I live on a busy road in the middle of my sector, so it’s not unusual for calls to the vicinity of my home to pop up on my screen. Today, however, was a little unusual. No sooner than I had sat down the in the allocator’s chair, I had to give out a call to an assault that had happened smack-bang outside my house. That was especially scary considering I had been there on my own in the dark 90 minutes beforehand! Then, a few minutes later, there was a diabetic collapsed in the road just round the corner by my local pub. A spate of calls followed for a drunk lying in the road near the High Street around lunchtime, though this is hardly unusual. A young woman was run over by a car travelling at 40mph a couple of junctions down the road from my house in the early afternoon (I know for a fact that the speed limit on that road is 30mph) and blued into hospital with a nasty head injury. And worst of all, a three month old baby just a few doors away from me was found dead in his cot minutes later. By the end of the shift, the road where I live was dotted with the angry red triangles that denote category A calls on the mapping system.
But it wasn’t over! It took over an hour to get home because someone had decided to jump under a tube train on my route home. He, miraculously, wasn’t killed and it took HEMS and several ambulance crews forever to remove him to hospital, leaving me stuck in a tunnel feeling like I was going to fall asleep on my feet. I finally got home ten minutes ago, and can you guess what was parked in the road opposite my house? Yes, a great big ambulance with its big blue flashing light on! Aargh!
