COLD STATION
I stepped off the train and merged with the crowd as they shuffled into another Monday morning. I adjusted the strap of my backpack and my thoughts were of breakfast, coffee, the day ahead. The crowd thickened as we approached the ticket barriers and people put on their commuting faces as they were forced to rub shoulders. A lady in a grey coat was pulling a small travel suitcase along and the man behind her tripped over it and fell crashing to the floor. I felt a small twinge of embarrassment for him but was already moving to one side so that I could step past.
After a couple of seconds I thought it a bit odd that the man still hadn't made any move to get up, he just lay there on the floor. As I got closer I saw he was laid flat out on his back, eyes closed, his face quickly turning from deep red to purple. My heart fell like a stone and my mouth suddenly became very dry. People were stepping around him and over him in their haste to get to work, switch on their computers and get on with their day. Some of them looked irritated at having to negotiate yet another minor obstruction, but I knew that something was very wrong. I knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Are you all right?" I said.
There was no response.
I shook him gently.
"Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"
Still nothing.
This wasn't a clumsy commuter or an early drunk, this man was having a heart attack, right there on the cold stone floor of the ticket concourse of the train station.
A woman in a red coat kneeled down on the other side of him.
"Is he alright? she asked. "Does he need help?"
She was small, neat. Mid-forties with a short, dark bob and clothes that looked like she was heading into a meeting somewhere. I nodded quickly.
"Put your coat under his head" I said.
I looked down at his face. He had already turned from purple to blue and he still wasn't moving. He was big, with a substantial gut and a thick neck that bulged a little over his shirt collar. He had a thick mustache that was greying a little and I could see that he'd nicked himself shaving that morning. He looked like a smoker, like someone who'd enjoyed one too many pies in his lifetime.
"Don't worry, mate, you'll be all right" I said. "We'll get you an ambulance straight away."
I undid his tie, tugging it loose and undoing a couple of buttons on his shirt. The woman beside me handed me her coat, neatly folded. I tucked it under his head, and then I remembered that you were supposed to make sure that the airway was clear, so I tilted his head back and looked in his mouth to make sure his tongue wasn't blocking his throat. The man made an involuntary sort of grunt, as if air was escaping, and as I tilted his head back I saw one of his nostrils filling with blood. It quickly overflowed and trickled back along the bridge of his nose to puddle in the hollow of his eye-socket. I got some on my hands.
The woman made a noise somewhere between a gasp and an exclamation - a shocked little "Oh!" that made her sound like a little girl.
From the corner of my eye I saw that someone else had stopped to help, a man in his fifties with a dark jacket and white hair who crouched by the fallen man's feet. I told him to call an ambulance.
"Hang on in there, mate. We're here and you're going to be just fine. We've got help on the way, so you just concentrate on breathing for now, all right? Just try and take a deep breath."
But there was no breath, deep or otherwise. The man lay there, a helpless slab of meat as we strangers patted his cheek and tried to get a response out of him. The crowd flowed past, a dark river of people, a flurry of striding legs and twirling coats and faces, faces, faces going past. All of it was a blur. The man with the dark jacket was talking to the emergency services on his phone, rattling off details. The man on the floor hadn’t moved a muscle. He didn’t look as if he was aware of anything around him.
As soon as I knew that an ambulance was on its way, I got up and left.
I don’t know why I left, but I felt that there was nothing more I could do. I stood up and left the man lying on the floor with the woman and the man in the dark jacket still kneeling beside him. I walked to work with my shoulders hunched, feeling slightly numb and faint. When I got to work I went straight to the bathroom and washed the blood from my hands, scrubbing hard under the freezing water. I splashed some water on my face and took a couple of deep breaths.
Then I went into the staff-room, made myself a strong cup of tea and sat and thought about my father…
No comments:
Post a Comment