Last night I attended two drink related incidents which demonstrated that alcoholism is not a problem determined by any class distinctions and that class is not necessarily a case of wealth versus poverty.
90% of what I do as a paramedic involves dealing with non-emergency situations. I had no idea of this before I became a paramedic and God knows if I had been aware of it, and the shocking salaries (less than the national average), I wouldn’t have touched this career with a barge pole. Quite simply, the rare occasions when I feel that I have really made a difference to someone who deserved and needed paramedic help are way to few and far between to make up for the daily crap we have to deal with. I find the calls to fuck-witted people less and less funny with each shift. I do not suffer fools gladly, and between hopelessly dim-witted managers, people calling who don’t need us and have no common sense or idea of community responsibility (i.e. not wasting our time and very likely delaying us from reaching people who really do) I find myself surrounded by them. My patience for the job is running diaphanously thin.
The first call was to a pair of piss artists living on incapacity benefits in a run-down council owned flat in a local, sought-after market town. Having downed a few cans of lager which had been paid for by hard pressed council tax payers like me in return for absolutely nothing from these wasters, one had stood up, stumbled on the can strewn, filthy floor and landed cleanly on her chin, opening it up with a fairly deep laceration. The pair of them were quite friendly and sociable when we arrived. I guess this is because they enjoy a gifted life of living and drinking at the expense of others. I think perhaps it would make me happy too, for a while at least… Satellite TV, cigarettes, beer, lodgings, food and bills…not a care in the world.
I wondered at their incapacity. Both have no problem moving. Either could have done manual work if nothing else and also who gives them enough not only to live but to party!
We tried in vain to get her to go to hospital and were declined. Who would get them home? Not us we said. And if you have spent all your cash on booze and fags, that’s your problem, I thought. Why call an ambulance if you will then decline hospital? Here is the key point in this meeting though. At one point, the man of the house offered us a drink; an ice cold lager on a hot night. Remember this. We declined obviously. But we were offered it all the same. After a long time trying to convince the patient to go, I decided she’d had enough chances to agree and that it was time for us to leave and head off, making ourselves available to someone needier. We are often delayed in backing up single responders helping critically ill or injured patients by such…people… who mock the idea of humans as an intelligent species…
Later the same evening we were called as an emergency to a woman lying on the steps at the front door of a mansion house in the very same market town. On arrival, we asked her, was she hurt. The answer was no. She was drunk and surrounded by three adults all of whom were sober. It is beyond me what made them call an ambulance without first seeing whether or not there was anything wrong. I’m sure we have all come pretty close to this at some point or other. You come home drunk (maybe way back as a teenager), can’t find your keys in the dark garden and think, well, this hard path looks just about the most comfortable place in the world for a little nap. And when your friends find you, even if they are drunk themselves, they somehow remember it isn’t good to sleep like that on the step, and in some kind of drunken committee approach manage to check you’re okay, coax you to your feet (or maybe just your knees) and herd you at least as far as the hall way, where someone flings a coat or perhaps just a hapless cat over you before collapsing in their bed, or your bed or the kitchen sink or something.
Well these people had done no such thing. Without even checking to see whether an ambulance was really needed, they called. Because they are fuckwits. Or perhaps because manual handling is something they pay their taxes to have suckers like us do… I’m not sure which.
We pretty soon had this uninjured and well woman into her grand drawing room. And her son, a strapping lad who, with the help of the neighbour also present could easily have got this woman into the house without us, without wasting our time and risking the lives of others in the community, stood in the doorway impassive. He stood in the door next to the kitchen. And not once did this inbred toff fucker even hint that we might like a drink at this early hour, a tea or coffee for tired and helpful people while we filled in the paperwork for his lush lowlife mother, who treated us as a service that she had a god given right to call upon at any old bollocks whim. Afterall, she said, we're all entitled to a night out! Yes, but perhaps you should budget for the £250 of tax payers money it cost to get her over her doorstep.
Both cases involved drunk women, wasted resources and risked the lives of those 10% who might really need us, the ones that give me satisfaction and pride and make me genuinely care.
But though these cases were at either end of the social spectrum, one poor the other rich, one educated the other not, the people with real class turned out to be those who looked the least classy. Those who should have had manners and humility, education and sensitivity to others were the most selfish and had the least excuse for us being there.
And I’m caught in the middle. Unable to say what I think to either except through an anonymous blog and it’s getting me down…
