We’ve been told that an ambulance car will be making a first on this severe respiratory distress. The satnav blue-lines us into a wide avenue and there we see it double parked a way up ahead, blue lights flashing. I drive up, park behind it, we climb out of the cab and go up to the front door of a detached Georgian house, its front garden built for speed with an unkempt clump of ornamental grass and a dump of slate chippings. The rack of buzzers by the battered front door testifies to the minute sectioning of this place into flats. The building has an air of slow, expedient ruin about it, like some grand family falling through hard times and scandals to a pragmatic accommodation with the modern age.
We are buzzed in to a musty hallway, original black and white tiling jarring with the notice board, fire extinguisher, alarm console and the casual scattering of letters above the radiator. With all the health & safety notices, contact numbers and house rules pinned up everywhere, it looks as if this may be some kind of hostel, but it’s not one either of us has been to before. We go up the stairs and in through the door marked ‘3’.
We step into a rancid atmosphere of nicotine and old sweat, and then: ‘Hello chaps,’ says Ray, the paramedic. He is standing with his stethoscope draped around his shoulders, his legs spread like a compass, scribbling observations down on his clipboard. Slumped on the bed in front of him is a half-naked young man who would not be out of place chesting walruses on an ice flow. His swollen breasts hang across his belly, a great, veined appendage that pushes his arms and legs apart and makes him look in danger of exploding. He raises a padded hand to stroke his Fu-Manchu beard, and nods at us.
‘More troops’ he says.
‘This is Henry,’ says Ray. ‘Henry has had a bit of chest infection for the past few days. Hasn’t seen his doctor, felt worse today, called us in. As you can see, he’s talking in complete sentences, his sats are fine, no chest pain or anything like that, I’ve listened to his chest, it seems clear, but Henry says he’d like to get some expert advice on all this. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to stand you down.’
Ray is brisk, with a kind of deadly clarity that only Henry seems impervious to.
‘And I can reassure you that he’s walking out to the vehicle.’
‘I’m sorry to call you people out,’ says Henry, starting to gather the vast black acreage of his t-shirt to him. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
We take in the bedsit whilst Ray finishes off the paperwork.
‘Are these your paintings?’ Rae asks Henry, nodding at the canvases brutally nailed to the walls. Each one is roughly covered with a smear of yellow, red and brown acrylic paint.
‘Yep. They’re my dreams.’
At one side of the room, opposite the kitchen with its nightmarish dump of dirty pans and pizza boxes, propped up casually against an old Laney amp, is a Gibson Les Paul guitar. Its beautiful, bright cherry finish is even more striking for the awfulness of its surroundings.
‘You play guitar?’ says Rae.
Henry half closes his eyes. ‘A little.’ He begins hauling the t-shirt over his head.
Above the guitar, on a cleanly swept, little blue votive shelf, there is a clip frame: a photo of Carlos Santana.
***
Later that night – one sprained ankle, one hyperventilation, one threatened suicide, one imminent birth and one collapse query cause later - I’m wheeling the trolley back outside to the ambulance when I notice a little grey triangle of plastic on the tarmac.
I nudge it with my boot. Unmistakable. A plectrum.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
routines
I knock on the door. A dog barks, a door somewhere deep inside the house is opened and then slammed shut; the barking is muted.
An elderly woman with a face as white as her apron opens the front door.
‘He’s upstairs’ she gasps, then stands aside.
We haul up the narrow stairwell with all our bags, and meet a young guy on the landing at the top.
‘I did what I could’ he says. ‘Grandad’s in the bedroom’
It’s a small room. His grandfather is lying on his back in the space between the bed and the wall. Rae pushes the bed as far over to one side as she can. I kneel down next to the patient. No breathing, no pulse. His face is a congested blue, but his body is still warm. I start chest compressions whilst Rae gets out the defib pads. For a second I wonder what’s causing the sharp pain in the palm of my right hand, then I realise that the patient has a staple in the middle of his sternum. I ask Rae to chuck me a gauze pad. When I take my hands off his chest to put the pad there, my rubber glove hangs in tatters from my hand.
A second crew arrives to help out.
---
The resus lasts an hour and twelve minutes. We manage a few shocks right at the beginning, but despite everything we do, the patient drifts away from us along a path of non-shockable rhythms to asystole.
Kerry, one of the supporting crew, goes downstairs to tell the patient’s wife that he has died. After a brief pause we hear a dreadful shrieking moan, and then a flurry of low voices. The dog starts barking again but then just as suddenly falls silent.
The three of us remaining upstairs pick the patient up, put him back to bed and make him presentable. Then we start tidying the room.
I take the resus bag from where it was thrown into the dog basket lying at the foot of the bed and pack the defib away. I open a clinical waste bag and we toss into it all the empty adrenaline phials, pads, caps, swabs, BVM – all the great clutter of stuff that accompanies a resus.
I notice a small whiteboard by the side of the bed. Along the top half of the board is a daily exercise routine written out in blue; some of the words are written in capital letters, some of them have next to them little hand-drawn stars and asterisks. The bottom half of the whiteboard is dedicated to important dates for the rest of the year. December has ‘The Wizard of Oz’, underlined twice, and an exclamation mark.
On the way out of the house we pass by the grandson again who holds the door open for us and thanks us for coming. A large man with silvered hair and a mouth so thin it could have been drawn with a sharp pencil, stands to one side, staring at us. I say to both of them how sorry I am. The grandson closes his eyes and nods. The silver haired man clears his throat, and I hesitate, expecting him to say something. But he remains as impassive as before, so I shoulder my bag, say goodbye and leave.
An elderly woman with a face as white as her apron opens the front door.
‘He’s upstairs’ she gasps, then stands aside.
We haul up the narrow stairwell with all our bags, and meet a young guy on the landing at the top.
‘I did what I could’ he says. ‘Grandad’s in the bedroom’
It’s a small room. His grandfather is lying on his back in the space between the bed and the wall. Rae pushes the bed as far over to one side as she can. I kneel down next to the patient. No breathing, no pulse. His face is a congested blue, but his body is still warm. I start chest compressions whilst Rae gets out the defib pads. For a second I wonder what’s causing the sharp pain in the palm of my right hand, then I realise that the patient has a staple in the middle of his sternum. I ask Rae to chuck me a gauze pad. When I take my hands off his chest to put the pad there, my rubber glove hangs in tatters from my hand.
A second crew arrives to help out.
---
The resus lasts an hour and twelve minutes. We manage a few shocks right at the beginning, but despite everything we do, the patient drifts away from us along a path of non-shockable rhythms to asystole.
Kerry, one of the supporting crew, goes downstairs to tell the patient’s wife that he has died. After a brief pause we hear a dreadful shrieking moan, and then a flurry of low voices. The dog starts barking again but then just as suddenly falls silent.
The three of us remaining upstairs pick the patient up, put him back to bed and make him presentable. Then we start tidying the room.
I take the resus bag from where it was thrown into the dog basket lying at the foot of the bed and pack the defib away. I open a clinical waste bag and we toss into it all the empty adrenaline phials, pads, caps, swabs, BVM – all the great clutter of stuff that accompanies a resus.
I notice a small whiteboard by the side of the bed. Along the top half of the board is a daily exercise routine written out in blue; some of the words are written in capital letters, some of them have next to them little hand-drawn stars and asterisks. The bottom half of the whiteboard is dedicated to important dates for the rest of the year. December has ‘The Wizard of Oz’, underlined twice, and an exclamation mark.
On the way out of the house we pass by the grandson again who holds the door open for us and thanks us for coming. A large man with silvered hair and a mouth so thin it could have been drawn with a sharp pencil, stands to one side, staring at us. I say to both of them how sorry I am. The grandson closes his eyes and nods. The silver haired man clears his throat, and I hesitate, expecting him to say something. But he remains as impassive as before, so I shoulder my bag, say goodbye and leave.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Gary
Gail is lying on her back on a boat-sized, brown twill sofa. As soon as we come through the door we can see that her left hip is dislocated; her leg shows the classic signs of shortening and rotation. She raises a smile and puts her left hand up in the air. Her husband Frank has shown us in, only interrupting his meandering description of the night’s events to take a pull on his cigarette. Frank has a face as red and slack as his tracksuit. His rheumy eyes check us slantways, and his chin is scrubby with the kind of perma-stubble you see in e-fit pictures.
‘To be frank with you – like I have to – it’s my name – hurgh - don’t worry, I’m always like this, I’ve had a bit to drink, it’s the weekend, so sue me. But hey – if you can’t have a little something now and again, well, what’s the world come to? Hurgh. Anyway, to be absolutely and perfectly honest with you, because there’s no point in lying about this stuff, hey? I mean, mate, we’re all adults. You’ve got a job to do. You need to know all the facts. And fucking hell, I mean, who’s hurting who? Hey?’
His mobile phone rings – the twangy guitar from James Bond.
‘Shit. Sorry. Gary? Yeah, mate. Yeah. The paramedics are here. They’re going to work on her now. Mate – I’ll call you back. No, mate. No. I’ll call you back.’
I take advantage of the interruption to say hello to Gail properly and take in the place. For the first time I notice that the walls are hung with dozens of small clip-frames. Hypercoloured photos, confusing at first, but then with a lurch seeing that they are of women – a woman – Gail – naked, in suspenders, or extravagantly zippered outfits, posing with a shadowy host of others, a Polaroid exhibition of proffered breasts, mouths, throats. In the whole room there is only one non-sexual photo, still of Gail – a crinkled up school photo, a little girl smiling demurely against a background of eggshell blue. Unframed, it is propped up against the DVD player.
Gail looks up at us from the sofa, a frail looking woman in her mid forties, pale freckled face and ginger hair. She is wearing pyjama shorts and a flowery t-shirt.
Frank clips his mobile shut and follows us over.
‘Gary’s such a twat. I don’t know. I suppose he has his uses. Hurgh. Anyway – I’ve dressed her for you, mate. Couldn’t have you seeing her in all her gear. Not that we care. Give you all a thrill. Well – you, maybe. Maybe not you (looking at Rae). Or maybe - yeah?’ He gives her a pouchy smirk, then blows out another litre or two of smoke.
‘It half killed her, mind. But she’s a brave girl – hey? Has to be, living with me.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Gail says, her voice dry with the pain and the alcohol, ‘He’s an idiot.’
‘So anyway,’ he carries on, ‘Just to put you in the picture. She’s had both her hips replaced, three months ago, arthritis. The right one popped out a month ago, had that done, and I’ll tell you something now for free – those bastards at A&E aren’t coming within a mile of her. Last time they broke her leg, like that’s gonna help. I want the consultant there to re-do this. I want him waiting for us, by the front door, with his hands out of his pockets, as we’re pulling up outside.’
We help Gail manage the pain with entonox, immobilise her, scoop her off the sofa on the orthopaedic stretcher and outside onto the trolley with a minimum of distress. Frank is a constant distraction, talking incessantly. It’s like having a puppy worry your foot whilst you’re trying to tidy up.
‘I drove lorries all round Europe. Worked hard, partied hard, different woman every night. Fantastic. But AIDS put paid to all that malarkey. I bought a pub in Deptford, ran that for a while. Then this geezer decided to shoot me in the legs, so I sold up, came down here. It’s not turned out bad.’
He squints at me.
‘I hope you don’t think badly of us,’ he says, as we load Gail onto the lift. ‘It’s been a while since the operation. A long while. A lean stretch, if you get me. I mean – I’ve been good, but there is a limit. We really thought it would be okay. So there I was giving her a right good seeing to and then she felt it go. Boom. I knew something wasn’t right because ordinarily she takes very good care of me. No complaints there. Hurgh. I remember, when I met her the first time, she looked me up and down, said – okay, mate, yeah, okay - took me home and tried me out, so to speak.’
He stands there whilst the lift rises into the air. Gail groans and takes another drag on the entonox. He suddenly seems reduced by the action and sound of the lift, the light spilling out of the back, everything. He flicks his cigarette off into the darkness.
‘I must have been all right,’ he says, patting his pockets for another. ‘We’ll have been together sixteen years next month’ At that moment his phone rings, and he starts, as if the patting woke it up.
‘Gary?’
‘To be frank with you – like I have to – it’s my name – hurgh - don’t worry, I’m always like this, I’ve had a bit to drink, it’s the weekend, so sue me. But hey – if you can’t have a little something now and again, well, what’s the world come to? Hurgh. Anyway, to be absolutely and perfectly honest with you, because there’s no point in lying about this stuff, hey? I mean, mate, we’re all adults. You’ve got a job to do. You need to know all the facts. And fucking hell, I mean, who’s hurting who? Hey?’
His mobile phone rings – the twangy guitar from James Bond.
‘Shit. Sorry. Gary? Yeah, mate. Yeah. The paramedics are here. They’re going to work on her now. Mate – I’ll call you back. No, mate. No. I’ll call you back.’
I take advantage of the interruption to say hello to Gail properly and take in the place. For the first time I notice that the walls are hung with dozens of small clip-frames. Hypercoloured photos, confusing at first, but then with a lurch seeing that they are of women – a woman – Gail – naked, in suspenders, or extravagantly zippered outfits, posing with a shadowy host of others, a Polaroid exhibition of proffered breasts, mouths, throats. In the whole room there is only one non-sexual photo, still of Gail – a crinkled up school photo, a little girl smiling demurely against a background of eggshell blue. Unframed, it is propped up against the DVD player.
Gail looks up at us from the sofa, a frail looking woman in her mid forties, pale freckled face and ginger hair. She is wearing pyjama shorts and a flowery t-shirt.
Frank clips his mobile shut and follows us over.
‘Gary’s such a twat. I don’t know. I suppose he has his uses. Hurgh. Anyway – I’ve dressed her for you, mate. Couldn’t have you seeing her in all her gear. Not that we care. Give you all a thrill. Well – you, maybe. Maybe not you (looking at Rae). Or maybe - yeah?’ He gives her a pouchy smirk, then blows out another litre or two of smoke.
‘It half killed her, mind. But she’s a brave girl – hey? Has to be, living with me.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Gail says, her voice dry with the pain and the alcohol, ‘He’s an idiot.’
‘So anyway,’ he carries on, ‘Just to put you in the picture. She’s had both her hips replaced, three months ago, arthritis. The right one popped out a month ago, had that done, and I’ll tell you something now for free – those bastards at A&E aren’t coming within a mile of her. Last time they broke her leg, like that’s gonna help. I want the consultant there to re-do this. I want him waiting for us, by the front door, with his hands out of his pockets, as we’re pulling up outside.’
We help Gail manage the pain with entonox, immobilise her, scoop her off the sofa on the orthopaedic stretcher and outside onto the trolley with a minimum of distress. Frank is a constant distraction, talking incessantly. It’s like having a puppy worry your foot whilst you’re trying to tidy up.
‘I drove lorries all round Europe. Worked hard, partied hard, different woman every night. Fantastic. But AIDS put paid to all that malarkey. I bought a pub in Deptford, ran that for a while. Then this geezer decided to shoot me in the legs, so I sold up, came down here. It’s not turned out bad.’
He squints at me.
‘I hope you don’t think badly of us,’ he says, as we load Gail onto the lift. ‘It’s been a while since the operation. A long while. A lean stretch, if you get me. I mean – I’ve been good, but there is a limit. We really thought it would be okay. So there I was giving her a right good seeing to and then she felt it go. Boom. I knew something wasn’t right because ordinarily she takes very good care of me. No complaints there. Hurgh. I remember, when I met her the first time, she looked me up and down, said – okay, mate, yeah, okay - took me home and tried me out, so to speak.’
He stands there whilst the lift rises into the air. Gail groans and takes another drag on the entonox. He suddenly seems reduced by the action and sound of the lift, the light spilling out of the back, everything. He flicks his cigarette off into the darkness.
‘I must have been all right,’ he says, patting his pockets for another. ‘We’ll have been together sixteen years next month’ At that moment his phone rings, and he starts, as if the patting woke it up.
‘Gary?’
Thursday, August 21, 2008
visitors
We are an extemporary group of five, rattling upwards in a bleachy lift – me, my partner, the chaplain third-manning with us and two police officers. The chaplain is carrying our dressings bag. He hugs it to him, emanating goodwill. Ellie is carrying her clipboard, I’m pulling on my gloves.
Ellie asks the policeman: ‘So what do we know?’
‘Called in by a friend. This is a twenty two year old male, history of self-harm, apparently sticking pins into himself tonight. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s some kind of voodoo ritual. God knows..’ he sneaks a look at the chaplain ‘… God knows I can think of better things to do with my time, but there you are. You probably know more about this sort of thing than we do.’
The chaplain, lean and quiet and dark as a Mafioso hit man, smiles and nods. The female police officer leans in to her colleague and whispers something to him. The lift careens upwards. It really does stink, and I’m glad we are not going all the way to the twentieth.
The lift crashes to a halt and the heavy metal doors slide open. The police lead on; as a joke, we push the chaplain out next.
But the door to the flat is right by the lift and the police are already banging on it, so we quickly draw on a professional mask of concern. A voice from the other side asks who is it.
‘The police. Could you open up please so we can have a word?’
‘Sure’
Bolts. Chains. It swings open to reveal a boyish man in a faded black rock and roll t-shirt, boxer shorts and bare feet - a washed out yawn of a man whose reactions seem as woolly as his tangled brown hair.
‘What’s all this about?’ he says, wanly, then takes another toke on his spitty cigarette. His forearms are as covered in horizontal scratches and scars as the bark of a wild cherry tree. ‘What do you want?’
‘Would you mind if we came in and had a chat? We’ve had a call from someone to say that they were worried about your safety tonight.’
‘Who was that, then?’
‘Can we come in and talk about it?’
He considers us all for a second or two, then seems to lose interest. He lets go of the door, turns and slouches back inside; we follow him through the sparsely furnished flat into the front room. He resumes his place on the battered leather sofa, fitting the deep indentation there perfectly. There is a laptop propped open on an upturned crate in front of him, playing David Gray’s version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye. The ash tray is so full it spills over onto the disks and detritus that surround it. There is a bamboo blind tilted downwards across the main window; from behind it on a ledge, a tiny black faced kitten peers out at us, her fierce yellow eyes electrified with interest.
The man does not so much stub his cigarette out as bury it.
‘Was it Abby?’
‘Abby’s your girlfriend?’
‘Well’
The kitten suddenly jumps down onto the floor between us all. For a moment it stops where it lands in an intensely spiky attitude, front legs splayed out, shoulders at forty five degrees, staring and twitching – then bowls out between us and off through the hall.
‘She was my girlfriend.’
‘So what’s been happening tonight?’
The man seems to notice the chaplain for the first time, and frowns.
‘Don’t worry. I’m just along with the ambulance crew as an observer’ he says, gripping the dressings bag as if he wished it were bigger. Despite our uniforms, belts, blue gloves and radios, the police officers’ panoply of cuffs, batons and sprays – never has a simple collar of starched white fabric marked someone out so profoundly before. He may as well be dressed as a giant rabbit.
‘Have you hurt yourself tonight?’ asks the female officer, bringing us back to business with a flip of her notebook and click of her pen.
‘No. No more than usual. It’s not a problem. I just like to let blood, that’s all.’
‘How do you do that, then?’
‘With one of these’
He produces a syringe.
‘I draw a load out. Most nights. It’s no big deal. It’s something I have to do’
It’s just a kitten’s leap between the man on the sofa and the five of us here on this side of the room, but it feels more like a chasm. He stares at us with the syringe extended before him like a sacrament, his eyes glittering dark against the pallor of his skin.
‘Don’t look so worried. It’s normal for me’ he says.
The police ask us to check the man over, something he submits to with a bemused, slightly martyred air. He tells us about his CPN, how they try to help, but can’t really, as he’s never agreed that he does need help. He’s been in to hospital before with various infections. He’s anaemic. Ellie asks him if he has anyone he can stay with tonight.
‘Just the cat. My girlfriend left me months ago. I don’t know why she’s calling you’ He watches the BP cuff expand around his arm. ‘I haven’t seen my little girl in ages.’
