still inside?’
‘Yeah.’
The intercom crackles, and an angry sounding voice blasts out: Who the hell is this?
‘It’s me,’ says the man, quietly, his face pressed to the door. And then, as if he were checking for rot, he raps lightly a couple of times on the wood with a knuckle.
The door buzzes, he pushes it open and we follow him into a bare hallway with four doors and some concrete stairs leading up. The lock on the door straight ahead of us clunks, the door gets thrown open, and a man of about sixty years and two hundred and sixty pounds presents himself to us, rearing up like a walrus on some wild shore, a walrus dressed in a Tweety Pie t-shirt and no underpants, his pendulously fat penis swinging like a grotesque beast in a nest of silver wire. The man’s yardbrush moustache seems actually to vibrate, as he stands there shooting holes into us with his eyes and chuffing air through his nostrils.
‘What the fuck are you doing back here? And who are these people?’
‘We’re the ambulance,’ says Rae. ‘Can we come inside and have a quick chat?’
‘A quick chat? Who are these people? And what the fuck have you come back for?’
In the time it has taken the Walrus to take in the scene before him, the thin man has stepped up to the open door and insinuated himself half-way in, slope shouldered, like a dog that knows the risks.
‘Get out of my flat!’, the Walrus roars, grabbing him by the corner of his leather jacket. And then to us ‘Get him out of my flat! I don’t want him here!’
‘We’re not the police, we’re the ambulance…’
The thin man lifts his chin and says: ‘You have a golf ball inside you,’ then tries to move deeper into the flat.
‘A – what? A golf ball? Are you insane? What are you doing back here? And who are these people?’
Before we can say or do anything else, the walrus has grabbed the thin man round the neck and tried to tip him out of the flat. But the thin man spreads his legs and puts his arms out to be as awkward as possible. They stand there, wrestling ineffectually, whilst Rae says: ‘We’re just going to go outside and call the police, guys.’
We step outside, and the door closes behind us on sounds of crashing and swearing and shouting.
Ten minutes later the police arrive. We tell them what has happened so far.
‘A golf ball?’ says one of them, a policemen so young he must surely be a teenager on his way to a fancy dress party. ‘A golf ball?’
‘Well what kind of ball do you use?’
‘But a golf ball?’
His colleague steps up to the front door and presses the Walrus’ door button. It takes four or five goes before the intercom crackles alive.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s the police. Could you open up for us, please?’
There is a pause, and then the door is buzzed open.
We all troop into the hallway. The Walrus is standing at his front door as before, but this time he has a smart blue dressing gown tied securely around his waist.
‘What can I do for you, officer?’ he says.
‘The ambulance crew here tell us that a man reported you as having a – an injury. To your person. And that when you opened the door to him, you ended up having a fight. Is that correct?’
‘No.’
‘So that didn’t happen?’
‘Well – a man did come here. A friend of mine. And we had a disagreement, and some things got knocked over. But it’s all okay now, and everything’s calm, and as it should be, thank you.’
‘Can we just come in and reassure ourselves that everything is okay? We’ve been called, so we’ll need some details before we walk away.’
The Walrus pokes at us with his eyes as if he still can’t figure out who we are, then smiles at the policewoman again.
‘Of course. Come in – but just you two.’
‘Not the ambulance crew?’
‘No.’
‘So you don’t need any medical attention?’
‘Of course not. I have diabetes. But it’s under control.’
‘Something about a golf ball?’
‘A what? No. No – balls.’
He turns and leads the two police officers into his flat.
Before they disappear, the young policeman turns and gives us a wink. ‘We’ll take it from here, guys,’ he says. Then he taps the side of his nose, and treats us to a tiny little mime: Fore!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
the lodger
The police car sits like a scandal outside number thirty seven, a tall, doll’s house residence as perfectly turned out as any of its neighbours. There are two policemen and two women on the chequerboard path leading up to the front door, standing as a square four at the end of a line of carefully clipped box. One of the women – a bearish figure in a dark fur jacket against which her face looks like a fresh batch of dough - steps forward.
‘Let me fill you in. Giles is really very unwell. He simply has to go to hospital. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, I can’t afford not to. He’s an alcoholic. He’s been drinking non-stop for a week. He has ulcers on his legs and they’re infected. He’s desperately sick and not taking any of his medications. He saw the practice nurse three weeks ago and that’s it. The smell’s unbearable. He’s been aggressive to me and I can’t cope. I’ve done my best but I’ve run out of energy. I simply have to go to work tomorrow and there’s no way he can stay here on his own. You have to take him with you.’
