I always felt sorry for the poor beggar, his wife and two kids had left him after his alcohol changed him spiralling out of control, becoming although he were a ghost inheriting the reminiscence of the past of a previous loving family man. Yet 3 later it’s rumoured that he still carries his ex-wife’s picture around with him in his wallet, as he drifts in and out of consciousness from the days of drinking it’s believed he thinks that his family are on holiday, he says so himself , I’ve heard him as he shouts it on the streets as he blunders around.
But as I stepped to the gates enclosing the edge of the pub I realised that something was wrong since the few minutes since the nicotine had first reached my taste buds, the man who had been standing,(if you could call it that more like staggering ) was now holding his shoulder , crumpled over and grimacing in pain. Urging my muscles to work from the sleep they had been lulled into by the cold, they began tingling as they woke.
I jumped the fence and forced my legs to move in a fast jog to the man who was leaning against a telephone box. As I reached him I began to see close up the wrinkled forehead that creased in pain, the sweat from the drunken night and the fresh beads on his brow appearing from the new seizing pain that had suffocated him. His hands shaking, one clutching his left arm in a bid to perhaps subdue or compress the shear pain he was experiencing. I had in the meanwhile fumbled my phone out of my pocket and had shakily dialled the emergency services.
I told the man who was now a worryingly pale white, so much so that I could see the thin veins running across his damp forehead. His lips almost blue, each breath sounded shallow and suffocated and as his whole body shook I tried to hold him as gently as possible as though at any moment he could break and just fall apart. I felt so helpless, what could I do to help this man.
People began to come out of the pub as they heard the dying man’s wails of an insufferable pain. I tried to urge them to stay back, to give this man some space and to not cluster around him though he was just a bit of entertainment for their night. I was so frustrated, I couldn’t think.
By now the man’s wails had been reduced to gurgles.
The sirens arrived and the crowd were hindering the ambulance team because they were cramped together the men had to select a path in which to worm their way through.
Moments passing by felt like fifteen times longer. I held my breath and stood there, I had never felt so pathetic and useless till then, as I watched on at this stranger being to undergo defibrillation.
They hadn’t been able to save him, suspected heart attack, combination of stress and alcohol is the supposed predominant cause. I sank to my knees as the ambulance drove the lifeless body of the addicted man away.
In a haze I limped back the pub. As I reached the entrance I saw the bin, reaching into to my pocket I felt the all too familiar plastic packet, i grabbed the packet of cigarettes and threw them in the bin with disgust.