We ask him what he intends to do tonight.
‘Take things as they come. I don’t know – improvise. I have no plans’
His blood pressure is low to normal, but he’s otherwise okay. He refuses hospital. We leave him to finish his interview with the police and let ourselves out.
‘I hope that cat didn’t go out the front door,’ says the chaplain. But we agree that the man didn’t seem concerned about it, so we let it ride.
Instead of taking the lift I suddenly sprint off down the stairs, and the other two try to catch me. It’s fourteen floors up, and I’m breathing hard as their heavy steps gain on me. The chaplain is singing the theme from Starsky and Hutch. Ellie throws her gloves at his head. Our laughter echoes up and down the stairwell.
Ellie asks the policeman: ‘So what do we know?’
‘Called in by a friend. This is a twenty two year old male, history of self-harm, apparently sticking pins into himself tonight. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it’s some kind of voodoo ritual. God knows..’ he sneaks a look at the chaplain ‘… God knows I can think of better things to do with my time, but there you are. You probably know more about this sort of thing than we do.’
The chaplain, lean and quiet and dark as a Mafioso hit man, smiles and nods. The female police officer leans in to her colleague and whispers something to him. The lift careens upwards. It really does stink, and I’m glad we are not going all the way to the twentieth.
The lift crashes to a halt and the heavy metal doors slide open. The police lead on; as a joke, we push the chaplain out next.
But the door to the flat is right by the lift and the police are already banging on it, so we quickly draw on a professional mask of concern. A voice from the other side asks who is it.
‘The police. Could you open up please so we can have a word?’
‘Sure’
Bolts. Chains. It swings open to reveal a boyish man in a faded black rock and roll t-shirt, boxer shorts and bare feet - a washed out yawn of a man whose reactions seem as woolly as his tangled brown hair.
‘What’s all this about?’ he says, wanly, then takes another toke on his spitty cigarette. His forearms are as covered in horizontal scratches and scars as the bark of a wild cherry tree. ‘What do you want?’
‘Would you mind if we came in and had a chat? We’ve had a call from someone to say that they were worried about your safety tonight.’
‘Who was that, then?’
‘Can we come in and talk about it?’
He considers us all for a second or two, then seems to lose interest. He lets go of the door, turns and slouches back inside; we follow him through the sparsely furnished flat into the front room. He resumes his place on the battered leather sofa, fitting the deep indentation there perfectly. There is a laptop propped open on an upturned crate in front of him, playing David Gray’s version of Say Hello Wave Goodbye. The ash tray is so full it spills over onto the disks and detritus that surround it. There is a bamboo blind tilted downwards across the main window; from behind it on a ledge, a tiny black faced kitten peers out at us, her fierce yellow eyes electrified with interest.
The man does not so much stub his cigarette out as bury it.
‘Was it Abby?’
‘Abby’s your girlfriend?’
‘Well’
The kitten suddenly jumps down onto the floor between us all. For a moment it stops where it lands in an intensely spiky attitude, front legs splayed out, shoulders at forty five degrees, staring and twitching – then bowls out between us and off through the hall.
‘She was my girlfriend.’
‘So what’s been happening tonight?’
The man seems to notice the chaplain for the first time, and frowns.
‘Don’t worry. I’m just along with the ambulance crew as an observer’ he says, gripping the dressings bag as if he wished it were bigger. Despite our uniforms, belts, blue gloves and radios, the police officers’ panoply of cuffs, batons and sprays – never has a simple collar of starched white fabric marked someone out so profoundly before. He may as well be dressed as a giant rabbit.
‘Have you hurt yourself tonight?’ asks the female officer, bringing us back to business with a flip of her notebook and click of her pen.
‘No. No more than usual. It’s not a problem. I just like to let blood, that’s all.’
‘How do you do that, then?’
‘With one of these’
He produces a syringe.
‘I draw a load out. Most nights. It’s no big deal. It’s something I have to do’
It’s just a kitten’s leap between the man on the sofa and the five of us here on this side of the room, but it feels more like a chasm. He stares at us with the syringe extended before him like a sacrament, his eyes glittering dark against the pallor of his skin.
‘Don’t look so worried. It’s normal for me’ he says.
The police ask us to check the man over, something he submits to with a bemused, slightly martyred air. He tells us about his CPN, how they try to help, but can’t really, as he’s never agreed that he does need help. He’s been in to hospital before with various infections. He’s anaemic. Ellie asks him if he has anyone he can stay with tonight.
‘Just the cat. My girlfriend left me months ago. I don’t know why she’s calling you’ He watches the BP cuff expand around his arm. ‘I haven’t seen my little girl in ages.’
We ask him what he intends to do tonight.
‘Take things as they come. I don’t know – improvise. I have no plans’
His blood pressure is low to normal, but he’s otherwise okay. He refuses hospital. We leave him to finish his interview with the police and let ourselves out.
‘I hope that cat didn’t go out the front door,’ says the chaplain. But we agree that the man didn’t seem concerned about it, so we let it ride.
Instead of taking the lift I suddenly sprint off down the stairs, and the other two try to catch me. It’s fourteen floors up, and I’m breathing hard as their heavy steps gain on me. The chaplain is singing the theme from Starsky and Hutch. Ellie throws her gloves at his head. Our laughter echoes up and down the stairwell.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
a wood pigeon
This is a room of white. The early morning light is filtering in through two long drop white net curtains. A warm current of air is nudging through the opened sash. There are two beds in the room, both with white counterpanes, and the clinical curtain divider between them is white.
The bed on the left of this divider is occupied by an ancient man, a thoroughly dessicated figure propped up on a banana-shaped pillow, taking cursory tugs at a plastic beaker of tea. He drops the spout from his lips to give us a little smile as we walk in.
Our patient is in the bed by the window. He is also propped up on pillows, but his head is being supported by Ken, the ECP who was also assigned to this job and got here first.
‘Could you come and take Geoffrey’s head for me, please?’ he says. ‘He’s rather slumped over and we need to get him into a better position.’ I walk over to help. Geoffrey’s breath is coming quickly, in fluttering gasps. In the last throws of emaciation, the skin of Geoffrey’s chest pulses against the outline of his ribs.
‘Geoffrey has been refusing food for the last couple of weeks,’ says the home matron, who has come to stand at the foot of the bed, and is thumbing through his case notes.
‘Is there a DNAR for Geoffrey?’
‘Not as such. But he has said a number of times recently that he wanted to die and didn’t want any help’
I wipe away the meagre strands of hair sticking to Geoffrey’s forehead. His eyes have receded deep within his sockets. They are half opened, but red and dry and without recognition.
‘What about the relatives? What do they have to say?’
‘Oh, they’re absolutely in agreement’
‘And the GP?’
‘Hasn’t been in a day or so’
‘Well – I’ll make a call to the GP, if you wouldn’t mind getting in touch with the relatives and letting them know the situation. As you’re probably aware, Geoffrey is going to die very soon. I don’t think he would want us to resuscitate him, and I don’t think it would be appropriate. But we’d better start getting things in order. And we need the doctor here to make Geoffrey as comfortable as possible in his last moments’
Ken goes outside to call the GP whilst Ellie and I make Geoffrey comfortable.
Apart from the rise and fall of his chest, the only movement Geoffrey makes is a delicate rolling of the oxygen tubing between the shrivelled pads of his right thumb and index finger, the kind of exploratory movement you might make if you were blindfolded and asked to identify something. But the movement seems removed from him, an automatism rooted in some profound dream of absence.
I feel for his radial pulse, but his heart beat is only detectable now as a faint brachial twitch in his upper arm – the tail end of a rhythm set running when he was just a tiny embryo no bigger than his fingernail, easing away now ninety years later, here in this whitened room, in blue-striped cotton pyjammas, a clutch of photos propped up on pots of emollient creams and packets of wipes, the white net curtains ballooning inwards on the breeze, and a wood pigeon high up somewhere near, who-hoo-hooing, announcing itself to the world.
The bed on the left of this divider is occupied by an ancient man, a thoroughly dessicated figure propped up on a banana-shaped pillow, taking cursory tugs at a plastic beaker of tea. He drops the spout from his lips to give us a little smile as we walk in.
Our patient is in the bed by the window. He is also propped up on pillows, but his head is being supported by Ken, the ECP who was also assigned to this job and got here first.
‘Could you come and take Geoffrey’s head for me, please?’ he says. ‘He’s rather slumped over and we need to get him into a better position.’ I walk over to help. Geoffrey’s breath is coming quickly, in fluttering gasps. In the last throws of emaciation, the skin of Geoffrey’s chest pulses against the outline of his ribs.
‘Geoffrey has been refusing food for the last couple of weeks,’ says the home matron, who has come to stand at the foot of the bed, and is thumbing through his case notes.
‘Is there a DNAR for Geoffrey?’
‘Not as such. But he has said a number of times recently that he wanted to die and didn’t want any help’
I wipe away the meagre strands of hair sticking to Geoffrey’s forehead. His eyes have receded deep within his sockets. They are half opened, but red and dry and without recognition.
‘What about the relatives? What do they have to say?’
‘Oh, they’re absolutely in agreement’
‘And the GP?’
‘Hasn’t been in a day or so’
‘Well – I’ll make a call to the GP, if you wouldn’t mind getting in touch with the relatives and letting them know the situation. As you’re probably aware, Geoffrey is going to die very soon. I don’t think he would want us to resuscitate him, and I don’t think it would be appropriate. But we’d better start getting things in order. And we need the doctor here to make Geoffrey as comfortable as possible in his last moments’
Ken goes outside to call the GP whilst Ellie and I make Geoffrey comfortable.
Apart from the rise and fall of his chest, the only movement Geoffrey makes is a delicate rolling of the oxygen tubing between the shrivelled pads of his right thumb and index finger, the kind of exploratory movement you might make if you were blindfolded and asked to identify something. But the movement seems removed from him, an automatism rooted in some profound dream of absence.
I feel for his radial pulse, but his heart beat is only detectable now as a faint brachial twitch in his upper arm – the tail end of a rhythm set running when he was just a tiny embryo no bigger than his fingernail, easing away now ninety years later, here in this whitened room, in blue-striped cotton pyjammas, a clutch of photos propped up on pots of emollient creams and packets of wipes, the white net curtains ballooning inwards on the breeze, and a wood pigeon high up somewhere near, who-hoo-hooing, announcing itself to the world.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Harold's lift
I am glad the warden has come to meet me at the door. The instructions for retrieving the key – a code for the keysafe outside, which holds one key for the front door and one for the main keysafe located in the lobby on the left behind the picture of HMS Hood, master key inside that safe, please pull the rope before you go in, please contact homeline to confirm entry – well, they’re just too complicated, especially when I’m on my own, especially at this hour of the night.
‘All right?’ she says, with a smoker’s rasp. ‘It’s only Cecil falling over again. He’s okay. Haven’t I seen you before?’
The warden has bright pink lipstick and bleached yellow hair tumbling in tightly orchestrated curls about her head. I would guess she’s about sixty, but her tanned face is marked by a profusion of leathery creases, as if she’s lived most of her life outdoors. She is packed into a pair of crease-free navy slacks and a plain white cotton shirt; if it wasn’t for her makeup and hairdo, she could pass for a retired whaling captain.
‘I’m sure I’ve met you before’ she gasps.
I follow her into the lobby. She leads me through a succession of narrow corridors to the lift, where she presses the button and we wait. A gloomy aroma of parma violets and flea spray settles around us.
‘Lonely shift for you,’ I say. ‘On all night?’
‘Me? Kind of. But I’m only out and about if there’s something happening, like tonight. Only if rude boys like you come knocking me up.’ She gives me a dig in the ribs. ‘Mostly I’ve got my feet up with a mug of cocoa catching up on the soaps. You ought to get yourself that Sky Plus, mate. I tell you what – it’s a bleedin’ miracle.’
The lift arrives and the doors open with a worrying judder.
‘That doesn’t look too healthy,’ I say.
‘Oh don’t worry. It’s only broken down about five times this week. And if it goes again and we’re stuck for a while..’ she gives me a dentured leer, ‘.. well, it could be worse.’
We step inside, the lift doors close and after an extended pause we are shaken upwards suddenly.
‘Blimey’, I say. ‘Well, I suppose it beats walking. Just.’
‘And that’s not all. I tell you what. This lift is actually haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
‘Haunted.’
‘Haunted by who?’
‘The warden before the warden before me. If you follow. He hanged himself one night, down in the utility room. Poor fella. I never knew him. Until now.’
‘Have you actually seen him?’
‘Nope. But I feel him sometimes. Like a chilly presence, standing where you are now. So I talk to him. I say “All right, Harold? How are you mate?” But he never answers. He just kind of stands there. I don’t think he’s up to any mischief. I just think he wants a bit of company.’
The lift doors open and we step out. She leads me over to Cecil’s door.
‘Hold on, Cecil. Here comes the cavalry.’ And she lets me in.
‘All right?’ she says, with a smoker’s rasp. ‘It’s only Cecil falling over again. He’s okay. Haven’t I seen you before?’
The warden has bright pink lipstick and bleached yellow hair tumbling in tightly orchestrated curls about her head. I would guess she’s about sixty, but her tanned face is marked by a profusion of leathery creases, as if she’s lived most of her life outdoors. She is packed into a pair of crease-free navy slacks and a plain white cotton shirt; if it wasn’t for her makeup and hairdo, she could pass for a retired whaling captain.
‘I’m sure I’ve met you before’ she gasps.
I follow her into the lobby. She leads me through a succession of narrow corridors to the lift, where she presses the button and we wait. A gloomy aroma of parma violets and flea spray settles around us.
‘Lonely shift for you,’ I say. ‘On all night?’
‘Me? Kind of. But I’m only out and about if there’s something happening, like tonight. Only if rude boys like you come knocking me up.’ She gives me a dig in the ribs. ‘Mostly I’ve got my feet up with a mug of cocoa catching up on the soaps. You ought to get yourself that Sky Plus, mate. I tell you what – it’s a bleedin’ miracle.’
The lift arrives and the doors open with a worrying judder.
‘That doesn’t look too healthy,’ I say.
‘Oh don’t worry. It’s only broken down about five times this week. And if it goes again and we’re stuck for a while..’ she gives me a dentured leer, ‘.. well, it could be worse.’
We step inside, the lift doors close and after an extended pause we are shaken upwards suddenly.
‘Blimey’, I say. ‘Well, I suppose it beats walking. Just.’
‘And that’s not all. I tell you what. This lift is actually haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
‘Haunted.’
‘Haunted by who?’
‘The warden before the warden before me. If you follow. He hanged himself one night, down in the utility room. Poor fella. I never knew him. Until now.’
‘Have you actually seen him?’
‘Nope. But I feel him sometimes. Like a chilly presence, standing where you are now. So I talk to him. I say “All right, Harold? How are you mate?” But he never answers. He just kind of stands there. I don’t think he’s up to any mischief. I just think he wants a bit of company.’
The lift doors open and we step out. She leads me over to Cecil’s door.
‘Hold on, Cecil. Here comes the cavalry.’ And she lets me in.
Friday, August 15, 2008
use your head
This is a steep street of small shops and cafes, many of them still following the Edwardian layout of bay fronted windows and recessed doorways to flats above. It’s midnight, dark and threatening rain. We struggle to read the numbers on the shops, and those that we do find don’t seem to follow a logical pattern. I’m just about to call up Control to ask for some help in locating the address, when a man steps out from an alleyway a little in front of us. He gives us a discrete nod, and looks up and down the street. I hang up the radio and we pull level with him. Ellie, the trainee technician I’m working with tonight, lowers the window.
‘Are you the patient?’
He nods again, and unfolds his arms.
‘Chest pain?’
‘Let’s just get inside, shall we?’ he says.
Ellie taps the ‘at scene’ button, and we both get out. By the time I have come round the front of the vehicle, she has opened the side door, put on the interior lights, the patient has jumped inside ahead of her and taken up position on the forward seat. I’m unnerved by the sequence so far. It feels as if the patient has snatched a lead on the normal run of things, first onto the back of the ambulance, sitting above us as we climb up into the back. I feel exposed, wrong-footed. It has not started well.
And getting a clear look at Keith beneath the harsh strip lights, I don’t feel any easier.
He is a tall, spare middle-aged man in a dirty yellow t-shirt and jeans, already sitting with the air of someone consciously holding himself in check, his hands resting in his lap and his feet evenly placed on the floor. He has a roughly carved head, the kind of face you could imagine climbing without ropes. But despite the angular chin, broken nose and cheekbones, his mouth is a little cupid’s bow, and when he talks – quietly, with an effeminate sibilance – he reveals two rows of crooked yellow teeth, sharp like a predatory fish. The most worrying thing about Keith, though, is the disconnection between the grey eyes and the smile he uses to punctuate his monologue.
‘I don’t know how much you know about my case. Yes – I was up at the hospital earlier today and yes – I did self discharge. But this pain. I tell you, I’ve got an immense tolerance for pain. Far more than the average person, far more than you. I was captain on a merchant ship for ten years. I’ve worked harder than you could possibly imagine and never been sick. I’ve taken knocks that would’ve killed a lesser man. I know all about pain, my friend. But let me tell you – this is worse than anything I’ve experienced. You see, the police know where to punch you. They’re trained. This one – he punches me here (centre of chest) with his knuckle, so it digs in – but doesn’t show bruising. And here, right on the point of the shoulder. He’s damaged the nerve. I can’t remember the name of it. I know a great deal about anatomy. I worked as a mortician’s assistant for years. I have an incredible knowledge – the whole body, its systems, muscles. Much greater than yours. I’ve personally opened up four hundred and fifty corpses for autopsy. You see, the police have this idea that I’m a violent person. I’ve spent the last ten years fighting it. I’m currently in dispute with the PCT about the fact that I’ve been put on the violent patient’s register. I’m not supposed to visit the doctor or the dentist without a police escort. How crazy is that? All because a while ago I went to see my GP, told him about my problems, he tried to tell me what was wrong, didn’t like it when I put him right. I don’t see any sense in being pushed around, especially by someone who knows a lot less than me. So admittedly I may have been a bit too – positive, shall we say? - in my defence, and end up on the register. Without appeal. And everyone has access to it, police included, and anytime anything happens, they come down heavy on me, and treat me like this.
‘But I am not a violent man. I’m a tough man, yes. I have great physical courage. But I’m not a violent man. And there’s a difference. It’s called self control. Let me explain. I’ve faced up to all kinds of assaults and abuse, but I’ve stood there like this (smiles and nods). I’ve looked down on this or that person, recognised them for what they were, and done nothing, knowing in myself exactly what I could do. Choosing not to react, simply holding off. Of course, I know I could completely destroy anyone who tried it on with me, so what have I got to prove? Nothing, my friend, and there’s the real power. Let me explain. Once there was this guy in a pub, big guy – you know - and he kept needling me and needling me, saying “Go on then, see what you’ll get if you start something”. This went on for ages. I did nothing, and I did nothing, until finally I heard this voice inside me. Do you know what it said? It said, very simply: ‘Come on Keith. Use your head’ What I thought it meant was – ‘Think about this. Don’t react.’ But then I realised what it actually meant was ‘Use your head’ – So I head butted him. He needed twenty eight stitches. Was in hospital for a week. But I know what a bottle can do, and that’s worse. So it was the kinder option.
‘Let me take my top off so you can do your observations. I’ve already had an ECG today at the hospital and it was fine. They said I have the heart of a twenty year old. But I could’ve told them that.’
He pulls off his t-shirt. His torso is rangy and scarred, with a coarse black spread of chest hair. Some hospital dots are still in place.
I’m trying to think of some way to get across to Ellie that we need to get this person off the ambulance as soon as possible, but she seems pinned to her seat.
In a blanched whisper she asks him the name of his doctor. The volume of his voice increases, the tone drops ten degrees.
‘I’ve already told you. You’re not listening to me. Will you please listen? I do not have a doctor. I’ve been struck off the list.’
