So - did you all have a lovely Christmas break?

I did!

23rd, off to my friends Zinnie and Johns’ for their annual “Gather around the pianoforte and sing carols at levels of differing singing competence” gathering.

Sadly I was slightly late and I was greeted with “Hello! You’re late! Here, have a bucket of mulled wine which is mostly made of brandy and whisky and a tiny volume of wine. Oh, also, we had a tiny, tiny baby, would you like to cuddle her?.”

Lovely! Got very drunk and we all told lots of silly stories and it was good and I walked home in the snow and had chips on the way.

24th! Hah! It’s Christmas Eve! Christmas fackin’ Eve! I went to see FlatmateGiles and deliver some presents and then DigitalLouis and I went for a swim while DigitalSean and DigitalKatie went off and bought stuff for Christmas. It was during this expedition to the swimming pool that we discovered that DigitalLouis’ wheelchair totally nearly works in the snow.

Instead of the safe, stable, trundly-trundly thing one would hope with a wheelchair, we instead had skitey slippery ploughing-through-the-snowy thing. I got round this by power-sliding around corners and singing the riff from Sabotage. Then I packed up my car to drive to Gala to spend Christmas with the Nerfs. The problem was that there was snow. No, in fact, there was…

Snow.

So I packed a bag full of presents for the Nerfs, then I packed up a bag of MY presents to take down (because I was fucked if I was sitting at Christmas morning opening nothing). Then I packed a bag of clothes to wear. Then I packed a bag of uniform and kit for my nightshift on the 25th. Then I packed a bag full of camera. And then, because of the Snow, I packed a bag of thermos and blanket and shovels and Ikea bags. Because I’m from up north and, as such, am unable to drive through the snow without preparing for some form of Arctic disaster.

Which was good thinking and totally redundant, because all the snow was politely stacking itself on the side of the road.

Christmas Eve was a very festive affair with a carol concert and snow and beer and Rock Band and Guitar Hero and present stacking and snow and a puppy and beer.

Mostly it was snow and beer.

It was awesome.

Then Christmas morning! Presents and snow! And terribly excited kids! And presents! I’m pretty certain there were presents, on account of hearing Nerfkid barrell down the stairs at 0530 and howling.

“PRESEEEEEENTS!”

Yes, indeed, presents.

Nerfkid got a massive lego police station from Santa, so all three grown ups sat in his bedroom and built it for him. We were, in no way, just playing Lego. Absolutely not.

Maybe a bit

I’d forgotten how brilliant Lego is. I’m very, very tempted to make this a Christmas tradition, whereby I’ll buy a HUGE Lego set at Christmas and build it and then (because, really, I’m not that excited about playing with it, I just want to build it) go and donate it to someone/somewhere. Maybe.

I guess, my point is, that building Lego on Christmas morning is brilliant. You should try it.

Nerfgirl and Nerfbaby and Nerfdog and I went for a massive tromp up in the hills behind their house while Nerfboy cooked an awesome Christmas dinner of lamb and delicious trimmings and then I had to drive up the road to work.

And that was pants, but fuck it, let’s pretend I didn’t have to, because working at Christmas sucks balls.

Boxing Day!
Boxing Day I went back round to the Digitals for their Boxing Day family dinner, which was very nice of them to invite me along (I do fear I’m becoming one of those single guys who people feel compelled to invite round for Christmas, because they fear that otherwise I’ll be hanging myself over my mince pies and microwave-turkey-dinner-for-one).

Dinner with the Digitals was awesome and tasty and also festooned in presents and culminated in me doing festive ironing of my uniform in preparation for my last night-shift. Oooh! Also, I got bought a beautiful Lomo camera to play with. Prepare for artsy pictures!

And now it’s the 27th and I’m sitting here watching the Eddie Izzard DVD that the Nerfs bought me (thanks guys!) with Aarayan who flies back to Berlin tomorrow.

My song of Christmas has been this, from the wonderful Tim Minchin.

