and stare is doing just that.
We’re quite near a bus shelter. A young dad lifts his small son up on top of the shelter, so he can get a better look at the paramedics trying to resuscitate the poor man. What a sight for a young child to witness. OK, it’s human nature to have a quick look. But giving your kid a front-row seat to watch an unfortunate person fighting a losing battle for life is going too far. To me, it’s despicable. How would these people feel if it was their colleague or partner lying there? Would they still stand there staring?
But now, almost on cue, things are happening: the welcome and distinctive whirring sound of a chopper overhead. The highly skilled pilots from HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Service) can land anywhere, on a postage stamp. They’ve managed to land on the nearby road junction, much to the delight of the enthralled crowd.
Now the team are up on the canopy with us: two pilots, a paramedic and a doctor. They wear orange boiler suits. The doctor takes control. He examines the man, pronounces him dead. Within minutes they’re gone, off to another call. Now it’s left to us to move the body.
As we start to move him the full extent of the damage his body has suffered becomes obvious. His arms and legs move in a most unnatural way. It’s horrible. He’s like a human bean bag in the shape of a man. He just flops about. What has happened is, his skin has remained intact. But inside his body every single bone has been shattered to smithereens. We get him on to the board, strap his body, cover him with a blanket. Then the fire brigade help us get it on to a ladder and lower it down to the street and into the waiting ambulance.
Only now do the crowd start to disperse. It’s a nasty job, this call, my first major trauma. I’m shocked at the prurience of the crowd, the state of his shattered corpse, my naivety that somehow he wasn’t badly damaged because there was no blood. Then we get the gen from the police. The man was just 30. He worked in the building in a clerical job. He threw himself off the roof – some 17 floors up. They’ve managed to find some of his belongings up there, along with a suicide note. It’s a first for me, the kind of first you could easily live without. I’m used to overdoses, suicide by hanging – but not the more desperate, violent extremes someone will go to in order to end it all. Despite my nursing experience, my time working in A&E (the correct term is now ED - Emergency Department), I’m still shaken up by this episode. The ‘bean bag body’ keeps coming back to me for ages. How bad was it for him, I wonder, to do it this way?
The next day my sister-in-law calls me. She works in the building directly opposite. She and her workmates had actually seen something fly down from the roof of the building facing them. Then they watched us all working away – and realised it was a person they’d seen falling. She’d spotted me.
‘I knew it was you, Lysa, because of your pony tail. But we couldn’t understand why you were trying to resuscitate someone who’d dropped from such a height. I nearly rang you on the mobile to say, “Don’t bother.”’ We chat some more. We both agree that people’s ghoulish fascination with the worst – like the man who put his kid on to the bus shelter roof – doesn’t say much for the sensitivity or compassion of strangers when another person’s life is at stake. Then I remember another thing that galled: a Peeping Tom in an office building opposite, staring at us through a pair of binoculars.
‘You live and learn about people,’ I tell her. ‘I know it’s part of what I’m doing. But I’m not sure it’s something I want to think about too much – or it’ll put me off this job for good.’
As you can see, it hasn’t. But you never forget.
Gerry has been doing the job for years – and he’s quite jaded. He’s seen it all, he says. Today we’re called to Brixton: a man, 21, can’t walk, legs hurt.
Blase as ever, Gerry shrugs. ‘This’ll be a load of rubbish,’ he grunts. He thinks it’s a waste of time. I laugh. You never know.
Inside the big house, converted into many flats, two young student types, a girl and a boy, accompany us up the stairs. They’re Italian. It’s their flatmate, up on the third floor. He’s been in bed for nearly 24 hours. ‘He come home sick from work and go to bed,’ we’re told. That’s all they know.
The bedroom is pitch-black, heavy curtains blocking all light. We can just about see the man because the sheets are pulled up right over him. They turn the lights on. I pull the cover down a little bit to get a look at him.
I don’t expect this. He’s got a horrible rash covering his face. It’s purple, flat and blotchy, the sort of rash that doesn’t blanch when pressed. It’s deadly, a killer. Very bad news indeed. Gerry has a look with me. Cynic he may be, but today he’s taken aback.
‘Bloody hell,’ he mutters.
We know what this is. It’s serious blood poisoning, or meningococcal septicaemia, to give it its medical name. A lethal bacteria. For all the rash on the surface of his skin, he is bleeding just as badly inside.
Now we’re taking a much closer look at the rest of him. The purple rash covers his entire body from head to toe. He’s awake, coughing, confused.
‘How’re you feeling?’ I ask.
‘My foot hurt,’ he says in heavily accented English. ‘They hurt so much, I not walk.’ Gerry immediately goes down for the carrychair so we can get him out and down to the ambulance.
His flatmates are stunned when they see his rash. Apparently he’d been working in a restaurant as a chef. It was his first day at work in London – he’d only arrived in the UK the day before from his home in Italy. He hadn’t even been able to finish his first shift in the kitchen. They’d sent him home late evening as he was so obviously unwell. As bad as it is, I’m surprised he’s not worse. The lower leg pain he’s experiencing is associated with poor circulation. But you can also expect vomiting, dizziness and painful headache with this type of bacteria. It’s terribly sad. He’s so handsome, this young Italian, it’s devastating to think of what’s happening to his body. He’s got thick, dark, curly hair and chiselled cheekbones, a real heartthrob.
Gerry and I don’t discuss it – there’s no need to – because we both know that his chances of survival are slim. At best, someone with this blood infection could face amputation of their hands or feet, because their circulation is so damaged. I feel so bad for him – but he’s got no idea this rash is running rampant all over him. There’s no point in mentioning it. It won’t help. Given the likely outcome, all we can do is be as kind and gentle as we can.
We go to lift him into the chair. He’s in real pain, every part of his body hurts. His friends watch in silence as we carry him into the ambulance. Now his blood pressure is dangerously low: his body is totally in shock. All we can do to help is radio through for a doctor to meet us, elevate his feet, to improve his circulation – and put a line into his arm. As we whiz through the streets I cling to a tiny, desperate, shred of hope: once we’re at the hospital they’ll be giving him the antibiotics he needs to pull him through, I tell myself. It’s a short journey. Hope and despair run in turn through your mind in those few brief minutes. And there’s a sense of helplessness too.
Finally we pull up. The doctor’s opening the door. He looks at the young man, purses his lips, says, ‘Yes, fair enough. Bring him in.’ and the hospital take over. Gerry is strangely silent. We just get on with it and write the job up. There’s another call within a few minutes; just a sprained knee, a brief distraction to take our minds off the tragedy we’ve just witnessed.