She puts the clip board aside. The back of the ambulance seems suddenly as pressured and confining as a diving bell.
We have to wrap this up.
‘Keith – you can put your top on. It’s obvious that there’s nothing wrong with your heart. We just need to ask you a couple of questions, you know – for our form. Just give us the basics, that’ll be fine. For doctor we’ll just put “not currently registered” As far as your shoulder goes, I’d recommend you take some pain killers tonight and get yourself up to the hospital in the morning. Okay?’
He gives me a brutally condescending smile.
‘You’ve got your job to do,’ he says. ‘Ask away. Do what you have to do. I don’t want to make things difficult for you. I know there are people out there who would give you a hard time. But I think you do a wonderful job. I met one of yours the other day. My son, Jake, he’s only four. He had a seizure. He went completely blue. Cyanotic. I know the terms. My girlfriend called the ambulance whilst I resuscitated him. Saved his life. The ambulance turns up – one like this, newer perhaps, and a paramedic on a car. And the police, of course. The police started getting involved, like they do. Pushing and shoving. The ambulance crew said I wasn’t to come on the back. Admittedly I was shouting by this point – but you tell me you wouldn’t shout if your son had just died in your arms? But the paramedic, a big black guy, he told the crew to fuck off – excuse my language. He told the police to fuck off. He took me and Jake into his car and he drove us up the hospital. He told me that he’d had to put up with that stuff all his life, too, because of his colour. He understood how I felt. And he respected what I’d done. He said he’d never seen such skill under pressure. But this is how things are for me. This is my life.’
He puts his t-shirt back on. I notice some recently healed cuts under his right arm.
‘I expect you’re wondering about those scars,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry. It’s nothing. I was walking down the street when this car tried to run me over. I couldn’t believe it. I was knocked into the air, and came down with my arm punching through the passenger window. The driver obviously thought I was reaching for them, so they took off – with me hanging out of the window. I managed to free myself, and rolled to a halt on the road. Of course, the police weren’t interested.’
He pats his knees.
‘But that was last week. Tonight - I’m not going to hospital. I know I don’t need it, you don’t need to tell me that. And I’m not about to waste anybody’s time.’
I open the door. He jumps out.
‘Thank you for coming by,’ he says, rubbing his face briskly, as if he has just woken up. ‘You don’t need to see me inside. I’m perfectly able to look after myself.’
I watch him stride off back down the alley.
I look back at Ellie. She’s standing up, pulling her gloves off. It feels as if the sweet night air is rushing in to fill the Keith-shaped hole between us.
‘Are you the patient?’
He nods again, and unfolds his arms.
‘Chest pain?’
‘Let’s just get inside, shall we?’ he says.
Ellie taps the ‘at scene’ button, and we both get out. By the time I have come round the front of the vehicle, she has opened the side door, put on the interior lights, the patient has jumped inside ahead of her and taken up position on the forward seat. I’m unnerved by the sequence so far. It feels as if the patient has snatched a lead on the normal run of things, first onto the back of the ambulance, sitting above us as we climb up into the back. I feel exposed, wrong-footed. It has not started well.
And getting a clear look at Keith beneath the harsh strip lights, I don’t feel any easier.
He is a tall, spare middle-aged man in a dirty yellow t-shirt and jeans, already sitting with the air of someone consciously holding himself in check, his hands resting in his lap and his feet evenly placed on the floor. He has a roughly carved head, the kind of face you could imagine climbing without ropes. But despite the angular chin, broken nose and cheekbones, his mouth is a little cupid’s bow, and when he talks – quietly, with an effeminate sibilance – he reveals two rows of crooked yellow teeth, sharp like a predatory fish. The most worrying thing about Keith, though, is the disconnection between the grey eyes and the smile he uses to punctuate his monologue.
‘I don’t know how much you know about my case. Yes – I was up at the hospital earlier today and yes – I did self discharge. But this pain. I tell you, I’ve got an immense tolerance for pain. Far more than the average person, far more than you. I was captain on a merchant ship for ten years. I’ve worked harder than you could possibly imagine and never been sick. I’ve taken knocks that would’ve killed a lesser man. I know all about pain, my friend. But let me tell you – this is worse than anything I’ve experienced. You see, the police know where to punch you. They’re trained. This one – he punches me here (centre of chest) with his knuckle, so it digs in – but doesn’t show bruising. And here, right on the point of the shoulder. He’s damaged the nerve. I can’t remember the name of it. I know a great deal about anatomy. I worked as a mortician’s assistant for years. I have an incredible knowledge – the whole body, its systems, muscles. Much greater than yours. I’ve personally opened up four hundred and fifty corpses for autopsy. You see, the police have this idea that I’m a violent person. I’ve spent the last ten years fighting it. I’m currently in dispute with the PCT about the fact that I’ve been put on the violent patient’s register. I’m not supposed to visit the doctor or the dentist without a police escort. How crazy is that? All because a while ago I went to see my GP, told him about my problems, he tried to tell me what was wrong, didn’t like it when I put him right. I don’t see any sense in being pushed around, especially by someone who knows a lot less than me. So admittedly I may have been a bit too – positive, shall we say? - in my defence, and end up on the register. Without appeal. And everyone has access to it, police included, and anytime anything happens, they come down heavy on me, and treat me like this.
‘But I am not a violent man. I’m a tough man, yes. I have great physical courage. But I’m not a violent man. And there’s a difference. It’s called self control. Let me explain. I’ve faced up to all kinds of assaults and abuse, but I’ve stood there like this (smiles and nods). I’ve looked down on this or that person, recognised them for what they were, and done nothing, knowing in myself exactly what I could do. Choosing not to react, simply holding off. Of course, I know I could completely destroy anyone who tried it on with me, so what have I got to prove? Nothing, my friend, and there’s the real power. Let me explain. Once there was this guy in a pub, big guy – you know - and he kept needling me and needling me, saying “Go on then, see what you’ll get if you start something”. This went on for ages. I did nothing, and I did nothing, until finally I heard this voice inside me. Do you know what it said? It said, very simply: ‘Come on Keith. Use your head’ What I thought it meant was – ‘Think about this. Don’t react.’ But then I realised what it actually meant was ‘Use your head’ – So I head butted him. He needed twenty eight stitches. Was in hospital for a week. But I know what a bottle can do, and that’s worse. So it was the kinder option.
‘Let me take my top off so you can do your observations. I’ve already had an ECG today at the hospital and it was fine. They said I have the heart of a twenty year old. But I could’ve told them that.’
He pulls off his t-shirt. His torso is rangy and scarred, with a coarse black spread of chest hair. Some hospital dots are still in place.
I’m trying to think of some way to get across to Ellie that we need to get this person off the ambulance as soon as possible, but she seems pinned to her seat.
In a blanched whisper she asks him the name of his doctor. The volume of his voice increases, the tone drops ten degrees.
‘I’ve already told you. You’re not listening to me. Will you please listen? I do not have a doctor. I’ve been struck off the list.’
She puts the clip board aside. The back of the ambulance seems suddenly as pressured and confining as a diving bell.
We have to wrap this up.
‘Keith – you can put your top on. It’s obvious that there’s nothing wrong with your heart. We just need to ask you a couple of questions, you know – for our form. Just give us the basics, that’ll be fine. For doctor we’ll just put “not currently registered” As far as your shoulder goes, I’d recommend you take some pain killers tonight and get yourself up to the hospital in the morning. Okay?’
He gives me a brutally condescending smile.
‘You’ve got your job to do,’ he says. ‘Ask away. Do what you have to do. I don’t want to make things difficult for you. I know there are people out there who would give you a hard time. But I think you do a wonderful job. I met one of yours the other day. My son, Jake, he’s only four. He had a seizure. He went completely blue. Cyanotic. I know the terms. My girlfriend called the ambulance whilst I resuscitated him. Saved his life. The ambulance turns up – one like this, newer perhaps, and a paramedic on a car. And the police, of course. The police started getting involved, like they do. Pushing and shoving. The ambulance crew said I wasn’t to come on the back. Admittedly I was shouting by this point – but you tell me you wouldn’t shout if your son had just died in your arms? But the paramedic, a big black guy, he told the crew to fuck off – excuse my language. He told the police to fuck off. He took me and Jake into his car and he drove us up the hospital. He told me that he’d had to put up with that stuff all his life, too, because of his colour. He understood how I felt. And he respected what I’d done. He said he’d never seen such skill under pressure. But this is how things are for me. This is my life.’
He puts his t-shirt back on. I notice some recently healed cuts under his right arm.
‘I expect you’re wondering about those scars,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry. It’s nothing. I was walking down the street when this car tried to run me over. I couldn’t believe it. I was knocked into the air, and came down with my arm punching through the passenger window. The driver obviously thought I was reaching for them, so they took off – with me hanging out of the window. I managed to free myself, and rolled to a halt on the road. Of course, the police weren’t interested.’
He pats his knees.
‘But that was last week. Tonight - I’m not going to hospital. I know I don’t need it, you don’t need to tell me that. And I’m not about to waste anybody’s time.’
I open the door. He jumps out.
‘Thank you for coming by,’ he says, rubbing his face briskly, as if he has just woken up. ‘You don’t need to see me inside. I’m perfectly able to look after myself.’
I watch him stride off back down the alley.
I look back at Ellie. She’s standing up, pulling her gloves off. It feels as if the sweet night air is rushing in to fill the Keith-shaped hole between us.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
lightning glass
As I turn on to the estate, the late night sky – for so long pregnant with the coming storm – begins lighting up with diffuse flashes. The horizon is closing down on us, and a few fat drops of rain begin to fall.
Rae looks out at the block of flats, raps her pen on the clipboard.
‘I’m not sure if I’ve been here before or not,’ she says.
As I back the vehicle up there’s a deep rumble of thunder. As if working to some melodramatic script, a police van followed by a police car appear around the corner. They park either side of the road. We all get out and convene on the grass verge. Everyone is relaxed, chatty, excited by the prospect of the storm. Some confusion about who called who. They say our ambulance control requested police back up; we were told the other way round, also that the police had already attended once today. News to them. But after a minute or two of pleasantries we become aware of the face looking down at us all from an upstairs window.
‘Best go up, then,’ says a young policeman.
‘What can you tell us about this one?’ asks Rae.
‘There’s been police out to this address a few times in the past – none of us, though. Domestic disputes, suicide threats, blah. The woman, Shelley, she’s a notorious drunk, apparently. Arrested a couple of times for public order offences. An on going situation, as they say.’
We all stand outside the main entrance to the block, but before anyone can buzz, the door opens and Shelley is there, a tired looking woman in her late twenties, a heaviness about her face and eyes as if there’s some cruel spiritual gravity being exercised on her. Even her yellow hair seems burdened, her whole body exhausted by something she has no power to change.
‘Come in,’ she says flatly, turns, leads the clumping pack of fluorescent jackets and squawking radios up the stairs. An elderly man peers over a balcony at the top.
‘Everything all right, Shell?’
‘Yeah. Go to sleep, Ron’
‘I’m here if you need me.’ But he stays out on the landing to watch.
She stops outside her front door and pushes it to go inside, seems confused that it doesn’t give. Then she says: ‘It must have shut when I opened the main door. I don’t have any other keys.’
She kneels down in front of the door and tries to push her arm through the letterbox to reach the catch.
One of the policemen says: ‘Don’t get your arm stuck, love. We’ll have the fire brigade out, next thing you know.’
‘It’s not a strong lock,’ she says, standing up slowly by pushing up on her knees. ‘You only need flip the catch and it’ll open.’
‘Here. Let me try.’
A policewoman extends her baton, pokes it through the letterbox and rattles around.
‘Don’t drop your baton in there, for God’s sake. We’ll never hear the end of it’
The atmosphere is practical and helpful. Even Ron offers the use of his flat, and he’s thanked politely.
Another policeman steps up, levers the bottom of the door with his foot, then pulls out a laminated crib sheet and tries to work open the yale by inserting it along the doorline.
‘Suspect skill you’ve got there, mate’ says another.
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper’
The card bends but the lock holds.
Suddenly Shelley says: ‘Actually – I’ve just remembered there’s a spare under a stone outside’
She excuses herself past the little crowd, hurries back down the stairs, and returns a moment later holding a key.
‘Great’
She lets us all in. We follow her into a sparsely furnished front room, two simple leather sofas, a table and two chairs, an expanse of laminate flooring, a large photo of a grinning toddler with curly hair in a plain wooden frame on the wall. Shelley sits on the sofa beneath it; we sit on the sofa facing her, and the police all crowd in the doorway.
There is a pause. The dim light in the room is shockingly augmented by an occasional flash of light from outside. A sudden rattle of hail against the windows.
Rae rests her clipboard on her lap, and leans on it.
‘Shelley. My name’s Rae and this is Spence. Why are we here tonight?’
Shelley turns her tired grey eyes on her.
‘I’m having bad thoughts.’
‘What bad thoughts?’
‘I don’t know. Like I want to kill myself.’
‘Have you done anything or taken anything tonight that might cause you harm?’
‘No’
The policewoman standing at the doorway unfolds her arms, pulls out a notebook.
‘Shelley. Can you tell us a little bit about your domestic situation?’
Shelley pushes her hair back from her face and looks at her.
‘My domestic situation? My domestic situation is I’m fucked and no-one’s interested. My domestic situation is that the fucking police don’t give a shit.’
‘Now – Shelley. We’re not from this locality and this is the first time we’ve met you. So you’ll have to bear with us and give us a little more information.’
There is a sudden and dangerous change in the emotional orientation of the room. With only these few words having been spoken, Shelley has locked on to something. She seems suddenly galvanised with a thrill of dark self-absorption, as if everything up to now – the storm, the 999 call, the meeting of the emergency services outside and getting locked out of the flat –that this was just a process of gathering or preparation for the main event. She speaks loudly, emphasising her words with a level rocking of her head from side to side like a street rapper, making hard angles in the air with her hands, tipping backwards and forwards on the sofa. It seems as if she is now fully possessed by her grievance.
‘Well - how about this for some information. He was here giving it all that. Shouting out down in the street how I was a fucking prostitute. He was down the pub telling his mates if they got a thousand pounds together they could come round here and spit roast me. But no one’s interested. I tried to get the police to stop him and they ended up sending him a letter. A fucking letter! I said to the police that the next time he comes round here I’m going to stick a knife in his eye. And then I’m going to hang myself from the banister. I told the last policewoman that - and the cunt laughed. She fucking laughed. I said I hope it’s you that finds me swinging there, darling. I hope it’s you that has to push past me to get to my kid…… I can’t bear these thoughts that I have. I swear I’m going to kill him and me. But no one takes me fucking seriously. No one’s interested.’
The hailstones against the window suddenly stop and the room is utterly quiet.
The policeman who tried breaking in with a laminated card pushes to the front. He takes his hat off and asks if he can join Shelley on the sofa. She looks away, but doesn’t refuse. So he sits down next to her.
‘Shelley. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But one thing I can tell you is that I take people as I find them. I don’t know the first thing about your problems because I’ve never met you before. But all I can say is, you seem genuine enough, and I’m willing to help you as much as I can. But you have to help me, too. You have to tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you what I think should happen next. Okay? I can’t speak for those other police you saw. The police is like any where else. You get wankers in all walks of life – the police is no different. I know you get wankers in the police, Shelley, because I’ve worked with some of them. But if you’re willing to calm down and tell me exactly what’s been going on, I’m willing to do what I can to help. How does that sound?’
I glance at the policewoman by the door. She has put her notebook back in her jacket and shifts her weight onto her other leg. Her face is utterly impassive; I can’t make out if she approves of her colleague’s intervention or not.
Shelley looks at him.
‘You want to know how that sounds? I’ll fucking tell you how it sounds. You’ll do exactly what everyone else has done. “Poor Shelley. She’s a fucking nutter. Her life’s a joke and her ex was right to dump her. Shelley’s a drunk. Shelley’s a fucked up bitch. She deserves everything she gets. Yeah - I’ll listen to what she has to say, I’ll scribble something down in my pathetic little notebook, then I’ll go away and have a good chuckle and write him a letter. A fucking letter!”
‘No. Shelley. You’re not listening to me. You need to calm down and try to help us’
‘Help you? Help you? What help have you ever given me? The last policewoman to stand there turned round and laughed in my face. And then turns round and says they’ve sent my useless cunt of an ex – the low life who breaks into houses and sells drugs, who goes round telling people I’m sleeping with a black man, and taking heroin, telling everyone I’m a crazy slag, shouting up at my window from the street, with all the kids in the neighbourhood gathered round, laughing – my ex gets a letter. He hasn’t even got an address! How’s he supposed to get a letter?’
‘What do you want to happen tonight?’
‘I want you all to piss off.’
Rae makes to stand up.
‘Shelley. I’m very sorry that you’re having all these problems and I do hope you get them sorted out. But it seems to me that it’s more of a police matter. So we’ll go now, and give you a bit more room.’
Back out on the landing we start to explain our position to the policeman waiting there, but suddenly there is the sound of shouting and crashing furniture, and he rushes inside to help them.
Rae is writing the job up out in the ambulance when we see her carried out, cuffed and struggling between four of them. They put her into the van, and after a little while, drive her away.
Fierce cuts of brilliant white lightning, now, ripping across the sky, coming to earth somewhere. Rain booming on the roof. The air smells crystalline, electrically charged. I tell Rae that I vaguely remember reading about how a crooked piece of glass is formed every time lightning hits the ground. Now that’s something we’d both like to see.
Rae looks out at the block of flats, raps her pen on the clipboard.
‘I’m not sure if I’ve been here before or not,’ she says.
As I back the vehicle up there’s a deep rumble of thunder. As if working to some melodramatic script, a police van followed by a police car appear around the corner. They park either side of the road. We all get out and convene on the grass verge. Everyone is relaxed, chatty, excited by the prospect of the storm. Some confusion about who called who. They say our ambulance control requested police back up; we were told the other way round, also that the police had already attended once today. News to them. But after a minute or two of pleasantries we become aware of the face looking down at us all from an upstairs window.
‘Best go up, then,’ says a young policeman.
‘What can you tell us about this one?’ asks Rae.
‘There’s been police out to this address a few times in the past – none of us, though. Domestic disputes, suicide threats, blah. The woman, Shelley, she’s a notorious drunk, apparently. Arrested a couple of times for public order offences. An on going situation, as they say.’
We all stand outside the main entrance to the block, but before anyone can buzz, the door opens and Shelley is there, a tired looking woman in her late twenties, a heaviness about her face and eyes as if there’s some cruel spiritual gravity being exercised on her. Even her yellow hair seems burdened, her whole body exhausted by something she has no power to change.
‘Come in,’ she says flatly, turns, leads the clumping pack of fluorescent jackets and squawking radios up the stairs. An elderly man peers over a balcony at the top.
‘Everything all right, Shell?’
‘Yeah. Go to sleep, Ron’
‘I’m here if you need me.’ But he stays out on the landing to watch.
She stops outside her front door and pushes it to go inside, seems confused that it doesn’t give. Then she says: ‘It must have shut when I opened the main door. I don’t have any other keys.’
She kneels down in front of the door and tries to push her arm through the letterbox to reach the catch.
One of the policemen says: ‘Don’t get your arm stuck, love. We’ll have the fire brigade out, next thing you know.’
‘It’s not a strong lock,’ she says, standing up slowly by pushing up on her knees. ‘You only need flip the catch and it’ll open.’
‘Here. Let me try.’
A policewoman extends her baton, pokes it through the letterbox and rattles around.
‘Don’t drop your baton in there, for God’s sake. We’ll never hear the end of it’
The atmosphere is practical and helpful. Even Ron offers the use of his flat, and he’s thanked politely.
Another policeman steps up, levers the bottom of the door with his foot, then pulls out a laminated crib sheet and tries to work open the yale by inserting it along the doorline.
‘Suspect skill you’ve got there, mate’ says another.
‘Poacher turned gamekeeper’
The card bends but the lock holds.
