scusstin cat

The side of this new ambulance is blazoned with stroke information but I think it should carry advertising for beer. At least that way we could generate some income and buy a few more of these trucks, which make the rest of the fleet look like hand carts.
And after all, beer is the motive force behind the majority of the jobs we’ve been hit with tonight. Drunken assaults, assaulted drunks, unconscious drunks, drunken falls, self-harming (with a bottle opener), spiked drinks, and a man – drunk - wanting his hip operation bringing forward at eleven o’clock on a Saturday night as he was tired waiting on the list.
I need a drink. But I have to settle for a Diet Coke down on the seafront as the sun drags itself above the horizon and survivors of the Saturday night apocalypse clatter home.

One last call – a psychiatric / suicide. Patient given as slightly violent, which I query with Control. Should we stand off a touch? It’s up to us. Police have been assigned, no ETA. There’s a grey wash of exhaustion in the air. Even the seagulls are gliding smack into buildings.
Frank takes the ambulance round the corner and into the street. There is a young girl standing outside a house with a mobile phone. She waves to us, it all seems calm, so we park up and introduce ourselves.
‘Mel’s upstairs,’ she says. ‘She’s taken about a dozen of these pills and says she wants to kill herself.’
She hands us an empty blister pack of Citalopram.
‘Is that everything she’s taken?’
‘I think so.’
We follow her up the stairs of a sparsely furnished student house towards a bedroom on the landing where a girl is being comforted on an unmade bed.
‘I just want to kill myself,’ she chokes. ‘I’m worthless and no good and everyone’d be better off if I was dead.’
All three girls are spilling out of ultra-short club dresses, the glossily sweet aromas of their make-up and perfume cut with smoke and sweat and alcohol. They are hyper-sexed figures from a Manga strip struggling in the grim dimensions and gravity of this room.
‘Kill me. Just kill me and walk away,’ Mel says.
At some point in the night someone has drawn a cat nose and whiskers on her face. ‘I’m scusstin. I’m a scusstin person and I want to die.’
Frank and I sit down on the other bed in the room. I put the clipboard on my lap. It’s an intolerable temptation to kick off my boots, lie down on this bed and go to sleep, and for a moment I wonder if that might actually help. Maybe it would be a calming influence. I remember reading an article about the psychiatrist R D Laing. If a patient was having a psychotic episode and was crouched on the floor with their hands over their heads, he would crouch down next to them and do the same. I bet R D Laing would’ve had no problem lying down. The shock factor. The distractingly idiosyncratic move. I could wake up after an hour or two, Mel would have straightened out, I could go home.
Instead I say: ‘What’s happened tonight to spark this off?’
Mel starts banging her head against the wall and her friend hugs her to stop it.
‘Nothing,’ the friend says, stroking away the strands of blond hair that are sticking to Mel’s face. ‘We had a nice time, came home, then this. She’s been like it before, but never as bad.’
Mel starts scratching at her legs, but her nails are all bitten back, so it doesn’t cause any damage.
‘Can’t you just give me an injection to kill me?’ she says.
There is a knock on the door downstairs and two policemen come thumping up the stairs.
I explain the situation to the first of them, a tall, buzz-cut guy whose blue eyes are no doubt capable of projecting his CV onto the wall.
Meanwhile, Frank says to Mel: ‘Do your family live nearby?’
‘They’re all miles away and I bet they’re glad about that.’
‘Brothers? Sisters?’
‘A little sister.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Claire.’
‘Imagine if Claire came to you and told you she was really sad and wanted to kill herself. What would you say to her?’
‘I’d say don’t be stupid.’
‘Would you tell her she wasn’t thinking straight? She was being too hard on herself?
‘Maybe.’
There is a pause. The policeman has tucked his hat under his arm; his colleague stands behind him on the hallway discretely studying his watch.
Mel suddenly snatches up the empty packet of Citalopram and shakes it in the air.
‘These are meant to be happy pills but they don’t fucking work.’
She starts trying to bang her head on the wall again.
The policeman steps into the room. We make room for him on the bed.
‘Now Mel,’ he says. ‘Don’t do that or I’ll have to restrain you.’
He puts his hat on the windowsill, sits down between us then leans forwards to take her hands. For a moment they sit like that, Mel cradled in her friend’s lap, both her hands held by the policeman.
‘I’m scusstin,’ she whispers. ‘I’m a scusstin person and I have to kill myself.’
‘You’re not disgusting, Mel. I’ve only known you a few minutes but I would say you’re a well loved young woman who just feels a bit under the weather at the moment. Why don’t you come with these guys to the hospital and speak to someone about how you feel?’
‘A little ride in the ambulance, Mel,’ I say, sounding like a poor salesman. ‘The pills you’ve taken won’t cause you any harm, but the fact you took them is a worry. We need to make sure you’re safe. So why not come with us to the hospital and we can find someone for you to talk to? Otherwise, I’m afraid it’ll mean a trip to the cells.’
The policeman gives me a slantways look.
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ he says. ‘I know Mel’s going to be sensible about this.’
Ten minutes later, he leads her down the stairs and into the ambulance. The policeman explains to her why he believes she is a worthwhile person. I chat to her friend about her studies.
Mel moans and pulls her hair. ‘I’ve done bad things, scusstin things. I’ve had sex with boys to make them like me.’
‘When?’ says her friend.
‘All the time. I don’t tell you ‘cos I think you’ll hate me.’
She starts scratching and slapping at her legs.
‘Don’t make me have to restrain you,’ says the policeman, reaching out to take hold of both her hands again.
She stares at him, a smudged and bedraggled, scusstin cat, paw to paw with the long arm of the law in the early hours of the morning.

