An absolutely easy shift last night.  One patient was a little old man who was “not right” and had “vague eyes”.  His wife was terribly worried about him, but I suspect that there was little seriously wrong with him.  We then got sent to a two week old baby with a flaky scalp.  Once more a nice an easy job, where we didn’t even have to carry the patient.

Then we were sent to “54 year old male with chest pain”, the call had come from a public telephone box, so I wasn’t too surprised when we received the update “Patient has been drinking”.  The area is a local haunt of our homeless alcoholics – there are public toilets, a nice churchyard to hide and sleep in and a number of off-licenses to buy their cheap tramp-juice.

Both ourselves and the FRU spent some time driving back and forth trying to find him, with no luck.

We got back on station before being sent on a similar call in the same area – I suddenly had a brainwave.

“I bet it’s John Smith”, I said, “He’s an alcoholic homeless guy, normally as good as gold, but he calls us when his hostel kicks him out for drinking”.

We got an update – ‘Patients name is John Smith’.

Once more we chased around the area looking for him, at least this time I knew who we were looking for.  Once more he had given us the slip.  I’ve never known him to act like this.

Still – next time I see him I’ll have a little word in his shell-like…