Suddenly Shelley says: ‘Actually – I’ve just remembered there’s a spare under a stone outside’
She excuses herself past the little crowd, hurries back down the stairs, and returns a moment later holding a key.
‘Great’
She lets us all in. We follow her into a sparsely furnished front room, two simple leather sofas, a table and two chairs, an expanse of laminate flooring, a large photo of a grinning toddler with curly hair in a plain wooden frame on the wall. Shelley sits on the sofa beneath it; we sit on the sofa facing her, and the police all crowd in the doorway.
There is a pause. The dim light in the room is shockingly augmented by an occasional flash of light from outside. A sudden rattle of hail against the windows.
Rae rests her clipboard on her lap, and leans on it.
‘Shelley. My name’s Rae and this is Spence. Why are we here tonight?’
Shelley turns her tired grey eyes on her.
‘I’m having bad thoughts.’
‘What bad thoughts?’
‘I don’t know. Like I want to kill myself.’
‘Have you done anything or taken anything tonight that might cause you harm?’
‘No’
The policewoman standing at the doorway unfolds her arms, pulls out a notebook.
‘Shelley. Can you tell us a little bit about your domestic situation?’
Shelley pushes her hair back from her face and looks at her.
‘My domestic situation? My domestic situation is I’m fucked and no-one’s interested. My domestic situation is that the fucking police don’t give a shit.’
‘Now – Shelley. We’re not from this locality and this is the first time we’ve met you. So you’ll have to bear with us and give us a little more information.’
There is a sudden and dangerous change in the emotional orientation of the room. With only these few words having been spoken, Shelley has locked on to something. She seems suddenly galvanised with a thrill of dark self-absorption, as if everything up to now – the storm, the 999 call, the meeting of the emergency services outside and getting locked out of the flat –that this was just a process of gathering or preparation for the main event. She speaks loudly, emphasising her words with a level rocking of her head from side to side like a street rapper, making hard angles in the air with her hands, tipping backwards and forwards on the sofa. It seems as if she is now fully possessed by her grievance.
‘Well - how about this for some information. He was here giving it all that. Shouting out down in the street how I was a fucking prostitute. He was down the pub telling his mates if they got a thousand pounds together they could come round here and spit roast me. But no one’s interested. I tried to get the police to stop him and they ended up sending him a letter. A fucking letter! I said to the police that the next time he comes round here I’m going to stick a knife in his eye. And then I’m going to hang myself from the banister. I told the last policewoman that - and the cunt laughed. She fucking laughed. I said I hope it’s you that finds me swinging there, darling. I hope it’s you that has to push past me to get to my kid…… I can’t bear these thoughts that I have. I swear I’m going to kill him and me. But no one takes me fucking seriously. No one’s interested.’
The hailstones against the window suddenly stop and the room is utterly quiet.
The policeman who tried breaking in with a laminated card pushes to the front. He takes his hat off and asks if he can join Shelley on the sofa. She looks away, but doesn’t refuse. So he sits down next to her.
‘Shelley. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. But one thing I can tell you is that I take people as I find them. I don’t know the first thing about your problems because I’ve never met you before. But all I can say is, you seem genuine enough, and I’m willing to help you as much as I can. But you have to help me, too. You have to tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you what I think should happen next. Okay? I can’t speak for those other police you saw. The police is like any where else. You get wankers in all walks of life – the police is no different. I know you get wankers in the police, Shelley, because I’ve worked with some of them. But if you’re willing to calm down and tell me exactly what’s been going on, I’m willing to do what I can to help. How does that sound?’
I glance at the policewoman by the door. She has put her notebook back in her jacket and shifts her weight onto her other leg. Her face is utterly impassive; I can’t make out if she approves of her colleague’s intervention or not.
Shelley looks at him.
‘You want to know how that sounds? I’ll fucking tell you how it sounds. You’ll do exactly what everyone else has done. “Poor Shelley. She’s a fucking nutter. Her life’s a joke and her ex was right to dump her. Shelley’s a drunk. Shelley’s a fucked up bitch. She deserves everything she gets. Yeah - I’ll listen to what she has to say, I’ll scribble something down in my pathetic little notebook, then I’ll go away and have a good chuckle and write him a letter. A fucking letter!”
‘No. Shelley. You’re not listening to me. You need to calm down and try to help us’
‘Help you? Help you? What help have you ever given me? The last policewoman to stand there turned round and laughed in my face. And then turns round and says they’ve sent my useless cunt of an ex – the low life who breaks into houses and sells drugs, who goes round telling people I’m sleeping with a black man, and taking heroin, telling everyone I’m a crazy slag, shouting up at my window from the street, with all the kids in the neighbourhood gathered round, laughing – my ex gets a letter. He hasn’t even got an address! How’s he supposed to get a letter?’
‘What do you want to happen tonight?’
‘I want you all to piss off.’
Rae makes to stand up.
‘Shelley. I’m very sorry that you’re having all these problems and I do hope you get them sorted out. But it seems to me that it’s more of a police matter. So we’ll go now, and give you a bit more room.’
Back out on the landing we start to explain our position to the policeman waiting there, but suddenly there is the sound of shouting and crashing furniture, and he rushes inside to help them.
Rae is writing the job up out in the ambulance when we see her carried out, cuffed and struggling between four of them. They put her into the van, and after a little while, drive her away.
Fierce cuts of brilliant white lightning, now, ripping across the sky, coming to earth somewhere. Rain booming on the roof. The air smells crystalline, electrically charged. I tell Rae that I vaguely remember reading about how a crooked piece of glass is formed every time lightning hits the ground. Now that’s something we’d both like to see.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
who goes where
The private road veers up and off in an exclusive arc high above the main sea route, as illustrative of the residents’ earnings differential as a steep black line on a graph. The houses here – a grandly stucco’d selection of Caribbean villas, contemporary mansions and sternly cast homesteads with eagles on pillars and spiked electric gates – are set way back from the road. The caller must have used a telescope to report her concerns.
The car we want is easy to spot: a small, banana yellow affair parked crookedly by the raised grass bank at the verge. When we draw closer we can see a pair of legs sticking out of the opened passenger door, jeans down by the ankles, bare feet. I jump out of the vehicle.
There is a middle-aged woman lying across the two front seats, her head in an empty metal dog bowl. There is a bottle of vodka in one foot well, a can of deodorant in another, and around them both a scattering of empty pill packets. There are some clothes spilling out of a holdall on the back seat, but other than this the car seems quite well kempt.
‘Hello. It’s the ambulance. My name’s Spence and this is Rae. Can I ask your name?’
She raises her head to look at me like she’s being hauled up on a chain. She tries to speak, but her mouth is claggy with a white residue.
‘Say again,’ she manages.
‘It’s the ambulance. People are worried about you.’
She slumps back down again. ‘Hah. That’s rich.’
‘What’s happened to you today? Are you hurt in any way? Come on – sit up so we can talk to you.’
We help her. She starts making an ill-focused attempt to pull her trousers back up.
‘Sorry about this,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry about that for the moment. First things first. Can you tell me your name?’
‘Sandy.’
‘What are all these pill packets here, Sandy? Have you taken them?’
She shakes her head.
‘Where are the pills then, Sandy?’
‘I was going to take them, but I didn’t’ she says, her cracked lips struggling up into something like a smile. ‘I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn’t’
‘Have you had much to drink?’
‘Half a bottle of vodka’
‘But no pills?’
She shakes her head.
‘Sandy – let us help you onto the ambulance so we can check you over properly and have a chat to decide what to do.’
She blinks asymmetrically, focuses on me, then hauls her mouth into a big statement.
‘I’m not going to hospital, so don’t even think about it.’
‘Sandy – to be quite blunt – we can’t force you to come to hospital, but we can’t possibly leave you here. If you refuse, we’ll call the police, they’ll arrest you, and you’ll end up in hospital anyway. At least if you come with us you won’t have all that extra fuss and embarrassment.’
She shakes her head and starts trying to pull her jeans up again. They are soaked through with urine.
‘Just give me a minute,’ she says.
I wonder if the caller is watching us from a balcony somewhere.
‘Where do you live, Sandy?’
She gives me an address, the other side of town.
‘What’s the dog bowl for?’
‘My dog’
‘Is your dog here?’
‘I dropped him at my mother-in-law’s’
‘What sort of dog have you got?’
‘A sharpy’
‘What – is that like a husky or something?’
‘No – squashy face’
She looks up at me, her eyes bloodshot and her face puffy with the trauma of everything.
‘Oh yes – I know’ I say, as if looking at her face has helped me place the dog. ‘A sharpy.’
We lift her into a carry chair and away into the ambulance. Rae locks Sandy’s car up and brings back her shoes and jacket. She has about five hundred pounds in cash in the pockets.
At the hospital, A&E is as busy as I’ve seen it in a while. There are crews queuing with their patients all along the corridor. When I go to handover to Elena, the charge nurse, she has a board marker in one hand, two clipboards in the other and one under her arm. She stands astride the centre of the department, dispensing order and place like a fierce blue postman sorting letters at Christmas.
‘Dehydrated old lady to resus one, pleuritic chest pain to cubicle three.’
(Takes a phone call, signs something, pushes a heap of forms across to a passing nurse).
‘And you,’ she smiles, hanging the phone up and then scrawling her signature onto my sheet, ‘You my friend, please could you take your OD to cubicle number five.’ She tosses the board back to me.
Sandy gets wheeled into position.
The car we want is easy to spot: a small, banana yellow affair parked crookedly by the raised grass bank at the verge. When we draw closer we can see a pair of legs sticking out of the opened passenger door, jeans down by the ankles, bare feet. I jump out of the vehicle.
There is a middle-aged woman lying across the two front seats, her head in an empty metal dog bowl. There is a bottle of vodka in one foot well, a can of deodorant in another, and around them both a scattering of empty pill packets. There are some clothes spilling out of a holdall on the back seat, but other than this the car seems quite well kempt.
‘Hello. It’s the ambulance. My name’s Spence and this is Rae. Can I ask your name?’
She raises her head to look at me like she’s being hauled up on a chain. She tries to speak, but her mouth is claggy with a white residue.
‘Say again,’ she manages.
‘It’s the ambulance. People are worried about you.’
She slumps back down again. ‘Hah. That’s rich.’
‘What’s happened to you today? Are you hurt in any way? Come on – sit up so we can talk to you.’
We help her. She starts making an ill-focused attempt to pull her trousers back up.
‘Sorry about this,’ she says.
‘Don’t worry about that for the moment. First things first. Can you tell me your name?’
‘Sandy.’
‘What are all these pill packets here, Sandy? Have you taken them?’
She shakes her head.
‘Where are the pills then, Sandy?’
‘I was going to take them, but I didn’t’ she says, her cracked lips struggling up into something like a smile. ‘I wanted to kill myself, but I couldn’t’
‘Have you had much to drink?’
‘Half a bottle of vodka’
‘But no pills?’
She shakes her head.
‘Sandy – let us help you onto the ambulance so we can check you over properly and have a chat to decide what to do.’
She blinks asymmetrically, focuses on me, then hauls her mouth into a big statement.
‘I’m not going to hospital, so don’t even think about it.’
‘Sandy – to be quite blunt – we can’t force you to come to hospital, but we can’t possibly leave you here. If you refuse, we’ll call the police, they’ll arrest you, and you’ll end up in hospital anyway. At least if you come with us you won’t have all that extra fuss and embarrassment.’
She shakes her head and starts trying to pull her jeans up again. They are soaked through with urine.
‘Just give me a minute,’ she says.
I wonder if the caller is watching us from a balcony somewhere.
‘Where do you live, Sandy?’
She gives me an address, the other side of town.
‘What’s the dog bowl for?’
‘My dog’
‘Is your dog here?’
‘I dropped him at my mother-in-law’s’
‘What sort of dog have you got?’
‘A sharpy’
‘What – is that like a husky or something?’
‘No – squashy face’
She looks up at me, her eyes bloodshot and her face puffy with the trauma of everything.
‘Oh yes – I know’ I say, as if looking at her face has helped me place the dog. ‘A sharpy.’
We lift her into a carry chair and away into the ambulance. Rae locks Sandy’s car up and brings back her shoes and jacket. She has about five hundred pounds in cash in the pockets.
At the hospital, A&E is as busy as I’ve seen it in a while. There are crews queuing with their patients all along the corridor. When I go to handover to Elena, the charge nurse, she has a board marker in one hand, two clipboards in the other and one under her arm. She stands astride the centre of the department, dispensing order and place like a fierce blue postman sorting letters at Christmas.
‘Dehydrated old lady to resus one, pleuritic chest pain to cubicle three.’
(Takes a phone call, signs something, pushes a heap of forms across to a passing nurse).
‘And you,’ she smiles, hanging the phone up and then scrawling her signature onto my sheet, ‘You my friend, please could you take your OD to cubicle number five.’ She tosses the board back to me.
Sandy gets wheeled into position.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
doll
‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s the ambulance.’
‘Just a minute, please.’
Silence.
The entire building seems to be asleep; it’s so quiet you can almost hear the miles of hallway carpet stretching their luxurious tufts upwards to the pools of light outside each flat door.
‘Okay. You may come in now’
The door opens with a little tug of air. Mrs Jessom stands revealed to us, a sad eyed lady of seventy odd years, aura of glade freshener and alcohol, wearing a voluminous leaf patterned housecoat so heavy and triangular on her she seems like the worn out clapper in an Arts and Crafts bell. She pats her hair.
‘I look a fright’
‘Can we come in for a chat?’
‘Of course. Do.’
She lets us in, then closes the door firmly behind us.
‘The living room, I think’.
We follow her across a polished parquet floor. I feel that my work boots are growing in size and awfulness as she leads us into a richly furnished front room, darkly expensive oil paintings on the walls, glass cabinets sparkling with porcelain treasures, a leather ottoman and braided pouffe, a regency striped chaises longue and an occasional table of walnut and cherry – everything smelling of beeswax and fuss, everything placed meticulously with respect to everything else. In fact, the lines and relationships between each piece in this room are so strong, merely the act of sitting down reads like a serious assault. I feel hot and hemmed in, but we’re here to talk about Mrs Jessom’s suicidal feelings, so I try to clear my head.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Rae, my partner. Now – could you tell us what’s happened tonight, Mrs Jessom?’
She sits, poised in a gilt chair, her fingers fretting away in her lap. She stares at me.
‘My husband died,’ she says.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘I just don’t know what to do with myself anymore. It’s all too difficult. I don’t see the point.’
‘Was it very sudden?’
‘Was what sudden?’
‘Your husband’s death’
‘Yes. I suppose it was. I can’t remember it all that well’
‘When did your husband die?’
‘When?’
‘Yes. How long ago did he die?’
‘Eighteen years or so. ’
‘It must be hard,’ I say, nodding empathetically, whilst at the same time making a radical adjustment to my reading of this scene. ‘And has anything happened tonight in particular? Has anything set you off, made you feel bad for some reason?’
‘No. I always feel like this.’
‘So what did happen tonight?’
‘Well. I had my friend Susan round for drinks and a game of cards as per usual for a Wednesday night.’
‘Sounds nice’
‘What?’
‘That sounds like a nice thing to do’
She grimaces.
‘One does one’s best. It’s more for Susan than for me, of course. She’s always – I don’t know – such a mope.’
‘Did you have much to drink?’
‘No. Just the usual. A glass or two of whisky. Nothing – hardcore.’
She uses the word hardcore with a little downward turn of the mouth and stiffening of the spine, as if she’s making every effort to communicate to us in words that we might understand.
‘And excuse me for asking this, but have you taken any tablets tonight or done anything that might cause you harm?’
‘Certainly not’ she says. ‘But these things, they’re always there, always available. And I often think – well, why not?’
‘But you haven’t tonight?’
‘But I haven’t tonight. I’ve been very good about it’
The interview continues, Rae joining in with questions and suggestions, making all the usual health checks and taking details, until we reach the point where Mrs Jessom needs to decide what she wants to happen tonight.
‘Of course we wouldn’t like to leave you here on your own if we thought you might hurt yourself in some way.’
‘I’m not going to do that. I suppose I just wanted someone to talk to. And now that’s done.’
‘You can always come with us up to the hospital and speak to someone there. I’m afraid we’re quite limited as far as time and practical things we can do.’
But as I’m saying this I know that if Mrs Jessom did come up to the hospital, she would spend hours on her own in a cubicle, with no access to anyone resembling a psychiatric nurse or counsellor. The hospital is poorly set up for emotional problems during the day; during the night, it’s actually the last place you’d want to take anyone who was feeling low.
‘I want to thank you for coming tonight,’ she says, standing up and concluding the interview. ‘I know you’re busy.’
‘Please – do call again if you’re feeling desperate. There’s always something to be done,’ I say, half expecting the porcelein fish on the table behind me to leap up and fracture at that particular falsehood.
Mrs Jessom leads us back towards the front door. I notice something for the first time, the life-sized figure of a little girl in a bright red raincoat, turned with her face to the wall and her arms crooked up as if she were crying. It’s a ghastly figure, and one that makes me shudder despite the flat’s stifling heat.
‘She’s – erm – she’s unusual’ I say.
‘Yes. I was given her some time ago. Don’t know why I keep hold of her. Silly really.’
She hauls open the door and we leave.
Back in the cab we look out over the sea, the moon bright and low in the sky, silvering the glassy black surface.
‘Waxing or waning’
‘Waning. I think.’
‘At least it’s not full, thank god. I’m really not in the mood for it tonight.’
We share some fruit flavoured chewing gum, and turn the music up.
‘It’s the ambulance.’
‘Just a minute, please.’
Silence.
The entire building seems to be asleep; it’s so quiet you can almost hear the miles of hallway carpet stretching their luxurious tufts upwards to the pools of light outside each flat door.
‘Okay. You may come in now’
The door opens with a little tug of air. Mrs Jessom stands revealed to us, a sad eyed lady of seventy odd years, aura of glade freshener and alcohol, wearing a voluminous leaf patterned housecoat so heavy and triangular on her she seems like the worn out clapper in an Arts and Crafts bell. She pats her hair.
‘I look a fright’
‘Can we come in for a chat?’
‘Of course. Do.’
She lets us in, then closes the door firmly behind us.
‘The living room, I think’.
We follow her across a polished parquet floor. I feel that my work boots are growing in size and awfulness as she leads us into a richly furnished front room, darkly expensive oil paintings on the walls, glass cabinets sparkling with porcelain treasures, a leather ottoman and braided pouffe, a regency striped chaises longue and an occasional table of walnut and cherry – everything smelling of beeswax and fuss, everything placed meticulously with respect to everything else. In fact, the lines and relationships between each piece in this room are so strong, merely the act of sitting down reads like a serious assault. I feel hot and hemmed in, but we’re here to talk about Mrs Jessom’s suicidal feelings, so I try to clear my head.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Rae, my partner. Now – could you tell us what’s happened tonight, Mrs Jessom?’
She sits, poised in a gilt chair, her fingers fretting away in her lap. She stares at me.
‘My husband died,’ she says.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘I just don’t know what to do with myself anymore. It’s all too difficult. I don’t see the point.’
‘Was it very sudden?’
‘Was what sudden?’
‘Your husband’s death’
‘Yes. I suppose it was. I can’t remember it all that well’
‘When did your husband die?’
‘When?’
‘Yes. How long ago did he die?’
‘Eighteen years or so. ’
‘It must be hard,’ I say, nodding empathetically, whilst at the same time making a radical adjustment to my reading of this scene. ‘And has anything happened tonight in particular? Has anything set you off, made you feel bad for some reason?’
‘No. I always feel like this.’
‘So what did happen tonight?’
‘Well. I had my friend Susan round for drinks and a game of cards as per usual for a Wednesday night.’
‘Sounds nice’
‘What?’
‘That sounds like a nice thing to do’
She grimaces.
‘One does one’s best. It’s more for Susan than for me, of course. She’s always – I don’t know – such a mope.’
‘Did you have much to drink?’