trouble sleeping

As we climb out of the cab, the heat of the afternoon lays down heavy on our backs. In just the few seconds it takes to pull out our bags, open the little iron gate and walk up the path, our delicious, air-conditioned frosting is burned clean away.
I ring the bell.
Dogs furious. Commanding words, and a door firmly closed inside. A pause, and then a white shirted figure moves into focus behind the leaf patterned glass of the front door. An elderly man, trim and precise, waves us in.
‘She’s just through here,’ he says, turning and leading us through into the curtained bedroom where his daughter died last night.

She is lying on her back on a single bed, the counterpane neatly rolled and folded at the end, and even the single sheet she had been lying under drawn across and to the side in a wide triangular fold. She looks asleep, her arms out to the sides, palms up, a martyr to the night’s heat who found respite in the early hours.
I touch her forehead, but the dark staining along the lower edges of her arms and legs tells the story well enough.
‘I’m very sorry to say that your daughter has died, George.’
‘I thought so. They said to put her on the floor before you arrived but I knew it would do no good.’
‘It’s not much comfort I know, but at least there are no signs of distress. I don’t think she could have suffered at all.’
‘Right.’
He leads us out of the room and into the sitting room. Dogs barking and scratching even more frantically behind the kitchen door.
‘We don’t mind if you let them out, George. We’re okay with dogs.’
‘If you’re sure. They like to know who’s here and whatnot.’
The moment the door is opened two small black and white mongrel terriers bowl across the carpet in a frenzy of wagging and sniffing. The smaller of the two immediately launches into a campaign to jump up on the sofa. The other seems more wary, running in and out and around until she’s sure she knows how many there are of us and what we might do.
‘Nutmeg is an absolute pain,’ George says. ‘She knows she’s not allowed. Jenny will settle eventually.’
And she does, taking up position between his legs. Nutmeg inspects my boots.
‘I don’t know what’ll happen to them,’ he says. ‘They’re rescues. They were everything to Mary. But they’ll have to go back.’
I make a start on the paperwork. George strokes Jenny’s head and scrunches her ears as he answers my questions. He spoke to Mary last night before she went to bed. Everything seemed fine, nothing out of the ordinary. They were due to go shopping this morning. She didn’t show. She didn’t answer the phone. He drove round and used his spare keys to let himself in.
I tell George that I need to make a phone call to the police, the next stage of the procedure for a death at home. George says he knows.
‘I went through it all when my wife died a few years back. Don’t worry.’
His face is flushed and damp with sweat.
Rae bats Nutmeg away and leans forward to touch George gently on the shoulder.
‘Can I get you a cup of tea? Anything at all?’
‘No. I’m fine,’ he says, taking off his glasses and wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘I’m fine. But I don’t know how the boys will take it.’

