I had never seen a dead body before.
I had been qualified only a couple of months and had, up till now, managed to avoid a fatality of any kind. We signed on to our night shift and all was well, then the call came – “59361, 999 call. Male fallen from the 4th-floor window.”. “this is it!”.
My first sight of a dead body, and it’s going to be gruesome.
I was attending that night so it was my job to deal with the patient, or what might be left of him. My partner, a veteran, read the terror on my face and began to rib me a bit. I was getting nervous, but this was part of the job, I had to get through this.
Further details began to come through as we sped to the scene. It was a block of flats we both knew, and the ground below was concrete. “middle-aged African male. Fallen out of the fourth floor”. There was little chance he could survive that.
The ribbing continued, my nerves grew.