Now, when you’re going on a first date you understandably want to look your best; clean, well presented clothes, good hair cut, nice smelling eau-de-toilette . . . and perhaps trimming the pubic hair on your testicles with a pair of scissors!
That’s what our next job came down as; ‘scrotum cut with scissors – Red 2’. The full story was explained later of course, but the gist of it was he was “preparing” himself for a first date.
I’m not sure how to think about this one . . . even now. On the one hand this poor sod had just cut his bollocks in a vain attempt to get laid . . . I can’t help but feel some form or respect for his endeavour. On the other hand, he had the ‘balls’ to call for an ambulance AND suggest we meet him outside his flat – so as not to cause unnecessary embarrassment to himself and his family.
As we pulled into the courtyard surrounded by council flats I spied an FRU in front of us already dealing with the sheepish looking patient. The patient looked horrified at the approach of our large luminescent yellow truck, especially with all our blue lights still flashing and drawing attention to our presence. The FRU, noticing the patient’s tormented look of terror motioned for us to turn off our lights. Unfortunately, as I leant down to turn them off, my foot accidentally pressed the siren pedal.
It has to be said that the surrounding buildings offered up excellent acoustics to the sudden onslaught of whirring that now bellowed from our flashing truck. In my blind panic I tried to switch them off by ‘double-tapping’ the pedal. I only succeeded of course, in switching the tone to the faster more intense sound. And, stamping on the pedal once again only made the noise switch into the most annoying fast pace siren there is – which EVERYONE hates. Giving up on the pedal I started lashing out at the button to turn off everything . . . unfortunately (and rather coincidentally), the bull horn switch sits underneath this and rather predictably, I hit this by mistake instead. On a positive note, when the bull horn is sounded the sirens are silenced . . . on a negative note however, the bull horn offers a blast of noise which is almost deafening.
Inevitably, Marvin saved the day by reaching over and calmly pressing the correct button and eventually the truck fell into a silent darkness. We slowly peered up and over the dash board at the patient . . . who stood staring, jaw dropped and eyes almost popping out of his sockets. Behind him and holding onto the side of his car was the FRU, doubled up in hysterics.
I wound down the window and leant out gingerly.
“. . . um, sorry” I smiled weakly.
Despite our best efforts at reassurance, our patient insisted on conveying to hospital. His concern was based around not being able to have staunched the bleeding by the second tissue. So, after all the normal checks were completed, we turned the truck about and headed off . . . much to the bemusement of the hundreds of residents that had stuck their heads out their windows to see what was happening.
And so the job ended with not only ourselves having to learn of his plight – but pretty much the whole A&E department at hospital. Still, I’d like to think that eventually his first date went well and that he was able to make a good first impression.
Binder