When the police arrive, Rae helps George put Jenny and Nutmeg back into the kitchen as I answer the door. I tell them what has happened, and take them into the room to see the body. They put on latex gloves and make a quick inspection for themselves, then I hand them the paperwork.
Back out in the hallway, George is standing with Rae.
‘We’ll be going now,’ I say to him. I shake his hand. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’
He thanks us for coming.
We pick up our bags, one of the policewomen holds the door open for us and smiles. We step back outside.
It’s so bright I can hardly open my eyes.

who had what

The brickwork of these old dock workers’ cottages still manage to radiate something rooted and forbearing through the thick masonry gloss of their recent refurbishment. They seem to hang back from the margin of the main road and the commercial brutalities of the rest of the area, everything having been ripped out years ago, replaced with factory units, DIY outlets and scrap metal yards. But the cottages have lasted, still keeping a look-out over the busy quays and sheds below them on the other side, the dark rectangular strips of deep water, and the sea, constantly pressing in on the other side of the harbour wall.

The door to the last of these cottages is open, spilling a light of a friendlier, more domestic hue than the points of fierce magnesium that blaze over the cargo ship fifty feet below, loading timber.

A man is standing in the doorway. Silhouetted as he is, arms folded and feet planted either side, he could be a security guard guarding the entrance to a club. But up close, we see that the stab vest is actually a soft sleeveless jacket, the frown is apprehensive not aggressive, and the arms are folded out of a need for reassurance.
‘He’s just through here,’ he says, letting us in through the tiny hallway and into the main living area, so neatly furnished and colour co-ordinated it feels as if we are walking into a feature in Country Living. But a man is lying on his side on a patterned cream rug, dressed in a white cotton wrap, his head surrounded by a messy red halo of regurgitated mousakka.
He feebly raises his head.
‘Who’s this?’
‘The ambulance, John. You’ve had me so worried.’
‘I didn’t want you to call an ambulance.’
‘Just lie still and let them look at you.’
‘So what’s happened here?’
‘We were at a restaurant celebrating a friend’s birthday. Nothing big, nothing wild. We had less than half bottle of wine each, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Then we caught a cab home. We’d only been back a minute or two. John had gone into the bathroom, undressed, and was walking out tying his robe when he took a step or two into the living room and – bam! – he was spark out on the floor, pretty much where you see him now. He was just gray and awful and there was nothing I could do to bring him round.’
‘I was not.’
‘I’m sorry but you were, John. What would you know about it? You were unconscious. Then when he did come round he threw up, and I was so out of my mind with worry I called you.’
John moans from down on the rug.
‘I’m so embarrassed,’ he says. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s just one of those things.’
‘One of those things,’ says Peter. ‘Oh – right. One of those “drink half a bottle of wine and fall unconscious” things? I don’t think so.’
‘I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Let’s have a look at you.’
Rae checks him over, then we help him sit up and re-arrange his robe.
‘Urgh! I can’t believe I did this,’ he says, staring down at the mess on the rug. ‘It’ll never come out.’
‘Who cares about that? The most important thing is that we find out what happened to you?’ says Peter, putting both his hands on John’s shoulders as if he were reasoning with a child.
‘Well I don’t need hospital. What will they do for me there? Oh. I know. See a doctor. Have a CT scan. Find I’ve got a brain tumour. Game over. I know. We both work for the NHS, for God’s sake.’
Rae gives me a look.
‘Let’s not get too carried away, John. But I think Peter’s right. I think you do need to come to the hospital for a check over. It’s certainly not normal behaviour, passing out after half a bottle of wine with no warning.’
He wipes his mouth on the kitchen towel and stares at the result with disgust.
‘Well. I’m getting dressed first.’

Even though we tell him that he’s fine as he is, that he’ll only have to undress again and put on a hospital gown as soon as he gets there, John insists. He spends the next ten minutes struggling to put together an outfit, knocking things over in his search for flip-flops, staggering around trying to push his head up into the arm of his t-shirt.
‘John! Please!’ says Peter.
‘If I didn’t know any better, I’d say John was simply very drunk.’
‘But he’s had the same as me. Absolutely nothing at all. Trust me - this is completely uncharacteristic. When he fell backwards on the rug, I thought he’d died.’
We watch as John bends down to put on a flip flop and rolls backwards onto the sofa.
‘So what do you do in the NHS?’
‘I’m a nurse on an orthopaedic ward, he’s a radiographer.’

Finally, after some firm intervention, John has some clothes on, a mobile phone and a bunch of keys.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he says. But shuffles out anyway.