‘Okay. Sorry – are you a relative?’
‘My name’s Ferdie. And no, I’m not a relative. Giles is staying here as my guest. He’s been here for three years.’
‘And can I ask – how aggressive has he been?’
One of the policemen tells me that they came in response to Ferdie’s call. The address isn’t tagged. As far as they can make out it was verbal aggression only; no violence, and the patient is calm at the moment.
‘Shall I go up and have a word with Giles then?’
‘Yes. Please. Top of the stairs, straight ahead. Just follow your nose, really.’
We step past them through a lead-lit doorway into what feels like a home improvements show: I can hear the anodyne jazz-funk soundtrack, and the modulated voiceover guiding us through the light and tastefully appointed hallway with its stripped pine floor and rich Persian runners leading the eye naturally into a reception area of comfortable conversational nooks. Here, stylish modern artworks rub up against a modest but intriguing selection of antique ceramics and pierced carvings, all of which lend a touch of opulence to this fantastic reception area, perfect for those vivacious meet-and-greets, as well as a private chill-zone for when the kitchen-diner becomes just too starry and loud.
A wide stairway takes us up onto a landing where there is a note lying on the floor outside a closed door. Scrawled on the back of an envelope: Please let’s not fight about this any more. Leave me to take care of myself. I’m going out later. We’ll talk when I get back. Giles x
I knock on the door.
‘Giles? It’s the ambulance. Can we come in?’
‘Yes of course. Please excuse the mess.’
I push open the door, but it only opens a little way. I look round it.
Giles is sitting on a two-seater sofa beneath the only window in a small, square room. A portable TV is off to his right on a plain wooden bookcase: on, with the volume right down and the colour up high. The door is stuck because the entire left side of the room is piled high with a great heap of discarded stuff – mostly books, DVD cases, clothes – as if the contents of all the drawers and bookcases and wardrobes in the house had been emptied into this room and then pushed up into an unsifted heap by a small bulldozer. Giles only has enough room on the sofa to lie down with his legs crooked up; every other available space is given over to trash. And lying over everything, as palpably as a mist over a swamp, the cloying odour of ulcerated flesh.
‘My name’s Spence,’ I say, as brightly as I can manage. ‘Do you mind if I come in and have a chat, take your blood pressure, that kind of thing? Ferdie’s a bit worried about you.’
‘No. Please do. Look. I know she’s worried about me, but honestly, it’s all in hand. I’m responsible for my own care. I know exactly what I’m doing – sorry if I appear rude, but probably much better than you or anyone. I’ll admit I’ve been a bit careless lately what with one thing and another. But I’m going to get myself cleaned up today and get myself down to the practice nurse tomorrow.’
He has exactly the voice that I imagined for the TV voiceover – blandly modulated, conscious of the appropriate intonations, entirely unconvincing.
‘Well let’s just see where we are now and take it from there,’ I tell him, looking for a reasonably flat surface to put the bag and board down. There’s no room for Rae to come in. She goes back down to talk to Ferdie and the police.
Giles sits neutrally on the sofa, his crazy, peppery black hair sticking out like a chimney sweep’s brush, and his teeth as grey as if he’d been snacking on ash. Both his legs are bandaged from knee to feet in thick swathes of dirty bandages. Rank fluid has seeped through both at the heel and instep, spreading out in flowerings of black and brown. I take his baseline obs, and they all come back fine.
‘That all seems okay, Giles, but it hardly needs me to say that your legs need attention,’ I tell him, folding away my stethoscope. ‘You’re absolutely right – I’m no expert. But these dressings haven’t been changed for awhile and there’s a bad smell in here. You must know you’re at risk of developing an infection – if you haven’t got one already. As soon as one takes hold, it can make you dangerously unwell very quickly. I really must insist that you come with us to hospital.’
‘Well, that’s awfully good of you, and I do very much appreciate you taking the trouble to come out here to see me like this. However, I reiterate. I am responsible for my own treatment. I’ve been a bit slack lately, I’ll admit, but that’s all going to change. I just need some time to myself to get things in hand, then I’ll be fine. I’m seeing the practice nurse tomorrow. So thank you, but I will not be travelling with you to hospital today.’
‘Okay, Giles. But if you won’t do it for me, will you come with us for Ferdie’s sake? She’s very upset about things at the moment. She’s worried about you and she wants to know you’re okay. Won’t you come with us to hospital just to set her mind at rest?’
