While people are saying to their buddies

“Hey guys…watch this.”

With the heaviness of all ”Mothers and daughters” behind us, I guess it’s time to wish you all a belated Merry Christmas and spiffy New Year.  It would have been more appropriate to say that a few days ago, but I like to think I’m the Eastenders of the blogosphere, bringing you some festive misery on Boxing Day.

 Thankyou for reading, thankyou MORE for commenting.  Daddy doesn’t have favourites, but you guys that comment?  You’re Daddy’s favourite favourites.

 And for everyone who reads and doesn’t comment?  You rock too.  My first advertising cheque came through recently which allowed me to buy a shiny shiny little torch (which arrived in olive green matte paper, wrapped in hairy string with Oriental stamps all over it, it was the parcelliest parcel I’ve ever received) with which I was able to fully illuminate this spewy son of a gun.

It’s like the circle of life this, innit?  Only without Elton John and singing warthogs.  I write lurid descriptions of sick people, you read them, I buy better equipment with which to attend to these sick people, you get better posts.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Because TQ is rapidly moving from being “my blog” to “the blog that I write with the input of other members of staff who corner me at work and shout at me about my content”….

Sake, her of the big mouth, wishes it to be known that if FriedBanana gets to claim credit for naming Chop, then she gets credit for naming Snowball, whose name has nothing to do with rosy cheeked scamps and frozen precipitative missiles.

So there you go Sake. Everyone knows you’ve a filthy mind.

Now are you happy?

- I’m working at public events from now until the 6th of January, no ‘road’ shifts for me, just a paid version of being a first aider, sitting in a namalance in big crowds of people waiting for folk to fall over.  “Thrilling Installments” may be thin on the ground for a wee while, Photos, Journal and Pish will be here in droves, though! -

Milk and one for Grissom, just milk for me. We lounge at the nurses station in an unfamiliar hospital.

It’s well past midnight, we flick idly through glossy magazines, I finish someone’s abandoned Sudoku and together we surreptitiously munch our way through the tin of Roses that hides under the desk.

Across the room and behind a curtain our patient is being tended to by a transfer team. She’s not a well wee girl at all and this smaller, somewhat parochial hospital is antsy to have her off their hands. She’ll do better in a large ICU with more staff and better equipment.

But it’s not like you can pop her in a taxi and send her on her way, her condition precludes it, so it’s our job tonight to crash the team up the road, dawdle around while they prepare the patient for transfer and then crash them back to Edinburgh.

Tonight we’re not medics, we’re fast drivers, a return to traditional ambulance values, doffing our peaked caps to ‘the doctor’.

The transfer nurse pops her head out of the cubicle and catches our eye.

“Ten minutes, guys?”

We nod, shake our dozy heads and I pop out to the vehicle to turn it over, run the diesel heater high for a while to make the back cosy. Little things make the difference.

On my return Grissom is standing at parade rest by the curtain, I’m about to step inside when she catches my wrist.

“Parents.” she mouths.

Together we slip into the background and stand in the dim glow of a suturing lamp, turned into the corner of the room. A couple in their late 30s stand by their daughter, the father quiet, Mum stroking her kid’s hair and self-consciously chatting to her, joshing her for coming out without her straighteners.

The urge to purge every maternal sentiment is obviously huge, but she restrains it in our presence.

The patient’s no longer her kid, now an integral part of the health service. The tube in her throat is hooked to the compressed gas in the wall, lines are stitched into her arteries and veins. She’s part of our system; the transfer team control every element of her body chemisty, finicking with acids and alkalis in her blood like shed-dwelling pensioners with demi-johns of nettle wine.

I take my position at the head of the trolley. Little more than a porter now, I can’t help but stare at the little girl under the sheet. It’s tempting at thirteen to believe you’re an adult, she’ll certainly be transported to an adult hospital, but the theme of “silly wee lassie” keeps repeating in my brain.

Her eyes are taped shut, smudges of pink glittery eyeshadow still visible in the curls of her lids. Her ginger twists of hair swim, long and unruly, across the pillow from her face and shoulders.

