Blood, Sweat Tea | Page 3

lady comes in to your
maternity department in the second stage of labour. Do you...
(a) Say hello, take a room and we'll have that baby out as soon as we
can, or...
(b) Tell them to go home and come back when the pain gets worse.
Guess which answer results in your baby being delivered by an
ambulance bloke who has 1days' training in maternity (and who, to be
honest, slept through most of it)?
Then when I take mother and baby into the same maternity department
are you...
(a) Vaguely apologetic, or...
(b) Snotty towards the ambulance crew who did your work for you.
Can you guess that tonight I got (b) for both questions?
Otherwise it was a nice simple delivery, with dad shooting pictures on
his mobile phone sending them to all and sundry while his wife was

lying, bloodstained and naked on a leather sofa. Blood went all over
that sofa, which come summer will start to smell just a little rank.
Blood also went all over me (note to self - must remember to pack
Wellington boots next time) and my acting skills ('Don't worry mum,
all normal, I've done hundreds of deliveries') were tested to the limit.
...and I didn't have to pick up any alcoholics.
Why Would People Even Think It?
I have sometimes been astounded by the bloodymindedness of people,
and sometimes by their stupidity. Now I am astonished at their petty
nastiness.
I'm driving my 'big-white-van-with-blue-flashing-lights-and-a-siren' to
a 1-year-old child with difficulty in breathing. While passing a group of
youths on the pavement, one of them thinks that it would be a good
idea to throw his bottle of coke at the ambulance, thus spraying my
screen, obscuring my vision and nearly causing me to swerve into
oncoming traffic.
All I can say is that it is lucky for them that I was going to a call,
because if I hadn't I'd have shoved my boot up their arse.
Where in the tiny recesses of their minds does it seem like a good idea
to throw something at an ambulance running on lights and sirens?
All I hope is that one day they need me, something likely given the
amount of people like that who get stabbed in my neck of the woods,
and I'm just that little too slow to save their worthless skins.
Payment Point
I get called to a lot of RTAs (that is, for the uninformed 'Road Traffic
Accident'). I'd say that 90% of these are diagnosed as 'whiplash' (which
is a muscular sprain of the neck - this is a minor injury that is treated
with painkillers); I'd suggest that over half of these are an attempt to
gain insurance money. In the ambulance trade we call this the 'Payment

Point', referring to the point in the neck that is painful, and pays out the
money.
Tonight I saw the most blatant attempt to get money from an 'accident'.
I was called to a flyover where two cars had been in a near collision,
yes, a near collision. There was no damage to either vehicle, neither
were there any skidmarks on the road. The 'patient' was the passenger
of the car, and complained of pain on the right side of his neck. He was
desperate to go to hospital, for what reason I did not know, as there was
obviously no injury.
This was made even more evident when he forgot what side of his neck
the pain was on. When I called him on this he pretended not to know
what I was talking about.
Even the police were not above making fun of this idiot.
It probably didn't help that he was 10 years younger than me and
cruising around in a red sports car.
Of course RTA is now RTC (Road Traffic Collision), because if it's an
'accident' then the police can't prosecute anyone.
Single
Although I do love my job dearly, there are a number of disadvantages.
At the moment I am a 'relief' worker, which means although I have a
main station, I can be sent anywhere in London to cover absences and
holidays in the 'core' staff. I also don't have a regular crewmate... I am
essentially the whore of the London Ambulance Service.
So, at the moment I am sitting on my backside at my main station with
no-one to work with, watching daytime TV.
Bored, Bored, Bored, Bored...
Of course, at some point in the next 12hours I could be rushing off
anywhere in London. Being on strange stations is actually quite good

fun, as you get to meet new people and, lets face it, in this job moving
around London just means 'same shit, different scenery'.
...But at the moment I'm bored...
Daytime TV, the ambulance relief's worst enemy.