boss – a middle-aged, chain-smoking, sarcastic woman with the face of an East London gangster – she looked me square in the eye and croaked, ‘You know by now what the traffic in London is like, son, don’t you?’
And I replied, ‘Yes, but it’s dangerous going fast without a pressing reason.’
And she said, ‘Harley Street patients are special, you understand. They expect the best. They have never waited for anything in their lives. They don’t expect to lie in ambulances while our drivers inch along in traffic, do they now?’
But a day later she inadvertently revealed her true reason for ignoring the fun crews were having with lights and sirens when Henry called up and told her we were unlikely to complete two jobs in the designated time frame.
‘Well,’ she said via the crackly radio, ‘what have you got those pretty lights on your wagon for, Henry?’
Turnover. It is all about turnover and profit. The faster we do a job, the quicker we’re on to the next. We make deliveries like any courier company, but because we deliver human cargo we can make our deliveries in half the time by halting on-coming traffic and momentarily paralysing city intersections.
Henry brakes heavily. ‘Wanka!’ he shouts.‘Got evry fink on, idiot!’
And with everything on we skid into Heathrow making such a racket that for a second airport security must think some hijacking has taken place without their knowledge.
But no, all this Arab wants is a quality heart bypass.
We meet the patient sunk into a deep leather recliner in the lavish corporate jet building, a man in his sixties wearing a stiff white dishdasha and rockstar sunglasses. He’s very pleased when I greet him with the traditional Assalam Aleikum but looks with a little disgust at Henry who struggles to negotiate a leather ottoman with the stretcher.
‘How was your flight?’ I ask the sheik.
‘Bekhair,’ he says, and his aide appears, a different one from last time, and translates.
‘Fine, he says flight is fine, thank you,’ says the aide.
Henry is by my side now. I can smell him.
‘Good to go ven?’ he asks, looking at the aide expectantly. But no wad of cash appears and we stand in awkward silence, a silence like the one after hotel porters take your bags up and you don’t have any change to tip them with. Why Henry expects the sheik will slip him some cash before he’s been driven anywhere is beyond me.
After half a minute, Henry readies the stretcher and we help the sheik climb on.
It’s a rough ride back to Harley Street. I’ve strapped the sheik down well but notice the skin over his knuckles blanche while gripping the stretcher rails. The sheik says something loudly to his aide, raising his voice over Henry’s siren. I fear that any chance of getting a tip now is out of the question. But I’m wrong. Instead of lodging his complaint about the journey, the sheik’s aide leans over and thrusts a fifty pound note into my palm.
‘No, no, I’m not supposed to take this,’ I protest.
But Henry’s siren is so loud I can’t really hear myself and when I try to hand the money back the sheik’s aide takes it and forcefully stuffs it into my top pocket. There is a certain desperation in the way he has given me the tip that makes me think for a moment I’m being bribed to take the wheel and slow things down. When Henry veers sharply to avoid something and leans on the horn for thirty seconds, cursing grotesquely, I consider it. In Kuwait, my partner would be promptly executed for driving like this with an al-Sabah on board. ‘Allah, Allah, Allah!’ cries the sheik.
Really got to quit, I think. The fifty pounds in my top pocket will hardly tide me over until the next job. But I don’t care.
After dropping off the sheik at a cardiologist, Henry curses the Kuwaiti royal family for not helping us out and how the House of Saud is far more generous.
I shrug, choosing not to mention my tip.
‘Henry,’ I say politely as we reach the Baker Street tube station, ‘you don’t mind dropping me off here, do you?’
‘Right ’ere?’ he asks, raising his eyebrows.
‘Yes please. And do me another favour, will you?’
‘What’s tha’?’
‘Tell the boss I’ve resigned.’
ALL QUIET! NEWS BULLETIN!
The Philippines
Lumbering like the giant propellers of an ocean liner, the fan blades turn too slowly and too high above us to cool the night. But the loose chugging and whooshing is sending me to sleep. Behind a heavy wooden desk illuminated by a strip of neon screwed into one of the peppermint-green walls is the chief of the Philippine General Hospital’s Emergency Medical Service, Manolo Pe-Yan, a plump man, unusually serious for a Filipino. Seriousness, however, does not always translate to professional appearance and Manolo is wearing the same singlet he’s been wearing for a week, stained by a dark bib of sweat, his head tipping forward then up again as he sleeps.
It’s 1 am on a Saturday morning. Two white uniform shirts are hanging on the posts of a single steel bed beside me. Snoring soundly upon it, curled up together despite the heat, is a crew of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) seemingly content with the status quo – a parked ambulance and no calls on a night when all manner of accidents and murders are occurring in the action-packed metropolis. A stone’s throw from where these medics are sleeping there is a constant stream of jeepneys, taxis and tricycles screeching to a halt outside the hospital emergency department. Onto the doorstep their contents are dumped: an assortment of stabbed and mauled victims; unconscious men with occluded airways, bodies made limp by the fractures of long falls and pedestrians with broken necks. Last week I worked a few shifts in the emergency department and dragged these people in, seeing how nasty and critical injuries and medical cases become without pre-hospital care. And while I did this, across an island of lawn and flowerbeds, under a low tin awning, two beautiful late-model Chevrolet ambulances stood washed and polished – and silent.
‘Okay, tayo marinig ng ibang song!’ Another Filipino hit is announced on a little transistor radio. It’s all we listen to. A World War II ceiling fan and cheesy music, neither of which is ever switched off – the ceiling fan for obvious reasons and the radio because, in its truest definition relating to ambulance work, we are listening out for jobs. There is still no central emergency number in The Philippines, no control room or ambulance dispatch. So we wait, as we do most days and nights, monitoring the half-hour news bulletins on ordinary FM radio and the occasional updates between Pinoy rock classics by Sugar Hiccup and Tropical Depression. Occasionally, maybe once a week, a member of the public will arrive breathless at the ambulance station, pointing in the general direction of some traffic collision nearby. But mostly we wait for a radio announcement – sometimes for weeks on end – about a pile-up on one of the many highways and skyways crossing Manila. Last month, both ambulance crews took it upon themselves to respond to a train derailment after hearing a report on the radio, but have since done little else.
The air is thick with humidity and the smell of green mangoes. I look around the room and see I’m the last one awake. Having no comprehension of Tagalog, the 1 am news means nothing to me. Half of Manila may have