Circling her neck, a blushing filigree of bruises hints at the damage done below: the shattered, toothpick delicacy of her hyoid, the obscene bending and kinking of her trachea that has landed her here tonight.

An argument with her mother about attending a sleepover, she stepped into the back garden, climbed to the top bar of her sister’s swingset, tangled the chains around her neck and dropped backwards, like a diver into oblivion.

Her mother found her swinging there; she held her baby’s weight for long minutes until the neighbours heard her screams.

I murmur an introduction to her unhearing ears, talk her flattened consciousness through our actions as we roll her into the cold and dark of the ambulance bay. As the wheels stub and stumble on the tarmac I marvel at thirteen’s certainty in its decisions, a certainty backed up by a flimsiest film of experience.

Mum and Dad at the back doors, Grissom and I in the cab. I nod my head to them.

“We’ll look after her.”

Grissom isn’t one to show emotion, hardened and blunt as she is.

But we both scrub our eyes with fists before pulling away.

The tower block shows on the GPS as a multi-winged building, imposing enough in its virtual form, but more impressive as we approach. A vast monolith against the dusk blue sky, lit by vandal-proofed halogens, their steel cages diffusing the light through the rain and mist.

The lobby of the block is brightly lit, a golden cut-away of a black, blank belly.

A half dozen teenagers are sheltering under an awning - one of them is sat on the steps of building, eyes closed, vomit on her trainers.

“She’s unconscious.” screams one of her friends.

Grissom and I cast eyes over the self-supporting, pink, comfortable looking lassie, her eyes screwed tightly shut, steadfastly refusing to wake up.

“No she isn’t.”

I give her a shake, smelling vodka, cider and vomit on her clothes.

“C’mon pal, wakey wakey.”

She screws her eyes a little tighter.

My fingers slide from her shoulder and under her clavicle.

“C’mon, pal.”

A sharp breath in and she opens her eyes.

“Ay! You fucker!”

Glory hallelujah, a murkle.

Grissom takes one arm and I the other and together we huckle the kid into the back of the vehicle. A set of obs and a chat later and we conclude that she is merely drunk.

Her mates bang on the back door and as I open it they don’t ask “Is she ok?” or “Which hospital are you going to?” but “Are you taking her home? Can we come?”

Oh-ho.

I’ve been wasted, as a teenager I once consumed sufficient chemicals to lie on the pavement announcing to my friends that they should leave me be and come back for me in the morning, though I did add the caveat that I may be dead on their arrival.

They dragged me home and alerted my parents to the fact that I was guttered - they did not call an ambulance.

I inform the friends that no, we won’t be giving anyone any lifts, but if they’d like to stick around and explain to the police how they managed to get hold of the drink, they’re more than welcome.

They make “Pwang” noises and leave three little dust clouds in their wake.

Back in the vehicle Grissom has the kid’s mobile against her lug, assorted diamanté baubles hanging from the pink handset.

“Uh-huh….no, no, she’s just drunk…yes, by the high flats…ok…we’ll see you soon.”

She snaps the phone shut and hands it to the patient.

“Your Mum will be here shortly.”

“Bitch isn’t my Mum.”

“Step-Mum?”

“I hate her.”

She snorts, coughs and hawks a gob of pukey snot, or snotty puke into her mouth.

I pass her a cardboard basin.

“In the bowl.”

She shrugs.

“Whatever.”

I take a deep breath.

“Ok, ‘whatever’. But if you deliberately spit on the floor of my vehicle? I’ll wipe it up with your jacket.”

“I feel sick.”

“Yeah, vodka’ll do that to you.”

“Don’t lecture me…I can handle my drink.”

Grissom and I both laugh out loud.

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“And you can ‘handle your drink’, can you?”

“Aye.”

“So how come we’re sitting here with you and not helping someone with a heart attack? Or a car crash? Or a sick baby?”

She sees a way out.

“You can go; you don’t have to wait.”

My frustration comes to the fore.