‘No. Just the usual. A glass or two of whisky. Nothing – hardcore.’
She uses the word hardcore with a little downward turn of the mouth and stiffening of the spine, as if she’s making every effort to communicate to us in words that we might understand.
‘And excuse me for asking this, but have you taken any tablets tonight or done anything that might cause you harm?’
‘Certainly not’ she says. ‘But these things, they’re always there, always available. And I often think – well, why not?’
‘But you haven’t tonight?’
‘But I haven’t tonight. I’ve been very good about it’
The interview continues, Rae joining in with questions and suggestions, making all the usual health checks and taking details, until we reach the point where Mrs Jessom needs to decide what she wants to happen tonight.
‘Of course we wouldn’t like to leave you here on your own if we thought you might hurt yourself in some way.’
‘I’m not going to do that. I suppose I just wanted someone to talk to. And now that’s done.’
‘You can always come with us up to the hospital and speak to someone there. I’m afraid we’re quite limited as far as time and practical things we can do.’
But as I’m saying this I know that if Mrs Jessom did come up to the hospital, she would spend hours on her own in a cubicle, with no access to anyone resembling a psychiatric nurse or counsellor. The hospital is poorly set up for emotional problems during the day; during the night, it’s actually the last place you’d want to take anyone who was feeling low.
‘I want to thank you for coming tonight,’ she says, standing up and concluding the interview. ‘I know you’re busy.’
‘Please – do call again if you’re feeling desperate. There’s always something to be done,’ I say, half expecting the porcelein fish on the table behind me to leap up and fracture at that particular falsehood.
Mrs Jessom leads us back towards the front door. I notice something for the first time, the life-sized figure of a little girl in a bright red raincoat, turned with her face to the wall and her arms crooked up as if she were crying. It’s a ghastly figure, and one that makes me shudder despite the flat’s stifling heat.
‘She’s – erm – she’s unusual’ I say.
‘Yes. I was given her some time ago. Don’t know why I keep hold of her. Silly really.’
She hauls open the door and we leave.
Back in the cab we look out over the sea, the moon bright and low in the sky, silvering the glassy black surface.
‘Waxing or waning’
‘Waning. I think.’
‘At least it’s not full, thank god. I’m really not in the mood for it tonight.’
We share some fruit flavoured chewing gum, and turn the music up.
Friday, August 01, 2008
cat wrestling
‘Excuse my state of undress,’ says Janice, coquettish sausage finger to chins. ‘It all happened as I was getting into bed, you see. I didn’t have a chance to put on my nightie.’
All exactly to script. Each crew will land a trip out to Janice at least once a month. Always late at night, and always the same reason – an injury to one of her legs whilst transferring from wheelchair to bed. Every time I pull up outside I expect to see a neighbourhood posse with flaming firebrands. I know they’ve made several complaints about noisy ambulances in the street in the early hours.
‘Is the front door shut? I don’t want the cats getting out.’
Janice is elephantine, a gross caricature fashioned from pillows and fat-filled balloons, stuffed into a pitted casing. She holds her World Wrestling Federation duvet across her naked chest as we stand there, repeating silently to ourselves the stern promise we made out in the cab to be chilly, clear and quick.
‘Show me where you’re hurt.’
Janice tosses the duvet aside.
‘Janice. You really must make an effort to have some clothes on.’
‘I know. I know. But you’ve seen it all before.’
I have. The glossy WWF calendar; the black and gold thread tiger embroidery above the bed; the racks of wrestling DVDs; the fluffy toys, and the cats, five black shadows, draped indifferently on shelves, chairs and a plush blue cat activity tower.
‘So where are you hurt?’
‘It’s my knee. My right knee.’
A young woman in her mid twenties, Janice lost sight and sense of normal joint function when she passed the 180kg marker a few years ago. Both her legs are terribly swollen. It’s a wonder she can move at all.
‘And what happened exactly?’
‘Well – I was just getting up from the wheelchair to get onto the bed when one of my cats head-butted me in the ankle and I fell forward.’
‘Onto the floor?’
‘Onto the bed.’
‘And was there much pain?’
‘Not really. I just caught my knee on the armrest and it hurt. Is it going to be all right?’
‘Can you move it?’
She flops back on the bed, and partially bends the knee.
‘Oof. That doesn’t half hurt.’
‘Well – the knee cap looks well placed. It’s difficult to tell if there’s any more or less swelling than usual. You have some movement, but that’s not always an indication. At the end of the day the only sure way to know whether you’ve damaged yourself is to come to hospital and see a doctor.’
‘At this time of night? I don’t think so.’
‘Of course the other thing would be to see your doctor in the morning.’
‘He’s no good.’
‘A third option would be to take anti-inflammatories, rest up and see how it feels in the morning.’
‘That sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll do that.’
‘Okay. I just need to complete the paperwork.’
‘Can you help me back up, please?’
We help her into a sitting position again.
‘Phew. Thank you so much for coming. I hate to call you out like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m all on my own here. Apart from the cats. Shame on you, Diesel, for throwing mummy on the bed like that.’ She smiles at me, and wipes away some hair sticking to the side of her face. ‘But I suppose that’s his nature.’
I write out the ticket from memory. It only takes a minute. I collect Janice’s signature and we see ourselves out.
‘Make sure the door’s shut,’ Janice shouts after us.
I accidentally scrunch a snail on the path. A fox barks somewhere off in the distance. There is a mist hanging about the lawns and driveways; it feels like the enmity of Janice’s neighbours coalescing in the chilly night air.
All exactly to script. Each crew will land a trip out to Janice at least once a month. Always late at night, and always the same reason – an injury to one of her legs whilst transferring from wheelchair to bed. Every time I pull up outside I expect to see a neighbourhood posse with flaming firebrands. I know they’ve made several complaints about noisy ambulances in the street in the early hours.
‘Is the front door shut? I don’t want the cats getting out.’
Janice is elephantine, a gross caricature fashioned from pillows and fat-filled balloons, stuffed into a pitted casing. She holds her World Wrestling Federation duvet across her naked chest as we stand there, repeating silently to ourselves the stern promise we made out in the cab to be chilly, clear and quick.
‘Show me where you’re hurt.’
Janice tosses the duvet aside.
‘Janice. You really must make an effort to have some clothes on.’
‘I know. I know. But you’ve seen it all before.’
I have. The glossy WWF calendar; the black and gold thread tiger embroidery above the bed; the racks of wrestling DVDs; the fluffy toys, and the cats, five black shadows, draped indifferently on shelves, chairs and a plush blue cat activity tower.
‘So where are you hurt?’
‘It’s my knee. My right knee.’
A young woman in her mid twenties, Janice lost sight and sense of normal joint function when she passed the 180kg marker a few years ago. Both her legs are terribly swollen. It’s a wonder she can move at all.
‘And what happened exactly?’
‘Well – I was just getting up from the wheelchair to get onto the bed when one of my cats head-butted me in the ankle and I fell forward.’
‘Onto the floor?’
‘Onto the bed.’
‘And was there much pain?’
‘Not really. I just caught my knee on the armrest and it hurt. Is it going to be all right?’
‘Can you move it?’
She flops back on the bed, and partially bends the knee.
‘Oof. That doesn’t half hurt.’
‘Well – the knee cap looks well placed. It’s difficult to tell if there’s any more or less swelling than usual. You have some movement, but that’s not always an indication. At the end of the day the only sure way to know whether you’ve damaged yourself is to come to hospital and see a doctor.’
‘At this time of night? I don’t think so.’
‘Of course the other thing would be to see your doctor in the morning.’
‘He’s no good.’
‘A third option would be to take anti-inflammatories, rest up and see how it feels in the morning.’
‘That sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll do that.’
‘Okay. I just need to complete the paperwork.’
‘Can you help me back up, please?’
We help her into a sitting position again.
‘Phew. Thank you so much for coming. I hate to call you out like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m all on my own here. Apart from the cats. Shame on you, Diesel, for throwing mummy on the bed like that.’ She smiles at me, and wipes away some hair sticking to the side of her face. ‘But I suppose that’s his nature.’
I write out the ticket from memory. It only takes a minute. I collect Janice’s signature and we see ourselves out.
‘Make sure the door’s shut,’ Janice shouts after us.
I accidentally scrunch a snail on the path. A fox barks somewhere off in the distance. There is a mist hanging about the lawns and driveways; it feels like the enmity of Janice’s neighbours coalescing in the chilly night air.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
bullets here and here
‘You motherfucking scum. You think you treat me like this? Like I don’t care, don’t mind? Like I’m a nothing man? You motherfucking piece of trash. I kill you. I smash you. I piss on you. You bring me here and expect me wait in there? With that people? Five, six hours? No. No, no, no. This not right. You see me now. You see me and you fix me up or I kill you.’
He pulls up his t-shirt and smacks his lean belly. We stand there, turned sideways so we’re less of a target, arms at our sides, watching him, waiting for security. Where are security?
‘See this? See this, you motherfucking scum? You think I don’t know what pain is? You think I care what you do? I got bullets here, bullets here. Here. I got half a head – boom. You think I care what you think you do to me? You motherfucking scum. You see me now. I see the doctors now. Come. Take me to the doctors.’
The charge nurse says: ‘I’m not taking any more of this crap.’ But all he seems able to do is hit the redial button. Everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity has slowed or stopped, dragged into the tow of this curious man’s rage. We’re all waiting for him to do something, to hit someone, or try to. He raises his crutch, then lowers it again.
‘Hrrrrrr’ he says. Hobbles off, then comes straight back.
‘You think I care what you do to me?’
‘Listen, Gil. We’re here to help you. We’ve brought you to hospital because you said you wanted to see a doctor about your hip. You will get to see a doctor, but there is a wait, unfortunately. All these people are in the same boat.’
I risk a glance past Gil’s shoulder into the waiting room. I catch the eye of a woman and her teenage daughter, the daughter clutching her arm, both of them staring across from the hard blue seat of their ordeal.
‘Just look around you, Gil.’
But he merely carries on fronting us out, waving his crutch occasionally like an enraged gorilla thrashing a branch. Eventually he turns and crashes an exit through the crowded waiting room, off into the car park. Two minutes later security arrives.
‘He’s about five foot six, wearing a cap with a red star on the front, using one crutch…’ I tell them.
‘Yes, yes, we saw it all on the cameras.’
They stroll cautiously outside to see if he’s still around.
‘They saw it on the cameras,’ says the charge nurse. ‘Great. We were never in any danger, then.’
When we had answered the red call to the man collapsed in the street, we’d found Gil and another man standing arguing on the pavement. Gil had a bloody cut to his eyebrow – his friend roughed in the details through a bad-tempered storm of interruptions: Gil had been sitting against a wall, had tried to stand up, lost his footing and grazed his head. He hadn’t lost consciousness, hadn’t felt unwell, and as far as he knew that was the only thing wrong with him.
‘Gil – we need to get you on the vehicle, clean you up and see what’s happened. But Gil – we also need you to calm down, okay? We’re here to help you. Can you do that for us? Just slow down, take it easy and we’ll see what’s what.’
Amazingly this seems to work. He slumps into himself, but steps nimbly enough up onto the ambulance.
In the good interior light we get a clear view of our patient. The most immediately striking thing about him is his head. He has a palm sized depression on the right side of his skull, yellowed and sunken below the cropped lines of his scalp. It looks like an old plastic plug that’s dried and receded. Its edges are ragged, suture like.
‘How did you get that?’ I ask him.
‘Ach. You don’t know and you don’t want to know. I got bullet here, here. I got explosion from mine. My hip, my head, my liver, my god - everything. Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Pow.’
‘So you were a soldier, Gil?’
He pulls up the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Look here. Bullet, bullet. Here also. Ach.’
We tour his scars, awful knots of pale knitted flesh rucked and raked together on his arms, his abdomen, his legs. Whether this was all the result of one explosion or a collection of wounds, it’s impossible to determine. He’s had a few cans of lager, it’s late at night, and all he seems to want is to see someone about his hip.
‘I had replacement,’ he says, smacking his right hip. ‘It hurts me now three four week. I need to see doctor.’
I start to clean up the wound on his eyebrow, which doesn’t seem bad.
‘So it’s not new pain tonight? And you’ve had it for a few weeks. Can I ask why you didn’t see a doctor before now?’
Gil pushes my hand away, wipes his eye-line with the back of his hand, pulls his cap back on, pulls his crutch upright in front of him like a rifle.
‘You take me doctor now.’
When the ambulance pulls in to the A&E car park, Gil seems more relaxed.
‘I get out now?’
‘Let’s just wait for Frank to finish reversing.’
Frank opens up the back door.
‘Would you like a chair?’
‘I walk. I not dead yet.’
I lead him into the minors area. He looks around him at the people scattered despondently around the purple waiting room.
‘Take a seat, Gil, whilst I go and have a word with the nurse.’
But he doesn’t sit down.
‘What means this?’ he says.
‘Take a seat. I’m afraid there may be a little wait to see someone. They’re quite busy tonight.’
I walk off towards the nurse’s station. Frank comes with me, rather than going off to make some coffee. He can sense the charge in the air.
‘No!’ shouts Gil. ‘You not do this to me. I not wait here. I see doctor now.’
He hurries after us and nails us in front of the nurse’s desk. We are in danger, a marked target. I wonder – should he attack– whether anyone will break from the anonymous safety of the herd to come to our assistance.
I wonder if he has a knife.
He pulls up his t-shirt and smacks his lean belly. We stand there, turned sideways so we’re less of a target, arms at our sides, watching him, waiting for security. Where are security?
‘See this? See this, you motherfucking scum? You think I don’t know what pain is? You think I care what you do? I got bullets here, bullets here. Here. I got half a head – boom. You think I care what you think you do to me? You motherfucking scum. You see me now. I see the doctors now. Come. Take me to the doctors.’
The charge nurse says: ‘I’m not taking any more of this crap.’ But all he seems able to do is hit the redial button. Everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity has slowed or stopped, dragged into the tow of this curious man’s rage. We’re all waiting for him to do something, to hit someone, or try to. He raises his crutch, then lowers it again.
‘Hrrrrrr’ he says. Hobbles off, then comes straight back.
‘You think I care what you do to me?’
‘Listen, Gil. We’re here to help you. We’ve brought you to hospital because you said you wanted to see a doctor about your hip. You will get to see a doctor, but there is a wait, unfortunately. All these people are in the same boat.’
I risk a glance past Gil’s shoulder into the waiting room. I catch the eye of a woman and her teenage daughter, the daughter clutching her arm, both of them staring across from the hard blue seat of their ordeal.
‘Just look around you, Gil.’
But he merely carries on fronting us out, waving his crutch occasionally like an enraged gorilla thrashing a branch. Eventually he turns and crashes an exit through the crowded waiting room, off into the car park. Two minutes later security arrives.
‘He’s about five foot six, wearing a cap with a red star on the front, using one crutch…’ I tell them.
‘Yes, yes, we saw it all on the cameras.’
They stroll cautiously outside to see if he’s still around.
‘They saw it on the cameras,’ says the charge nurse. ‘Great. We were never in any danger, then.’
When we had answered the red call to the man collapsed in the street, we’d found Gil and another man standing arguing on the pavement. Gil had a bloody cut to his eyebrow – his friend roughed in the details through a bad-tempered storm of interruptions: Gil had been sitting against a wall, had tried to stand up, lost his footing and grazed his head. He hadn’t lost consciousness, hadn’t felt unwell, and as far as he knew that was the only thing wrong with him.
‘Gil – we need to get you on the vehicle, clean you up and see what’s happened. But Gil – we also need you to calm down, okay? We’re here to help you. Can you do that for us? Just slow down, take it easy and we’ll see what’s what.’
Amazingly this seems to work. He slumps into himself, but steps nimbly enough up onto the ambulance.
In the good interior light we get a clear view of our patient. The most immediately striking thing about him is his head. He has a palm sized depression on the right side of his skull, yellowed and sunken below the cropped lines of his scalp. It looks like an old plastic plug that’s dried and receded. Its edges are ragged, suture like.
‘How did you get that?’ I ask him.
‘Ach. You don’t know and you don’t want to know. I got bullet here, here. I got explosion from mine. My hip, my head, my liver, my god - everything. Iraq. Afghanistan. Israel. Pow.’
‘So you were a soldier, Gil?’
He pulls up the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Look here. Bullet, bullet. Here also. Ach.’
We tour his scars, awful knots of pale knitted flesh rucked and raked together on his arms, his abdomen, his legs. Whether this was all the result of one explosion or a collection of wounds, it’s impossible to determine. He’s had a few cans of lager, it’s late at night, and all he seems to want is to see someone about his hip.
‘I had replacement,’ he says, smacking his right hip. ‘It hurts me now three four week. I need to see doctor.’
I start to clean up the wound on his eyebrow, which doesn’t seem bad.
‘So it’s not new pain tonight? And you’ve had it for a few weeks. Can I ask why you didn’t see a doctor before now?’
Gil pushes my hand away, wipes his eye-line with the back of his hand, pulls his cap back on, pulls his crutch upright in front of him like a rifle.
‘You take me doctor now.’
When the ambulance pulls in to the A&E car park, Gil seems more relaxed.
‘I get out now?’
‘Let’s just wait for Frank to finish reversing.’
Frank opens up the back door.
‘Would you like a chair?’
‘I walk. I not dead yet.’
I lead him into the minors area. He looks around him at the people scattered despondently around the purple waiting room.
‘Take a seat, Gil, whilst I go and have a word with the nurse.’
But he doesn’t sit down.
‘What means this?’ he says.
‘Take a seat. I’m afraid there may be a little wait to see someone. They’re quite busy tonight.’
I walk off towards the nurse’s station. Frank comes with me, rather than going off to make some coffee. He can sense the charge in the air.
‘No!’ shouts Gil. ‘You not do this to me. I not wait here. I see doctor now.’
He hurries after us and nails us in front of the nurse’s desk. We are in danger, a marked target. I wonder – should he attack– whether anyone will break from the anonymous safety of the herd to come to our assistance.
I wonder if he has a knife.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
nfa bear
There is a huge man sleeping on the steps of the grand office portico. He needs only bigger ears and a pair of claws to make a passable grizzly bear, but instead of a log he rests his arm across a filthy tote bag.
‘Please. You have to help him,’ says the young girl at my shoulder. Her boyfriend, his arms behind his back and his hands pressed compliantly into his jeans back pockets, grins shyly and lifts his eyebrows. ‘She didn’t know what else to do.’
So now five of us – me and my partner Jack, a policewoman, the girl and her friend – stand in a semi-circle around the man, whilst hundreds of Saturday night clubbers press on around us through the streets on their great nocturnal migration from the bars to the clubs.
‘Did you see anything happen to him? Did he fall? Was he attacked?’
‘No. We just saw him lying there. He could be dead. No-one gives a damn. Do something.’
She seems narcotically strung, scratching from side to side in gorgeous boots, pale and brittle. I would very much like to have them away from the scene, partly in case the man reacts badly to being woken up, but mostly because I would prefer only to have to deal with one unpredictable and not two.
‘Well thank you for you help tonight,’ I say to her. She waits for something more. ‘I don’t think there’s much else for you to do here. Thanks very much. It’s okay for you to go.’
The boyfriend seems relieved but the girl isn’t satisfied. She allows herself to be drawn off to the side, where she stands and waits and studies us.
Mindful of a swipe from the sleeping man, I chose the least vulnerable position, lean in and give him a humane shake. ‘Hello. Ambulance. Can you sit up and talk to me, please?’
It’s like calling down a well. My voice seems to echo somewhere deep behind his face.
‘Ambulance. People are worried about you, mate. Sit up and talk to me. Are you hurt or sick in any way?’
I increase the stimulation and it comes back with a vague twitch of consciousness.
‘Open your eyes for me.’
He snuffles, gives a torpid sneer.
‘Open your eyes.’
They lever open a crack, just enough for me to see that he hasn’t had any smack, and just enough for him to throw a line around his tormentor.
‘And who the fuck are you?’
