perspective

The first thing Margaret does after opening the door is to lead us into the kitchen.
'There', she says, proudly pointing down to a splash of crimson on the lino. 'That's me, that is.'
She is holding a flannel to the back of her head. Although she is about forty, she stands with a childlike hunch to her shoulders, as if she is expecting instructions, or perhaps some shouting. She is wearing a saggy old, shiny arsed tracksuit; her straight black hair is flecked with flakes and curls in at the neck like a costume wig.
'Margaret - let's sit down for a minute and see what's what,' I say. She slumps off into the sitting room and plops herself down on the sofa amongst dozens of sheets of drawings. She fishes one up for us. A line of men sitting cross-legged and looking off to the left, each with a flame coming out of the top of his head. They are identical, drawn with a poor grasp of perspective that makes their limbs seem broken rather than folded. Their faces - the repeated face - is just familiar enough to give me a stab of recognition.
'Who's this?' I ask.
'Apostles.'
'Oh. OK.'
She offers up another. That face again, but close up and smiling, wearing a Robin Hood cap.
Clue.
I recognise him. Errol Flynn.
'I copied the video cover,' she says.
'Excellent, Margaret. Right. Let's have a look at your head.'
There's no wound to speak of, just a minor abrasion. Margaret answers all our questions, so she won't need a trip up to A&E. She tells us she fell over when she had another fit, and banged her head on the kitchen wall. Although her medication has been working well lately, she still averages a fit or two a month. I fill out the form and make the usual run of observations. Whilst I take these, Rae asks her about her drawings, and the two big black and white photographs on the wall, side by side, seemingly taken minutes apart. One is of a woman in bat winged specs holding up Margaret as a smiling toddler, her hair flying out like pine shavings. In the foreground, the muzzle of an enormous dog emerges darkly.
'That's Bobby,' says Margaret, as I dab at her head. 'He was a cross between an Airedale and a Great Dane.'
The other picture is of Margaret again, with the same frilly dress and curls, laughing and hurling herself forwards on the swing.
'I was raped by my brother for seven years,' she says suddenly. 'From the age of seven, in fact.'
'Oh. My goodness. Have you spoken to anyone about this?'
Margaret ignores the question and holds up another drawing instead. With the same, neutrally informative tone she says: 'Look. This is one I did as if I was flying over the house.'
There is a moment's silence, then a muted roar sounds from outside and reverberates through the room.
'Hark at that rain,' says Rae. 'We'll be getting wet later.'
The pattern of the rain on the patio windows smears watery shadows over everything.
'I fell down the stairs once,' says Margaret.
'Was that a fit as well?'
'No. It was the cat. It wound itself round my legs. The plumber was at the bottom. He'd just taken the old toilet out. I fell all the way down and landed on top of him. He ended up with his head wedged in the toilet. They had to walk him out to the ambulance holding either side.'
I take a step backwards with the beauty of this image.
'That's fantastic!'
Margaret looks up at me. 'Maybe, but the plumber was furious.'

polaroids of pets and their owners

#1 A woman is lying on the pavement in front of a rusty promenade bench. Her knees are drawn up to her belly, trying to make her waterproof jacket into a kind of cut off sleeping bag. Her arms are curled to pillow her face, but you can't see it because of a tangled spread of black and grey curls . On the bench behind her, wedged between a khaki green shoulder bag and a stack of free magazines, a teddy bear. It is over-stuffed, made of caramel cloth worn down to the ticking at the hot spots. The arms and legs stick out gingerbread man style. It has a pink ribbon around its neck, with two little plastic bells. It has a flat face, no ears. Its nose is higher than its eyes.

#2 A woman is lying on a sofa, groaning. Her left hand is flat against the left side of her chest; her right hand lies over her left. She is breathing quickly, from the stomach. On the floor over by the open french windows is a large porcelain collie. It is sitting obediently, looking up, its head cocked slightly to the right. The glaze on the dog is so thick it blurs the colours beneath, like the photo of something taken in low light. There is a layer of dust over the thing, especially along the nose, but at the right ear there is a new, white chip.

#1 An elderly woman is lying on her back on a single bed. Her neck is arched back over the pillow, the crown of her head pressed against the padded headboard. Her eyes are wide, fixed at a point on the ceiling. Her mouth is gaping open, at an angle which acts to partially lever the bottom set of her false teeth up and out. Her right arm is hidden beneath the rucked blue pattern counterpane that the left hand has grasped and drawn up around her chest. On the second single bed that lies alongside this one is a large elderly Beagle. Its wide white forepaws are expertly draped over the edge, upon which the Beagle has patiently rested its head. Its ears hang down either side. It watches the woman.

L-shaped

We have trouble locating flat number 32, the scene of female 40 assault/lacerations/ dangerous body area. It's dark, it's late, we're transparent with fatigue. Eventually we figure out that all the even numbers must be located round the side of the flats that face the street. The flat we want is a few buildings back, so I reverse into a convenient parking bay. I press the KRS button - which allows the engine to keep running even though you take the key with you - and follow Rae up the path to the hidden door.
She knocks, waits, knocks again.
Eventually a bolt is drawn back and the door opens a crack. A woman peers out from the harshly lit interior, holding a blood-spotted kitchen towel to her forehead.
'Oh. You.' She sounds disappointed.
'Come in.' She shuffles back to the sofa, sits down, and picks her cigarette back up from the ashtray. She makes no dabbing motions at the wound on her head; it's as if her left hand is frozen there. But there is so little blood, either on the kitchen towel or on her T-shirt - one penny-sized spot on the right shoulder - that I think the wound cannot be serious.
'Could you put that out, please?', Rae says.
'What? Really? Oh.' Her face crumples along with the cigarette. 'What's next?'
This is peculiar. I feel like a policeman. I self-consciously uncross my arms.
'I don't know,' says Rae, 'You tell us. I mean - you called us, didn't you?'
The woman nods. I exchange a look with Rae.
'First things first,' Rae goes on. 'What's your name?'
'Lynette.'
'OK, Lynette. Now, can you tell us what's happened tonight?'
I glance around the room. From the sofa Lynette faces a TV/video combination crammed precariously onto a maple-veneer stand along with a cluster of videos whose titles have been writtten and crossed out a number of times; a bad painting of a ship on one wall; an oval mirror on another, and then a beaded curtain separating the living room from the kitchen area. Another door leads off, presumably into a bedroom and bathroom. The whole is no bigger than a generous hotel room, and is just as anonymously furnished.
Lynette purses her lips. In her baggy brown T-shirt and her saggy cream trousers she sits on the sofa like a badly drawn bear. We wait for the story.
'A man came round. He wanted me to pay him the money I owe, but when I told him I didn't have it he punched me in the head. He said if I didn't have it when he came by again tomorrow he'd put all my windows in.' A pause, then she adds: 'And then break my legs with a brick.'
'When did this happen?'
'I don't know. An hour ago, I suppose.'
'Did you call the police?'
'No. I couldn't. He took the SIM card out of my phone.'
'Couldn't you have gone next door and asked them for help?'
'I didn't want to bother them.' Lynette reaches for another cigarette, and then draws her hand back slowly. I want to ask her how she called for the ambulance, but for some reason I don't. 'Anyway,' she continues, 'I know this is all to do with that stupid package I found when I moved in here. Letters and such. Drugs. I threw them all away but they won't believe me.'
'Well - let's have a look at your head, Lynette.' She peels away the kitchen towel.
There, in the middle of her forehead, is an extraordinary L-shaped incision. Full thickness, its puckered edges can be moved apart to reveal the skull beneath. There is very little blood from the wound, now, though it must have bled considerably when it was made. And it would seem by its condition to have been made longer than an hour ago.
'Lynette - this is quite a wound you have here. I'm afraid you're going to need a trip to hospital to have it sewn up. Tell us how you came by it again? Did the guy have a knife on him or something?'
'No. Just his fist. I was getting up from the sofa and he punched me back down. He had a big gold ring on, I think.'
'Janet - I have to ask you a few things. Have you been drinking tonight?'
'No.'
'Okay. And are you on any medication?'
'Not really. I have some mental health issues, I'll admit. I don't see any sense in lying about these things. So I do take a few things for that. I've got a list somewhere.'
'And have you taken any recreational drugs tonight?'
'Oh. I suppose you saw the pipe, then.'
'No. I didn't see any pipe. I just have to ask these things as we need to know all the facts so we can treat you appropriately.'
'Well, I'll admit that I am a user. I have had a bit of a drug problem in the past, I may as well admit, but nothing serious. When they stitch this up - will I have a scar?'
'I think you probably will,' says Rae, 'Like Harry Potter - a little lightning stroke there.'
Lynette is impassive. She does not seem to know Harry Potter. She sighs, and begins hauling herself up from the sofa. She stuffs her pockets with her tobacco and lighter and purse.
'Let's get going,' she says.
'Will you be reporting this to the police?', says Rae, taking her arm as she stumbles towards the door.
'The police?,' she snorts. 'They wouldn't believe it.'