“No, we can’t. Do you know why? Because you’re a kid, a wee lassie who’s got herself pissed and in trouble. We can’t leave you alone because you’re a child.”

She mutters something inaudible, I only catch the word “cunt”.

A taxi’s diesel engine outside, slamming car doors and a polite knock at the window. Step-Mum stands outside, glaring at the kid.

“In the cab.”

“I just…”

“Now.”

The lassie stomps into the rain, the older woman turns to us.

“I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Grissom shakes her head.

“You haven’t wasted our time.”

We all climb into our respective vehicles and make off into the night.

TBC

Not my job, a related tale from a friend.

999 call to a patient complaining of haematuria, hardly a life threatening situation, in most situations an indicator of a wee UTI. My colleague is astonished when the door is answered by a man holding a tea towel against his temple, his face is covered in blood, the walls are coated with arterial spray. His crotch appears dry.

“Thank Christ you’re here…my head’s pishing blood.”

Ahhhh.

I was told by a drunken bam last night that she was a “nurse paramedic”.

Has anyone ever heard of this?  Because I haven’t.

Colleagues have told me for months - “I know the police send us to a lot of bollocks calls, D&Is, minor injuries, cut fingers…but when you need their help and call for immediate assistance? They’re right there.

I can’t discuss details, because it’s going to court, suffice to say that nobody got hurt and that when you hit the radio and ask for “Immediate police - violent patient”, you’ll be surrounded by cops in minutes and hearing more sirens closing on you from every angle.

Thanks guys.

The 15 year old laddie tells me he’s “A hundred fucking per cent,” the police are three shivering wise men around the tableau.  The patient is leaning against a rubbish bin, his legs stretched out flat in front of him.

“Mmmmurp.”   he says.

“You alright, son?”

“Mmmmmmmurp…WOWF.”

The vomit fires out parallel to his shins, striking his trainers with some force.

“Cor!”  says one of the police officers, “I’ve only ever seen that in cartoons.”

I cast my eye over his vomit, I’m something of a connoisseur, (o wad some power)

“Beans on toast?”

He beams at me.

“How did you know?”

“And vodka.”

“Mmmmurp.”

“Lots of it, too.”

From there to a 13 year old, sufficiently unconcious to warrant A&E attendance, the stench of Malibu rolling off her as she lies in a bus shelter, her thin-lipped mother taking pictures on the child’s camera-phone - “To show the little slut what she looks like.”

And I’m just on my way to check out another D&I when I find myself flagged down to a little old lady who, thanks to a ’senior driving moment’, has cut across traffic, been struck by an oncoming car and stamped on the gas, instead of the brake, putting her through a plate glass window.

I’m single crewed, working without a partner, blogging live as it happens…and it’s not even halfway through the shift yet.

NieceN’s hair and my chin.

Strange portrait, a grab shot, but I like it.

And back you came.

Seven of us standing around a grubby plastic dummy, the three pairs that went before had passed their exam, the assessor throwing hurdles against us as we struggled to resuscitate the mannequin.

The seventh medic stands alone, the group’s numbers denying her a partner; she laughs and shrugs.

“It’s not like it’s the first time.”

My colleagues on this course have all been in the job for years, some for longer than I’ve been alive. They’ve grinned and passed me the heavy lifting, I’ve joked about “knowing my place” and being “the laddie”.

Today I’m the newbie.

Cha-Cha returns with an infant resus dummy, its pale, yellow face is rubbery and blank.

“There, a single person scenario.”

We bitterly shake our heads and talk amongst ourselves.

The decision is unanimous - “prescribe diesel” - drive as fast as you can to the nearest resus room.

“Not a nice experience, as I’m sure some of you will agree.”

The room is quiet - there are no more jokes, the catcalls and comedic commentary are gone, each face studies its boots, reliving past horrors.

I can’t remember your name and barely where you came from; the details are vague in my mind without rereading the day’s events. But clear in my memory is the purple cleft of your elbow, the aunty-pinchable roll of baby fat a startling, starving violet.

You’re a merit badge I can do without.