‘It’s the ambulance. Sorry to wake you. But people see you lying there and they wonder if there might be something the matter.’
‘Go away.’
He re-seals his eyes.
‘No. Come on. We’ve come out to see you. The least you can do is talk to us.’
‘Go a fucking way’
The policewoman enters the ring.
‘Mate. You need to get up and be on your way. You can’t be sleeping here tonight. This is public property.’
The eyes are back on.
‘And who the fuck may you be?’
‘I’m the police, mate. And I’m telling you that you need to move on.’
I can sense the young girl rearing off to my right. This isn’t what she had in mind when she called for help. Her friend has his arms around her shoulders, but it’s like throwing a bridle on an unbroken horse. They exchange some urgent, low level conversation.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Sorry. We can’t do that. If we leave you alone, all that will happen is that someone else will call an ambulance, and we’ll be back where we started.’
Cued by her line, I cut back in with my rudimentary patient assessment.
‘Just to be clear – is there anything wrong with you? Are you hurt or sick?’
‘I’m fucking sick of you.’
The policewoman looks up and down the street. Her back-up is in the takeaway getting snacks.
‘Why don’t you do us all a favour and go to the park, or something?’ she says.
He leans upwards towards her, the dangling thread of saliva on his lip gleaming dully in the overspill light from the shop next door.
‘I can’t go to no fucking park. I’ve got an asbo there.’
‘Well can you go to the beach?’
‘I can’t go to no fucking beach. I’ve got an asbo there.’
‘Can’t you go to a hostel tonight?’
‘They’re full. I got no where. The fuck you care.’
‘Well I think we’re all sorry that you’re in such a strait, but the simple fact is that you can’t sleep here.’
‘Go the fuck away. Leave me alone.’
Three policemen are coming down the street towards us, each with a little white plastic bag of food. They chat and laugh together, fluorescent with comradeship and purpose. The policewoman seems to grow slightly.
‘We don’t like to insist,’ she says, ‘But we can’t go anywhere until you co-operate.’
The young girl suddenly pushes between us all. Even the man on the steps pulls back.
‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ she wails. ‘This is not what I wanted. It isn’t fair. Can’t you take him to a shelter or something? The hospital? You can’t do this. He has nothing. Can’t you see? He needs help.’
The boyfriend steps back in and leads her away again. She has her mobile phone out and is frantically tapping in some numbers. I wonder who.
The man is on his feet now. He leans down precariously to gather his bag up.
‘Fucking cunts’ he breathes. ‘What do you care?’
Then he sees a man in crutches on the other side of the street.
‘Oi’ he bellows.
The man in crutches raises one, and they begin a slow shuffling progress towards each other through the late night crowd; it parts as smoothly and easily as repellent opposites to let them.
‘Please. You have to help him,’ says the young girl at my shoulder. Her boyfriend, his arms behind his back and his hands pressed compliantly into his jeans back pockets, grins shyly and lifts his eyebrows. ‘She didn’t know what else to do.’
So now five of us – me and my partner Jack, a policewoman, the girl and her friend – stand in a semi-circle around the man, whilst hundreds of Saturday night clubbers press on around us through the streets on their great nocturnal migration from the bars to the clubs.
‘Did you see anything happen to him? Did he fall? Was he attacked?’
‘No. We just saw him lying there. He could be dead. No-one gives a damn. Do something.’
She seems narcotically strung, scratching from side to side in gorgeous boots, pale and brittle. I would very much like to have them away from the scene, partly in case the man reacts badly to being woken up, but mostly because I would prefer only to have to deal with one unpredictable and not two.
‘Well thank you for you help tonight,’ I say to her. She waits for something more. ‘I don’t think there’s much else for you to do here. Thanks very much. It’s okay for you to go.’
The boyfriend seems relieved but the girl isn’t satisfied. She allows herself to be drawn off to the side, where she stands and waits and studies us.
Mindful of a swipe from the sleeping man, I chose the least vulnerable position, lean in and give him a humane shake. ‘Hello. Ambulance. Can you sit up and talk to me, please?’
It’s like calling down a well. My voice seems to echo somewhere deep behind his face.
‘Ambulance. People are worried about you, mate. Sit up and talk to me. Are you hurt or sick in any way?’
I increase the stimulation and it comes back with a vague twitch of consciousness.
‘Open your eyes for me.’
He snuffles, gives a torpid sneer.
‘Open your eyes.’
They lever open a crack, just enough for me to see that he hasn’t had any smack, and just enough for him to throw a line around his tormentor.
‘And who the fuck are you?’
‘It’s the ambulance. Sorry to wake you. But people see you lying there and they wonder if there might be something the matter.’
‘Go away.’
He re-seals his eyes.
‘No. Come on. We’ve come out to see you. The least you can do is talk to us.’
‘Go a fucking way’
The policewoman enters the ring.
‘Mate. You need to get up and be on your way. You can’t be sleeping here tonight. This is public property.’
The eyes are back on.
‘And who the fuck may you be?’
‘I’m the police, mate. And I’m telling you that you need to move on.’
I can sense the young girl rearing off to my right. This isn’t what she had in mind when she called for help. Her friend has his arms around her shoulders, but it’s like throwing a bridle on an unbroken horse. They exchange some urgent, low level conversation.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Sorry. We can’t do that. If we leave you alone, all that will happen is that someone else will call an ambulance, and we’ll be back where we started.’
Cued by her line, I cut back in with my rudimentary patient assessment.
‘Just to be clear – is there anything wrong with you? Are you hurt or sick?’
‘I’m fucking sick of you.’
The policewoman looks up and down the street. Her back-up is in the takeaway getting snacks.
‘Why don’t you do us all a favour and go to the park, or something?’ she says.
He leans upwards towards her, the dangling thread of saliva on his lip gleaming dully in the overspill light from the shop next door.
‘I can’t go to no fucking park. I’ve got an asbo there.’
‘Well can you go to the beach?’
‘I can’t go to no fucking beach. I’ve got an asbo there.’
‘Can’t you go to a hostel tonight?’
‘They’re full. I got no where. The fuck you care.’
‘Well I think we’re all sorry that you’re in such a strait, but the simple fact is that you can’t sleep here.’
‘Go the fuck away. Leave me alone.’
Three policemen are coming down the street towards us, each with a little white plastic bag of food. They chat and laugh together, fluorescent with comradeship and purpose. The policewoman seems to grow slightly.
‘We don’t like to insist,’ she says, ‘But we can’t go anywhere until you co-operate.’
The young girl suddenly pushes between us all. Even the man on the steps pulls back.
‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ she wails. ‘This is not what I wanted. It isn’t fair. Can’t you take him to a shelter or something? The hospital? You can’t do this. He has nothing. Can’t you see? He needs help.’
The boyfriend steps back in and leads her away again. She has her mobile phone out and is frantically tapping in some numbers. I wonder who.
The man is on his feet now. He leans down precariously to gather his bag up.
‘Fucking cunts’ he breathes. ‘What do you care?’
Then he sees a man in crutches on the other side of the street.
‘Oi’ he bellows.
The man in crutches raises one, and they begin a slow shuffling progress towards each other through the late night crowd; it parts as smoothly and easily as repellent opposites to let them.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
lucky
I don’t have to worry about finding the site of this RTC, riding as I am on the tail of a brace of fire trucks, careening through the dark streets, cleaving the night with our lights and sirens and getting straight to it, no question.
Car into house is the message on the terrafix, and then – no back up available. pls. assess and advise.
A police car tags on behind me. Then another. The punters turning out of the pubs must think it’s the end of the world.
We blaze off the main road up into residential territory, rights and lefts and tight fits between parked cars until the trucks haul up outside a bungalow marked by a small crowd of people – teenagers in dressing gowns, old men in slippers, family huddles – and, when I’m out and able to see, a car wedged in the front of it. The bungalow is on the elbow of the road as it turns up and to the right. It looks as if the car has taken the corner too fast, ploughed through a low brick wall, rolled on to its off-side and buried its bonnet just below a window. There is already a police car on scene. The officer tells me that the driver has absconded, but he leads me over to a middle-aged man who is waving his arms descriptively in front of a couple of fire fighters.
‘My boy was asleep in that room. There was an almighty crunch, we jumped off the sofa and ran in. You’ll see. There’s glass and stuff everywhere. We just scooped him up and ran out of there. We found this kid standing outside looking fucked up, you know. Obviously the driver. Not a mark on him, but completely spaced. He asked me if we were okay, and when I said I think so, he took off up the road.’
The policeman puts a hand on the man’s shoulder and leads him away to the side. A bright white light flips on from one of the fire trucks, laying the scene bare.
‘We’ve got a paramedic here,’ says the officer.
‘Great,’ says the man. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with James, but I’d appreciate it if you’d come and give him the once over.’
‘Sure.’
I follow him into a neighbour’s house. If the crowd in the street is held together by a compulsion to witness the wreck, the blue lights and the police running up and down the road, the focus of this house is altogether more personal. It seems to have become a gathering place, a neighbourly place of safety, where those most directly affected can gather themselves, drink tea and make plans. It’s as if the car has slammed into a hive, jolting the community into collective action.
James is bouncing up and down on his mother’s lap, a bright little two year old, enjoying the strangeness of all this. I check him over but he’s very obviously fine. Before I go, I ask the mother if she’d mind if I had a look in the house to see what the level of damage was.
‘Please do,’ she says. ‘You’ll see how lucky we’ve been.’
Even though I know that the family are next door, I still knock before I go in. The hallway is strangely illuminated by the harsh scene lighting. The house seems to be hanging back, guarding its shadows from the blatant scrutiny. I walk along the hallway, take a right, and stand in front of the door to the James’ nursery. It swings open smoothly, then catches on something. I look in.
The wall beneath the bay window opposite bulges inwards, five courses of bricks from the carpet up witness to the point of impact. All the glass has been shattered above it, the struts hanging inwards, a vicious confetti of glass shards scattered across every surface, the carpet, dresser, teddies and dressing up clothes, the train track and the colouring books. The bed.
This is a shocking assault on a happy little room, and yes, James is a lucky boy.
Just as I turn to go, I catch a sudden, strange hopping movement on the floor. I see a little dark lump – and it hops again. A froglet, heading towards the window. I guess it was either on the bush outside and carried through when the car struck, or perhaps hopped through one of the gaps immediately after. Either way, it will struggle to get back outside on its own. I take a step forward to try to rescue it. The glass crystals crunch underfoot. The froglet makes a desperate sideways leap and disappears under the bed. I can’t reach it, and can’t afford any time trying.
I leave the room, and head back outside into the light.
Car into house is the message on the terrafix, and then – no back up available. pls. assess and advise.
A police car tags on behind me. Then another. The punters turning out of the pubs must think it’s the end of the world.
We blaze off the main road up into residential territory, rights and lefts and tight fits between parked cars until the trucks haul up outside a bungalow marked by a small crowd of people – teenagers in dressing gowns, old men in slippers, family huddles – and, when I’m out and able to see, a car wedged in the front of it. The bungalow is on the elbow of the road as it turns up and to the right. It looks as if the car has taken the corner too fast, ploughed through a low brick wall, rolled on to its off-side and buried its bonnet just below a window. There is already a police car on scene. The officer tells me that the driver has absconded, but he leads me over to a middle-aged man who is waving his arms descriptively in front of a couple of fire fighters.
‘My boy was asleep in that room. There was an almighty crunch, we jumped off the sofa and ran in. You’ll see. There’s glass and stuff everywhere. We just scooped him up and ran out of there. We found this kid standing outside looking fucked up, you know. Obviously the driver. Not a mark on him, but completely spaced. He asked me if we were okay, and when I said I think so, he took off up the road.’
The policeman puts a hand on the man’s shoulder and leads him away to the side. A bright white light flips on from one of the fire trucks, laying the scene bare.
‘We’ve got a paramedic here,’ says the officer.
‘Great,’ says the man. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with James, but I’d appreciate it if you’d come and give him the once over.’
‘Sure.’
I follow him into a neighbour’s house. If the crowd in the street is held together by a compulsion to witness the wreck, the blue lights and the police running up and down the road, the focus of this house is altogether more personal. It seems to have become a gathering place, a neighbourly place of safety, where those most directly affected can gather themselves, drink tea and make plans. It’s as if the car has slammed into a hive, jolting the community into collective action.
James is bouncing up and down on his mother’s lap, a bright little two year old, enjoying the strangeness of all this. I check him over but he’s very obviously fine. Before I go, I ask the mother if she’d mind if I had a look in the house to see what the level of damage was.
‘Please do,’ she says. ‘You’ll see how lucky we’ve been.’
Even though I know that the family are next door, I still knock before I go in. The hallway is strangely illuminated by the harsh scene lighting. The house seems to be hanging back, guarding its shadows from the blatant scrutiny. I walk along the hallway, take a right, and stand in front of the door to the James’ nursery. It swings open smoothly, then catches on something. I look in.
The wall beneath the bay window opposite bulges inwards, five courses of bricks from the carpet up witness to the point of impact. All the glass has been shattered above it, the struts hanging inwards, a vicious confetti of glass shards scattered across every surface, the carpet, dresser, teddies and dressing up clothes, the train track and the colouring books. The bed.
This is a shocking assault on a happy little room, and yes, James is a lucky boy.
Just as I turn to go, I catch a sudden, strange hopping movement on the floor. I see a little dark lump – and it hops again. A froglet, heading towards the window. I guess it was either on the bush outside and carried through when the car struck, or perhaps hopped through one of the gaps immediately after. Either way, it will struggle to get back outside on its own. I take a step forward to try to rescue it. The glass crystals crunch underfoot. The froglet makes a desperate sideways leap and disappears under the bed. I can’t reach it, and can’t afford any time trying.
I leave the room, and head back outside into the light.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
puppets on crack
Working the car has some advantages – periods on standby when you can simply be quiet and read; assessing patients at your own pace without interruption; listening to whatever radio station you feel like. But as I slam the car boot and struggle to gather together the three bulky bags I’ll need for this job, one big disadvantage is made weightily clear.
And then, of course, another disadvantage is that sometimes you’ll find yourself going in to a crack house on your own at three in the morning.
Control has reassured me that the police are on scene, and I’ve parked in front of their patrol car, but it’s not the same as having a crew mate to share the particular vulnerabilities of the ambulance position. Plus – this has been given as an overdose, and I don’t fancy spending half an hour bagging this patient without relief. The night is rolling on thick and close. The storm that would ease it has seemed imminent for the past hour, but maybe it will never come. I’ve only been out of the air conditioned car for a minute and already the frosting on my skin has gone.
During the day this is a busy street serving the railway station and the top end of town. Now the little café fronts and obscure record shops are dark. The flat numbers seem to be lower than I was expecting, and the police car turns out not to be immediately outside the address. I waddle past three dark entrances, unable to wield a torch and tote the bags at the same time. A young woman slides me a sympathetic look as she passes, then calls back a few seconds later.
‘In there,’ she points, just as a policeman peers round the corner of a shop.
‘Thanks.’
I donkey my way over to him.
‘Here, can you carry that?’
‘All right, mate. Blimey – what’s in there? Gold bars? Anyway - what we’ve got is a woman of about thirty odd. Flat out on the floor. Looks like some kind of overdose, probably crack cocaine. We were called to the address because a guy said he’d been burgled. He answered the door with a knife, but it’s all okay now. Bit of a nut job, but nothing we can’t handle. Says the woman’s a friend of his. Can’t tell you much more. Thanks for coming. Watch your step.’
He leads me over the threshold of a dark and dirty back room, strewn with cushions, papers, carrier bags and cups – the usual flop house chic. In through a filthy galley kitchen where a policewoman is talking to a man in a dark suit, up a tight little dog-leg twist in the stairs, and into a sitting room where a woman is lying face down on the lino. She’s wearing an off-the-shoulder purple party dress, and would look as if she’d fainted during canapés were it not for the dreadful surroundings and the patterns of bruises and scars along her arms. I can see the rise and fall of her breathing even from here, even in the gloom of this place.
‘Have we got a name?’
‘Adie, we think. Trev’s not too clear about that. Or anything else, for that matter.’
I put the remaining bags down and go over to her.
‘Adie? Adie? Talk to me, Adie.’ I give her a shoulder pinch. Then a little harder. She groans and tries to shrug me off.
‘Adie. What have you taken tonight?’
On the armchair beside her is an asthma inhaler, but the cylinder has gone and there is some foil wrapped around the mouthpiece. The inside is charred. On a table nearby there is a clutter of vodka bottles, beer cans and a tall yellow canister of lighter fuel.
‘Have you been smoking some crack tonight, Adie?’
Her pupils are small but not pinpoint, and they react to my torch. Her respirations seem a little slow, and her oxygen levels aren’t quite what they should be, so with the help of the policeman I put a mask on her. As I’m taking some other obs the man in the dark suit comes into the room, followed by the policewoman. He walks over to me, a bobbing, curiously disjointed kind of walk.
‘She’s had the last rites,’ he puffs.
The black suit hangs off his slight frame with minimal contact. His face has an emphysemic, waxy gloss. His teeth are all gone – although he can’t be more than forty five – and his wide mouth flaps open and shut in an unhinged way. Everything about this man seems slack. Even his eyes pitch from left to right without focus. The policewoman is standing right behind him, and I could swear she has a hand up his back, and that her lips move slightly when he talks.
‘She’s going to die,’ he wheezes.
‘Trevor – it is Trevor, isn’t it?’
He nods, and his eyelids clack shut.
‘Trevor – is Adie your partner?’
The eyelids spring open.
‘No she is not. She is a friend. I’ve known her for fifteen years.’
‘Great. Can you help me out with a few details then, Trevor? Her full name, for a start.’
‘Adie. A-d-i-e.’
‘Thanks. And last name?’
‘What do you mean, last name?’
‘Her surname. You know.’
‘No idea.’
‘Okay. How old is Adie?’
‘No idea.’
‘Where does she live?’
He rattles his head.
‘Past medical history? Medication? GP?’
No. No. No. His level of consciousness seems to fall with each ‘no’.
‘Okay, Trevor. Can you tell me what happened tonight?’
His eyes suddenly widen again.
‘Adie came round. We had a few drinks.
‘How many drinks?’
‘Not much. Some cans of beer. A bottle of vodka. Then Adie had a smoke of her pipe. I went down to make something to eat. When I came back up she was on the floor.’
‘What happened about the burglary?’
‘Burglary? What burglary?’
I look over to the policeman. His expression reads: well what do you expect?
‘What are you going to do?’ says Trevor. ‘You can’t leave her here to die.’
‘Well, I don’t think she’s going to die, but she does need to go in to hospital so they can keep an eye on her. I’ll call for an ambulance.’
I give Control a ring and request a vehicle. Trevor seems to fall asleep standing up.
‘Why don’t you take a seat, Trev?’ I say to him.
He straightens with a little thrill.
‘I’m a section one patient,’ he says brightly. ‘But I’m off my medication.’
‘Why’s that then?’
He stares at me.
‘Why’s what then?’
He turns his head slightly to the side, his eyes stay to the front, and for a moment I think his head is about to spin around completely. Before I can shake off the image, the policeman steps over.
‘Come on, Trev. We need to have a little talk.’
He leads him back down the stairs. I squat back down to see how Adie is progressing, and turn over some rooted holiday talk with the policewoman for ten minutes whilst I wait for back up.
And then, of course, another disadvantage is that sometimes you’ll find yourself going in to a crack house on your own at three in the morning.
Control has reassured me that the police are on scene, and I’ve parked in front of their patrol car, but it’s not the same as having a crew mate to share the particular vulnerabilities of the ambulance position. Plus – this has been given as an overdose, and I don’t fancy spending half an hour bagging this patient without relief. The night is rolling on thick and close. The storm that would ease it has seemed imminent for the past hour, but maybe it will never come. I’ve only been out of the air conditioned car for a minute and already the frosting on my skin has gone.
