Cruising down the road in a friend‘s car, just at the start of the evening rush hour. And we stopped in traffic; because there was a bus blocking the road. Cars between us and the bus overtook that bus, but it pulled out just as we came up to it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a rag doll lying on the pavement just by a bus shelter. I might have missed her, as we were going pretty fast, but she was wearing scarlet trousers and a green coat. I asked Jerry to stop, and ran back. That’s because I do First Aid, and it seemed like the right thing to do, leap out and see what I could do to help.
You know how it seems at the time : you ask the two women standing over the casualty “Do you know First Aid?” and no-one looks at you. One is busy chatting on her mobile ‘phone, the other is staring at the one on the ‘phone. It seems like minutes pass, but it was only ten seconds. The ambulance screams its arrival, and I leave the casualty (she is quietly having the end of a Grand Mal epileptic seizure. No-one is cradling her head, in case she bangs it on the pavement).
I speak to the Para-Medic getting out of the ambulance; I tell her the score and then walk away. There was now nothing for me to do. The teen-aged boys and girls huddled at the far end of the bus shelter have been texting and chatting quietly, and I guess they’ll carry on after the ambulance leaves.
I feel that it’s the little actions we take that make a difference. Not to anyone else, just to ourselves. What if I hadn’t asked my friend to stop the car. The casualty would still have been OK, wouldn’t she . . .
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