Everything began on a Tuesday in November. Just a normal working day for me and if I'd been sensible and taken my break on station then nothing in my life would have changed. But I didn't because I preferred my own company spending thirty minutes by myself reading a book eating my lunch. Yep antisocial is my middle name.
The job suited me down to the ground as I got to drive by myself from job to job as they came in. More often than not after I'd done a job I'd be sent to a likely area to wait for my next. Anyway it meant I could park up in the middle of nowhere and just sit quietly which was fantastic.
Basically my job was the best bit of my life because it limited the need to interact with other people to purely work related situations apart from the beginning and end of my shifts. At the end of the shift it's be off home to my wife and our increasingly fractious home life, so as I said the job was the best bit of my life... It wasn't as if we hated each other it was more we'd been together for such a long time but we didn't have the impetus to split up.
That Tuesday was one of those late autumn early winter days that are clear and dry with bright sunshine but pretty chilly. Now if you're not from the UK pretty chilly here means a few degrees above freezing so everyone's wrapped up in jackets and looking at winter sun brochures at their desks. If you're from anywhere more north it was balmy shirt sleeve weather. So there I am sitting in the car reading and watching the world go by when a job comes in.
It's a pretty insistent noise when the radio goes off and it has to be cancelled and acknowledged within a few seconds otherwise there's potential for an "chat without coffee" with your line manager. So I do that, start the car, look at my screen for the details and wait for Sally sat Nav to wake up and tell me where I'm off to.
You'd think I'd know where I was going after 10 years but it's pretty rural round here and I could be sent to a village that's four houses a mile down a dead end lane to a city that's got 2 million inhabitants and I cover an area of several thousand square miles. This time I'm in luck and the jobs about 4 miles away, unfortunately it's the middle of nowhere so it's tractor dodging time.
Now the car I drove for work is a normal estate with all wheel drive. Where it differs are the blue lights on the roof and grill and green and yellow markings all over. So once those lights are on it's fully licensed hooligan time. Obviously, not really, but I don't have to keep the speed limits and people are meant to get out of my way. Although the majority of the public seem to think that wing and rear view mirrors are an optional extra.
So there I am driving along and off goes the radio, "beep beep" and that's bloody annoying as I'm trying to concentrate on missing the car driven by the blind deaf driver in front and avoid the oncoming traffic as I overtake. "734 receiving over" I say as I pull the lever behind the steering wheel. At the same time I pull back onto the correct side of the line in front of the car I've just overtaken who only now realises what was happening.
"Control, 734 we have a confused report of a unwell male outside a barn. No back up available. We're trying to free up a crew... We've been unable to contact the reporter but we'll keep trying and pass and further details as we get them" so says my dispatcher. Now I know she's being truthful but we both know there's no crew coming anytime soon. It's the middle of nowhere and the nearest vehicles going to be bloody miles away, possibly in a different county and mobile signal is notorious unreliable round here.
"734 acknowledged, no back up available, I'll assess and stand down backup if not required". This is a normal job for me. I know it sounds bad to have somebody collapsed but it's astonishing how many people faint at the sight of blood after a paper cut so I wasn't too concerned. I ran through which bags I'd need first and a quick mental refresh of the likely causes and what I'd need to do to counter them. All useless of course because each job throws up a new problem. However this was going to be a job like nothing I'd had before.
I pulled onto the farm track leading to a big gray metal barn. The track wasn't too bad with only some major pot holes and the barn was one of those metallic industrial looking constructions you see in many fields. Several rusting shipping containers with random piles of failed agricultural equipment completed the scene. Definitely not the sort of thing a London based banker would buy to convert to a 5 bedroom house with a pool out the back. I drove onto the concrete hard standing and looked for my patient.
Usually there's someone waving madly but not today. Today there was a bloke lying on the ground all dressed in white apart from the bits that were bright red from the blood leaking everywhere. This was when it got really bad so I rapidly put in a priority call to control and jumped out grabbing as many bags as I could carry and ran over. I looked at him looking for wounds and assessing ABC's. To put it mildly he wasn't going to need my help as he'd come apart. There was a mobile phone lying beside him that had seen better days and I suspect that's why control hadn't got any more details
Now I looked up and saw that the barn door was open so I got up and walked over and looked inside the 2 storey barn. First thing I noticed was it wasn't a barn inside but a large sectioned off room. Second thing I noticed was the bodies all over equally as red as body I was beside. "Fuck" I muttered and leaving my bags I ran back to my car. You see the issue in my job is to save life but to that I have to be alive. The rule is two down get out otherwise you risk joining them.
The car was rammed into reverse and I shot backwards down the track. At this point control decided to respond to my priority message and I virtually shouted into the radio "734 declaring major incident, repeat major incident! Advice multiple casualties possibly all fatal unknown cause! Require HART. Police. Fire to my location. Fuck!"
Now that isn't radio protocol and could get me a bollocking but justified as I realised despite my best efforts I had blood on my knees which would be soaking through to my skin. The problem was my best guess was an infective or chemical weapon cause. Control took this time to respond with "confirm major incident your location. Fire Police and HART informed. Can you confirm you're ok?". There was a bit of a wobble in her voice but nothing to mine previously.
It was only going to get worse as I felt a heat building up inside me and my heart beat became noticeably irregular. "No I'm not - need assistance now!". My vision started to go so I slammed my foot on the brake but confused and terrified I forgot the clutch and the engine stalled. My thoughts were just "fuck it" and I reached to the glove box.
Now in there were a variety of injectors that we were supposed to use on ourselves in the event of a chemical attack and this was the time. My vision was purpling out and my hearing was just roaring noises so I knew I was losing consciousness so my thought process was a bit suspect. The last thing I remember was sticking each auto injector against my thigh until they were all gone then that was it.
Now I've been told what happened next was HART turned up and had their usual argument with the fire service over who was doing what but once that was over my body was found and retrieved from my car. After they realised I wasn't actually dead just bleeding out and barely breathing resuscitation was started. A compulsory trip through an inflatable tent and much decontamination later I was taken to an actual hospital to die.
Bizarrely and despite lots of predictions of my impending death I didn't which left everyone with a problem of how to treat me. This was explained much later as I wasn't taking any notice at this time. About two weeks after that job I started showing signs of life in itu. This is where it starts to get weird.
I came to slowly. It's not like tv/cinema where one second the patient is unconscious the next they're awake and chatting. It's much more like a fever dream/major hangover combo and I only have impressions of a dark room and lots of machines. This probably lasted about a week and was time I really don't want to repeat. My first proper recollection is seeing my wife Sara sitting beside me looking tired then surprised as I said "hi". I say I said hi but it probably sounded like a frog clearing it's throat. But she realised and leant forward and kissed me crying as she did. This was the most affection she'd shown in months if not years so I was a little shocked but willing to go with it.
