Читать книгу More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea - Tom Reynolds - Страница 21

There is a slight problem I have with returning to the ambulances, and that is my new partner is currently on sick leave, and has been for some time. No one knows when she will be fit to return—so I often find myself ‘single’ with nobody to work with.

When you are single you can be teamed up with another single pretty much anywhere in London.

At the moment our sector is having trouble reaching our government targets (which are calculated at the end of February). Of particular concern is Poplar ambulance station which, because of atrocious manning, is struggling to meet them. To counter this management have made it known that any shortfall in manning Poplar must be corrected as a priority.

So, when I’m single I’m often going to find myself making my way over to the Poplar area.

Last night, however, there was no one for me to work with at Poplar so they asked me to work on the FRU.

Fear of being asked to travel over to the other side of London if I refused meant that last night I was once more a solo responder.

This meant I had the right hump.

Thankfully it wasn’t too busy; the usual complaints of ‘my child hasn’t eaten properly for two days’, ‘I’m having an angina attack’ and ‘I’m drunk’ were quite enough. There was one interesting job though—a policeman hit a pedestrian with his car.

Thankfully he wasn’t travelling on blue lights, nor going too fast for the road. The woman apparently ran out into the road without looking, which given some of the pedestrian activities I normally see wasn’t out of the ordinary. Luckily for the woman involved there was an anaesthetist walking past, and he managed the immediate need to keep her neck still. After our examination our main concerns were that she was concussed and that she was cold from lying in the road—thankfully the ambulance was pretty quick, and she was soon in the warm, where our further examination showed no immediate injuries.

The area was cordoned off and as the woman was being looked after by the crew I went to make sure that the policeman who had been driving was all right. He was quite shaken up by the event, and I hope he gets support from his work.