Our patient lay on our ambulance bed.  In broken English he pleaded with us.

“Please, give me something.  Now!  The pain . . .”

We assured him we were doing all we could.  And we were.  He’d tried the Entenox (laughing gas) but couldn’t get to grips with using it.  Now we were administering Morphine, 2.5mg at a time.

He’d relax for a minute or two and then start up again.

“Oh . . . the pain, please, its not working!”
“Its ok, we’ll be at the hospital soon”  I was giving treatment en route.  The patient started sobbing.
“I’ll never walk again . . . its over”
“Stop being a baby”  I joked, “Its all fixable”  I hoped I was right.

His two friends sat in the ambulance also and relayed his personal details to me.  When we arrived my crew mate started lowering the tail-lift to bring the bed out.  The patient wailed again.

“I’M DYING!!!!  . . . . PLEASE HELP ME!!!”
We smiled paternally and continued our comforting.
“Stop mincing Darius*, for goodness sake”  I rolled my eyes.
“You’re being silly now”  My crew mate added.
Even his friends joined in the chorus and they laughed loudly at him.
“You’re being a girl Darius”

We moved the patient to ressuss where I handed over to a Doctor.  Darius had been running from gang and had jumped off a six foot wall where he had landed “badly”.  His right foot was bent at a right angle inward and had slid a few inches up his leg.  The skin was broken slightly and had bled a small amount.  At the very least it was severely dislocated.

Thankfully, he had good circulation and sensation to the foot otherwise we might of had to apply traction on scene.

We came back later to find our patient heavily sedated and his foot back in the right place.  A group of student nurses were giggling and chuckling to each other as they were putting his leg in plaster.  The mess was incredible!

The doctor showed me the X-ray and explained using technical terms.

“He’s mashed his foot good and proper.  Complete dislocation, fracture of the Tib and Fib and the ligaments are nicely mangled”

My crew mate and I went back to the ambulance and sipped our tea.  After a few seconds she piped up.

“Hmmmm, that’s got to have hurt a bit eh”

Binder.

*not his real name