Just as I was preparing to leave work, there was a serious stabbing on my patch. The HEMS team sent the helicopter. I explained what was going on to the night turn allocator, and set off on my way home.
Just as I was leaving the building, I heard a loud whirr overhead and looked up to see HEMS flying low above me. My first thought is “Oh, I wonder where it’s going?” Then I remembered, of course, it was going to MY call. The call I’d handed over less than five minutes ago.
It’s funny, when you leave the building, you hand over the calls and the ambulances to the next person and you forget the world you are walking out into is the same world that you’ve been sending crews out into all day. Sometimes you switch off too well when you leave and forget that it’s still all going on. Of course, sometimes I don’t switch off as well. Occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night in a blind panic because I think I’ve fallen asleep at my desk and that no one has been watching the screen. Then I remember I am in bed and there is no screen.
HEMS must have finished with the stabbing by now. I wonder if the boy is alive?