As I’m driving to the hospital, I catch sight of Rae in the mirror, raising the feet of the trolley up, leaning over and shouting ‘John? Come on, John.’ Then to me, through the hatch. ‘He’s gone off on me.’
‘Shall I pull over?’
‘No. I’m not sure about it. Just keep going and I’ll let you know.’
Further down the road, I can tell from the tone of her voice that John has come round.
‘It’s not funny, John,’ she says. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this.’
I see Peter’s reflection in the mirror, leaning forwards, his face blurred with anxiety.

When we arrive at the hospital, Rae tells me that John seemed to have a curious kind of fit – not the usual phonus-bolonus, pseudo-fit we often see, but more like a partial seizure. His breathing had changed in character, becoming shallower and faster, and his heart had pounded out an irregular one forty plus.
‘I’m really not sure about this one,’ she says to me in secret, just before she goes to handover.
I wait by the trolley in the corridor. John seems genuinely embarrassed.
‘God. If anyone recognises me,’ he says. ‘I feel so bad about all this. I’m so sorry to waste your time.’
‘You’re not wasting anyone’s time,’ Peter says, pushing the fringe back from John’s forehead. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’ Then he looks at me and says: ‘What do you think it is?’
‘A brain tumour,’ says John.
‘Don’t say that,’ says Peter. He looks exhausted. ‘Don’t say such things.’
Rae comes back with a cubicle number. We wheel him into position.
Just as we do this, John seems to go off again, staring vacantly up into the ceiling, breathing rapidly, his pulse racing.
‘Has John taken any kind of recreational drugs tonight?’
‘No. Never. We don’t touch them.’
A doctor comes over and has a quick look.
‘Mm,’ he says. ‘Let’s do another ECG.’

Later that night we check in on John’s progress.
‘They’ve just gone up to the CT suite,’ says the nurse.

An hour later still, and we’re back in A&E again. I’m sipping coffee out by the ambulance when Rae comes through the double doors looking like she has something.
‘Well?’
‘I spoke to the nurse again. They’ve just got bloods back from our mate John,’ she says. ‘He’s absolutely loaded. Half a bottle of wine? Yeah, right – and Oliver Reed had a diet Coke.’

sea breeze

The night has rolled on, thinning to a scrape of heels on concrete, a shriek in an alleyway, bass notes spilling from a passing car. The pier has closed finally, shutting down its multicoloured circuits for the night, leaving just a workshop window illuminated, tucked beneath the dark boardwalk. There’s a barely discernible silhouette moving about in there, like an ant caught in a light box. Meanwhile, the moon leans down low and bright, scrying our fortunes in the polished black surface of the water.

Karol is sitting in a wheelchair by a tall, open window that overlooks the sea. He grips the armrests, leaning forwards with his chin up, his face whiter than the net curtains, breathing like he’s just been running a race.
‘Please.’
His wife is holding on to one of the rear handgrips, either to keep herself upright or her husband in the chair, it’s hard to tell. She smiles at us as we haul our gear into the room – her smile, like her hair, thinning and untended.
‘Can’t you help him?’
Karol is a cancer patient of a year or so, the tumours slowly metastasising from where they first laid root in the right lung, creeping on through the rest of his body despite the drastic treatments called down on them. He manages his condition at home and at the local hospice, with a bottle of Oromorph to supplement the other pain relievers when things get too difficult.

The problem tonight, though, is that Karol is hyperventilating. He nods to say he understands what that means.
‘Don’t - leave me - until I’m better,’ he says.
‘We promise.’

I coach his breathing to bring it back down to a normal rhythm. He gradually relaxes his grip on the chair. His wife comes round to sit on a facing stool.
‘All day he’s been worrying that the cancer will stop him breathing,’ she says, rubbing his knee. ‘The doctors are happy with the way things are at the moment, and everything seems to be holding, but now and again Karol gets a bit – well - worked up.’
‘I think I tripped out on all the meds,’ he says, his breathing levelling out and his shoulders relaxing. ‘I grew up in the sixties. You’d think I could handle that.’ He laughs, but then his face seems to slacken again with a dreadful kind of existential sweat.
‘The walls just seemed to be bearing down on me,’ he says, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I just couldn’t seem to get my breath.’
‘That’s why we came to the window,’ says his wife. ‘The ozone.’
‘It’s got to help.’

I make a phone call to request a home visit from the out of hours doctor. Karol could do with some lightweight sedation tonight, to see him through to a visit from a Macmillan nurse in the morning and a thorough-going review. A trip to A&E would only make things worse.