On my first listen, I wound up bawling my eyes out; for some reason I’m missing my family far more keenly this year than I normally do. It’s odd, we’re not exactly a close family, but for some reason I just want to see everybody. I’ve had some good chats on the phone with folk, but I was feeling a little bit lost all Christmas, really.

Tim sums it up nicely though, with his line about “These are the people that make you feel safe in this world.”

Because family is essential, and blood is important, but distance gets in the way sometimes, seperating you from the folks you love. Just as important is spending Christmas with people who make you feel safe. I hope you did.

I did.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

K x

We send the cops in first. Any caller who gives our call handlers grief gets police onscene with us. Mako, the two cops and I ride the lift up the eighth floor. I step to the side and let them enter first.

One constable shuffles himself to the back of the car.

“So you’re by the doors if he’s standing there with a chainsaw…”

I flick his vest with a finger.

“Isnt that why you’re here?”

Joking aside, they take the lead on the landing. The front door is open, Talking Heads’ “Life During Wartime” screaming from a stereo somewhere in the house.

There’s a golf club in the hall and he lifts it, I assume to put it somewhere safely out of radge’s reach, but he cunningky uses it to swing the doors open as we stalk through the corridor.

“Hello! Police! Paramedics!”

No reply, save the stereo

“…we got some groceries, some peanut butter…”

The flat is a classic 70s high rise, a central lift and stair shaft with six flats bomb-bursting away. They’re long and thin, passageways with rooms down one side and a toilet at the end, this one glowering at us through the open door with it’s ripped lino and espresso dribbles down the bowl’s outside.

The cop pushes the last door open, a mattress with a bulging duvet on it occupies the middle of the living room floor. Beyond a door in the corner, a dog howls along with the music.

Pushing the head of the golf club out in front of him, the police officer lifts one corner of the duvet. Nothing underneath but pillows. We all exhale and turn to the final door. Club in hand he flicks the door open to reveal a man standing in his pants in the kitchen, phone in one hand, a black and white collie sat at his feet, howling at his face. He’s babbling into the phone.

“Oh God! Oh God! It’s the police! There’s a policeman in my house and he’s got a big stick and he’s going to kill me!”

“Calm down, mate. It’s your golf club.”

“Oh…it’s ok, it’s not a stick. It’s my golf club. Bye.”

He hangs up and begins to pour out his heart to Mako, he tells him of schizophrenia, of voices in his head, of swinging bipolar episodes. Overcrowded in the kitchen, I step back into the lounge and play with the dog. It wags its tail at me, barks a number of times and tries to have sex with my right knee.

The younger cop laughs at us and I tempt the furry Lothario out into the corridor with a promise of “Biscuits, boy! Biscuits!”

Stupid fluffy rapist prances out into the corridor where I shut the door on him. He howls again.

While Mako talks to the patient - “…the voices tell me to kill fucking Scottish people…with an AK47…just blow them all away…”I survey the living room. Where it’s tidy, it’s obsessively so. The ornaments are arranged in perfect meter along the sideboard, the two chairs at the table are perfectly opposite each other. Aspects of the house are orderly and calm.

But on the flip side, the walls have cuttings from newspapers pinned up at random, a flag on the wall is smeared with blood. The stained duvet on the floor is surrounded by empty plastic bottles and cigarette ends.

Schizophrenia’s a fucker…only one man occupies this house.

But two people live here.

This can’t be a ED doctor; at no point did the doctor say “Oh fuck it, stick an nasopharyngeal airway down her and see if she’s ’seizing’ then.”

Because doctors don’t say that.

Uh-huh.

From the brilliant GruntDoc

Short handed in resus, I stick around and lend a hand where I can. The charge nurse and I each grab a side of his waistband and tug the patients jeans down. A combination of tight jeans, dodgy knicker elastic and slightly over zealous staff results in the gentleman…falling out of himself.

“Oh!” blurts the nurse, “Santa hat.”

I laugh. 

An odd, but festive and fitting euphemism for the male phallus, I think.  Floppy, red and white, bobble on the end and fluffy bits at the base. Never thought of it in such terms, but, yes, I suppose it fits.