During the day this is a busy street serving the railway station and the top end of town. Now the little café fronts and obscure record shops are dark. The flat numbers seem to be lower than I was expecting, and the police car turns out not to be immediately outside the address. I waddle past three dark entrances, unable to wield a torch and tote the bags at the same time. A young woman slides me a sympathetic look as she passes, then calls back a few seconds later.
‘In there,’ she points, just as a policeman peers round the corner of a shop.
‘Thanks.’
I donkey my way over to him.
‘Here, can you carry that?’
‘All right, mate. Blimey – what’s in there? Gold bars? Anyway - what we’ve got is a woman of about thirty odd. Flat out on the floor. Looks like some kind of overdose, probably crack cocaine. We were called to the address because a guy said he’d been burgled. He answered the door with a knife, but it’s all okay now. Bit of a nut job, but nothing we can’t handle. Says the woman’s a friend of his. Can’t tell you much more. Thanks for coming. Watch your step.’
He leads me over the threshold of a dark and dirty back room, strewn with cushions, papers, carrier bags and cups – the usual flop house chic. In through a filthy galley kitchen where a policewoman is talking to a man in a dark suit, up a tight little dog-leg twist in the stairs, and into a sitting room where a woman is lying face down on the lino. She’s wearing an off-the-shoulder purple party dress, and would look as if she’d fainted during canapés were it not for the dreadful surroundings and the patterns of bruises and scars along her arms. I can see the rise and fall of her breathing even from here, even in the gloom of this place.
‘Have we got a name?’
‘Adie, we think. Trev’s not too clear about that. Or anything else, for that matter.’
I put the remaining bags down and go over to her.
‘Adie? Adie? Talk to me, Adie.’ I give her a shoulder pinch. Then a little harder. She groans and tries to shrug me off.
‘Adie. What have you taken tonight?’
On the armchair beside her is an asthma inhaler, but the cylinder has gone and there is some foil wrapped around the mouthpiece. The inside is charred. On a table nearby there is a clutter of vodka bottles, beer cans and a tall yellow canister of lighter fuel.
‘Have you been smoking some crack tonight, Adie?’
Her pupils are small but not pinpoint, and they react to my torch. Her respirations seem a little slow, and her oxygen levels aren’t quite what they should be, so with the help of the policeman I put a mask on her. As I’m taking some other obs the man in the dark suit comes into the room, followed by the policewoman. He walks over to me, a bobbing, curiously disjointed kind of walk.
‘She’s had the last rites,’ he puffs.
The black suit hangs off his slight frame with minimal contact. His face has an emphysemic, waxy gloss. His teeth are all gone – although he can’t be more than forty five – and his wide mouth flaps open and shut in an unhinged way. Everything about this man seems slack. Even his eyes pitch from left to right without focus. The policewoman is standing right behind him, and I could swear she has a hand up his back, and that her lips move slightly when he talks.
‘She’s going to die,’ he wheezes.
‘Trevor – it is Trevor, isn’t it?’
He nods, and his eyelids clack shut.
‘Trevor – is Adie your partner?’
The eyelids spring open.
‘No she is not. She is a friend. I’ve known her for fifteen years.’
‘Great. Can you help me out with a few details then, Trevor? Her full name, for a start.’
‘Adie. A-d-i-e.’
‘Thanks. And last name?’
‘What do you mean, last name?’
‘Her surname. You know.’
‘No idea.’
‘Okay. How old is Adie?’
‘No idea.’
‘Where does she live?’
He rattles his head.
‘Past medical history? Medication? GP?’
No. No. No. His level of consciousness seems to fall with each ‘no’.
‘Okay, Trevor. Can you tell me what happened tonight?’
His eyes suddenly widen again.
‘Adie came round. We had a few drinks.
‘How many drinks?’
‘Not much. Some cans of beer. A bottle of vodka. Then Adie had a smoke of her pipe. I went down to make something to eat. When I came back up she was on the floor.’
‘What happened about the burglary?’
‘Burglary? What burglary?’
I look over to the policeman. His expression reads: well what do you expect?
‘What are you going to do?’ says Trevor. ‘You can’t leave her here to die.’
‘Well, I don’t think she’s going to die, but she does need to go in to hospital so they can keep an eye on her. I’ll call for an ambulance.’
I give Control a ring and request a vehicle. Trevor seems to fall asleep standing up.
‘Why don’t you take a seat, Trev?’ I say to him.
He straightens with a little thrill.
‘I’m a section one patient,’ he says brightly. ‘But I’m off my medication.’
‘Why’s that then?’
He stares at me.
‘Why’s what then?’
He turns his head slightly to the side, his eyes stay to the front, and for a moment I think his head is about to spin around completely. Before I can shake off the image, the policeman steps over.
‘Come on, Trev. We need to have a little talk.’
He leads him back down the stairs. I squat back down to see how Adie is progressing, and turn over some rooted holiday talk with the policewoman for ten minutes whilst I wait for back up.
Friday, July 11, 2008
off to spain
‘Your chap’s about a thousand years old. He was the driver of a car that ran into the back of a young girl’s motor – low speed – not much damage, no airbags, nothing exciting. She’s okay and doesn’t want anything to happen particularly, but we were a bit concerned about him. Could you have a look?’
The policeman leads us over to the front seat of a battered old Hillman Imp. Sitting very correctly upright is an elderly man, who still has both hands on the steering wheel as if he expects to move off any moment. I crouch down beside him and introduce myself. He tells me his name is Mr Breedon.
‘I’m perfectly all right, you know. I don’t know what all this fuss is about. My brakes failed, is all.’
He seems strangely distant, like he’s been cast in wax and sat here in this car as some kind of display. After we’ve determined that he has no pain, no injuries and no untoward feelings anywhere, we carefully help him out of the car. He straightens and looks around him like he’s been asleep and woken up somewhere unusual.
‘Where are we going?’ he says.
‘Just to the ambulance, first of all. We want to run a few tests, see how you’re doing.’
‘I’m absolutely fine. Thank you. I just need to get going.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m picking up my wife. We’re going to Spain.’
‘Where is your wife?’
‘In care’
‘Okay. Oops. Mind yourself.’
Mr Breedon shifts his balance precariously from step to step and would fall if we were not either side of him. I lean in to catch a discrete whiff of alcohol, but all I can smell is camphor.
‘Are you feeling dizzy, Mr Breedon?’
‘Well, yes, a little. But I saw my GP yesterday and he gave me a clean bill of health.’
‘Right.’
We help him in to the back of the vehicle. I persuade him to lie on the trolley rather than sit in a seat, even though he protests that this is all too much. Rae helps him out of his blazer and rolls up his sleeve. He rests his head back as if he’s suddenly very tired.
‘How old are you, Mr Breedon?’
‘Sixty.’
‘And what’s your date of birth?’
‘5th of the 5th, nineteen twenty two.’
‘Mm. I think that makes you eighty six.’
‘Yes. That’s right. Eighty six.’
‘Do you know what day it is today?’
‘Do I know what day it is today?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘What day is it today, then?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Well I’d rather hear it from you.’
‘If you must.’
He shuts his eyes.
At this point, the policeman knocks on the door. Rae opens up and he looks inside.
‘How are we doing?’ he asks. ‘I just need Mr Breedon’s keys so I can move his car out of the road.’
‘Did you hear that, Mr Breedon? The policeman wants your keys.’
‘Yes. Fine. Here they are.’
He reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out a piece of white plastic cable, and hands it to me.
‘What’s this?’
‘My car keys.’
‘I think it’s a computer modem, Mr Breedon.’
‘Is it?’
I smile at the policeman.
‘Rae, could you see if Mr Breedon’s keys are in his jacket pocket?’
She pats his jacket, locates the keys, and passes them out to the policeman.
‘Will he be going to hospital, do you think?’ he asks.
‘Oh yes, I think so. Definitely.’
‘Hospital? I can’t go to hospital. I’ve got things to do and it’s already late. I’ve got to pick up my wife and go to Spain.’
Mr Breedon seems to be running a temperature, and it’s a fair guess that with everything he tells us, his confusion and loss of balance, that he may have some kind of urinary tract infection. We make him comfortable and prepare to set off.
‘Are you visiting anyone out in Spain?’ I ask him, as Rae jumps out and slams the door to.
‘Yes. My son.’ He turns and winks at me, a procedure that seems to take a full minute. ‘But ah! He doesn’t know it yet.’
The policeman leads us over to the front seat of a battered old Hillman Imp. Sitting very correctly upright is an elderly man, who still has both hands on the steering wheel as if he expects to move off any moment. I crouch down beside him and introduce myself. He tells me his name is Mr Breedon.
‘I’m perfectly all right, you know. I don’t know what all this fuss is about. My brakes failed, is all.’
He seems strangely distant, like he’s been cast in wax and sat here in this car as some kind of display. After we’ve determined that he has no pain, no injuries and no untoward feelings anywhere, we carefully help him out of the car. He straightens and looks around him like he’s been asleep and woken up somewhere unusual.
‘Where are we going?’ he says.
‘Just to the ambulance, first of all. We want to run a few tests, see how you’re doing.’
‘I’m absolutely fine. Thank you. I just need to get going.’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’m picking up my wife. We’re going to Spain.’
‘Where is your wife?’
‘In care’
‘Okay. Oops. Mind yourself.’
Mr Breedon shifts his balance precariously from step to step and would fall if we were not either side of him. I lean in to catch a discrete whiff of alcohol, but all I can smell is camphor.
‘Are you feeling dizzy, Mr Breedon?’
‘Well, yes, a little. But I saw my GP yesterday and he gave me a clean bill of health.’
‘Right.’
We help him in to the back of the vehicle. I persuade him to lie on the trolley rather than sit in a seat, even though he protests that this is all too much. Rae helps him out of his blazer and rolls up his sleeve. He rests his head back as if he’s suddenly very tired.
‘How old are you, Mr Breedon?’
‘Sixty.’
‘And what’s your date of birth?’
‘5th of the 5th, nineteen twenty two.’
‘Mm. I think that makes you eighty six.’
‘Yes. That’s right. Eighty six.’
‘Do you know what day it is today?’
‘Do I know what day it is today?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘What day is it today, then?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Well I’d rather hear it from you.’
‘If you must.’
He shuts his eyes.
At this point, the policeman knocks on the door. Rae opens up and he looks inside.
‘How are we doing?’ he asks. ‘I just need Mr Breedon’s keys so I can move his car out of the road.’
‘Did you hear that, Mr Breedon? The policeman wants your keys.’
‘Yes. Fine. Here they are.’
He reaches into his trouser pocket, pulls out a piece of white plastic cable, and hands it to me.
‘What’s this?’
‘My car keys.’
‘I think it’s a computer modem, Mr Breedon.’
‘Is it?’
I smile at the policeman.
‘Rae, could you see if Mr Breedon’s keys are in his jacket pocket?’
She pats his jacket, locates the keys, and passes them out to the policeman.
‘Will he be going to hospital, do you think?’ he asks.
‘Oh yes, I think so. Definitely.’
‘Hospital? I can’t go to hospital. I’ve got things to do and it’s already late. I’ve got to pick up my wife and go to Spain.’
Mr Breedon seems to be running a temperature, and it’s a fair guess that with everything he tells us, his confusion and loss of balance, that he may have some kind of urinary tract infection. We make him comfortable and prepare to set off.
‘Are you visiting anyone out in Spain?’ I ask him, as Rae jumps out and slams the door to.
‘Yes. My son.’ He turns and winks at me, a procedure that seems to take a full minute. ‘But ah! He doesn’t know it yet.’
Thursday, July 10, 2008
the right thing to say
‘I wasn’t unconscious or knocked silly. I can remember the whole sorry episode. I simply had another of my groggy turns, fell over, clipped the back of my head on the coffee table, and lay there like a fool. Again!’
Agnes sits on the edge of the sofa, her ancient hands picking at the handkerchief in her lap, her pale grey eyes wide and shining. She tells us the story of her latest fall as if the little group around her – the community responder, me, Frank and the next door neighbour – were a bunch of five year olds at story time.
‘The other day I pitched backwards through the kitchen door. Just look what I did to my arm. My goodness, there was blood. Tell them about the blood, Rose.’
‘Oh,’ says Rose, standing with one hand pressed to the side of her face. ‘Well. Oh.’
The community responder has already cleaned the wound – a ragged hole in the back of her head the size of a ten pence piece.
‘That’ll need a stitch or two,’ I tell her.
‘Really? More stitches? Well – I’m speechless.’
Whilst Rose takes instruction from Agnes – prescription sheet in the kitchen, cardigan and slippers in the bedroom, purse, keys, glasses, emergency phone number – I finish dressing the wound. I hold the dampened gauze in place with a bandage that wraps round Agnes’ head, pushing her silver hair upwards.
‘My word – you’ve made me look like a pineapple.’
‘It’s only temporary, Agnes.’ I stand up, take a step back and admire my work. ‘I tell you who you do look like. That singer out of Sigue Sigue Sputnik.’
‘What?’
‘A punk-ish pop band. From the eighties.’
Frank studies me with fatherly concern, the community responder seems to buckle under the weight of his smile. Even Rose stops hunting around for things and joins in the wake. I redden, for no real reason at all, the first time in ages.
‘Come on,’ I say, bluffing it out. ‘Time to make a move.’
‘What an adventure,’ Agnes says, and then ‘Rose? Have you got those things, yet?’
‘Let’s go, Mrs Pineapple,’ says Frank, helping her up. I get the bags.
A&E is crammed. I leave Agnes sitting in a wheelchair with Frank by her side and excuse my way over to the desk to handover to the charge nurse.
Nerys is working the board like a bookie at the races. I stand there trying not to add any more to her stress whilst at the same time asserting my position. She stands at the centre of a dreadful cloud of demand – nurses, doctors, consultants, patients and relatives – bravely fighting for order with a marker pen and board wipe.
A man appears and stands next to me, puts both hands on the counter. He radiates aggressive intent as palpably as the alcohol fumes that hang off his seamy clothes.
‘Hey. I need to use the phone to tell people I’m here,’ he says, cutting across everything.
‘Payphones in the lobby,’ Nerys says, giving him a professional smile, passing out a form to one nurse and accepting another from the clerk.
The man spreads his hands further on the counter, pushing my board aside.
‘I know exactly what you mean. I know what your game is,’ he says. ‘I’ve been here fucking hours. I’ve got chest pain, a pain in my chest. Do you know what I mean? Like you care. You just want fucking rid of me. Well if I go now and drop dead in the car park it’ll be your fault.’
‘Hey. Hold on,’ says Nerys. ‘Rewind. You asked me about phones. I told you where the phones are. What’s your problem?’
‘What’s my problem? What’s your fucking problem?’
I catch the ward clerk’s eye as she dials security.
‘Mr…?’
‘Walsh. Mr Walsh. You don’t even know my name. You think I’m a waste of space and you just want shot of me.’
‘Mr Walsh,’ I say to him, as evenly as I can. He swivels round to face me. ‘I know this is frustrating for you, but we’re all here to help. The nurse was just saying you can make a phone call from the lobby.’
Red rage bunches up in his eyes and his cheeks.
‘You what?’ he says. ‘You fucking what?’
‘If you carry on like this you won’t be seen. You’re just making things worse.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m with the ambulance.’
‘Well – Mr I’m-a-big-Fucking-Ambulance me. You keep your snout out of it. Fucking cheek.’
I shake my head impassively, and get ready to dodge the fist that seems almost certain to follow. But Mr Walsh – probably well aware that security are on their way – turns and stomps off, pushing past people. He shouts at Agnes as he goes through: ‘Count your fucking toes, lady. You won’t have the same number when you leave as you came in with.’
Security intercept him at the door; there is shouting out in the car park.
I turn back to Nerys. She tries to smile, but her chin seems to slacken slightly and I know it’s an effort for her to continue.
‘Nice man’ I say to her. ‘What a shame he’s gone.’
‘Who’ve you got, then?’ she says, finally, uncapping her pen to put Agnes on the board.
We help Agnes onto a trolley and make her as comfortable as we can, tucking her in and making sure she has her bag to hand.
‘Will I be here long?’ she asks.
‘Well – it is busy tonight, Agnes, so I can’t promise that you won’t have a wait. But the nurses and doctors are working as hard as they can. They know you’re here, and they’ll be along shortly.’
‘So this is where we part company?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
‘Thank you so much for all you’ve done.’
‘Pleasure’
We leave her, sitting up on the trolley, smoothing down the blanket and staring out at her surroundings, her hair sprouting up above the thick white bandage, an expression on her face about one part excitement, two parts fear.
Agnes sits on the edge of the sofa, her ancient hands picking at the handkerchief in her lap, her pale grey eyes wide and shining. She tells us the story of her latest fall as if the little group around her – the community responder, me, Frank and the next door neighbour – were a bunch of five year olds at story time.
‘The other day I pitched backwards through the kitchen door. Just look what I did to my arm. My goodness, there was blood. Tell them about the blood, Rose.’
‘Oh,’ says Rose, standing with one hand pressed to the side of her face. ‘Well. Oh.’
The community responder has already cleaned the wound – a ragged hole in the back of her head the size of a ten pence piece.
‘That’ll need a stitch or two,’ I tell her.
‘Really? More stitches? Well – I’m speechless.’
Whilst Rose takes instruction from Agnes – prescription sheet in the kitchen, cardigan and slippers in the bedroom, purse, keys, glasses, emergency phone number – I finish dressing the wound. I hold the dampened gauze in place with a bandage that wraps round Agnes’ head, pushing her silver hair upwards.
‘My word – you’ve made me look like a pineapple.’
‘It’s only temporary, Agnes.’ I stand up, take a step back and admire my work. ‘I tell you who you do look like. That singer out of Sigue Sigue Sputnik.’
‘What?’
‘A punk-ish pop band. From the eighties.’
Frank studies me with fatherly concern, the community responder seems to buckle under the weight of his smile. Even Rose stops hunting around for things and joins in the wake. I redden, for no real reason at all, the first time in ages.
‘Come on,’ I say, bluffing it out. ‘Time to make a move.’
‘What an adventure,’ Agnes says, and then ‘Rose? Have you got those things, yet?’
‘Let’s go, Mrs Pineapple,’ says Frank, helping her up. I get the bags.
A&E is crammed. I leave Agnes sitting in a wheelchair with Frank by her side and excuse my way over to the desk to handover to the charge nurse.
Nerys is working the board like a bookie at the races. I stand there trying not to add any more to her stress whilst at the same time asserting my position. She stands at the centre of a dreadful cloud of demand – nurses, doctors, consultants, patients and relatives – bravely fighting for order with a marker pen and board wipe.
A man appears and stands next to me, puts both hands on the counter. He radiates aggressive intent as palpably as the alcohol fumes that hang off his seamy clothes.
‘Hey. I need to use the phone to tell people I’m here,’ he says, cutting across everything.
‘Payphones in the lobby,’ Nerys says, giving him a professional smile, passing out a form to one nurse and accepting another from the clerk.
The man spreads his hands further on the counter, pushing my board aside.
‘I know exactly what you mean. I know what your game is,’ he says. ‘I’ve been here fucking hours. I’ve got chest pain, a pain in my chest. Do you know what I mean? Like you care. You just want fucking rid of me. Well if I go now and drop dead in the car park it’ll be your fault.’
‘Hey. Hold on,’ says Nerys. ‘Rewind. You asked me about phones. I told you where the phones are. What’s your problem?’
‘What’s my problem? What’s your fucking problem?’
I catch the ward clerk’s eye as she dials security.
‘Mr…?’
‘Walsh. Mr Walsh. You don’t even know my name. You think I’m a waste of space and you just want shot of me.’
‘Mr Walsh,’ I say to him, as evenly as I can. He swivels round to face me. ‘I know this is frustrating for you, but we’re all here to help. The nurse was just saying you can make a phone call from the lobby.’
Red rage bunches up in his eyes and his cheeks.
‘You what?’ he says. ‘You fucking what?’
‘If you carry on like this you won’t be seen. You’re just making things worse.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m with the ambulance.’
