What the hell’s going on?’
‘Who suggested we should go and have a quiet drink after work?’ murmured Frankie sardonically. ‘Perhaps next time we’ll go to the café on the high street for a nice cup of tea…’
A chair was thrown against the bar, and a scream came from a woman in the little knot of onlookers. Then there was a general intake of breath as someone fell to the floor and two or three men began to wrestle with a tall youth in a black leather jacket and shaven head. Gradually he was manhandled to the wall and pinned against it with his arms behind his back. The figure on the floor lay still.
‘I only tapped him one,’ shouted the youth. ‘It was just a tickle—no reason for him to go down. He was threatening me with a bottle… He’s dead drunk, out for the count.’
Frankie’s eyes met Corey’s in humorous exasperation. ‘Here we go—sounds rather familiar doesn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘Better go and look, I suppose.’
They pushed their way through the small crowd of gawping customers, and Frankie said quietly to the landlord, who was bending down by the fallen man with two other people. ‘I’m a doctor and my friend’s a nurse—perhaps we’d better see how this man is if you’d just let us through…’
The landlord looked at her with relief and stepped back. ‘Thank God—I’d be grateful. This is the last thing I need. No decent punters want to come to a place where brawls are happening. The police and ambulance are on their way—but Lord knows how long they’ll be.’ He glanced down at the supine figure before him. ‘This guy looks as if he’s had a skinful—completely blotto. What do you think?’
The young man had started groaning, his eyes fluttering in a grey-tinged face and his limbs moving restlessly from side to side.
‘He’s still with us at any rate,’ said Frankie, and squatted down beside him, holding his wrist to take his pulse, touching his forehead with her hand. She looked up at the curious onlookers. ‘Anyone know this man’s name?’
‘Gary Hemp,’ shouted someone.
‘Right, Gary,’ said Frankie, bending low over the man. ‘Can you hear me?’
Gary muttered something unintelligible, and Frankie pulled down his lower eyelid to look at his pupils. ‘No reaction,’ she murmured. ‘He’s sweating and his heart rate’s up.’ She looked up at Corey, frowning. ‘But something doesn’t add up here. Did you see where he was hit?’ she asked the landlord, who was now standing over her with folded arms and pursed lips.
‘It didn’t look a full-blooded punch,’ he admitted, ‘more a swipe that glanced against his chin, but he went down like a felled tree.’
‘It’s possible he’s got concussion from hitting his head on the floor,’ pondered Frankie, ‘But it’s a carpeted area here. I wouldn’t have thought…’ She bent forward and smelt the man’s breath, then looked up at Corey with a slightly triumphant smile. ‘I think I’ve got it, Corey. Not sure if I’m right, though. What do you think?’
Corey knelt next to Gary and put her face close to his. ‘He smells of alcohol, that’s for sure…but there is something else on his breath, too, which reminds me of nail polish. It’s acetone, isn’t it?’
Frankie nodded. ‘My guess is he’s diabetic, and he’s got alcohol-induced hypoglycaemia. It probably didn’t help when he was involved in a fight. At least we know what we’re trying to cope with when the ambulancemen get here.’
A man from the watching crowd called out, ‘That’s right, Doc—he’s diabetic. Has to inject himself every day.’
‘Ah, yes, look at that, Corey—a pinprick on his thumb.’
Frankie turned the man’s hand towards Corey, who put a cushion from one of the chairs under Gary’s head and covered him with a rug the barman handed to her.
‘Is he in danger?’ asked the landlord looking anxiously at the figure on the floor.
‘If he’s not treated, he could be,’ admitted Frankie.
‘In what way? What can it do to him?’ asked the landlord. ‘I thought he’d just had a skinful.’
‘A diabetic who takes alcohol can suffer an unnatural surge of insulin, and that can absorb too much of the glucose in his blood. That affects the nervous system, which in turn could lead to brain damage,’ she explained.
‘Bloody hell,’ said the landlord. He gazed nervously at the youth and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Will he be all right, then?’
The sound of a siren whining down to silence came from outside and two policemen and a paramedic appeared at the door. The two girls exchanged relieved looks and Corey murmured, ‘The cavalry’s arrived, thank God. Once we’ve got some glucose into him he’ll improve.’
The paramedic strode over to the injured man and then looked at Frankie and Corey in surprise. ‘I thought I’d said goodbye to you two about an hour ago—after we brought in those RTA victims. Don’t you have a home to go to?’ He knelt down beside Frankie. ‘What’s happened to this gentleman?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s alcohol-induced hypolglycaemia,’ said Frankie. ‘I suggest you give him fifty grams of glucose intravenously, and then you can take him back to hospital and get him in balance again. His name’s Gary Hemp.’
‘I’ll do a quick blood test with a Haemastix strip,’ said the paramedic, opening his medical bag. He withdrew a little blood from the patient’s arm and put a blob on the strip. ‘Yup—his blood sugar’s way down,’ he remarked. ‘Better get some glucagen into him.’
He took out a prepacked needle and phial of glucose, which he swiftly injected into the man. ‘Involved in a fight, was he? He’s got a cut lip…’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ shouted the other youth, now held by one of the policemen. ‘I told you, he suddenly went beserk—tried to kill me with a broken bottle, he did! I wasn’t doing anything to him at all, just talking about football,’ he added in an aggrieved voice.
‘He could very well have got aggressive just before he went down,’ murmured Frankie to the other policeman. ‘People who are out of balance with their insulin can sometimes become very hostile—change their character completely.’
Gradually the young man’s eyes flickered open and he looked in a bewildered way at the faces above him.
‘You’re all right, Gary—just had some imbalance with your insulin,’ said the paramedic. ‘Forget to take it today, did you? Don’t worry, son, we’re just going to take you to hospital to check you out.’
The youth moaned faintly. ‘What’s happened?’ he croaked as he was being stretchered out of the pub. The other youth’s details were taken down by the policeman. Gradually the onlookers drifted back to the bar, and the paramedic turned to Frankie and Corey as he picked up his medical bag.
‘I know you’re off duty,’ he said pleadingly, ‘but you couldn’t come back with us, could you? Just heard that there’s been a general call for more staff—a wall’s collapsed in the high street and there’s several people trapped. Some of the A and E staff have gone out to the scene.’
Corey