She pulls a red and white fluffy hat from a jeans pocket and I point, open mouthed.

“Oh!  Santa hat!”

She looks at me strangely.

“Yeee-eees?”

“Nothing.”

Exit Kal, resus left, blushing. 

Owen and Brooke and Sassoon, some white haired old duffer beating out the meter with a ruler on his desk.

Rudely young, arrogantly immortal, we scoffed at dusty old fuckers, safe in their pens.

Decimated laddies just marks in an essay.

Your ID is a badge of honour at clubs and bars, “Grown up” betrayed by your phone.

“Mum”.
“Dad”.
“Home”.

Tonight the adult world caught you, twisted you up in itself, mixing you in forever.

The cops seem scared to touch you, like bashful new uncles. Happier to fetch and carry, running errands and messages through the dark.

One crouches by, soft stubble, his larynx and voice wobbling as he speaks softly to you, awkward hands safe between his knees.

They leave you foetal on the stones.

Maimed and defiled in the black and the rubble I fear death might be a blessing; its heavy flannel stilling your thrashing limbs and my burling brain.

Death holds secure and stable, wipes dirt and blood from faces, dresses us sharply and heralds men as faultless, loved sons and brothers.

Dulce et decorum est, I’d quote you Hardy’s Hodge.

We bag up little pieces, misplacing more than we find. Now less than the sum of your parts, some corner of this city is forever you.

I have you in my mind’s quiet moments, butchered boy, bright and beautiful.

It doesn’t look like much, a single police van parked neatly in the roadway, its roof beacons laconically spinning in the dark and rain. The streets are quiet, black and wet, but we’ve still managed to acquire a small crowd of rent-a-starers. How they get here before us every time, I’ll never know - perhaps we should hire them as consultants to solve our response problems.

The technician is out of the vehicle first, she’s attending after all, and I follow half a dozen steps behind, lifting the bag and oxygen from the side door.

“Kal?”

Her voice tells me it’s bad and I flash my torch over the body in the gutter. I see blood, skin. Limbs that were born perfectly formed are now twisted and smashed beyond any Vetruvian blueprint. I swing my torch over the crowd. One young woman is supported on her forearms by another, screaming.

I tune her out.

Standing at the end of the line is a young Asian man, staring intently but apparently undistressed. I point at him, then at the floor beside me.

“You! Come here,” then remembering my manners, “please.”

He steps forward and I give him the torch.

“You shine this wherever my hands are, right?”

It’s an LED and its light is the white and blue as frost and sea glass. The lenses that surround the bulbs produce three concentric circles of light, two bright and one dull. These halos slide up and down the body, echoing the round mouths of the crowd, echoing that one woman who Won’t. Stop. Screaming.

The driver of the police van is already kneeling by the patient, barking into his radio, I catch the end of his conversation.

“…definitely appears LTP at this point.”

There comes a point where medical training becomes redundant and you just know that people shouldn’t be bleeding this much.

“D’you want me to call Medic One?”

“No point. We’ll be in hospital before they have their boots on.”

“You’re the boss. If you need anything, just tell me, whatever you say.”

“Go to the cab of my motor and get yourself a pair of gloves. I’m going to need you.”

I send my colleague off for spinal board, collar, straps, blanket and trolley and survey the damage. The cop hurries back with gloves, though they look a size too small. He fumbles with cramming his fingers into them, making embarrassed little jokes as we wait.

I’ll give him as long as it takes, I need him. I run a todo list in my head, the patient’s airway definitely needs attention, his snoring and grunting breaths tell me that.

Similarly I want to sound his chest for collapsing lungs, or to discover if he’s drowning in blood. Finally I want to prod his belly, his pelvis and the long bones in his legs. Anyone of them could quietly secrete enough blood to send him off into an EMD cardiac arrest. If that’s on the cards, I’d like to know sooner rather than later, thanks.

I’m pretty sure he’s dying anyway.