‘Well – Mr I’m-a-big-Fucking-Ambulance me. You keep your snout out of it. Fucking cheek.’
I shake my head impassively, and get ready to dodge the fist that seems almost certain to follow. But Mr Walsh – probably well aware that security are on their way – turns and stomps off, pushing past people. He shouts at Agnes as he goes through: ‘Count your fucking toes, lady. You won’t have the same number when you leave as you came in with.’
Security intercept him at the door; there is shouting out in the car park.
I turn back to Nerys. She tries to smile, but her chin seems to slacken slightly and I know it’s an effort for her to continue.
‘Nice man’ I say to her. ‘What a shame he’s gone.’
‘Who’ve you got, then?’ she says, finally, uncapping her pen to put Agnes on the board.
We help Agnes onto a trolley and make her as comfortable as we can, tucking her in and making sure she has her bag to hand.
‘Will I be here long?’ she asks.
‘Well – it is busy tonight, Agnes, so I can’t promise that you won’t have a wait. But the nurses and doctors are working as hard as they can. They know you’re here, and they’ll be along shortly.’
‘So this is where we part company?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
‘Thank you so much for all you’ve done.’
‘Pleasure’
We leave her, sitting up on the trolley, smoothing down the blanket and staring out at her surroundings, her hair sprouting up above the thick white bandage, an expression on her face about one part excitement, two parts fear.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
confessor
The last thing to clean is the carry chair. I put on another pair of blue gloves, pull the chair out of its cupboard, carry it off the back of the ambulance, set it up, and then step back in again to fetch a canister of surface wipes. When I come back out, a young guy is standing over beside the automatic doors to A & E, looking down into a mobile phone. He catches my eye, nods a hello, then shuffles over uncertainly for a chat.
‘Thanks for coming earlier,’ he says, stuffing his phone in the back pocket of his jeans and then standing neutrally as if he were awaiting further instructions.
‘That’s okay. How’s he doing?’
‘Oh – he’s okay. The idiot. One of the doctors had heard of those pills and he says they’re not too bad. He says it’s a kind of plant treatment that they can sell as a vaguely legal e or something. Weird.’
I picture the smart little pill folder to myself – the silhouette of a dancer against a bright yellow sunflower.
‘But he did say that maybe taking two at once was pushing it.’
I carry on with my cleaning and he watches me work.
‘He got a bit freaked when his heart start beating like some kind of cookery timer, though. I don’t think he’s cut out for these weird extracts. The idiot.’
‘There’s always something,’ I say, but I don’t know what I mean. It stalls the conversation. I worry away at a seam of faecal matter just below the lip of the seat.
‘Busy night then?’
‘Oh. Not too bad. You know.’
‘I hope we didn’t waste your time. We didn’t know what else to do. He was well freaked by it all. The nut job.’
‘I’m glad it’s all worked out ok.’
‘Yeah.’
The seat’s clear now. I move on, methodically wiping down the struts, back, rings, joints, foot rest, throwing each wipe into the yellow clinical waste bag that I’ve set up on the ground beside me.
He watches me.
I feel like spilling the whole sorry episode out to him, telling him who the last occupant of this carry chair was, a man who had been hauled drowned and lifeless by his elderly father up out of a bath of freezing water, and whose father we had seen trying to compress his son’s chest and talk on the phone at the same time whilst the family dog howled in the room next door. I want to tell him that our attempts to revive the man on the filthy bathroom floor had been hopeless, or try to describe how difficult it was to lift him in such a cramped and slippery environment up off the floor and on to the chair when it was time to go. I want to tell him that when I sat the mother in the cab with me to follow the leading ambulance to hospital, I’d forgotten that we’d left the radio on in our rush to go into the house, that I still didn’t realise how loud the music was playing as I explained what would happen next, and how stupid I’d felt when the mother reached forward, turned it off and said ‘Sorry. I don’t think I can listen to this at the moment.’ I want to tell him how she rode up to the hospital with her hands folded in her lap, shocked white and calm, and how we’d both watched as the blue lights of the ambulance carrying her son gradually sparkled further and further off into the night ahead of us. I want to tell him that at hospital by the relative’s room she’d politely insisted to the charge nurse that she be allowed into the resus room, and how respectfully she was received when she was eventually led through those doors.
‘Do you think we’ll be here all night?’ the young guy asks me.
For a second I’m disoriented and don’t know who he means. I straighten up, toss the last wipe into the bag and look at him.
‘Let’s hope not,’ I say, and notice Rae walking over with two cups of coffee. ‘Let’s hope not.’
I peel off the blue gloves. They follow the wipes into the bag.
‘Thanks for coming earlier,’ he says, stuffing his phone in the back pocket of his jeans and then standing neutrally as if he were awaiting further instructions.
‘That’s okay. How’s he doing?’
‘Oh – he’s okay. The idiot. One of the doctors had heard of those pills and he says they’re not too bad. He says it’s a kind of plant treatment that they can sell as a vaguely legal e or something. Weird.’
I picture the smart little pill folder to myself – the silhouette of a dancer against a bright yellow sunflower.
‘But he did say that maybe taking two at once was pushing it.’
I carry on with my cleaning and he watches me work.
‘He got a bit freaked when his heart start beating like some kind of cookery timer, though. I don’t think he’s cut out for these weird extracts. The idiot.’
‘There’s always something,’ I say, but I don’t know what I mean. It stalls the conversation. I worry away at a seam of faecal matter just below the lip of the seat.
‘Busy night then?’
‘Oh. Not too bad. You know.’
‘I hope we didn’t waste your time. We didn’t know what else to do. He was well freaked by it all. The nut job.’
‘I’m glad it’s all worked out ok.’
‘Yeah.’
The seat’s clear now. I move on, methodically wiping down the struts, back, rings, joints, foot rest, throwing each wipe into the yellow clinical waste bag that I’ve set up on the ground beside me.
He watches me.
I feel like spilling the whole sorry episode out to him, telling him who the last occupant of this carry chair was, a man who had been hauled drowned and lifeless by his elderly father up out of a bath of freezing water, and whose father we had seen trying to compress his son’s chest and talk on the phone at the same time whilst the family dog howled in the room next door. I want to tell him that our attempts to revive the man on the filthy bathroom floor had been hopeless, or try to describe how difficult it was to lift him in such a cramped and slippery environment up off the floor and on to the chair when it was time to go. I want to tell him that when I sat the mother in the cab with me to follow the leading ambulance to hospital, I’d forgotten that we’d left the radio on in our rush to go into the house, that I still didn’t realise how loud the music was playing as I explained what would happen next, and how stupid I’d felt when the mother reached forward, turned it off and said ‘Sorry. I don’t think I can listen to this at the moment.’ I want to tell him how she rode up to the hospital with her hands folded in her lap, shocked white and calm, and how we’d both watched as the blue lights of the ambulance carrying her son gradually sparkled further and further off into the night ahead of us. I want to tell him that at hospital by the relative’s room she’d politely insisted to the charge nurse that she be allowed into the resus room, and how respectfully she was received when she was eventually led through those doors.
‘Do you think we’ll be here all night?’ the young guy asks me.
For a second I’m disoriented and don’t know who he means. I straighten up, toss the last wipe into the bag and look at him.
‘Let’s hope not,’ I say, and notice Rae walking over with two cups of coffee. ‘Let’s hope not.’
I peel off the blue gloves. They follow the wipes into the bag.
Friday, July 04, 2008
the elephant in the sailor suit
The house is as perfect as a Georgian doll’s house in a toy museum. A scarlet climbing rose flowers abundantly between the well-proportioned windows and the peacock patterned stained glass panels of the front door, whilst lavender and box in lead planters stand formally clipped along the stone flagged front path. I flip the brass, lion’s paw knocker and we wait.
Eventually the blurred image of an elderly woman coalesces behind the coloured glass and the door opens.
‘Hello?’
She is a magically animated old lady doll, slightly curved in the back, filled out in a heavy tweed skirt and white blouse, her hair as lovingly tied and tended as the plants in the front garden.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello. It’s the ambulance. We had a call to this address. Something about a woman feeling sick or peculiar in some way. Can I ask – are you the woman who made the call?’
‘Oh. Yes. I believe I did. Do come in.’
She turns round and leads us across a neat little hallway tiled in black and white squares and guarded by a beautifully sonorous grandfather clock. We follow her into a sitting room, and we all sit down, each in a chair with lion’s feet and vivid brocade.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Rae. Can I ask what your name is?’
‘Jennifer.’
‘So. Jennifer. What seems to be the trouble?’
'Well. It’s all most unusual. I woke up this morning and found myself in this strange house. I seem to have been taken up somehow and put here. And that’s not all. Someone’s gone to the trouble of taking some of my things, some things I recognise very well, and put them here with me. I can’t think why on earth they would have done that. Can you?’
Jennifer tells us about her abduction with only a mild concern, as if she is describing an unexpected order of milk.
‘Do you feel unwell in any way? Are you in pain?’
‘No. I feel absolutely fine. The only thing is – I did suffer terrible burns to my legs. Look.’
She pulls up her skirt, and shows us some scarring to her lower legs.
‘That looks quite old to me,’ I tell her. ‘When did that happen?’
‘When I was two or three,’ she says. ‘It was quite horrible, and still gives me pain from time to time.’
‘Apart from your legs, how do you feel in yourself?’
‘Fine. Fine. Just a bit – well, concerned, you could say.’
Rae gets up and has a look around the room for clues - care folders, prescriptions, ambulance sheets, but doesn’t find any. She picks out one of a number of anniversary cards on the mantelpiece. ‘To James and Jennifer,’ she reads. ‘Happy Fiftieth.’ She puts the card back. ‘Who’s James?’
‘Oh James. He’s my husband. I’ve no idea what’s happened to him. But perhaps he’d know what all this is about.’
She looks at us, and folds her hands in her lap.
‘It really is so nice of you to take the trouble.’
I ask her if she’d mind if I checked her blood sugar levels and blood pressure, and she smiles and says of course not. All her observations are fine.
Suddenly the front door opens, and a moment later an elderly man in brown corduroy trousers and a crisply ironed shirt steps into the room. ‘Hello,’ he says, but the concern in his eyes undermines the warmth of his smile.
‘James,’ she says, giving a little clap. ‘Perhaps you can help us get to the bottom of this. Where on earth am I?’
He strokes her head, kisses the top of it.
‘Just a moment, Jennie’ he says, then discretely nods to me to follow him into the kitchen. He tells me that his wife has dementia, that he is the sole carer, but does get help three times a week. Unfortunately this morning there was some hitch and he needed to nip round the corner to the shops, leaving his wife alone for a half an hour. She’s been fine before, but he tells me that her condition is worsening.
After James has given me all the details I need for my form, we go back into the sitting room. Jennifer is laughing at something that Rae has said.
‘That’s priceless,’ she says. ‘Well – I do thank you for coming, even if you couldn’t solve my little mystery.’
James leads us back out across the hallway. I notice an ancient, knitted elephant in a sailor suit propped up on a chair by the clock.
‘That elephant,’ he sighs. ‘She was carrying him around when she got up this morning. I should know by now. It’s always a bad sign.’
He thanks us again for coming, and we walk back to the ambulance, just visible through the jasmine that coils vigorously around and above the filigree iron gate.
Eventually the blurred image of an elderly woman coalesces behind the coloured glass and the door opens.
‘Hello?’
She is a magically animated old lady doll, slightly curved in the back, filled out in a heavy tweed skirt and white blouse, her hair as lovingly tied and tended as the plants in the front garden.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello. It’s the ambulance. We had a call to this address. Something about a woman feeling sick or peculiar in some way. Can I ask – are you the woman who made the call?’
‘Oh. Yes. I believe I did. Do come in.’
She turns round and leads us across a neat little hallway tiled in black and white squares and guarded by a beautifully sonorous grandfather clock. We follow her into a sitting room, and we all sit down, each in a chair with lion’s feet and vivid brocade.
‘My name’s Spence. This is Rae. Can I ask what your name is?’
‘Jennifer.’
‘So. Jennifer. What seems to be the trouble?’
'Well. It’s all most unusual. I woke up this morning and found myself in this strange house. I seem to have been taken up somehow and put here. And that’s not all. Someone’s gone to the trouble of taking some of my things, some things I recognise very well, and put them here with me. I can’t think why on earth they would have done that. Can you?’
Jennifer tells us about her abduction with only a mild concern, as if she is describing an unexpected order of milk.
‘Do you feel unwell in any way? Are you in pain?’
‘No. I feel absolutely fine. The only thing is – I did suffer terrible burns to my legs. Look.’
She pulls up her skirt, and shows us some scarring to her lower legs.
‘That looks quite old to me,’ I tell her. ‘When did that happen?’
‘When I was two or three,’ she says. ‘It was quite horrible, and still gives me pain from time to time.’
‘Apart from your legs, how do you feel in yourself?’
‘Fine. Fine. Just a bit – well, concerned, you could say.’
Rae gets up and has a look around the room for clues - care folders, prescriptions, ambulance sheets, but doesn’t find any. She picks out one of a number of anniversary cards on the mantelpiece. ‘To James and Jennifer,’ she reads. ‘Happy Fiftieth.’ She puts the card back. ‘Who’s James?’
‘Oh James. He’s my husband. I’ve no idea what’s happened to him. But perhaps he’d know what all this is about.’
She looks at us, and folds her hands in her lap.
‘It really is so nice of you to take the trouble.’
I ask her if she’d mind if I checked her blood sugar levels and blood pressure, and she smiles and says of course not. All her observations are fine.
Suddenly the front door opens, and a moment later an elderly man in brown corduroy trousers and a crisply ironed shirt steps into the room. ‘Hello,’ he says, but the concern in his eyes undermines the warmth of his smile.
‘James,’ she says, giving a little clap. ‘Perhaps you can help us get to the bottom of this. Where on earth am I?’
He strokes her head, kisses the top of it.
‘Just a moment, Jennie’ he says, then discretely nods to me to follow him into the kitchen. He tells me that his wife has dementia, that he is the sole carer, but does get help three times a week. Unfortunately this morning there was some hitch and he needed to nip round the corner to the shops, leaving his wife alone for a half an hour. She’s been fine before, but he tells me that her condition is worsening.
After James has given me all the details I need for my form, we go back into the sitting room. Jennifer is laughing at something that Rae has said.
‘That’s priceless,’ she says. ‘Well – I do thank you for coming, even if you couldn’t solve my little mystery.’
James leads us back out across the hallway. I notice an ancient, knitted elephant in a sailor suit propped up on a chair by the clock.
‘That elephant,’ he sighs. ‘She was carrying him around when she got up this morning. I should know by now. It’s always a bad sign.’
He thanks us again for coming, and we walk back to the ambulance, just visible through the jasmine that coils vigorously around and above the filigree iron gate.
the quiet dog
I’m standing at the door to the flat with a policeman next to me. He already has his hand to his face, because the hallway is thick with foul air. There are a couple of massy black flies lolling around the letterbox; I put the resus bag down because I don’t think I’ll be needing it.
‘Police. Open up.’
Rae shouts from the pavement that runs along the front windows to the flat. ‘I can see legs on the sofa – kind of.’
‘Are you happy kicking the door in or do you want me to help?’ I ask him.
He shakes his head confidently, takes a step back, braces himself with both hands against either wall, then lays into the door with one then two great flat-footed kicks. It splinters at the lock and swings backwards.
‘Ambulance’ I call out and step into the flat.
The air seems to ripple around us with fatty, cloying vapours. I move further along the cluttered hallway, breathing through my mouth. ‘Ambulance’ I say again, with much less vigour. The door to the sitting room is open. I can see the body of a large Alsatian dog lying on its side against the wall, the flesh along the length of its wasted body sinking into the gaps between its bones. Its eyes are bored deep and black. I walk into the room and see the dog’s owner lying on the sofa. He was naked when he died; now he is blown up with decay, spilling and blackened like a monstrous, over-cooked sausage.
I leave the room and walk back, passing the policeman in the hallway.
‘Very obviously dead,’ I say to him. He squeezes past me to see for himself as I move quickly outside. After a minute or two I start finishing the paperwork.
The policeman comes outside and asks me if I’ve got any chewing gum, or some mints.
A scattering of neighbours are being drawn outside by the police and ambulance lights. The woman in the flat next door to the dead man comes out in her white towelling dressing gown. She clutches it round her neck as she speaks to me.
‘What’s happened? Is he all right?’
‘No. I’m afraid he’s not. He’s – erm – he’s died.’
‘Oh my god.’ She puts her hand to her face. ‘What about his dog?’
‘I’m afraid the dog has died, too.’
‘Urgh. What’s that smell?’
‘He died a while ago. When did you last see him?’
‘George? I don’t know. Must’ve been a couple of weeks or so.’
‘Did you hear anything? See anything?’
‘I do remember the dog barking for a while. Come to think of it, that’s unusual. He’s always such a quiet dog.’
She looks out at the second police crew to arrive and hugs her dressing gown to her even tighter.
‘Oh my god.’
A woman comes out of the flat next door to hers on the other side and asks what’s going on as she locks the door.
‘That George has died. And his dog.’
‘Oh that’s awful,’ she says, pocketing the key. ‘I thought his truck hadn’t moved for a while. He’s normally so - out and about. Oh that’s terrible.’ She hurries off up the concrete steps. I turn back to my form and write ‘decomposition’ in the box that asks for signs incompatible with life.
‘That poor dog’ says the woman.
A policewoman comes over to us, and two more go into the flat with thick white masks on.
‘Police. Open up.’
Rae shouts from the pavement that runs along the front windows to the flat. ‘I can see legs on the sofa – kind of.’
‘Are you happy kicking the door in or do you want me to help?’ I ask him.
He shakes his head confidently, takes a step back, braces himself with both hands against either wall, then lays into the door with one then two great flat-footed kicks. It splinters at the lock and swings backwards.
‘Ambulance’ I call out and step into the flat.
The air seems to ripple around us with fatty, cloying vapours. I move further along the cluttered hallway, breathing through my mouth. ‘Ambulance’ I say again, with much less vigour. The door to the sitting room is open. I can see the body of a large Alsatian dog lying on its side against the wall, the flesh along the length of its wasted body sinking into the gaps between its bones. Its eyes are bored deep and black. I walk into the room and see the dog’s owner lying on the sofa. He was naked when he died; now he is blown up with decay, spilling and blackened like a monstrous, over-cooked sausage.
I leave the room and walk back, passing the policeman in the hallway.
‘Very obviously dead,’ I say to him. He squeezes past me to see for himself as I move quickly outside. After a minute or two I start finishing the paperwork.
The policeman comes outside and asks me if I’ve got any chewing gum, or some mints.
A scattering of neighbours are being drawn outside by the police and ambulance lights. The woman in the flat next door to the dead man comes out in her white towelling dressing gown. She clutches it round her neck as she speaks to me.
‘What’s happened? Is he all right?’
‘No. I’m afraid he’s not. He’s – erm – he’s died.’
‘Oh my god.’ She puts her hand to her face. ‘What about his dog?’
‘I’m afraid the dog has died, too.’
‘Urgh. What’s that smell?’
‘He died a while ago. When did you last see him?’
‘George? I don’t know. Must’ve been a couple of weeks or so.’
‘Did you hear anything? See anything?’
‘I do remember the dog barking for a while. Come to think of it, that’s unusual. He’s always such a quiet dog.’
She looks out at the second police crew to arrive and hugs her dressing gown to her even tighter.
‘Oh my god.’
A woman comes out of the flat next door to hers on the other side and asks what’s going on as she locks the door.
‘That George has died. And his dog.’
‘Oh that’s awful,’ she says, pocketing the key. ‘I thought his truck hadn’t moved for a while. He’s normally so - out and about. Oh that’s terrible.’ She hurries off up the concrete steps. I turn back to my form and write ‘decomposition’ in the box that asks for signs incompatible with life.
‘That poor dog’ says the woman.
A policewoman comes over to us, and two more go into the flat with thick white masks on.
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