the boss one day

Number 17 is the most lit-up of the cluster of neat little houses on the country road. The night is cold and black, pinned by the moon to a cloudless sky.
A thin teenage boy opens the door with a phone at his ear. He is wearing a baggy green T-shirt which says: One day I will be your boss.
'Just a moment' he says into the phone, and then smiles at us. 'Come in. She's just up the stairs, off to the right, in the bedroom. I won't be a moment.'
I am momentarily confused. How old is he? Physically he seems to be a boy of twelve or thirteen, but his bearing is that of a confident young man. I follow P, hauling the yellow resus bag up the narrow stairs.
'What's your name?' I ask the boy, following me up the stairs with his two phones.
'Logan.'
'And how old are you, Logan, if you don't mind me asking?'
'Thirteen. Just a moment.' He begins another phone conversation.
The house is precisely tidy, like a corporate hotel. In the bathroom facing the top of the stairs a woman is holding on to the rim of the basin and being sick. She waves us away, runs the taps, wipes her mouth with a crisp, white flannel, and then stumbles back into the bedroom where she sits and then lies down heavily on the bed.
'Can I ask your name?' P. says.
'Tepponen.'
'And what do we call you?', thinking this is her surname.
'Tepponen.'
She pushes some strands of hair away from her face and then turns her face to stare up at us. Her pupils are so wide it is like looking down through twin portholes into an abyss. The skin of her face is waxy and slack. After a numb pause, she talks again, with difficulty, using the numbed, aphasic drawl of a bottle of gin. 'And who are you?' she manages.
'We're the ambulance,' says P., kneeling down in front of her. 'Your son called us. He was worried about you.' She smiles, and closes her eyes, like a saint pleased with her followers. '
'We're worried about you.'
No response.
'Tepponen?'
Eyes hauled open again.
'What's happened tonight? What's wrong?'
'Nothing. I'm fine. I've just been a little sick.'
'Have you had any alcohol tonight, Tepponen?'
'Some.'
Logan catches my attention from the doorway and gestures for me to come out on the landing. I leave P. to take some basic obs and go to talk to him.
'So what's going on, Logan?'
'She drinks. A lot,' smiles, man-to-man. 'But I've hid her tablets, so at least she hasn't had any of them. I don't think so, anyway. Unless she hid some.'
'How much has she had to drink tonight?'
Logan shows me a litre bottle of gin that is now two thirds empty.
'Her diazepam's in my room.'
'Is there anything else wrong with your mum apart from the drinking?'
'Well, she's got a stomach ulcer, which the drinking doesn't help. She's supposed to be on a withdrawal programme. She takes thiamine and some other stuff. But it hasn't been going too well. This is the second time this week I've had to call the ambulance.'
Logan tells me has an elder brother, Tyler, who is fifteen and on a skiing trip to Canada. Neither his natural father or his step-father live with them anymore. Logan hasn't seen his father in ages; his step-father is in the pub tonight - Logan was on the phone to him trying to sort out a place to stay tonight. He couldn't come and collect him himself because he'd had too much to drink.
'He said maybe I could stay with Mr and Mrs Heinz. They live four doors down.'
'How well do you know the Heinz family?'
'Not that well. Not any more.'
'When was the last time you stayed with them?'
'Four years ago?'
Logan smiles at me. 'Don't worry,' he says. 'I've been through all this loads of times before. It's a problem. We'll sort something out.'
'Has the ambulance been out here before?'
'Actually, it was the police last time. She got drunk and assaulted me. She was in prison for two weeks.'
'Does she always get violent when she's been drinking?'
'Oh no. Mostly she just sleeps. And then the day after she cleans everything.'
'So - is your mum the sole carer?'
'Yep. But we have loads of social workers and stuff. We have one each for all this, Mum has another one for her addiction, I have a special one for school, and we all share a family liaison officer at the police station.'
I leave Logan to one last phone call whilst I take P. to one side. This seems to be less a call about the mother - who seems physically okay apart from being drunk, and safe to leave at home to sleep it off - and more about Logan's welfare. I contact Control, using the code word for child protection issue. After a few more calls we arrange for a police sergeant who is aware of the case to attend. It will be up to them to either escort Logan to the Heinz address, or take him into temporary foster accomodation. When the police finally arrive, Logan has packed an overnight bag and is letting the dogs out into the garden for one last stretch before sleep.
'Thanks for your help,' he says to us as he picks his bag up to leave with the officers. 'I hope I get you next time.'
Back upstairs, Teponnen is crying.
'All I want is a hug,' she says.
We make her comfortable, and let ourselves out.

dookey et decorum est

Rae tells me all about Stanley, the chest pain we're hurrying to on blue lights across town. Stanley is a frequent caller. When Stanley is fully active he phones 999 at least three times a day, and although his address is tagged, he still manages to present at A&E a couple of times a day. I've been on the road for six months now but he's one of the last frequent fliers I haven't run into yet. I'm looking forward to crossing another regular off my list.
'Whatever happens, don't get drawn into his flat. I'm serious. It's a trap. He'll keep you talking and we'll never get away. Just make sure he comes out to the ambulance, so we can play the game and do the tests - and then he'll say he can't possibly leave his dog, and go back inside.'
Stanley has a springer spaniel called Dookey, the one lovely thing in his life.
'Another thing he likes to do is come to the door in just his pants. So make sure you ask him to put some trousers on. He gets a big kick out of parading around in the buff, so watch out.'
The address is in an expensive part of town. I tell Rae that I came to another place here a few months back, and what an amazing house it was. Rae says that Stanley is renting a flat that's got potential but is pretty down-at-heel. In fact, Stanley is pretty down-at-heel.
'He's got some great paintings on the walls, and some nice sticks of furniture. I don't know what his story is. Some ruined old queen soaking up the inheritance. Dookey's lovely, though.'
We pull up outside the flat.
'Look. He's got the door open and ready for you.' She gives me a big grin. 'He's all yours.'

From the outside the Georgian building fits right in with the grand sweep of the terrace. It's a pleasure just to step up onto its wide pavements and push open the heavy iron gate. What a prospect of the city, too. But stepping through the door into the hallway I feel a percentage slide in the health of the building. There is a familiar, sweetly damp smack to the air, sporing up off the ruined carpet.
'That's his door, there.' She is standing beneath the sickly yellowed shade of the hall light and its pretentiously pendant glass diamonds. She reaches up expertly, plucks one off and hangs it from her ear.
'What do you think? Nice?'
I knock on the flat door and say 'Ambulance'.
'Come in. Come in. Don't stand on ceremony.'
I push the door open and peer inside. Another little hallway. Heavy gilt frames on the wall; a spread of disapproving Edwardians. Fronds of cigarette smoke reach around me, followed by a voice from the living room.
'I really am very sick this time. Honestly, this is the worst it's ever been.'
He shuffles out of the gloom towards me, wearing a soiled white dress shirt and an athletic support. 'Hello. You're new.' And then 'Dookey! Decorum!' as a beautiful springer spaniel dodges around him and leaps up to put her paws on my chest. 'Do come in. Don't mind the idiotic hound. 'Dookey! A la cuisine! Maintenant!'
Dookey runs out into the hallway. Rae scrunches up a pair of gloves into a ball and starts playing with her.
'I'm teaching Dookey another language,' Stanley says with a sniff. And then: 'Well, aren't you coming in?'
'Stanley, I need you to put some trousers on, some shoes and a jacket, and then walk out to the ambulance with us so we can run some tests. Okay?'
Stanley narrows a look at me, and it feels as if I am being scrutinised by an enormous cigarette. I want to pick him up by the legs and tap the ash out of his hair.
'If you insist - Dookey! Decorum! - I will follow your instructions to the letter. But you must understand, I could never leave my dog. She's all I have left.'
He turns and shuffles off to find some trousers.

When he eventually appears again, Rae and I have been playing catch with Dookey in the hall. She is a fantastic dog, with sleek, well-conditioned fur and a pair of bright brown eyes. Frankly, I am amazed that she is in such good shape. A professional breeder would be proud of this animal. She doesn't even smell of cigarettes.
Stanley appears at his flat door again.
'Dookey! Retournes à ton panier!'
Dookey looks up at us both, seeming so smart and self-possessed it would not surprise me if she held out a paw to shake, then trots inside. Stanley pulls the door to.
'Well I think you should put some shoes on, Stanley. It's pouring with rain outside.'
'I don't believe in shoes. I learned to live without them in Malta.'
Rae leads the way as I help Stanley out of the building, across the pavement and down to the ambulance. He does seem frail, although he's only about sixty, and it is hard to tell how much of this vulnerability is an act. By reputation, all of it.
On the vehicle we lay Stanley on the trolley and begin the usual run of tests.
Stanley directs his attention to Rae.
'You have beautiful dark eyes,' he says. 'Proud and lovely. Moorish bloodline?'
'Don't you remember me, Stanley?', she sighs, 'I've been out to you enough times.'
'No. I'm afraid I don't.'
Rae had told me earlier that once she had been called out to see him and he had been in a terrible mood. Despite all their efforts he had rung headquarters to make a complaint. Later that day they had been called out to him again. Not only did he fail to recognise them, but he told them all about the awful crew that had attended him that morning, the dreadful things they had done, not nearly as nice as you two etcetera.
Stanley is watching her intently. 'I can tell you don't like me,' he says.
Rae puts a blanket over his legs and then says: 'Spence, I'm going to sit in the front. Are you okay just to canter through these things? I just don't think I can bear to do all this again.'
I tell her it's fine. It's already apparent that the chest pain Stanley rang us about is put on. All his observations are coming through okay, and his overall demeanour - although not exactly healthy - is not that of someone having a heart attack or any other acute illness.
When Rae is sitting in the cab, Stanley leans up from the pillow and looks up at me, with an expression I last saw on his dog.
'Could you convey my deepest apologies to your colleague? I really did not mean to upset her.'
I tell him that I will certainly do it.
He relaxes back. Then: 'I do think she's awfully cruel, though.'
'Stanley, she's doing her very best to help you. She certainly does care about you. But I have to say, you're not doing anything to help yourself.'
He stares at me.
'Have you heard the story about the little boy who cried Wolf!'
He stares at me.
'There's a little shepherd boy who....'
'Yes! Yes! I know the story!' he snaps. 'And I must say I don't much care for being called a liar.'
'Stanley. I haven't met you before but I am well aware of the number of times you have called 999. You must realise that this is not the way to carry on. It's not fair - for lots of reasons.'
'Well I'm not going to hospital,' he says, swinging his legs over the side of the trolley and sitting up. He disdainfully hooks the blanket from his lap. 'I could never leave my dog.'
It seems pointless trying to talk to him further. I show him where to sign the paperwork to say he will not be travelling to hospital tonight. He makes a childishly extravagant flourish with the pen, obliterating half the form.
'That,' he says, giving me back my pen, 'can never be repeated.'

