Love You Dead

48 Sunday 1 March

The brightly lit skyline of Brighton was dead ahead of them in the clear night sky, as the twin-jet, black and white liveried MD 902 Explorer helicopter, flying on visual at 155 mph, tracked the A23 south. Johnny Spelt, the pilot, observed the familiar night landmarks of Shoreham power station to the west, the Palace Pier, as he still liked to call it, and the Brighton Wheel to the east of it. It was easy to see the entire shoreline — the long necklace of street lights, beyond which was the pitch dark of the English Channel.

He lived in Brighton and knew the geography of the city intimately. A short distance in front of the Wheel was a whole cluster of flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Liaising on the radio with the police inspector on the ground, he descended to 500 feet and hovered.

Below they could see a car embedded in a lamp post, part of which had fallen on the vehicle’s roof, with a cordon round the scene. Inside the cordon was an ambulance, a fire engine and several police cars.

‘Golf Kilo Sierra Sierra Alpha,’ crackled the inspector’s voice.

‘Golf Kilo Sierra Sierra Alpha,’ Spelt responded.

‘Please land in East Brighton Park, there’s a car waiting to transport you to the scene.’

As he spoke, Spelt could see below them to the left the wide, dark area of the park at the bottom of Wilson Avenue. He pulled on his night-vision goggles, wiggling the strap around his headset, and looked down, studying the area carefully. Apart from a figure some distance away exercising a dog with a ball-thrower, and the flashing blue lights of the waiting police car, the area was deserted. Plenty of room for them. He removed the goggles and switched on the helicopter’s powerful search light, immediately able to see the greensward of the park.

Two minutes later they touched down. With the rotors still turning, Dee Springer and Declan McArthur unclipped their safety harnesses, removed their headsets and hung them up. Then, clutching their bags of medical kit, they jumped out onto the grass, clambered into the rear of the waiting police car and were driven the half-mile to the accident scene.

They were met at the cordon by a paramedic who briefed them quickly.

‘His head and legs are trapped and the fire crew is cutting him free. He appears to have severe head and spinal injuries as well as what looks like internal haemorrhaging.’

The paramedic raised the blue and white police tape and they ducked under and ran across to the car, pulling on protective gloves and barely glancing at several police officers close by. The driver’s door had been cut free and was lying on the road, and two Fire and Rescue officers were crouched down, cutting through the front of the roof with a huge hydraulic pincer. Inside the car was a thin man, all in black, wearing a black beanie and leather gloves, his neck twisted. Dee Springer shone her torch in. The man was barely conscious. His face was the pallid colour common in any trauma victim, but blood was leaking from his eyes, nose and mouth. He was breathing in short, clearly painful bursts.

‘Fubar Bundy,’ she said under her breath. The gallows humour of her profession. It stood for ‘Fucked up beyond all recovery but unfortunately not dead yet’.

Declan kneeled and spoke to the driver. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Lurrrrr,’ the driver responded.

‘I’m a doctor. What’s your name?’

‘Lurrrshhhh.’

‘Can you move your arms?’

The driver raised them a fraction and half closed his hands.

Declan heard the crackle of a radio and a siren wailing in the distance, coming closer. ‘We’ll have you out in a few minutes and we’re going to fly you to hospital.’

Normal practice with trauma victims was to inject them with a ketamine-based anaesthetic, to restrict the capillaries and reduce blood loss. Clearly some major internal bleeding was occurring.

He peeled off the man’s left glove, to take his pulse. Then stared in shock for some moments, as he looked at the man’s hand in the beam of his colleague’s torch. Blood was leaking out under his fingernails. He curled his finger round the man’s wrist and quickly found the median nerve. He’d been expecting him to have a weak pulse, but to his surprise it was hammering, dangerously. He counted, checking against his watch.

One hundred and eighty, he estimated broadly after counting for twenty seconds. Enough to kill someone with a heart condition or give them a stroke. He looked back at the man’s bleeding eyes. His pupils were hugely dilated.

‘Have you been taking any drugs?’ he asked, gently.

‘Lurrrrrrrshhh. Lurrrrshhh.’ Without warning, he coughed up a large globule of bright blood which spattered on the white, sagging airbag.

The doctor’s brain was racing. The man must have taken something — but what? Brighton was a party town. He’d attended people in a bad way here before, clubbers who’d swallowed a whole cocktail of stuff they’d bought from street dealers. But he’d never before seen symptoms quite like this.

‘Can you tell me what you’ve taken tonight?’ he asked, firmly but calmly.

‘Shnufog,’ the man murmured. His voice was almost drowned out by the grinding sound of the hydraulic cutter.

‘Could you say that again?’

‘Frog.’

‘Frog?’ Dee said, very gently, kneeling beside him. ‘Did you see a frog?’ she coaxed.

The whites of his eyes were veined with red and blood ran, like tears, from between his lids. ‘Schfrog. Schnake.’

‘You saw a frog and a snake? Have you taken any drugs tonight?’

The man’s eyes were closing. Declan took his pulse again. The rate was lower this time. He wasn’t sure whether this was a good or bad sign. He’d never encountered anything like this. He asked his colleague for the syringe and ketamine.

‘Shankle,’ the man said, suddenly. ‘Shankle.’

‘Stay with us!’ Dee said. ‘Please stay awake and tell us as much as you can remember. What have you taken?’

‘I think he said ankle,’ Declan said. He looked at the man’s face. ‘Is that it? Your ankle?’

But his eyes were shut now and he no longer responded.

The doctor leaned into the footwell, with his torch, pulled up the man’s trouser legs and pushed his socks down. He could see swelling and bruising round the right ankle, and two tiny pinprick marks.

‘Have you injected yourself?’ he asked, but got no reply.

He then checked his pulse again. It was dropping at an alarming rate. Dee tapped him on the shoulder and signalled for him to move out of earshot of the patient.

As he stepped a couple of paces back from the car, Dee Springer said, ‘Look, I think he’s been poisoned — either taken some drug or eaten something. I heard of symptoms like this from someone who’d eaten a puffer fish that hadn’t been prepared properly. Could it be something highly toxic like that?’

‘Take a look at his ankle. I think he’s injected something or possibly been bitten by something very small — and I don’t know what to give him,’ Declan said. Normally calm, able to cope with any victim however bad his or her condition, he seemed close to panic at this moment. The possibility was also going through his mind that this man might have some kind of tropical disease that could be contagious. If so, there was no way they could take him in the helicopter and risk contaminating it for future patients.

Dee leaned close to the victim. ‘Sir, we’re going to help you get better. But we need you to tell us what’s happened. Did you eat something tonight? Have you taken any drugs? Has something bitten you? Have you been abroad recently?’

There was no response.

She stepped back and said to the doctor, ‘We need to get him to the poisons unit at Guy’s in London — that’s my view.’

Declan checked the man’s pulse again. It had dropped to thirty-five. One hundred and eighty down to thirty-five in the space of minutes. Guy’s was an hour’s flying time away. It would be close to 10 p.m. by the time they got him there. They would radio the patient’s symptoms ahead of their arrival, giving the hospital time to get a specialist team on standby. But if he had a tropical disease, which might be contagious, could they take the risk of him contaminating the helicopter?

They had to give it a go, he decided. They always gave it a go. And, more often than they sometimes dared to believe, they succeeded.

Those were the sweetest moments. The reason they all did this job.