‘Sorry but no. I’ll square things with Ferdie, don’t worry. That’s all I have to say.’
I leave the room and rejoin Rae and Ferdie downstairs.
‘There’s been a development,’ says Rae. Ferdie hooks some loose strands of hair behind her ear, closes her eyes as if she’s disclosing a grave confidence, tells me Giles has been stealing from her.
‘Somehow he got the pin number for my credit card and maxed it out. Cash from my purse, too. I know it’s his addiction to alcohol fuelling all this, but I just feel like I’ve reached the end of my tether.’
We try to persuade Ferdie to make a formal accusation of theft to the police so they can arrest Giles. ‘At least that way we can start to get him the help he needs. It’s more than just his legs, Ferdie, even though they need the most urgent care. He needs a thorough-going health assessment, for his drinking, his mental health. His living conditions up there aren’t good.’
‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘But I just couldn’t bear to do that to him. I couldn’t bear to have him arrested, to think of him lying in some cell somewhere.’
‘But as things stand, we can’t simply frogmarch him out of the house and into hospital, Ferdie. That would take a Section order, and I’m not sure he’s quite there yet.’
‘No.’
‘So do you want the police to arrest him for stealing from you?’
‘No. I couldn’t.’
‘Well then. He’s refused to come to hospital, so all we can do is report what we’ve found to our Control. But if anything changes, call us again.’
‘Thank you so much for coming.’ She shakes our hands, and the blue enamelled bracelets jangle round her wrist.
The second woman steps forward to shake our hands, too. Her sister? Neighbour? Whoever she is, she seems relaxed, radiantly content, beautifully framed as she is by the tapestry hanging behind her on the wall, a flock of doves on a pale winter oak.
‘Let me fill you in. Giles is really very unwell. He simply has to go to hospital. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, I can’t afford not to. He’s an alcoholic. He’s been drinking non-stop for a week. He has ulcers on his legs and they’re infected. He’s desperately sick and not taking any of his medications. He saw the practice nurse three weeks ago and that’s it. The smell’s unbearable. He’s been aggressive to me and I can’t cope. I’ve done my best but I’ve run out of energy. I simply have to go to work tomorrow and there’s no way he can stay here on his own. You have to take him with you.’
‘Okay. Sorry – are you a relative?’
‘My name’s Ferdie. And no, I’m not a relative. Giles is staying here as my guest. He’s been here for three years.’
‘And can I ask – how aggressive has he been?’
One of the policemen tells me that they came in response to Ferdie’s call. The address isn’t tagged. As far as they can make out it was verbal aggression only; no violence, and the patient is calm at the moment.
‘Shall I go up and have a word with Giles then?’
‘Yes. Please. Top of the stairs, straight ahead. Just follow your nose, really.’
We step past them through a lead-lit doorway into what feels like a home improvements show: I can hear the anodyne jazz-funk soundtrack, and the modulated voiceover guiding us through the light and tastefully appointed hallway with its stripped pine floor and rich Persian runners leading the eye naturally into a reception area of comfortable conversational nooks. Here, stylish modern artworks rub up against a modest but intriguing selection of antique ceramics and pierced carvings, all of which lend a touch of opulence to this fantastic reception area, perfect for those vivacious meet-and-greets, as well as a private chill-zone for when the kitchen-diner becomes just too starry and loud.
A wide stairway takes us up onto a landing where there is a note lying on the floor outside a closed door. Scrawled on the back of an envelope: Please let’s not fight about this any more. Leave me to take care of myself. I’m going out later. We’ll talk when I get back. Giles x
I knock on the door.
‘Giles? It’s the ambulance. Can we come in?’
‘Yes of course. Please excuse the mess.’
I push open the door, but it only opens a little way. I look round it.
Giles is sitting on a two-seater sofa beneath the only window in a small, square room. A portable TV is off to his right on a plain wooden bookcase: on, with the volume right down and the colour up high. The door is stuck because the entire left side of the room is piled high with a great heap of discarded stuff – mostly books, DVD cases, clothes – as if the contents of all the drawers and bookcases and wardrobes in the house had been emptied into this room and then pushed up into an unsifted heap by a small bulldozer. Giles only has enough room on the sofa to lie down with his legs crooked up; every other available space is given over to trash. And lying over everything, as palpably as a mist over a swamp, the cloying odour of ulcerated flesh.
‘My name’s Spence,’ I say, as brightly as I can manage. ‘Do you mind if I come in and have a chat, take your blood pressure, that kind of thing? Ferdie’s a bit worried about you.’