I walk him back to the front door. He fumbles with the keys, mumbling something about the lock being difficult, but I push it open to show that he left it on the latch.
'Many thanks,' he says. And as I turn to go, 'Please convey once again my sincerest apologies to your friend.'
I turn back to the ambulance, and the door clicks shut behind me.

animal welfare

Freighter's Lane may once have served the river that gently meanders a hundred yards at the end of it, when barges toted their agro-industrial cargoes to and from the English Channel, but now its metalled surface is pitted with deep holes; the few, expensive self-build houses off to the right all have four-wheel drive cars, and the dog walkers from the nearby village pick their way carefully.
S. drives the ambulance at a dead slow pace. The chassis rocks from side to side, and the equipment in the back shifts precariously. We are looking for a caravan where an elderly woman has fallen to the floor, query cause. So far all we have seen is an abandoned car chassis lying in a ditch, but S. has a feeling that there is a caravan site at the end of the lane.
Halfway along a driveway opens off to the right, leading to a substantial bungalow in a landscaped garden. Next to the driveway, set back amongst the trees, is a pristine antique caravan, picked out in Lincoln green, with large wooden wheels, a curved roof and a stable door carved with rustic patterns.
'Wow', I say, pulling on my gloves and jumping out of the cab, 'Now that's a caravan.' I climb up the three steep wooden steps and knock on the door. No reply. I try the door, but it's locked. I peer through the little porthole window. Empty. But it strikes me as odd anyway that an elderly woman would be able to live in this. Surely it would be difficult for her to get in and out.
'I didn't think this would be it,' says S. 'I'm almost sure there's a caravan site at the bottom of the lane. I'll head that way, if you get on to Control and ask for more information.'
By the time Control answer, we've made the end of Freighter's Lane, which terminates at a post and rail fence and a stile to the flood plain. We can see a caravan site off to our right, but access to that must be via another roadway. The sky is a vivid blue wash above us, and the air has a salty tang. It's great to be out in the country.
Control tells us that we are definitely in the right lane. They say that they will try to get back to the person that called us, a person out walking, but in the meantime, could we take one more close look back along the lane.
As S. reverses, the ambulance swaying precipitously each time we hit another crater, we notice in the mirrors a man waving to us. It looks to be someone from the bungalow we had passed earlier on, the one with the caravan in the grounds. As we draw alongside him we wind the windows down.
'Hello chaps. I bet you're looking for Mrs Meadows.'
I tell him about our search for an anonymous woman on the floor of a caravan that we can't locate. I tell him that I had a look in the caravan by his driveway as I thought that might be it. The man laughs, and the laugh seems to resonate caustically beneath the rest of what he has to say.
'I can absolutely guarantee that you won't believe me when I tell you where Mrs Meadows lives,' he says. 'We've all been trying for years to get her to move, to get something done. But she's very stubborn - well, crazy, actually. But you see the problem is, no-one seems ready to say that she is actually crazy, and of course that wreck is her registered address, so the whole sorry business drags on. I went as far as buying her a mobile home to live in. I cleared a site here, set it all up. But she wouldn't move and she wouldn't move, so eventually I had to have it taken away. Everyone's worried about her. The neighbours have been very good. We all take her food now and again. But at the end of the day - what can you really do?'
'So - where is she?'
He tells us that Mrs Meadows lives in the abandoned car that we passed at the top end of the lane, the one in the ditch. She has lived there for twenty five years, firstly with a husband, who had mental health problems and who disappeared a little while ago, and latterly with a number of cats. She used to be able to walk to the local shops until a few months ago, but now she is dependent on bags of food dropped off by passers by.
We use the man's driveway to turn around, and drive up the lane to Mrs Meadow's residence.

It is a desperate place. In the nineteen fifties it may have been identifiable as a caravanette, but now it is a blackened hulk. There are jagged, head-sized holes in the sides where rust has flaked away the metal, but the interior is dark and unreadable. What would have been the cab is lodged under a thick bush of blackberry thorns and filled with a sludge of detritus; the upper curve of the steering wheel is just visible, rising like the helm of a ship from the slime at the bottom of the sea. The whole thing is tilted into the waterlogged ditch at an angle. Around the back of the wreck where the door would have been there is now a filthy orange bathtowel strung across. I knock on the metal to the side and call out 'Ambulance. Mrs Meadows?'
I hear a voice inside.
'Can I come in?', and I pull the rag aside.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust not only to the gloom, but to the sodden chaos, a full minute before I can disentangle the animate from the inanimate, the human from the animal, the humanity from the neglect. Mrs Meadows is lying on her right side, her shape moulded around on all sides by a foetid morass of damp and unthinkable matter - a black tide of waste that fills this tiny space on a falling diagonal, from the back to where I now crouch, wondering what to say. Mrs Meadows seems able only to lift her head to see who I am, and to wave a small red plastic torch with her left hand. I count five cats at various points on the slope, one filthy white cat fastidiously licking a paw to the left of her head. There is a mulch of sodden cat biscuit boxes around Mrs Meadows' feet, and a shopping bag with some items for her, some buns, and a bottle of squash.
'Are you okay, Mrs Meadows? What's happened?'
She replies in a gently modulated whisper. If I shut my eyes I could imagine I was being invited to take tea with her in a cottage garden.
'Thank you so much for coming. I'm actually fine. It's not me at all, it's my cats. I'm desperately worried about them. You see I can't get about as much as I used to and it's really not fair on them.'
'Okay. Would you mind if I came a bit closer and gave you a check up?'
S. came to the opening just behind me. I heard him whince.
'No. No thank you. I'd rather you didn't touch me or come near me, thank you. I'm perfectly well. I simply want you to do something about my cats. Now - I have the number of a rather good animal shelter here somewhere.' She feels blindly with her left hand in the pocket of her coat, which is shinily filthy. She pulls out a scrap of paper and waves it out to me. The nails on her hand are curved and yellowed claws. I take the paper. It has the number of a cat rescue project written on it.
'Could you ring that for me and have them take my cats away? It would be such a weight off my mind.'
'Mrs Meadows,' I begin, 'There are lots of people very worried about you. We're very worried about you. These - conditions. They don't seem - all that good for you. And winter's just around the corner. What will you do? How will you cope?'
'Yes, yes. I know all that. But look. What I really want to know is - are you going to do something about my cats?'
'Let me just consult with my partner,' I say, withdrawing outside.
S. shakes his head. 'We can't just leave her here like this,' he says. 'No way. I've never seen anything like it.'
Back in the cab I call Control on my mobile phone. I tell them how shocked we both are. I tell them that I think Mrs Meadows should be taken into care - by force, if necessary. I cannot believe that this situation has been allowed to continue for a week, let alone a number of years. As I talk I have a dreadful image in my mind of her hand on the little red torch in the darkness.
But it seems that this is a formally registered address, so any forcible removal would have to be conducted via GP, mental health and social services. Control finds out that a recent assessment of Mrs Meadows' mental health had been made and she was found to be competent. Although I try to argue that the extremity of her living conditions must surely be interpreted as evidence of mental incapacity, Control are bound to say that these are questions for the mental health team in that area.
There is nothing more we can do.
I complete the paperwork. Mrs Meadows has refused treatment. All we can do is write a report highlighting our concerns.
And to notify the cat warden.
I have no doubt the cats will be re-homed immediately. This is no place for a cat.

birthing partners

The first
The early hours, thin and grey. We lie sprawled on leather recliners beneath the sick and flickering light from the TV.
And then the alerter goes off and I find myself standing up, walking out of the door, incredibly. A fox looks up from amongst the bins.
In the vehicle the message on the terrafix gives us an incident number, address and then description: Abdo pain. Just as I turn the engine over, Control calls us on the radio. It's likely we'll be stood down before we make this one, he says, but in the meantime can we run routine until they've found out if we're definitely needed or not? I turn out of the drive. The fox lopes off.
A couple of minutes into the journey, it's Control again: proceed as planned, but nothing serious.
Another couple of minutes and I'm turning into the road we need, a decrepit square of two storey Georgian houses. It is dark and the numbers are difficult to make out, but after I cruise slowly round a light comes on in a porch the other side and I see a young woman step forward from the shadows to start waving over to us.

I drive round and pull up outside. The woman patiently waits for us as we get our bags and lock the vehicle. She stands hugging her arms to her chest for warmth, stepping from one foot to the other, a ghostly teenage girl with a scooped face and a mouth of decaying teeth. 'Follow me' she says, and leads us back up the steps with her arms still folded tightly to her chest. Sick as she looks, it turns out that it's actually her sister, Julie, who is the patient. D. asks her what the problem is.
'She's six days late.'
'Six days late for what?'
'For the baby.'
We exchange a look. 'Abdo pains?' Well, giving birth would fit.
'So - er - she's pregnant then?', he says.
The girl stops briefly on the stairs to drop a look back on us. 'Yes,' she says, without expression, then turns back round to carry on with the climb, but somehow slower than before.
This looks like some kind of temporary hostel. There is a fire alarm console in the hallway, and a noticeboard has been put up to display regulations and useful numbers. The lights on the stairs don't work, and it seems that every door we pass has been kicked in at least once in its life. The darkness smells sweetly spotted with damp. Eventually, at the top of the last flight of stairs, the girl shows us into one room and then disappears into another.
It is a fuggy, intensely lit space, with clothes, plastic bags, cigarette packets, hair brushes and newspapers strewn across every surface. And lying the wrong way round on the bed, looking as discarded as everything else, a pregnant girl, her swollen belly emphasised by a tight white top and the vivid tracings of blue veins standing out beneath the skin around the sides. Her cheeks are flushed, and strands of her hair stick to her forehead.
The bed sinks down to where another, more substantial teenage girl sits on the bed; standing over by the window is an angular, skinny guy in a baseball cap who gives us a nod and a raise of the hand as if we're waiters and he's ordering a beer. The girl on the bed dabs a face-cloth across Julie's forehead, the chunky silver links of her bracelet sway gently as she moves her hand back and forth. 'All right?' she says.
D. kneels down and tries to rouse her.
'Julie? Julie?' She gives a groan but does not open her eyes.
The sister comes back into the room and stands over by the window with the tall guy, who tells us he is Julie's boyfriend. He says he isn't the father of the baby, but wants to do what's right. He lights two cigarettes, one for him and one for the sister.
D. feels for a pulse and asks how long she has been like this. The sister tells us that they had all gone for a long walk along the front earlier in the day - Julie's idea - and she'd seemed fine then, fitter than any of them. When they got back they'd all had a bit of wine - Julie didn't have much - after that, Julie had complained she felt funny.
As D. asks the questions I take Julie's blood pressure and other essential observations, all of which seem fine.
The girl on the bed says that Julie's contractions are very spaced out, and that despite passing a 'show' yesterday, nothing much else has happened. 'I know all about it', she says, 'I went through it last year. I've got one of my own. A girl. A right pain.'
She tells us that no, Julie didn't faint or have a fit, she hadn't been complaining of any unusual pains or swellings anywhere. No, she doesn't have any health problems. She says that Julie is due for an appointment at the hospital in four days, when they say they will probably induce her. 'They'd better.'
It doesn't appear that Julie is either giving birth at the moment or in danger of pre-eclampsia, so we decide to sit her up, to see if we can lift her responsiveness, and get some information directly from her. We help her slowly into a comfortable sitting position - and the change is immediate. 'Where's my coke?' she says, and then smiles at us.
'Feeling a bit better, then?'
She nods as she sips. Her boyfriend comes across to us, holding out a clear plastic envelope with her notes in. I start filling in our worksheet. He says: 'Can we all come in the ambulance or ....?' but the silence that greets this makes it obvious that he's the only one in the room still thinking along those lines. The sister goes back into the next room, and he retreats back to the window.
D. says that the best thing to do is for us to call the maternity unit where Julie is registered so he can have a chat to one of the midwives there, relay all the observations we've made, and let them decide whether they want us to bring Julie in.
'We can do lots of things but one thing we can't do is check the cervix to see how dilated it is. That's the best way to tell established labour, I'm afraid. And it doesn't sound as if it really is that far along, to be honest. The contractions would be coming along much closer together, and the pain - well, I'm only a bloke, so what do I know - but I'm sure you'll notice a change in the quality of the pain.'
The friend has been turning the face cloth over and over in her hands as D. says all this, but she suddenly throws it across the room. 'I could tell you about that', she says. She brushes her lap. 'I had to have a caesarian. Twelve hours pushing, and then the baby got stuck.'
The boyfriend yawns and looks down into the street below.

