Alcohol

This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.

I think it has been a while since I wrote about alcohol. Last weekend I was doing a 24 hour paramedic shift again, and of course, one patient stood out.

We were just returning to home base and after a few minutes past six (am) we get called to an angry and rambling drunk person at a nightclub in our mission range.

As self protection is before protecting of others the police was alarmed too.

We arrived at the site and as almost always the police wasn’t there yet. So far nothing special. The security team of the nightclub lead us to the guy. He was already standing up straight again. I saw a large stain of blood were he was probably lying before.

Also a large laceration was visible on his head. The blood did already dry so he must have injured himself a while ago (at least an hour or more I think).

As we approached him with caution and asked him what’s up, we quickly knew that he wasn‘t going to cooperate with us. No definite answers to what happened or how he was feeling currently. We tried our best to convince him to let us help him which he denied furiously.

Minutes pass and the police arrives. I quickly explain the situation to them and say it would be a really got idea if he would come with us. As the police arrived we noticed he got more and more angry.

The policemen start asking him questions and also try to convince him to go inside our ambulance vehicle and get checked out at the hospital. Sadly he kept denying the offer.

The thing is, if you‘re drunk enough you basically loose the right to say you don‘t want to be treated by us (the medical staff), as you might not understand the situation enough.

So we were standing there, being watched by a bunch of other, unrelated, people who just waited for their taxis home.

Maybe half an hour passes again and he starts to walk around and starts taking pictures of the security staff, the policeman and us (at least photographing medical staff is illegal). The he starts to wander off. Obviously we had to follow him and also the policemen.

The following and convincing keeps going for about an hour. We are now maybe one or two Kilometers away from the original point where we „found“ him. I was keeping close contact with one of the police guys and we thought about what to do as we can‘t leave him here.

The police took a look around to find a girlfriend the guy was always referring to, but didn‘t find one. Side note: the girlfriend could have taken responsibility for him and the case would be done for us. It would basically mean that if something bad happens to him (because of the injury), we won‘t be responsibly anymore and she would be in charge.

So we have been following this guy around in our vehicle for more than one hour now. He still keeps taking pictures and swearing around.

Then again I consult with the policemen. He wasn‘t aggressive enough to take him into custody so will still can‘t force him into our vehicle and into an appropriate hospital. Suddenly the guy starts to run in a closeby field. We quickly managed to follow him a little bit before he was out of sight.

Back at hour vehicles I contact our dispatch on what to do now. With them and the police we decide we can‘t do anymore. A bad feeling starts to rise in me and my co driver, as we think about what could happen.

After a few more minutes we resign and drive back to our home base (we were already way over our duty schedule). The policemen took a note of the name of my co driver and me in case a complaint from that guy comes up.

I hope he slept his intoxication out somewhere and drove home. I wander what he will do when the bill for our „service“ will arrive.