‘Karol is an artist. He did all these paintings,’ she says. ‘Look.’

We scarcely noticed them as we came into the room at first, but now things have calmed down we’re able to take in our surroundings. There are huge, square canvases hung around the room, vigorously painted, intensely coloured images of pelicans jostling on flaming yellow and blue beaches, a naked woman reclining on a leaping zebra, a cascading forest of orchids and tigers. And then, just by the door, an abstract canvas, the biggest of all of them, strung from ceiling to floor – a massing cloud swirl of ochre, burnt earth, carmine and terracotta.

‘I tried to get down how it felt to be told I had cancer,’ he says. ‘How it feels.’

We all look at the painting, as the net curtains gently bow and snap in the cool sea breeze.

vera the bog mummy

‘She’s in a terrible state,’ says the caretaker of the flats, a man as square and brutally constructed as the building itself. ‘Absolutely terrible. No one had seen her for a couple of days, and I had a key, so…’
The lift springs to a halt and the doors slide back.
‘I expect you’re used to these things, but – er – it’s going to be one hell of a job for you.’
‘You’re not selling it, particularly’ says Frank.
We follow the caretaker over to a battered blue door that shows signs of having been kicked in a few times in the past. He knocks on it twice.
‘Vera? It’s Barry again, with the ambulance.’ Then to us: ‘Not that she’ll understand any of that, of course.’
He pushes open the door.
‘She’s under the table in the living room.’

As we stand in the doorway a dreadfully grey and foetid smell billows out around us and on into the pine fresh chamber of the hallway.
‘I told you it was bad,’ Barry says. ‘Poor thing. She’s been bad with the drink before now, but nothing like this.’
‘Hello? Ambulance!’ I say, and we step inside.

Three thousand years ago the early Northern Europeans, in an effort to buy off their gods and make the harvest work that year, would sometimes lead a person out onto the marshland and cut their throat. Then they would lay the body in a shallow grave, cover it with peat, walk away and evaporate into Time. But the body would be drenched in the aseptic waters of the sphagnum moss, would be drawn down into the deepening bog, that black and anaerobic world – until, shockingly, its tanned leather face is suddenly squinting back up into the sunlight again, another bog mummy for the museum, tucked up on its side, with a long dream of suffering playing across its flattened face for everyone to see.

But now - if instead of taking your bog mummy and carefully lying it in a presentation case, you dress it instead in a torn floral nightie, drop it down on some lino and slide it under a chipped white Formica table, and instead of respectfully placing its grave goods alongside it you scatter round the withered feet a half dozen empty bottles of cheap supermarket vodka, and instead of installing a clinical de-humidifier you take a bucket of cold urine and faeces and slop it generously all over your specimen – this is how you will come to see Vera as we see her now, groaning and wailing beneath the table on the other side of the room.

‘I told you,’ says Barry. ‘How on earth are you going to move her?’

miss claudine, in the hospital, with the hat

If I was an alien visiting the earth, on a mission to sample the prevailing emotional flux of humankind, this would be my favourite time to touch down - the evening rush hour, when the bright weight of the day’s business eases up, and the sky deepens and pulls away, and people mass in the streets, following their routes and thoughts, but somewhat changed by the day that’s gone, roughened by all the compensations and accommodations they have had to make in order to keep these routes and thoughts running clear and in the right direction. And as the light changes, the bridges of stone they strode across so confidently that morning seem to have been replaced by something less certain, bridges of sticks, or black glass; in any case, they make their way home, back to the places they have strengthened to dream in safety, and close their doors against the night until the next day comes rolling around.