The delivery suite confirms what D. already suspects. They're happy for Julie to stay where she is until the labour has progressed. We get a signature on our worksheet to release us, and leave. Julie waves to us from the bed, and we find our own way back down the stairs.

The second
The blue lights are leaping around us on the dark buildings as I drive quickly along to the incident given as: birth imminent. Control has told us on the radio that it's a busy night for maternity and the midwife is having to come from quite a way away. It means we will be on our own for at least half an hour. No problem.
The early morning streets are quiet, and we pull up outside the address in no time. I jump in the back to get the maternity pack and the resus bag, then lock the vehicle and join D. at the front door. He rings again. No reply.
A cosy Victorian semi in a quiet street. The hazard lights on the ambulance seem a terrible intrusion. He rings again, and knocks loudly.
Then, just as he bends down to have a look through the letterbox, we see a muted light through the door's delicately patterned glass panels. Someone's coming out. Slowly.
The door opens.
A large woman stands with one hand on the door and one on the frame, blocking the hallway. She has vividly spiked blond hair, thick framed black glasses and an expression that seems to me - at this hour, and in this situation - to be a curiously controlled hybrid of discretion and hostility.
An introduction seems redundant - here we are, paramedic and technician, for the pregnant woman, with all the gear - but after a pause, when it becomes apparent that one is necessary - D. says: 'Ambulance?' And then: 'So - where's the patient?'
The woman steps closer up to us.
She speaks quietly, and what I think she says is: 'I'm Adula' - which I take to be a variation on Adela. So I nod and smile and say 'Hello Adula - I'm Spence and this is D.' I can feel D.'s patience dissipating like drops of water on a griddle.
She looks at me, demonstrating even tighter control. 'Well. I'm Diane,' she smiles, 'Could you follow me into the front room, please?' Which turns out to be dark, and noticeably without patient. I am confused about the introduction, until it strikes me that she probably said she was a doula - a term which I hadn't come across before, but which must be some kind of birthing partner. Meanwhile D. insists on being shown to the patient right away.
'There is no patient,' Diane says. 'There is nothing wrong here. All that's happening is that a woman is having a baby.'
'Excuse me,' D. says, 'But - who exactly are you?'
'I'm Jane's Doula. I'm here to make sure her wishes are respected, that everything she planned for the birth goes ahead exactly as she wants it, wherever possible.'
'Do you have medical training? Are you a midwife?'
'No,' she says, 'I don't catch babies.'
D. straightens at this. 'Look. Someone called for an ambulance because a woman is in labour. That's why we're here. And we have been trained. We're wasting time talking to you whilst this patient is unattended, possibly in danger. How am I to know if I can't examine her?'
Diane is prepared for this. I wonder if she's faced this situation before.
'I'm not being obstructive. I'm not getting in the way, or stopping you from doing your job. Jane is in the birthing pool, with her partner, just in the next room. Everything's fine, and they don't want you in there. But if you feel that you need to go in, then of course I won't stop you.'
'Well there's absolutely no point in us standing here in the dark like this. I need to be sure that the patient is happy for us not to attend, and if that's the case, we'll wait outside for the midwife to turn up. If we're not wanted, it's all the same to us.'
'I'll go and talk to her now and see if that's what she wants.'
Diane leaves the room, and I switch the light on.
D. shakes his head. We put our bags down and stand looking around us. There is a large, painted canvas on one wall, a baby angel descending between two melting figures. Simply framed black and white family portraits. A book shelf crammed with books on travel, novels, books on film and jazz. Wall charts for identifying creatures of the shoreline, birds, woodland animals. Diane comes back in.
'Jane has asked me to thank you for coming. She says that she doesn't need anything at the moment, and asks that you wait - either here or outside in your vehicle - until the midwife arrives. Is that okay?'
D. shrugs, and she leaves again.
We wait for about twenty minutes in the front room. The woman's contractions are obviously coming intensely, now; with hardly any gaps, her cries resound throughout the house. Every so often she seems to sing as she shrieks. I look at D. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head.
'If something goes wrong...'
And then we hear a car pull up. We go outside to brief the midwife. D. tells her about the Doula, and the midwife tuts. 'That's all we need.' She asks us if we'd mind hanging around until the baby is delivered, and then hurries inside. We wait in the hallway.
The labour progresses, with the midwife giving Jane encouragement and instructions.
At one point we hear her say: 'The head is out.'
And then: 'You must get out of the water if this next push does not deliver the rest.'
Soon after it is apparent that the baby has been delivered, but there are no crying sounds. The midwife speaks very sternly to the mother: 'Jane. You must give the baby to me so I can put him on the towel and get him breathing. Jane.' And then shouting out to us: 'Can I have some help here, please? Some oxygen?'
I pull out a cylinder and D. takes it through. Some long seconds later, then the baby's first cries echo through the house.
'Thanks' she says. D. comes back out, and we both go back into the living room.
Eventually the midwife comes into us. She tells us that Jane will not be having syntometrine to deliver the placenta, so it may take some time. We're near the end of our shift, so the midwife says she's happy to let us go. If she needs any further help she can always call for another ambulance.
We say goodbye to her, and leave.
I pull up round the corner, turn the radio down, lean back in the seat.
D. gets out and rolls a cigarette.
The sky is lightening now, but I don't feel tired.

The man in the dark suit

I acknowledge the message, book us mobile, then scroll down to read the details. The first part of the message: OS Red Spot Casino, The Marina. Overdose/Poisoning/Psychiatric/Suicide attempt.
J. groans. 'This night just gets better and better.'
Then an addition: Warning - weapons involved. Pls stand off and await police assist.
And again: Man armed with explosives. Hearing voices. Wearing a Brazilian football shirt.
J. calls up Control to get an ETA for the police on scene. Is told approximately ten minutes. As an afterthought he says: 'This patient is obviously insane. Argentina are a much better team.'
The airway crackles blankly.
'Joke,' he says, but the radio is a tough audience tonight, and remains silent.
He groans again and makes himself comfortable as I head off down the road towards the marina.

A few streets from our destination J. tells me to stand-off on the ramp that leads down to the supermarket at the edge of the marina. 'The police will have to pass us to get to the scene, and it's high enough up so we can see what's going on,' he says. Uncannily, just as he finishes explaining his plan, Control sends us another message: Rendezvous with police in supermarket car park.
'Crap idea,' he says. 'But if that's what they want...'
I turn on to the ramp and follow it round and down towards the mini roundabout at the end where we need to turn left into the car park.
As I reach the end of the ramp I see a man in a Brazilian football shirt walking towards us from our right.
J. is immediately awake, slapping me on the arm and mock-squealing. We are straightaway two schoolboys on the dodgems.
'Go round! Go round!' he screams.
'Argh! He's following us!' I shout back.
'Go round again!'
'He's heading us off!'
'Quick! Turn left! No - right! No - Left! Go into the car park and drive to the other side.'
The crazy man in the football shirt makes an ineffectual lunge at the vehicle as I pass, but I make it through and drive off around the supermarket car park. I drive way out across to the other side. As our giggles subside I notice a tall, smartly dressed figure in a dark suit and white shirt standing on his own in the centre of the carpark by a trolley station. He makes a minimum turn of the head to watch us as we drive past.
'What's wrong with everyone tonight?'
J. sighs and rubs his face.
I reach the far side of the car park and stop the vehicle. The engine clicks as I stare out across the bleakly illuminated space.
'Is he coming?'
'I'm not sure. He's thinking about it.' Then: 'Yep. He's headed right this way.'
We scan the car park. No police.
'This is ridiculous,' J. says. 'We can't keep driving round the car park. It's like the Benny Hill Show.'
The man in the football shirt is half way across to us by this point.
'I can't see any thing that looks like a bomb.'
Almost at us, walking with a purposeful slouch, like a player walking back to the bench after a red card. Disappointed, tired - but homicidal? I don't know enough about these things to tell. Does anyone?
J. hits the central locks button and the mechanism engages with a reassurring thunk.
The man stops, his arms straight down by his sides, and stands neutrally, a little away from my window.
I smile at him and nod, polite to the last.
He waits for me to lower the window.
So I lower the window.
'Why did you drive away from me?' he says. He shivers and folds his arms.
'Sorry about that,' I say. 'We've been told not to approach you because you're armed with explosives.'
He shrugs.
'Have you got any explosives on you?' I am profoundly conscious that this is probably the first and last time I will ever ask anyone this question.
He shrugs again, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a mother of pearl cigarette lighter. 'This is all I have. I only said what I said because I need help. I have to go to hospital tonight.' He taps his head. 'I'm not well up here.' He takes a tentative step closer. 'Please. Can I come on board? It is very cold.'
J. leans across me and says: 'Well - you shouldn't go telling people you're going to blow yourself up, mate.'
'I'm sorry. It was a mistake.'
J. makes an irritable gesture to a bench a little way ahead of us. 'Go and sit on that and wait til the police get here.'
The man does as he is told. He sits on the bench, folds his arms and legs, and stares at us.
J. gives Control an update. 'Further to this call at the Marina - we've found the patient - or rather, he's found us. He's now sitting on a bench a couple of yards in front of us. Don't think he's armed. Looks quite harmless. Can you tell the police where we are?'
There is a pause. J. searches for some music on the radio.
Suddenly the man stands up and comes over to the ambulance again. I wind the window down.
'Yes?'
'Couldn't you give me a blanket at least? It's so cold.'
J. makes the same gesture back to the bench.
'You really should have thought about that when you started shouting about bombs in your pocket. Maybe when you've sat back down I might throw a blanket your way. But you've got to go and sit down first. Go on.' And then: 'Go on.'
The man retreats to the bench. J. groans, climbs out of the vehicle, grabs a blanket out of the back and tosses it across to him. He wraps it around his shoulders, J. climbs back in, I lock the doors again and we all settle into our positions to wait for the police.
The man in the centre of the car park watches us as before, his face and shirt white beneath the lights.
'What does he want? He's crazier than any of us.'
We slide further down in our seats.

