Someone Dial 999 - We Have an Incident...

It's late evening.
The skies are dark; the air cold and damp.
Rain falls lightly, the drops visible in the yellow beams of the halted vehicle headlights.
Engines are running, growling in the night. Onlookers watch, wondering what to do.
Call an ambulance?
The amber glow of the street lamps illuminate a most catastrophic scene outside Elgin Library.
The ambulance had been responding to a recent call when a foolish driver had come speeding round the corner of the Library building, and had collided head on with the oncoming vehicle. Not only this, but a couple of pedestrians had ran out in front of the driver to try and stop him from hitting the ambo, and had got caught in the sudden crash. One pedestrian had been knocked aside and had (in comparison with other casualties) "gotten off lightly"; she sat at the side of the road, in shock and nursing a bleeding, broken arm. The blood was gushing, and it soaked her hoodie as she sat in dumbfounded silence, not knowing what to do. Her friend however, lay limply between the snouts of the two vehicles, after bouncing off the bonnet of the ambulance and the car. The headlights highlighted her pale, bruised and broken body. She wasn't unconscious - not yet anyway - but unable to move, she remained lying helplessly on the wet cobbled road.
The driver of the car hadn't been wearing his seat belt, and had hit his head off the dashboard as his car came screeching to a halt. Across his forehead stretched an impressive laceration, which dripped with thick red blood. It was only sheer luck that he hadn't been catapulted from his seat behind the wheel.
Within the ambulance sat the pair of medics. The driver suffered a badly bleeding, broken nose and was in shock with what had just happened. Black bruisies ringed her eyes and blood stained her pale skin. Her associate sat beside her, who, in putting her hands out to stop her from flying through the windscreen, had shattered her wrist, and a section of bone was now sharply protruding through her flesh.
The scene was one of despair, desperation, and blood. A lot of it.
Onlookers gazed at the picture in awe and horror. How could this have happened? Sheer carelessness of the car driver, or of the ambulance driver too?



......



I lay shivering on the wet, damp concrete. I was trying so hard not to shiver. It ruined the effect. It was such a surreal experience, lying at the wheels of an ambulance. The headlights of Red Echo 8 glared down on me, like spotlights. Appropriate, seeing as I needed to turn on the acting skills any minute soon.
Our driver of the ambo stuck her head out of the door; "Here, Sarah, it's like that episode of Casualty that was on a couple of weeks ago! I feel like Dixie, but I didn't high five anyone!"
I laughed and agreed. The scenario really did resemble Casualty (for those of you who saw the first episode of "Farmhead Menace") when the girl had been struck down by the speeding ambulance. Only in our instance, we had a car thrown in for extra drama too.
In the car sat another member of our team, who modelled a most wonderful laceration which was filled with more wood filler and fake blood than you could shake a stick at.
Along with our ambo driver (who was beginning to slightly resemble Dracula, with her panda eyes and blood-stained chops) sat another fellow first aider, with a piece of polestyrene sticking out of her wrist to act as a bone, which had also been covered in fake blood for added effect. Beyond the two vehicles sat Raffia on a bench, who had unintentionally ended up covering her hoodie in red food colouring, and decided to just go with it cos it looked good.
We sat in our various positions, and waited for our saviours to appear.
Bishopmill's local chav population turned up for a while to watch the show - another contibuting factor to our scenario feeling like Casualty:Live and On Tour!
If they had started a riot, the BBC would have sued us for copyright infringement.
Thankfully the chav gang stood back most of the time, a part from trying to get our attention and generally nosying into what was going on.
What was quite funny was that some of them were generally concerned at first that it was a real accident. Same goes with a few members of the public who passed by; I remember one guy in particular - who looked to be a bit of a business man - walked by, did a double glance, studied the scene with a look of real anxiety on his face, and then walked away, still throwing the odd glance over his shoulder to double check that it wasn't real. I have a feeling that one day someone will inevitably call for an ambulance, out of the goodness of their hearts, only to watch as two irritated paramedics are turned away because it's only a practice scenario and nothing more. One day, it will happen.
Anyway, finally the Advanced Motor Institute folk came forth from the library where one of our RC lot had been giving a talk on the basics of first aid. It was now their turn to save our souls.
Basically what ensued their arrival was a lot of panic and anxiety as they nervously treated us to the best of their abilities. It was like that evening in March all over again, except the difference is we're not going back to Manchester NA tomorrow. Sadly. (Confused? Look back to previous blog posts in March).
Which makes me reflect on how much things change within the limited time of 8 months. But that's a thought for another post.
I have to say, I'm pretty chuffed with how the whole thing went. It was really successful, and I can't be too rusty with the acting skills these days, cos the people who treated me were totally freaked by how believeable I was. Saying that, I would have been freaked with the whole thing if I had been them, being entirely new to first aid with limited experience. The whole scenario was very realistic, and good fun to act out!
I nearly giggled to myself at one point when I heard a woman shout, "Someone call an ambulance, because the bugger is this one is actually involved!"

So members of the public, if you should go down to the park one night, and are sure for a big surprise when you come across a Red Cross ambo and a car which look to have crashed, and there are people lying "injured" all over the place, think before you take out your mobile phone and dial 999. We don't mind if you come by and look for a while just to double check, because it gives us something to laugh about later on. It also means you won't go calling ambulances unnessecarily and then having to face two pissed off paramedics.
Just remember; our Red Cross ambo drivers aren't that shoddy.
Well, not all the time anyway.