‘No. Please do. Look. I know she’s worried about me, but honestly, it’s all in hand. I’m responsible for my own care. I know exactly what I’m doing – sorry if I appear rude, but probably much better than you or anyone. I’ll admit I’ve been a bit careless lately what with one thing and another. But I’m going to get myself cleaned up today and get myself down to the practice nurse tomorrow.’
He has exactly the voice that I imagined for the TV voiceover – blandly modulated, conscious of the appropriate intonations, entirely unconvincing.
‘Well let’s just see where we are now and take it from there,’ I tell him, looking for a reasonably flat surface to put the bag and board down. There’s no room for Rae to come in. She goes back down to talk to Ferdie and the police.
Giles sits neutrally on the sofa, his crazy, peppery black hair sticking out like a chimney sweep’s brush, and his teeth as grey as if he’d been snacking on ash. Both his legs are bandaged from knee to feet in thick swathes of dirty bandages. Rank fluid has seeped through both at the heel and instep, spreading out in flowerings of black and brown. I take his baseline obs, and they all come back fine.
‘That all seems okay, Giles, but it hardly needs me to say that your legs need attention,’ I tell him, folding away my stethoscope. ‘You’re absolutely right – I’m no expert. But these dressings haven’t been changed for awhile and there’s a bad smell in here. You must know you’re at risk of developing an infection – if you haven’t got one already. As soon as one takes hold, it can make you dangerously unwell very quickly. I really must insist that you come with us to hospital.’
‘Well, that’s awfully good of you, and I do very much appreciate you taking the trouble to come out here to see me like this. However, I reiterate. I am responsible for my own treatment. I’ve been a bit slack lately, I’ll admit, but that’s all going to change. I just need some time to myself to get things in hand, then I’ll be fine. I’m seeing the practice nurse tomorrow. So thank you, but I will not be travelling with you to hospital today.’
‘Okay, Giles. But if you won’t do it for me, will you come with us for Ferdie’s sake? She’s very upset about things at the moment. She’s worried about you and she wants to know you’re okay. Won’t you come with us to hospital just to set her mind at rest?’
‘Sorry but no. I’ll square things with Ferdie, don’t worry. That’s all I have to say.’
I leave the room and rejoin Rae and Ferdie downstairs.
‘There’s been a development,’ says Rae. Ferdie hooks some loose strands of hair behind her ear, closes her eyes as if she’s disclosing a grave confidence, tells me Giles has been stealing from her.
‘Somehow he got the pin number for my credit card and maxed it out. Cash from my purse, too. I know it’s his addiction to alcohol fuelling all this, but I just feel like I’ve reached the end of my tether.’
We try to persuade Ferdie to make a formal accusation of theft to the police so they can arrest Giles. ‘At least that way we can start to get him the help he needs. It’s more than just his legs, Ferdie, even though they need the most urgent care. He needs a thorough-going health assessment, for his drinking, his mental health. His living conditions up there aren’t good.’
‘I know,’ she sighs. ‘But I just couldn’t bear to do that to him. I couldn’t bear to have him arrested, to think of him lying in some cell somewhere.’
‘But as things stand, we can’t simply frogmarch him out of the house and into hospital, Ferdie. That would take a Section order, and I’m not sure he’s quite there yet.’
‘No.’
‘So do you want the police to arrest him for stealing from you?’
‘No. I couldn’t.’
‘Well then. He’s refused to come to hospital, so all we can do is report what we’ve found to our Control. But if anything changes, call us again.’
‘Thank you so much for coming.’ She shakes our hands, and the blue enamelled bracelets jangle round her wrist.
The second woman steps forward to shake our hands, too. Her sister? Neighbour? Whoever she is, she seems relaxed, radiantly content, beautifully framed as she is by the tapestry hanging behind her on the wall, a flock of doves on a pale winter oak.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
incident at the mountain view
The Mountain View Hotel should be better than this.
The Mountain View Hotel should be made of pine and glass and quarried stone, be up on stilts, have a great sloping roof dressed in snow, have a balcony holding colonies of expensively casual people sipping glühwein and basking in the brilliant sight of each other behind wrap-around shades.
It should at least have a view of the mountains.
It needs renaming. The Poor Outlook, maybe. The Dim View. A tall, thin building, so shabby you might put its thinness down to malnutrition and neglect. Stuffed into the shadowy top right corner of a not-so-nice square, shielded from all but the highest and fiercest mid-summer sunlight, it’s a roost so bleak even the seagulls and starlings leave it alone.