After another quarter of an hour a police van turns the corner off the ramp and cautiously glides to a halt on the far side of the car park. For a moment the night seems strung with a thinly glistening web of distrust - between the police in the van, the man on the bench, the man in the centre of the car park, and me and J. in the ambulance. Then it is just as quickly broken as the police van starts moving again; a minute later the van draws alongside us. The man on the bench stands up and pulls his blanket tightly around himself, ready for the next stage.
I wind my window down and tell the policeman what has happened so far, about the ludicrous chase around the mini roundabout, the cigarette lighter, the world's closest stand-off.
'So who's that guy in the middle of the car park?'
'I have no idea.'
Three policemen and a policewoman get out of the van, put their hats on, and go to talk to the man on the bench. We follow on behind.
Suddenly, as if sensing a bigger, more responsive audience than the hopeless ambulance people, the crazy man immediately begins to talk nonsense, very quickly. Something about God, and knowing his plans, and how he has been given a mission to kill people. The senior policeman makes a calming gesture with his hands, just as if he is directing a car to pull over.
'That's enough of that,' he says, flatly.
'So what do you want then? DO YOU WANT ME TO SHOUT?'
'No, I don't want you to shout, either. I just want you to tell me what all this is about.'
The crazy man immediately reverts to the subdued, rather deflated tone he used with us.
'I need to go to a hospital tonight. I'm not well. I need help.'
The other officers have already lost interest and are chatting to each other or looking round the car park. One notices the man in the middle.
'Who is that?'
'Nobody knows.'
Meanwhile, the senior officer discusses things with J. and his next in command.
'We're not taking him,' says J.
'He's hardly a 136.'
'But still...'
The senior officer speaks to the man again. 'If you'd like to come with us, sir, we'll make sure you get to where you need to get to tonight.' And then to us: 'Thanks for your help, guys.'
The crazy man snaps us a look that is one part victory, three parts disdain.
We complete our paperwork and drive off.

The man in the dark suit watches us all as we leave.

Old injuries

I ring the doorbell but get no answer. Have we got the right address? A third party made the call. Why aren't they here? I smile at Rae and look up at the lighted window. And then further up, on into the black sky. 'Aren't the stars clear tonight?' I say, in an effort to wake up. I clap my rubber-gloved hands together. 'Fuck it's cold'.
We hear footsteps on the stairs, a light goes on in the hallway, and a moment later the door opens. A woman with a dessicated smile peers out at us.
'Ambulance,' I say.
'He's in the bath,' she says, and then, as she turns to go back up the stairs, 'you're welcome to him.'
As I follow her up I ask what his name is. Malcolm. And her name? Sheila, his girlfriend.
She steps over something on the stairs - a vegetable knife.
'What's the knife doing there?' I ask.
'That's where I threw it after I took it off him.'
I pass a weighted look back to Rae. Is this the point where we should excuse ourselves and retreat to wait for police back-up? But I'm sufficiently new to this game to think I can cope with anything, and I don't want to sit outside in the truck whilst the police struggle to find the resources, so I carry on after the woman, with Rae - reluctantly or not, I'm not sure - in my wake. I check the shadows and doorways carefully when we reach the landing. I've seen 'Psycho'. I'm ready for anything.
'So - where is Malcolm?'
Malcolm is crammed into a three-quarters full bath, naked except for his glasses, his arms hanging over the sides, his feet hooked up beneath the taps, his shriveled penis swaying gently just below the surface of the water like a sea-anemone.
'What's happened, Malcolm? What's wrong?' I say, putting my board and bag down and kneeling on the bath mat.
'He's taken a load of pills and I hope he dies,' says Sheila, and then walks off into the sitting room.
'Malcolm?'
He slowly turns his face to look at me. Pulls off his glasses and dips them in the water to clear the steam. Puts them back on and stares at me. There is a sweat on him, and I don't know if it's from the bath, the effects of the pills, or the stress. But he doesn't seem stressed. He looks just as if he has been interrupted taking a leisurely soak, and is mildly interested to see who it is.
'I just want to die,' he says, with a matter of fact smack of the lips. 'I'm no use to anyone.' And then he turns his face forward again.
'First things first', I say. 'Can I take your pulse?' He doesn't say no, so tentatively I reach out to touch his wrist. 'What have you taken tonight?'
He recites the list. 'Ibuprofen, Citalopram, Irbesartan.'
'And how much did you take?'
'All of it.'
'All of your medication?'
'Yes'
I see the cartons in the little wicker basket under the sink.
'And were they full packets?'
The face turns towards me again.
'I was going to do this.' he says, and performs a perfunctory little mime of drawing a knife across his wrists. 'But I don't like blood.'
I fish out the cartons and set them by the board for later.
Rae stands by the bathroom doorway and we exchange a look. I make myself comfortable on the toilet beside the bath and tell him that I think he should come with us to hospital, that the amount he has taken - particularly the painkillers - could cause him some harm.
'I don't care. Good. I want them to.'
The woman re-appears at the door with a cigarette right up by her cheek for easy access.
'He left his wife two years ago and she doesn't want him to see the boys.' Suck/blow. 'And after this - don't think you'll ever see them again.'
Rae leads the woman back into the sitting room. I watch Malcolm carefully to see his reaction, but he seems supported and oblivious in the bath.
'So you're taking medication for depression?' I say.
'It's not working,' he says, and then with a damp snort: 'Obviously'.
'The way I see it,' I say after a pause in which I have to fight a growing self-consciousness about any words I will try to say.
'The way I see it is that depression is just another chronic illness like any other illness, and you can get treatment for it, and adjust that treatment or start something new if things aren't working out. But the important thing to remember is that these dark feelings you have at the moment are just like feeling sick with the flu, or dizzy with an ear infection. You have to put yourself in a position to get some help. One step at a time. First - come to hospital with us to look at what drugs you've taken tonight. And then - take it from there.'
'No.'
'If not for your sake, then at least for all those people that love and care about you.'
'No-one cares about me.'
'Your boys.'
'Better off without me.'
'Your girlfriend. She called the ambulance, after all.'
'I don't know why. She hates me. Especially now. It's all too much. I've had enough.'
Rae is back in the doorway. She comes at the problem from a different angle.
'Malcolm - what you've taken won't kill you but it may damage your kidneys and put you on dialysis for the rest of your life. That will certainly make things worse.'
He suddenly drops his knees below the water line, pulls his arms in.
'You seem all right. I don't want to be trouble.'
'Don't worry about it. It's all the same to us. But the thing is - we can't call the police and have you arrested and dragged out of here kicking and screaming. We can't force you to come to hospital if you don't want to. But all that will happen is that you'll send us away, you'll get weaker and eventually fall unconscious, and we'll come straight back and take you in anyway, so whatever happens, you're bound to end up in hospital. It's just that if you come now, you'll be giving yourself more of a chance to avoid any long term damage and get yourself in a position where you can do something about your problems. What do you say?'
There is a long pause. Rae ushers Sheila away who looks like she wants to come and throw something else in the bath. Eventually, Malcolm sits up.
'I'm a taxi driver. I'll lose my licence after this.'
'How will they ever know?'
But as he stands up in a cascade of water and reaches for a towel, I'm thinking that he may be right.
He dries himself off ineffectually, drops the towel to the floor, and then pads off down the hall into the bedroom to get some clothes. He has the bearish lope of heavy men, with his hands hanging loosely by his side and the palms pointing backwards. I notice a thickly crimped line on the skin of his left shoulder.
'That's an interesting scar', I say after him. 'How did you get that?'
'Oh that', he says, tugging some trousers up over his damp legs, and swaying precariously. 'That's from my rugby days. Years ago. That's an old injury.'

Four assaults

Somewhere quiet
A quarter to midnight and our first assault. I climb out of the ambulance and walk across to the man standing in a blood splashed shirt with a policeman on one side and a shivering girl on the other. When I ask his name he simply tips his head back and bares his teeth, and there's nothing else to do but stand there and look into his mouth. The police lights clatter on around us.
After a suitable pause I say: 'First things first, mate,' and then 'What's your name?'
'Paul,' he says, and turns to his girlfriend. 'I can't believe this, Chrissy. He's only gone and broken my fucking teeth. Look.' He suddenly snarls back at me again. 'I had them done last month. How much is this going to cost?'
We help him into the ambulance and sit him down. His girlfriend sits next to him, and hitches up her halter-neck. She has his blood on her hands and arms. She rubs his knee reassurringly as we check him over. The blood pressure cuff creaks around his thickly muscled arm.
'First night out in a year. Can you believe it? I knew it would be trouble, going out with a load of kids.'
'So what happened, Paul? Can you remember?'
'No. Not all of it. Some guy - he got arsey with one of the boys in the pub but I smoothed things over. He even shook my hand. I didn't think any more about it. But then outside, he started in like he wanted to fight him again. The bouncers didn't want to know. They didn't do anything. So I stepped up to sort it out. Then he smiled, shook my hand again - and wallop. He must have just hit me in the face, one hell of a punch. The next thing I remember I'm at the top of the stairs, Chrissy is hanging on to me screaming and the guy is chasing the boys across the car park. Unbelievable. Is my nose broken?'
Chrissy tugs her top up again, tells him that the man had jumped into a taxi with another guy, and the police say they have a witness who got the number.
'I just want to know who it is so I can pick him up myself and take him somewhere quiet. I mean - what a coward. Look at my teeth. He knew I wasn't expecting it. Couldn't ask me for a fight straight out. Just took advantage. Well, I'll recognise him if I see him again.'
A policeman looks in the ambulance and asks if he can get a statement. I tell him to meet us down the hospital, so he closes the door and we set off.
Paul cautiously dabs at his nose with some gauze and then says: 'Chrissy? If we go out tomorrow, let's go on our own. Somewhere quiet.'