Claudine is led out of her house by her husband, Ed. A social worker stands on the pavement, clutching a manila envelope, flanked by two policewomen. Claudine looks as if she had been expecting to be led out onto the lawns of some lovely country estate. She is wearing an elegant lilac dress tied at the waist with a broad ribbon, plaited white shoes, Onassis sunglasses and a floppy cartwheel hat. She could be a Duchess, slightly cut on Madeira wine, paying a little too much attention to her feet as she is led out to greet her guests.
‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ she says, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose and smiling indulgently, first at Frank, then at me. ‘I’m not ill.’
‘Now, Claudine,’ says Ed, releasing her arm and putting both his hands on her shoulders. ‘We spoke about this. Remember? It’s just the way these things are done. You’ll be more comfortable in the ambulance, and there’s lots of room for everyone.’
‘Why? Who’s coming? Where are we going?’
‘To the hospital, Claudine. And I think a policewoman and – Spence – here, in the back with us.’
Ed looks around at us all to check that this is right. The policewoman nods.
‘I’ll follow in the police car,’ says the social worker. ‘I’ve got the papers.’
She clutches the envelope to her with such a self-conscious grip on the authority of what it contains, it reminds me of the ‘murder cards’ envelope in Cluedo, the one that sits in the middle of the board holding the weapon, the place – and the murderer, Miss Claudine, her smiling head stuck on a plastic counter. Except in this version of the game there has been no murder. In this sullied, real world version of the game, Claudine gets to be sectioned.
‘I was born thirty eight years ago next Wednesday,’ she says pleasantly, as I offer my hand to help her into the ambulance. ‘Thirty eight years since I was tucked up inside my Mother. I wish I could go back there now.’
She sits on the chair, and as I show the policewoman to her seat, Claudine slides right down and pulls her hat over her face.
‘You can’t see me,’ she says. She is charming, like a ten year old showing off to a bunch of stuffy relatives. ‘I’m invisible.’
Ed sits next to her and encourages her to put a seatbelt on.
‘No,’ she says, then: ‘Where are we off to?’
‘To Southview, to the hospital, Claudine.’
Frank slams the door shut.

As we ride along, the policewoman asks me questions about my shift patterns. Claudine listens in, frowning.
‘Who are these people?’ she asks Ed.
He straightens her hat.
A darkly thin man in his early forties, Ed is exhausted, someone inexplicably split from the normal run of things, like a man who fell asleep by a mirror and woke up to find himself trapped on the other side.
‘I haven’t slept in five days,’ he says to me. ‘Because she hasn’t.’
He says his mother has taken their children.

At Southview, Frank parks up and comes to the side to the open the door. The social worker and the other policewoman stand to his side. Ed gets out first, then turns to offer up his hand to Claudine. She steps out and looks around her.
‘My goodness,’ she says. ‘It’s amazing.’
We all walk along the pavement and into the foyer. A patient is standing over by the security desk. She has roughly cut ginger hair and a congested face like a plumped up cushion. When she sees us come in the door she pulls out her iPod earplugs and hurries over.
‘How are you? I’m fine. I’m always fine. Traffic all right? Made it here, anyways. Could’ve been killed, mate. Bang. Squashed. The roads. The roads are so dangerous these days. It’s a wonder there’s anyone left alive. Anyways. People know you’re coming? People know you’re here? Shall I ring? I’m Katy but I ‘spect you knew that already. I know what your name is. I can read it on your shirt! They don’t let you have pets in here. I had a dog. His name was Rufus….’

Claudine politely steps to one side and then carries on over to the Coke machine. She takes off her hat and glasses, kneels down on the floor, and peers up into the hole where the cans roll down.
‘Amazing,’ she says.
‘We’ll take her from here,’ the social worker says. We watch as Ed helps Claudine to her feet again, and then they all walk off down the corridor towards the secure ward, Katy talking incessantly at their backs, the leads of the earphones in her back pocket trailing down left and right behind her, like a spindly white tail.

dookey revisité

The paramedic car has its hazards flashing, but we know exactly which house we need.
‘I haven’t been to Stanley’s for a little while,’ I say to Rae.
‘No. Perhaps he hasn’t been well.’
As I park the ambulance behind the car I wonder whether this might be the one time I visit the man and find he actually needs some help.

Although there is already a paramedic on scene, when we ring the bell there is the usual schtick about who we are and what we’ve come for.
‘Who do you say you are? The ambulance?’ As if an ambulance was the last thing anyone could have expected, despite Stanley having made the call not ten minutes ago, and despite the fluorescent bulk of one of our colleagues right there on his sofa, surrounded by kit. But finally – heroically - he buzzes us through into the hall, where we wait another couple of minutes by his flat door.
‘I’m just getting my keys,’ he says finally, pressing his mouth to the gap. ‘Now where are my trousers. The keys must be in the trousers.’
CJ the paramedic lets us in.
‘All right?’ he says, wearily. We follow him back into the sitting room.