We’re bluing our way through town to get to The Mountain View and a resident who has suffered a cardiac arrest. A crew is approaching from the other end of town; we meet at the entrance to the square, the others decide to drive the wrong way round it, so we meet nose to nose outside the hotel’s discrete front door.
A woman is standing there, waiting to let us in. She has her arms folded across her chest, and stamps her feet on the icy pavement. From the cab she looks dressed for a party, in a low-cut red silk dress and a sparkly cardigan; her long straight hair shining like yellow nylon. Up close, and the effect is slightly different. Her teeth are greyed with cigarette smoke. The makeup is thick. The hair’s a wig.
‘He’s right at the top,’ she says.
There’s one of those awkward little shuffles between Frank and the woman, when they both go forward together, then both hold back.
‘After you, love,’ he says, gesturing forward with a big hand, ‘You know where you’re going.’
‘Sorry there’s no lift,’ she says.
She leads our galumphing troupe up the narrow staircase.
Just as the building has not - never will have – a view of the mountains, it is not, and probably never will be, a hotel. It should more properly be called a hostel. Each landing has a bathroom and toilet, servicing three rooms. The woman leads us up five flights, arriving on a landing that has just two rooms and no bathroom.
‘We hadn’t seen Jed for a day or so, and we wondered if he was all right. I had a key to his room, so I came and had a look. Found him on the floor like you’ll see. I think he’s dead. I know he’s dead. But you’ll see.’
She reaches forward with her key.
‘Have you got a torch? Only there’s no power on in the flat. Jed had to top up his key at the post office, but I don’t think he’d done it for a while. It’s freezing in there. That’s what probably killed him.’
She opens the door. The light from the landing spills around and over us into the room, illuminating the facing wall and a spread of twenty or so baseball hats hung all over it, an unmade bed beneath them, a calor gas fire, and the body of a man curled around it. He is lying on his back, his legs drawn up, his mouth gaping open. His skin has a dull and waxy tinge, as devoid of human warmth as the air in this freezing black box of a room.
‘He is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘I thought he was.’
‘When did you find him like this?’
‘About an hour ago.’
Frank raises his eyebrows.
‘An hour? If you don’t mind me asking – why the delay?’
‘Oh. Well. We didn’t know who to ring. Police? Ambulance? Relatives? We just didn’t know.’
She pauses and looks between us.
‘Did I do wrong?’
‘No, no. It’s just we need to be clear about the sequence of events. Who else was with you?’
‘Jack, another one of Jed’s friends.’
‘And where’s Jack now?’
‘He’s gone downstairs to get some fresh air. Look – did I do wrong or something?’
‘Don’t worry. We just need to be clear, that’s all.’
As the second crew, we’re no longer needed here. Frank asks us if we’ll take a couple of bags back down to the vehicle for them. The woman nods and gives us a terse smile as we pass.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I say. She nods again.
As we reach the lobby the front door opens and a short, red-faced man puffs his way inside, alcohol fumes swirling around him like an invisible cloak. When he sees us he performs an oddly vaudevillian gesture of surprise, leaning back against the door, his arms crooked, his fists balled up to his mouth.
‘Aargh!’ he says. ‘You’ve seen him I take it!’
‘Do you mean Jed?’
‘Yes. Jed. Is he – ?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid he is. Dead.’
‘Aargh!’
‘I’m sorry. Are you okay? Are you going to be all right?’
He suddenly takes a staggering step towards us, straightening his arms down by his side but keeping his fists tight.
‘That bastard landlord!’ he shouts, jerking his fists down at the floor with each phrase. ‘The bastard! He did this! He froze him out! He killed Jed!’
‘Try to calm yourself…’
‘Take pictures! I want you to take pictures! I want the police here. This is terrible.’
Then, just as suddenly, he seems to run aground. He relaxes his fists, pulls out a filthy handkerchief and pats it across his forehead.
‘I don’t know. I’m terribly sorry. It’s been something of a shock. Jed was such a nice man. A nice, gentle man. He shouldn’t have gone like this. It’s so unfair. But of course it’s not you I blame.’
He stuffs the handkerchief back in his pocket, then stands in front of us, waiting for some kind of direction, blinking under the harsh fluorescent strip.
The Mountain View Hotel should be made of pine and glass and quarried stone, be up on stilts, have a great sloping roof dressed in snow, have a balcony holding colonies of expensively casual people sipping glühwein and basking in the brilliant sight of each other behind wrap-around shades.
It should at least have a view of the mountains.