Pigeonfist and Yellowtit
Pigeonfist is lying on the floor of the all-night takeaway pizza place beneath a silver thermal blanket. A security guard stands off to the side, chewing gum, occasionally repositioning his earpiece with a gloved finger, whilst behind him, slumped on a chair with a bloody wad of tissue pressed against his nose, sits Yellowtit.
I kneel down beside Pigeonfist. Tell him not to move whilst we check him over. Yellowtit tells us what happened.
'Bastards jumped us. God knows why. Animals, a bloody pack. We didn't say or do a thing. Absolutely nothing. Two of them started in on Mark, knocked him to the ground, no reason at all, started jumping up and down on his head. The other two threw me against the wall and kept me there. I had an armload of pizza boxes when they came in. It was all over in a minute. A pack of dogs. Is he all right?'
I can see a trainer tread pattern on the right side of Pigeonfist's face, and all around it the flesh is rising up mottled and plump. When he tries to talk it sounds as if his mouth has been reconstructed using a bathroom sponge, but incredibly, other than his facial injuries, he seems relatively undamaged. We help him to his feet.
Both men are wearing bright purple sweatshirts with their stag names printed cheaply in big yellow letters on the back.
'We're from Gloucester. We were having a good night of it before this. Bastards. What's everyone going to say?'
We lead them both on to the ambulance. Clean them up a bit and take some observations. Yellowtit may have had his nose broken. Pigeonfist seems concussed.
'I don't know how you do this job,' says Yellowtit. 'Dealing with arseholes every night.'
'Sorry?' I'm finding it difficult to understand him. 'What did you say?'
'It's my accent, isn't it?'
'Well - I'd say it was more to do with the state of your face.'
'Oh. Yeah,' he says, and dabs at his nose with the tissue as the ambulance moves off.

The Big I Am
'I'm standing there waiting for the bus and this gang of kids rolls up, giving it the big I am.' He tips his chin up, rocks his shoulders, holds his arms out from his body, turns his mouth down at the corners and squints, all in a cartoon imitation of The Big I Am.
'I tell them all to fuck off. Why would I be having time for any of that. Next thing I know I'm on the ground and there are four or five of them jumping up and down on me. And I remember - one of them kept saying to me "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?" Well, what do I care who the fuck he is?'
The man has a gash above his right eye, and the blood from this has run down to mix with the blood from his squashed nose. He speaks as though he has the flu, aching and swollen with fluid.
'Look at the state of me. What will my kids say when they see all this? I'm thirty three. What am I doing?'
He shakes his head as I help him onto the ambulance. His friend climbs on board, too. He is wearing a white shirt with not a mark on it. He keeps quiet as we drive on to the hospital.

Birthday Girl
In the centre of town, outside the Paradise Hotel, the police are talking into their shoulder radios and wandering round with their arms spread wide trying to shepherd the crowd on to the pavement. It isn't working. I can see our patient, a tough looking man sheltering in a doorway with his girlfriend, a policeman of their own waving us over. The man is holding a wad of tissues to the top of his head, whilst the girl is skipping from foot to foot with a jacket hugged round her bare shoulders.
'What's happened?' I ask as I approach.
The man smiles at me and raises the wad of tissues as if he's tipping his hat.
'I got bottled mate.'
'Knocked out?'
'Nah,' he sniffs. 'Take a lot more than that to put me down, mate.'
The policeman help us load the two of them on to the ambulance where we go through the routine of checking wounds, cleaning up and taking basic obs. He has a gash on the crown of his head with a small raised skin flap. There are several other, smaller wounds where the glass has shattered; tiny fragments of glass glint like water amongst the thickly gelled strands of his short hair.
'So what happened?'
He winks at the girl. 'It's her birthday today.'
'Happy Birthday,' I say. She starts to cry.
'I just want to go home. I hate this. Why do people act like animals? I just want to go home. I'm never coming out again.'
He leans across to give her a hug, smiling at me as he does this. 'Come on, darl'', he says, 'let's go to the hospital, get patched up, and we'll still have plenty of time to meet up with the others and take the limo home like we said.'
The back door opens and one of his friends pokes his head in.
'All right, mate? When shall we see you, then?'
'I'll give you a ring when we're done at the hospital. Maybe you could come and pick us up, and we'll take it from there.'
'Okay,' and he shuts the door.
He asks me how long I think they'll keep him at the A&E. I tell him that I can't really say. It depends on how busy they are tonight - but being a Friday night, it might be a while. He settles back into his seat and groans. 'It's throbbing a bit, now. Although that might just be the drink.' He sniffs. 'Shame to waste a good night out.'
The policeman who led them over to us knocks on the door and leans in to ask if he wants to make a statement. The man grins. 'Nah - I know how these things work,' he says. 'Just leave it with me.'
The policeman slams the doors shut and we head off to the hospital.
His girlfriend cries again. I give her some fresh tissues.

A quiet pint

Saturday afternoon and these pedestrian backstreets are thick with people walking and eating and busking and window-shopping and drinking and staring blankly at the ambulance with the blue lights nosing impatiently through to get to the pub in the square where, we are told, a man is lying on the floor not breathing. It has taken me so long to get this far that I don't have time to think about parking the vehicle ready for a quick getaway. I put on the handbrake and we jump out, make a grab for the resus bag, and bully our way through a narrow passageway to the pub door. A woman is being helped out, an arm round her shoulder. 'He's gone', she says.
Inside the pub the first thing that strikes me is that one half is busy and the other empty. The landlord has cleared the section off to the left; he has put a menu board sideways across the little step to delineate the two halves. Like a comic book version of a normal pub, Lounge and Bar, this is one with two areas marked out: Living and Dying. Between the round tables, I see a man lying on his back with a white handkerchief over his face.
'Did anyone see what happened?', as I snatch the handkerchief away. (D. asks me: 'Is he breathing?' and then: 'Done a resus before?')
The landlord is standing over us as I check the man's airway and whether he's breathing or not. He isn't.
'What can I tell you? He's a regular. Nice enough. Comes in on his own. Told someone a while ago he'd got cancer and not long to go. Who knows? Never any trouble, though. Came in as usual for a quiet pint. Next thing (slaps his hands) - crash! off the stool, on the floor, gameover. I think he's probably dead, mate.' Checking his watch, hurrying things along. He turns to wave instructions to the girls behind the bar.
No pulse, either. D. has already cut down the centre of his shirt and pullover, exposing his chest. I start compressions.
Above my head on the wide plasma screen TV, it's half time and the experts are dissecting the match. As I call out every ten compressions I look to my right. The punters are well-provided for, dividing their attention between the TV, the resus in progress and their mates. Crisps, peanuts, another pint of guiness, a spritzer and a pint of lager, don't care what. Cheapest.
A man leans in at the window and says something like: 'I can see you're doing your best,' like he's giving encouragement to some clumsy painters and decorators.
D. asks the landlord to at least close the window. He does that, and then hangs the dog's blanket over the door window. He's not letting any more people in. This is a grim lock-in. He probably thinks it would be too much to explain to anyone new.
D. has placed the defib pads on. I stop compressions to let him evaluate the heart rhythm. Asystole. I'm back on the chest again whilst he calls for back-up on his mobile. Control says that they don't have a paramedic available nearby but will try their best. Police, too, he says.
This is his second resus today. I smile at him. 'Jonah' I say. This is my first ever. I wonder if I'm doing it right.
I look at the man's face. His skin is as grey as his long greasy hair. His eyes are like doll's eyes, dilated, immutable. There is nothing in this pub, not me, the TV, the noise of the drinkers or the buzz of the crowds outside that can reach him now.
We work for half an hour but the heart rhythm remains unchanged. A paramedic arrives and unpacks his kit but notes the time and declares the scene moments afterwards. The police arrive and clear the pub. I bring the trolley in as a policewoman searches his pockets for identification. She also takes his rings off and puts all his property in a bag. We lift him onto the trolley, and disguise the fact that he is dead by putting an oxygen mask on him, the blanket up to his chin. We wheel him out into the sunny, Saturday afternoon.
The landlord thanks us for our help as we leave. I know that he's lost a fair bit of money this afternoon, but he hides his frustration well.

Behind us, the bar staff clear the dead man's drink.

Resurrection

I knock once and then test the door. It's open. Calling 'Robert?' and 'Ambulance' we step into the flat. The first thing I see are a pair of legs in a room off to the left, and then as we push our way further inside, the whole man, lain out on his back on the dirty brown carpet, his shirt off, his arms outstretched, his head turned to one side, spread out like the martyred lord of all studio flats.
I step quickly across to him, kneel down and say loudly 'Are you all right?' into his ear. I pinch his earlobe. No response. 'This is for real' I think, and am just about to check his airway when F. leans in and rubs him vigorously with his knuckles in the centre of his chest.
Robert grimaces and opens his eyes wide. 'Ow! What did you do that for, man? That really hurt.'
'We were worried about you, Robert.' And then, covering my surprise. 'We didn't know if you were alive or not.'
'But you didn't need to do that. Why did you have to hurt me like that for? Fuck.'
F. withdraws his rough healing hand. Robert sits up. An invisible cloud of rancid sweat and alcohol rises up with him. There are several little bottles of pills on the floor next to him, some empty, some half full. I pick one up and ask him what he's taken.
'Who cares?' he says, swatting the question away. His eyes are fat, and there is a line of dried red wine running from the corner of his mouth to his ear.
'We care, Robert.'
'Just leave me alone. Just get out and let me die.'
'We can't do that, mate. We need to know you're okay.'
The room has so little in it, it seems emptier than if it were actually bare. A television in one corner. A sofa, an armchair, a bookcase with a packet of cigarettes and a mobile phone. Two dumbells on the floor. Every piece of furniture, even the paper on the walls, seems to be losing its light to the corrupting brown tide of this carpet. Robert suddenly looks up at us.
'What do you want with me?'
'We want to help you, Robert. We think you should come with us into the ambulance so we can check you over, and then maybe come to the hospital.'
'I'm not going. I just want to die.'
'Who called us, Robert?'
He passes the tip of his tongue over his chapped lips and then says quietly:'I did.'
'Well, then. That makes me think a part of you really doesn't want to die.'
He follows the logic of this, through a fog of nausea. Then: 'I couldn't hurt my parents. It would kill them.'
'So for their sake, come with us to hospital. Give yourself a chance. Give them a chance. And then take it from there.'
Robert rubs his chest. 'Okay. First I need a piss.'
We help him up, and he staggers off into the bathroom. Whilst he's in there, above the torrent of his urine, I hear him muttering intensely: 'I’m going to hurt someone tonight,’ he says, ‘I’m going to fuck someone up. Badly. Two hits.'

