Unnerved

Ten emergency calls; 2 running calls and 2 conveyed.

The weather doesn't even have to be much of a factor anymore. If it's Saturday night, people are gonna go out and get as drunk and as stupid as they possibly can. Young females will wear the shortest of skirts (if at all) and the guys will wear a shirt over jeans, even if its only 10 degrees. I was always taught 'never cast a cloot til May's oot', which roughly translated means don't start stripping off until the month of May has finished, then its Summer. Mind you, that applied more in Scotland where Summer tends to come when it suits - like August.

My first job dragged me down South of the river to a collapse ? cause. I arrived to find a bystander with a man of considerable girth who was lying in an alley on a large estate. I had to use my torch to see what he looked like - these places are never lit properly. He was asking to go to a specific hospital and when that happens I know that we are probably not dealing with a dire emergency. The crew arrived and we all hoisted him up and shuffled him into the ambulance. I didn't spend too long getting to know the ins and outs of his condition but I suspect he just wanted to be somewhere warmer and safer than here. So did I.

As I made my way back towards the river and Central London, I was given a job just around the corner in SE-nearlymadeit. It was to a stabbing - 'male stabbed in head by schitzophrenic person'. Lovely. I saw a police van screaming off in that general direction and I called Control to ask if there was a police presence on scene. They told me to wait at a safe stand-by point and they would get back to me (that has never happened) and I told them I had seen the police go that way so I would trundle along and catch up with them. I got caught out however.

I turned a corner at a junction and found myself on scene, with no police, just a bunch of people at a bus stop looking up at the top floor of a 'known' building. I stopped the car and I could hear voices shouting down at me. The bus stop crowd looked at me and then back up again. I got out of the car, after I had told Control where I was, and the voices became faces attached to heads that were leaning out of the top floor window. They were shouting and gesturing for me to go up. I called back to them and told them I would have to wait for the police and I asked if the man with the weapon was still up there. They said no.

I prepared my bags and the police, thankfully, began to arrive. First one car, then another, then a few more. The noise of sirens became a cacophony in seconds.

The police rushed in and up the stairs, with me in tow. At the top floor - no lift and a million stairs - there were four noisy people inside a tiny little bedsit. One of them had been stabbed a number of times. I inspected the stab wound on his head, which was actively bleeding and dressed it quickly. I then worked systematically down his neck and chest and discovered another wound, quite a deep one, in his chest and another, less deep, in his back. He also had a wound on his arm, which was deep. The crew arrived quickly and I didn't get any further with my checks. They got him out of there and into the ambulance.

The patient was quite aware that he had wounds but he didn't have a clue how many. He didn't know he had been stabbed in the chest and that was potentially the most serious wound for him. He went to hospital in a stable condition and I have no doubt he will need stitches and possibly some repair to any damage caused to his lung.

This call unnerved me for the rest of the night because I was aware of how easy it is to be stabbed. On a separate call I was with a suicidal and very depressed man with chest pain. He was a big man and I was alone with him in his flat, surrounded by strange artwork, self-written poems and weird declarations adorning the walls. He also had a lot of condoms lying around. All the time I was checking him and talking to him I was planning an escape route in case he suddenly decided to attack me. Even with the stab vest on, I felt vulnerable. I don't usually feel like that and so it must have been the stabbing job that triggered this unease. It wasn't a particularly horrible job - as you know, I've seen much worse - it was the vulnerability of it. How easily it could be done. In seconds you could have a potentially fatal stab wound.

The man in the flat was no threat to me, I realised that when I had spent twenty minutes with him but I still didn't feel safe in that place.

I got a call to a frequent flyer who always complains of chest pain. As soon as the location of the call was given, I knew it would be him. Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the pavement, mobile phone to his ear as he clutched his chest and parodied pain in the worst possible way. He has no heart condition - he just has a problem with attention and not getting enough. I spoke of this man in an earlier posting and I told you he wouldn't catch me out again. Neither me nor the police (who also recognised him) were fooled. A crew came to pick him up anyway - we can't refuse an ambulance in these circumstances, especially with 'chest pain'.

While I was on that call, I was handed a running call by the police. They had a man with them who had sprained his thumb after falling in the road, in front of a bus. The bus driver had got out and shouted at him to get out of the way, the man had not responded and so the driver really shouted at him and the man actually wet himself with fear. The police handed him over to me and told me he was a deaf mute. That explains his reluctance to get off the road on demand. The poor bloke was scared stiff and I was happy to run him up to hospital in the car while our regular timewaster got an ambulance and two professionals to tend to his needs.

Whilst on stand-by I was offered a chocolate by a girl dressed as a devil (or maybe it was the devil). The chocolate eclairs were taped to her top and I had to pick one off. Cost me 50p.

I was also told by two middle-aged women that I looked like Barry Manilow. My nose took offence at this immediately! Barry Manilow...I don't think so!

Then I was off to an address in North London I couldn't find and when the ambulance arrived, neither could they. Eventually we got it and I wasn't required anyway. Good use of the service I think. All this for a 'man with swollen face, ? cause'.

An assault near the square and I was waiting almost 30 minutes for an ambulance. When everyone starts fighting, we get stretched very thin. The young man had allegedly been set upon by an angry man whose girlfriend had, allegedly, been insulted. He kicked and punched the young man, who was now lying on the pavement, then jumped on his head a couple of times for good measure - allegedly. Nice to see that once a man is down he is pretty much left alone.

My last call of the night was to a very upset young girl, again lying on the pavement, drunk and emotional and not at all interested in me or my kind words. She was quite rude to me in fact. Nevertheless, alcohol being everyone's enemy, I took her and her in-laws to hospital for a rest.

The news has been covering the story of an LAS employee who was set upon and beaten up on a train as he went to work. The reason? He was wearing his uniform. The future is NOT bright.

Be safe.