It needs renaming. The Poor Outlook, maybe. The Dim View. A tall, thin building, so shabby you might put its thinness down to malnutrition and neglect. Stuffed into the shadowy top right corner of a not-so-nice square, shielded from all but the highest and fiercest mid-summer sunlight, it’s a roost so bleak even the seagulls and starlings leave it alone.
We’re bluing our way through town to get to The Mountain View and a resident who has suffered a cardiac arrest. A crew is approaching from the other end of town; we meet at the entrance to the square, the others decide to drive the wrong way round it, so we meet nose to nose outside the hotel’s discrete front door.
A woman is standing there, waiting to let us in. She has her arms folded across her chest, and stamps her feet on the icy pavement. From the cab she looks dressed for a party, in a low-cut red silk dress and a sparkly cardigan; her long straight hair shining like yellow nylon. Up close, and the effect is slightly different. Her teeth are greyed with cigarette smoke. The makeup is thick. The hair’s a wig.
‘He’s right at the top,’ she says.
There’s one of those awkward little shuffles between Frank and the woman, when they both go forward together, then both hold back.
‘After you, love,’ he says, gesturing forward with a big hand, ‘You know where you’re going.’
‘Sorry there’s no lift,’ she says.
She leads our galumphing troupe up the narrow staircase.
Just as the building has not - never will have – a view of the mountains, it is not, and probably never will be, a hotel. It should more properly be called a hostel. Each landing has a bathroom and toilet, servicing three rooms. The woman leads us up five flights, arriving on a landing that has just two rooms and no bathroom.
‘We hadn’t seen Jed for a day or so, and we wondered if he was all right. I had a key to his room, so I came and had a look. Found him on the floor like you’ll see. I think he’s dead. I know he’s dead. But you’ll see.’
She reaches forward with her key.
‘Have you got a torch? Only there’s no power on in the flat. Jed had to top up his key at the post office, but I don’t think he’d done it for a while. It’s freezing in there. That’s what probably killed him.’
She opens the door. The light from the landing spills around and over us into the room, illuminating the facing wall and a spread of twenty or so baseball hats hung all over it, an unmade bed beneath them, a calor gas fire, and the body of a man curled around it. He is lying on his back, his legs drawn up, his mouth gaping open. His skin has a dull and waxy tinge, as devoid of human warmth as the air in this freezing black box of a room.
‘He is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘I thought he was.’
‘When did you find him like this?’
‘About an hour ago.’
Frank raises his eyebrows.
‘An hour? If you don’t mind me asking – why the delay?’
‘Oh. Well. We didn’t know who to ring. Police? Ambulance? Relatives? We just didn’t know.’
She pauses and looks between us.
‘Did I do wrong?’
‘No, no. It’s just we need to be clear about the sequence of events. Who else was with you?’
‘Jack, another one of Jed’s friends.’
‘And where’s Jack now?’
‘He’s gone downstairs to get some fresh air. Look – did I do wrong or something?’
‘Don’t worry. We just need to be clear, that’s all.’
As the second crew, we’re no longer needed here. Frank asks us if we’ll take a couple of bags back down to the vehicle for them. The woman nods and gives us a terse smile as we pass.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I say. She nods again.
As we reach the lobby the front door opens and a short, red-faced man puffs his way inside, alcohol fumes swirling around him like an invisible cloak. When he sees us he performs an oddly vaudevillian gesture of surprise, leaning back against the door, his arms crooked, his fists balled up to his mouth.
‘Aargh!’ he says. ‘You’ve seen him I take it!’
‘Do you mean Jed?’
‘Yes. Jed. Is he – ?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid he is. Dead.’
‘Aargh!’
‘I’m sorry. Are you okay? Are you going to be all right?’
He suddenly takes a staggering step towards us, straightening his arms down by his side but keeping his fists tight.
‘That bastard landlord!’ he shouts, jerking his fists down at the floor with each phrase. ‘The bastard! He did this! He froze him out! He killed Jed!’
‘Try to calm yourself…’
‘Take pictures! I want you to take pictures! I want the police here. This is terrible.’
Then, just as suddenly, he seems to run aground. He relaxes his fists, pulls out a filthy handkerchief and pats it across his forehead.
‘I don’t know. I’m terribly sorry. It’s been something of a shock. Jed was such a nice man. A nice, gentle man. He shouldn’t have gone like this. It’s so unfair. But of course it’s not you I blame.’
He stuffs the handkerchief back in his pocket, then stands in front of us, waiting for some kind of direction, blinking under the harsh fluorescent strip.
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