Out in the ambulance F. drives and I sit in the back. Robert refuses to give me any other details, not his last name, his date of birth, his GP. He lies back in the seat with his eyes closed and his forehead crossed with uncomfortable thoughts. I ask him a few times if it would be okay for me to take his blood pressure and other obs, but I'm cautious. He's been co-operative up until now, but I don't want to provoke him.
The journey to hospital is short. I wake him up when we arrive, and when F. opens the doors we help him down into a chair and wheel him in. I handover the details to the nurse in charge who listens with a blank face.
‘Last name?’ he drones. I tell him that he would only give me his first name.
‘Cubicle Three,’ he says with a sigh. When we wheel Robert past the desk, he looks up sharply and says: ‘What’s your last name?’
Robert makes a drunken pantomime of ignoring this question, but the nurse suddenly stands up and says: ‘Hey! Give me your last name.’
Robert says ‘Redland’
‘Redford?’, he snorts, ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got Robert Redford in tonight.’
‘Redland’, says Robert again. I’m astonished he’s being so coherent and submissive.
‘Okay Mr Robert Redland.'
We wheel him to Cubicle Three. Robert slumps back into the chair and puts both hands over his face.
As we pass the desk the nurse in charge says: 'There’ll be someone over in a minute.' And he writes his name up on the board with a fat blue marker.

Outlaw

Ten o'clock and the night has the city cupped tightly in its hands. The pubs are crammed, their summer windows and doors swung wide, loud knots of people spreading and sprawling over the tables and pavements and traffic barriers. A generalised, insectivorous swell of noise, cut with clacking heels, beery chants of bravado, car horns, whistles, low beats and thumps, polyphonic ringtones and urgent conversations face to ear along the streets and at the bars and in the alleyways.

The streets are narrower here, darker, less populated. I drive slowly, reading the numbers, but even though I take my time, we realise that the address we want must be off a turning behind us, and this is a one way street. Rae jumps out to guide me back. As I reverse past it and then drive forwards to go in, Rae points to a dark gated opening. At the same time I see a man step out of the shadows in front of her. I drive up to them quickly and jump out, taking the keys but leaving the engine running.

'He's in there, man', he says. 'I've never seen him like this before.'

The weak overhead light dimly illuminates the heavy gold chain round his neck, his white teeth. I check myself to see if I can feel any greater sense of danger than my eyes can make out. Rae is standing with a studied neutrality; I know she is poised, too. She has the radio.

We follow him through the archway, which opens out into a large, rectangular courtyard, each side boxed in with two storeys of flats, some with lights on in the windows but mostly dark. There is just enough light spilling across the flagstones to pick out a tall, pale figure with a white handkerchief knotted around his face like an outlaw, pacing around and around a circular washing line.
'I've never seen him this bad.'
'Sorry - what's your name? Is he a relation of yours?'
'My name's Jon. He's my half-brother. I haven't seen him for two years. He just disappeared. Then he comes round looking like shit and talking nonsense. I heard he was having problems, but - this.'
'What's his name?'
'Eden', and then he shouts out: 'Eden! Someone here to see you, bro.'
Eden stops and watches as we walk across to him.
'Eden? My name's Rae. I'm with the ambulance. We're a bit worried about you, mate.'
Eden pulls his mask down. His hair is sticking up in spiky blond clumps. His face has a pinched intensity about it, a worrying hybrid of hunger and astonishment. His tracksuit bottoms are filthy and his shirt is unbuttoned to the waist. His feet are bare.
'What's happened tonight, Eden?'

And then he talks.

I have never heard a language like this. It is dangerously brittle, a crazy white boy patois, a pidgin jumble of mispronounced words, cut-and-shut clichés, backward intonations, a flickering bedsit TV patois, a language so tangled to be almost incomprehensible. And yet, incredibly, it insinuates a meaning when I stop trying to understand.

He stops talking, takes out a small notebook, and begins urgently riffling through the pages.

Jon gives me a look. Rae touches me on the arm and we turn away briefly to discuss what we should do. Eden is obviously vulnerable, and may even pose a danger to others. I ask Jon if he would come with Eden if we were able to persuade him to come to hospital; Jon says he would normally, but he has some kittens up in his room and they can't be left alone. Rae says she will ask the police to attend. A Section 136 is perhaps the best thing in this case. She goes to make the call, whilst Jon and I turn back to Eden.

We lead him onto the ambulance, coaxing him delicately. I promise not to run any tests, and to leave the door open so he can leave at any time.

So we all sit in the ambulance, the three of us hoping that the police will turn up soon and Eden telling us about Jesus and faces and other questions. The pages of his notebook are almost black, written through with words. I can only make out two of them: ghost and structure.
The police don't come. Control tells Rae that they are hard-pressed tonight and can only do their best. Eden becomes more and more restless. Occasionally he falls out of his weird-speak into a relaxed, normal phrasing. It is startling, like a crowded room suddenly falling silent. But then the noise picks up again as strongly as before. He stands, and pulls up his mask. We cannot restrain him. He jumps out of the ambulance and lopes off down the road, his half-brother following him for a short distance, before he turns at the top of the road and is gone. A loud group of girls come round at the same time, and whether their shrieking laughter is directed at Eden or not, they jostle each other with their beautiful, bare shoulders, their sleek, Saturday night normality, and the night clatters on.

Jon comes back.

We make our apologies, goodbyes, green-up, run red to the next job.

Suspended animation

Betty was sitting so upright and still in the chair it looked as if she was a shop display, immaculately dressed and pressed in a white blouse and tartan skirt, her hands neatly folded on her lap. Only the eyes gave away that she was real, dilute and watchful behind the great round lenses of her spectacles.
I knelt down next to her. 'So what's happened, Betty? What's wrong?' Barely moving her head she said: 'Well, you'd best ask my daughter that. I'm not sure myself. All I know is I had more trouble than usual with my legs when I woke up this morning.' Those enormous eyes turned down to look at me. 'I'm ninety four you know. Worked all my life.' The essentials.
Her daughter, an old woman herself, rubbing her hands with the worry of it all, told me the rest. Normally quite mobile - can manage by herself but I call in every day and the carers come in morning and night - takes water tablets for her legs - badly swollen today - couldn't get out of bed on her own - due a health check next Monday but GP said to call for an ambulance today. Hope that was okay.
The care centre manager, who had been standing in the hallway, swinging a bunch of keys, chipped in.
'Betty wears an emergency call button round her neck but she'd lay on the floor all week and never use it. She's an amazing woman - aren't you Betty? - so independent. Strong-willed. Only does what she wants to do - isn't that right, B?'
'That's right, dear.' She looked down at me, sadly. 'They're all such good people.'
My crewmate Helen and I reassured them that it was fine and that we'd certainly take Betty to A&E if that's what she wanted. It was probably the best thing to do. The doctors could run lots of tests and find out what was happening. Betty squeezed my hand. 'It is what I want, dear. I'm not myself. I'm normally pretty good. I don't like to make a fuss.'
We took a few basic observations, all of which seemed normal for her age, and reassured ourselves that she hadn't suffered a stroke. The daughter loomed over us. 'Okay, Betty,' I said brightly, let's get you down the hospital and sort things out.'
The daughter took me by the elbow. 'We - erm - didn't make it to the commode just now. I don't want to let her go down the hospital all wet like this. Could we change her before we go? Have we time?'
So as not to embarrass Betty, Helen helped the daughter get her ready whilst I filled in the paperwork with the care centre manager, who had all her details. Finally, we lifted Betty onto our carry chair and wheeled her out to the vehicle. 'Mind you don't hurt yourself,' she said, a number of times, as we negotiated lift doors and stairways. She waved like the Queen Mother to the other residents who'd come out to watch.
'You're no weight at all', I said, 'You must eat more.'
'You don't eat,' she said, feebly, 'not when you're ninety-four.'
'Definitely not herself,' the daughter said, then gave her a kiss before we loaded her up into the vehicle and made her comfortable on the trolley. 'I'll see you down there a bit later,' she said, then gave us all one last anxious smile as we closed the doors.
During the journey I tried to chat to Betty, but she seemed locked into position again, her enormous watery eyes fixed straight ahead. I let her rest.


At A&E I described the case to the sister in charge, who came over to introduce herself to Betty. I stood at the foot end of the trolley, with Helen up at the top.
'What's happened today?' she said. A thrill of attention seemed to energise Betty. She pushed her glasses firmly back on to her nose and looked around.
'Well. I don't know why I'm here, that's for sure.'
The sister glanced at my name badge. 'Spence says you had trouble with your legs this morning.'
'No. No more than usual.'
The Sister, Helen and Betty all looked at me. Alarmed, I touched Betty's foot and gave her toe an encouraging wiggle. 'Don't you remember, Betty? You couldn't get out of bed? Your daughter said you were quite bad this morning?'
Betty frowned at me disapprovingly. 'Did she? Well I wasn't. I feel fine. What's all the fuss about? There's nothing wrong with me.'
The Sister pulled back the blanket and looked at Betty's puffy legs. She did some strength tests, asking Betty to raise each leg in turn, to flex the ankle, to push against her hand - all of which Betty did perfectly well.
'Okay Betty,' said the Sister. 'Let's have you in cubicle three.'
'I don't like to make a fuss,' Betty said, and then, giving Helen's hand a squeeze and nodding in my direction added: 'Is he always like this?'