I take the cops hands and mould his fingers into two guns, thumbs up, index and middle out and clamp these hands around the patient’s head, pushing them into the corners of his mandible.
“You feel those sharp points? Lift them up.”
He does so, the patient stops snoring.
“He shouldn’t make that noise, ok? If he starts again, tell me. In fact, if he looks or sounds different in anyway, shout at me.”
I’m the senior clinician on scene, I should be on the airway.

And I am.

Sort of.
I’ve just got an assistant, that’s all.

I have too many other things to be worrying about right now. With his airway secured, I shred the patient’s clothes. Blades down his chest and along the seams of his sleeves. The car ripped his trousers off on impact, and I briefly consider dropping something over him to preserve his decency. Then think about it again. Car accidents are neither decent nor dignified.

I settle for pulling his slashed jumper down a little while strapping an oxygen mask to his face.
Airway protected. Breathing failing. Pulse present, but crashing blood pressure. His blood leaking out of him, probably into that pelvis, definitely into his lungs.
Back up at the head I wriggle my fingers down underneath, feeling torn flesh, sticky hair. His shattered face reminds me of nothing more than overcooked cherry pie, the crust brittle and cracking, dark red fluid seeping to the surface.
My fingers are muted by the gloves and cold, I cant tell what I’m touching.

Is that flesh or fabric? His clothes and collar are soaked with rain and both give, soft and pliable, under my probing fingers. I’m trying to feel if it’s knitwear or brain matter when my hands, befuddled in the cold, tell me that there’s fast moving fluid running through them. Lots of it.
My torch bearer crouches down at my call and shines the light under the patient’s ear where I anticipate a torrent of blood.
Just water. We’re on a hill, in the gutter, in the pissing rain. A vigorous stream runs under us both. My knees and lower legs are soaked and freezing from kneeling in it.

I never noticed.
An RRU pulls up and it’s driver, Ferrero, joins me at a run.

“How’s his breathing, Kal?”

“Shite. Can you take the head?”

“Sure.”

The extrication equipment arrives and we throw a collar around his neck, shoving him onto the board as fast as we can. There’s a time and place for text book C-spine immobilisation and this is not it. I’d take a wheelchair over death any day.

Sadly, this chap isn’t in a state to let me know his preference. I elect to operate under the assumption that most people would choose “not death” over other options.

Many hands lift the board onto the trolley and we’re in the back of the motor in seconds, the technician standing at the back doors jingling the ignition keys.

“What’s the standby?”

When people are dead or dying, pre-alert messages become terribly simple. Relatively stable people need lots of information passed, but this guy’s easy.

“60 YOM, massive head trauma, peri-arrest.”

“Done.”

The journey to hospital takes minutes, we’re so close and moving so fast that we don’t even have time to take a blood pressure, the cuff puffing and wheezing, straining to hear his pulse over the howl and rattle of the engine.

I take a tourniquet out of my pocket to give him IV fluids, but Ferrero, with years of service on me, shakes his head.

“No point, son, we’ll be there in a second. Just watch him.”

Nothing to do en route but hold fingers against his throat and wait for his heart to stop.

He arrests on the bed in resus, I pump his chest while the team drive chest drains into his lungs, blood cascading out into the bottles at the bedside. Bags of fluid and blood run into his veins while they drain his own from where it pools inside him.

I lift the spinal board from the floor and carry it back to the vehicle. Thick, liquorice clots and bright ruby puddles drop from its surface as I walk along the corridor and I run back a moment later with a cloth to wipe it up. A nurse catches me at it.

“Sorry about the mess.”

“Don’t worry about it. How is he?”

“Doesn’t look good.”

She nods at the blood on the floor.

“That off your board?”

“Yeah.”

“The waiting room’s packed. They’re all arseholes tonight. You should take it in and show it to them. “This is why there’s a four hour wait.” “This is what we’re doing.”

I nod and leave her to it, returning to station and pressure washing the board on the floor, spraying soap and water into its crevices and watching the run-off turn an ever lighter pink until nothing remains but clean bubbles and clouds of fine jet spray in the cold air.

For those of you lust after F1 memorabilia, there’s an auction on Ebay that might interest you.

Sex with a fat Glaswegian?

A weighty fuck.