Dookey, Stanley’s springer spaniel, flies over the back of the sofa to frisk us for affection, driven to heights of ecstasy never before seen in a dog.
‘Dookey!’ growls Stanley like some grumpy old stage manager somewhere off in the gloom. ‘Decorum!’
CJ gives us an exhausted look.
‘Just this shift and I’m nine days clear,’ he says. ‘Count them.’
Dookey licks him clean in the chops.
‘Yeuch! Anyway, guys, listen. I know this is one you’ve maybe come across before. But the story is, he rung up with DIB. He’s sounding a little bit crackly and his SATS are a touch low. So that and his previous means it’s inevitably a trip down the old choky. Sorry and all that. I have done some paperwork for you, though.’
‘He won’t go,’ says Rae, making a blue glove ball and tossing it for the dog, who almost demolishes a sideboard of antique glass in his eagerness to retrieve. ‘Oops.’
‘Well, he assures me that this time he means business.’
‘I definitely do,’ says Stanley, dragging himself into the room by the buckle of his belt. ‘I’ve never felt so rough.’
He looks slack and grey, but then his smoking and his reclusive lifestyle means he would never make too many demands on a palette of healthy colours. He regards Rae and me with disappointment.
‘Haven’t I seen you before?’ he says.
‘Come on, Stanley. We’re taking you to the hospital, apparently.’
‘Yes. I need to go. I’ve never been so ill. I just can’t get my breath.’
‘Have you had a cigarette recently?’
‘I may have had a consolatory puff or two. Look – this is not easy, you know. You really shouldn’t make fun of me like this.’
‘We’re not making fun of you, Stanley. We’re just trying to get the full picture.’
‘Yes. Well. The full picture as you say is that I’m not breathing at all well, and I’m quite possibly dying. You know how I feel about my darling Dookey, but even she cannot keep me from my appointment with the doctors at the hospital tonight, because I’m afraid that if I stayed here I would expire and that would be that.’
‘So let’s go, then.’
‘Look. Don’t rush me. I’ve simply got to find my keys.’
‘Keys are in the door,’ says Rae, turning Dookey onto her back and scrunching her fingers around on her tummy.
Incredibly, they are, right there in the lock.
‘Oh. Fine. Well then. I just need my shoes. Dookey! Un peu de l'étiquette s'il vous plaît.’ Then he turns to me and says:
‘Where is your chair?’
‘I don’t think you need a chair, Stanley. You’re moving about like an antelope. Let’s try a walk out to the vehicle, shall we?’
‘I don’t care for your tone,’ he says, ominously. Then after giving Dookey a series of instructions in English and in French, he shuffles out with us into the hallway.

Stanley lives on a road with a crow’s view of the city. It lies spread out before us, a thousand points of light below an ink blue sky.
‘What a night!’ I say, offering my arm.
‘For you, perhaps,’ he says with a sniff. ‘For me, a vision of hell. I’m not enjoying this, you know. And I most certainly will not manage those steps.’
‘Let’s just have a go and see. If you can’t, we’ll have a rethink.’
Stanley pulls his arm out from mine.
‘Really. This is ridiculous. So you’re refusing to take me to hospital.’
‘Not at all. If you need to go, we’ll go. But I’m not carrying you in a chair, Stanley. You don’t need it.’
‘Then I’m not going.’
He turns round and marches back inside, slamming the door behind him.

The paramedic joins us over by the ambulance.
‘That went well, then.’
‘He’s just an arse.’
‘Why wouldn’t he come?’
‘He insisted on a chair.’
‘Oh well. No doubt he’ll call back in a second or two. I’d wait here if I were you.’
I talk to Control and they stand us down from the job. Just a minute later, though, we get it back again. Control ask us to give him a severe talking to.
‘Tell him it’s you or nothing,’ they say.

When Stanley answers the door and sees me standing there, his mournful expression drops a clear foot.
‘You!’ he says. ‘You’re the one who refused to take me to hospital.’ Then he notices Rae and says: ‘But you, my dear. You have been the epitome of helpfulness and humanity throughout this entire ordeal. You I don’t mind.’
‘Stanley. This is your last chance. Either you walk out to the ambulance with us now and we take you to hospital, or you find some other way to cope with your illness tonight. We’re not a taxi service. We’re not here to answer to your every beck and call.’
‘Don’t be cruel,’ he says. ‘I’ve never been so ill.’
But he seems to lose a measure of haughtiness, takes my arm, and allows himself to be led out of the flat and down to the vehicle.
Dookey watches us go from her lookout behind the window.
I half expect her to wave.