Strange trip

Nicky and Stacy, Enid's two carers, not having any reply from the front door, walked round to the back of the bungalow and peered through various windows. Eventually they made out the shape of Enid on all fours by the side of her bed, not moving. She did not turn round when Nicky banged on the glass, so whilst Stacy looked around for a way of getting in, Nicky got her mobile phone out and called for an ambulance.

When my crewmate and I stepped into the house we found them all in the bedroom, Enid sitting hunched and furious on the edge of her bed, sipping from a mug of tea, her brittle white hair tufting away from her head at all angles. 'Clear off,' she growled. Nicky told Enid not to be so rude. Stacy laughed and glanced at her watch.
'What's happened?', I said, whilst E. got out the kit we needed to take some obs.
Before Nicky had a chance to say anything, Enid slopped the mug down towards her lap and said: 'Nothing's happened. Who are you, anyway? What do you want all that for? This is my house and I don't want you in it.'
Nicky told me how they had found her, and added that she thought Enid wasn't herself.
I looked around the room. Above the bed, a low shelf with a couple of crucifixes, a few lurid prints of Jesus, and a bear with 'Best Nan' on its chest. The room was small and boxy, with just the bed, a rickety wardrobe, a zimmer frame and a commode. The air was as thick and yellow as the light.
'She's ninety-two', said Nicky, and then added in a confidential whisper, with a dip of the eyes to indicate something bad below: 'cancer of the lung'.
'Enid', I said, 'we're all a bit worried about you. We want to know what happened, how you came to be on the floor like that. We need to do a few little tests just to see how you are in yourself. Will that be okay?'
Amazingly, she gave the mug of tea to Stacy and submitted to blood pressure, BM and SATS measurements. Whilst E. took all these, I asked her to tell me what happened.
'I was just about to go to bed when those men who stay here sometimes came over and took me to Bognor. We were down on the front, by the sea. I hadn't been there for a while, and I felt a bit lost. I asked for help, but everybody just stood around, not looking. There was a crowd of them, very tall, with big elbows, sticking up, you know. Anyway, they brought me home again. And then when I was walking round the end of the bed to get into it, one of them waved his arms or something and it took me by surprise. What did he do that for? Anyway, I ended up on the floor. But I hadn't been there long when you came in.'
'Who did you say these men are, Enid?'
'You know who they are. Don't try and pretend you don't. The ones that come here. They live here sometimes.' She suddenly reached over to the side of the bed to grab a walking stick that was propped up there. 'If you don't get out of here I'll hit you with this.'
For the next hour we tried to convince Enid to come with us to hospital, but she was adamant that she would not. We could not leave her on her own so obviously confused, so I called her GP. Enid demanded to speak to her.
'Hello?' she said 'Dr Barnet? This is Enid. Now, you know me. You know I'm allright. Tell these people to go away and leave me alone.'
There was a pause whilst Dr Barnet asked Enid to tell her what had happened. Enid went over the story about her trip to Bognor with the gang of men with large elbows. She finished by saying: 'I'm not crazy. You know me, Dr Barnet. Don't let them force me out of my home. I want to stay here.' Dr Barnet asked to speak to me again. She agreed to come round to see Enid immediately she had finished the morning surgery.
Nicky and Stacy said that they couldn't stay any longer as they had a busy morning ahead of them and were already very late. Stacy found the name of Enid's granddaughter who lived nearby, so I rang her to ask if she could come over and stay with Enid whilst we waited for the GP to arrive. It took some persuading, but eventually she agreed.
'I'm not well myself.' she said.

Nancy's story

When Nancy talks, her ill-fitting teeth portion out her phrases like pastry cutters.

'There's a man who owns everything - all this land around us now - as far as the eye can see. But he only had one daughter, a beautiful girl. And she went on a cruise. Or was it a cruise? No! It was a horse thing. And the girl was coming out of a horse box, and she took a turn - and she died. And the man was never the same again. You wouldn't ever get over something like that, would you? It's my birthday today. I've got a cake for my husband in my bag.'
'Oh! Happy Birthday! What flavour's the cake?'
'Chocolate.'
'Who made it?'
'Marks and Spencers.'

Cables

Mr Bennett sits straight and tidy in the chair with the day's newspaper folded on his lap. As he talks he punctuates the details of his story with a benign little fall of the mouth, as if this is a story that even he is finding difficult to follow or believe.

'I was an international salesman in the 1960s and 70s. I was abroad more than I was at home - my poor, poor wife - selling power cables to countries like the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus. They all wanted electricity, you see. I went all over the world. Beirut was amazing. Everyone went there to let their hair down. They had a casino with a river running right through it - literally, right past the tables. Then one day they drained it and staged a horse race along it. Amazing. Incredible. Not that I gambled much.'

'My wife saved my life you know. I was in Cyprus, staying at a hotel before flying on to Israel the following day. I had taken a shot of insulin ready for the evening meal, and was having a quick drink beforehand in the bar when the waiter stood in the doorway and announced that there was an international phone call for Mr Bennett. I ran upstairs to take it in my bedroom. It was my contact in Israel, ringing up about arrangements for the following day. So we chatted about it for a while, then I hung up and went back downstairs to the restaurant to start my meal. But before I could eat a thing, the waiter came over and tapped me on the shoulder and said that I had another phone call. So I ran back upstairs - and it was Israel again, with some silly little piece of information he'd forgotten to give me. When I put the phone down I knew I'd made a terrible mistake with the timing of my insulin and what have you, and fell on the floor. A few minutes later the phone rang again, but this time it was my wife. I managed to reach the phone, but all I could was make a few slurred sounds. She immediately realised I was having a hypo attack, and that she had to act fast. She also knew that the line to Cyprus was volatile, and that it sometimes happened that the line would go dead and there would be no connection again until the following morning, by which time it would be too late. Anyway, she managed to get back through to the hotel, and persuaded the manager to look in on me. He came back on the line after a minute or two, very cross, and told her that she was to ring back in the morning as I was lying on the floor, drunk. She told him that I certainly was not drunk, that I was going into a diabetic coma. The manager said that he was sorry to have to tell her that I certainly was drunk. I'd been seen drinking in the bar that evening, and I was lying on the floor in my bedroom making disgusting noises. Jenny told him that if he did not give me some sugar immediately that I would die, and he said that he didn't know much about diabetes, but what he did know for sure was that sugar was the last thing he should give me, and hung up. Amazingly, she managed to find the number of a nearby hospital, and they sent a doctor round. It saved my life.'

She was an amazing woman. So strong, and funny. We were both on the same ward six weeks ago, me with my knee and Jenny with her lupus. And that's when she died - I still can't believe it - I was just across from her when it happened, but I didn't know. So of course I couldn't go through with my operation. I doubt I'll bother now.'

Mr Bennett smooths the paper on his lap.

'Another time I was packing the bags away in the lockers over my seat on a flight to Frankfurt when an Indonesian man passed me in the aisle and shook my hand. I knew the face but I just couldn't put a name to it. Anyway, he turned out to be the General Secretary of the United Nations, Mr U-Mant, shaking just about everyone's hand as he made his way down to his seat. And the only reason he was on this particular flight was because he'd swapped planes at the last minute as a security precaution. And we found out later that an hour or so after he got on our plane, the one he was due to fly in was blown up and everyone on board killed.

Oh yes - my life, my life reads like a thriller.

Directions

I knock at number forty-two. After a couple of minutes an image of Mrs Dillon comes slowly together behind a frosted glass door. 'Just a minute, love' she says - and then dissolves again without explanation. I'm already late, and spend the time looking from my watch to the ambulance to my watch - and then to the flowers in her tatty front garden, trying to relax. After a long five minutes her image re-assembles and the door slowly opens.
'Ambulance,' I say, unnecessarily.
Mrs Dillon stands frowning at me. She is dressed like an amateur actor, having overdone the character details with a cliché headscarf, thick-lensed glasses, overcoat and a filter cigarette which she snaps away into the privet. 'You're late. I phoned to see what had happened. I didn't know whether it had been cancelled or what.'
'Sorry. I'm a bit behind.'
'I suppose it can't be helped.' She slams the door shut. 'Let's go, then' she adds, as if I might want to do anything else.

This is an area I don't know well, so when I've picked up the second patient - a politely flirty woman with a leg that won't bend, and helped her to her seat, I ask them both if they could direct me back to the main road without going via the busy High Street, to save time.
'Of course' says Mrs Dillon 'I've lived here twenty three years. I could do it blindfold. Straight over the bridge and then left at the mini-roundabout. We'll go through the forest, that's probably the best way.'
'Don't forget that I don't know this area at all. So I'm relying on you to tell me where to go.'
'Just carry straight on. I'll set you right.'
Twenty minutes later we're driving through the Forest, over the speed limit to make up time, but there's only so much you can do with the roads so twisty and obscured, and the threat of deer.
'Keep on through here, then you go left and right.'
Eventually we come to a main road. There are no directions from the back, so I'm forced to ask: 'Where now? Left or right?'
'I don't know' she says 'I've not come this way before. Why don't you look at your map book?'
There's a long queue of traffic behind me.
'I thought you knew the way.'
'Well, I do - but not from this direction.'
Horrified, I turn right, and then pull over as soon as I can. The map book shows me that we're heading completely the wrong way, so I work out what to do and make the correction. I can hear Mrs Dillon telling the other patient how the hospital car drivers never get it wrong - they always know where they're going.

On the return journey, she swears at me when I refuse to drop her in town to do her shopping.

'I didn't want an ambulance in the first place,' she says.

Carry On

Five feet six inches, curving over forwards to just about five feet. A tam o'shanter hat, frizzy brown scarf, white beard. He carries a plastic shopping bag, hanging from the crook of his right arm, and a newspaper rolled and tucked under his other arm. He shuffles along uncertainly, speaks with a voice cooked by cigarettes, has an excoriating cough.
'Where's Robert?'
'He's on holiday all this week. I'm afraid you're stuck with me'
'That's lovely. A change is as good as a you know. Har har haaaaar'.
I help him into the ambulance, and then, when I'm taking my seat behind the wheel, I accidentally lean on the horn. I apologise to the patients behind me, saying: 'Sorry about that' and then, in a Kenneth Williams voice: 'I leant on me 'orn'
'Oh, you don't want to do that, sonny,' he says ' Noooooooh, or it's straight down casualty with you. Har har haaaaar.'