The Wrong Place at the Right Time

People jump to conclusions. I don’t blame them. I probably would myself.

“Oh, Jean, it must be awful living in one of those tower blocks!”

“I don’t know how you stand it! Time they were pulled down, in my opinion.”

Well, I won’t pretend I wholly like living on the tenth floor of Branscombe Tower. I live in a constant state of low-level fretfulness about the lift. I worry about it breaking. I’m quite fit for my age, thank Goodness, but I doubt I could manage ten flights of stairs! And though I’m not exactly claustrophobic, if I have one worry that’s greater than it breaking down when I’m not in it, it’s of it breaking down when I am. Other residents have assured me that “Say what you like” (such observations often begin with say what you like) about Branscombe Tower, they can’t recall the lift ever having broken down. Still, there’s a first time for everything.

I suppose like most people I can’t get those images of that tragic fire in London back in 2017 out of my mind. But we are assured that the cladding on Branscombe Tower has passed all the safety checks and conforms to all the regulations – that it, indeed, out-performs them. In fact, it’s almost considered quite a desirable place to live.

And there are advantages to living high up, though I know that on that famous “grand scale” the tenth floor hardly counts as high. But I can look down and see, well, I won’t say for miles, but for quite a long way, and, on a clear day, out across the town and, just, to the countryside beyond, to that borderland between the two. 

I don’t have any unhappy memories of tall buildings. Quite the opposite. I still can remember when we, that’s my Mum and Dad and my little brother Arthur and I went on our first holiday abroad. Well, it wasn’t the first holiday abroad they’d been on. They’d once been to Belgium and still had photographs of them standing by the floral clock in Ostende to prove it. I wish I knew where that photo ended up. I definitely recall it was in colour, though I presume it had been colourised. Anyway, we went to Spain, to the Costa Brava, a little town called Calella, before it became very over-commercialised and a bit tacky.

  But there were some high-rise hotels there, even then, and Mum and Dad certainly couldn’t afford a villa or the like, so we were in the Hotel Bella Vista. Only lately did it occur to me that it was a bit odd, a hotel in Spain having an Italian name, but there certainly was a good view. We didn’t have a balcony, and that made me sulk a bit, but we could, being so high up, look out either to the town or to the sea if we positioned ourselves at the right angle. I was just the right age, I suppose, for that first packaged holiday abroad. I was old enough to be trusted (with warnings and instructions!) to explore a bit myself, but not quite old enough to contend with such complications as holiday romances. 

I have a fancy that we could have been on the tenth floor then, but I’d be lying if I said I was sure.

So I’m not going to turn into one of those people who moan about living in a tower block on principle. And no, it’s not that that I hate. I know hate is one of those strong, heavy-duty words you should only use for strong, heavy-duty matters. But perhaps I find it more acceptable than fear.

It’s not as if it’s the first time I’ve lived in town.  In the city even. Far from it. For a while Kevin and I even lived in London, though admittedly in the suburbs. And I used to enjoy the busy bright red buses and the people who all seemed to have a reason to be going somewhere quickly. I expect I often had reason to go somewhere quickly myself back then.

     Now, when I go down to the bottom of Branscombe Tower, in the lift that I always fear is not going to work or is going to break down, I have to steel myself. It is not so long a walk into the town centre. Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I get a cab. There seem to be hardly any buses round here apart from school buses, though there is a coach station. When I am in the centre, on the paved streets, and among the shops and offices, I sometimes feel as if I have become invisible. I fear I have turned into the kind of person who is referred to as “Oh, that nice little woman,” (even though I am not especially small in stature) “Yes, I think I might have seen her somewhere. I’m not sure.” I am no longer young enough to have something to do, or somewhere to arrive, or a schedule to keep to. My daughter Sasha, who means well, has suggested I should think about enrolling in the University of the Third Age. My friend Laura suggests I do as she does and volunteer in a local charity shop. I am so fond of Laura. When I went back into nursing when Sasha and Rob were both in full time education, she was, though a little younger, technically my superior, and that was back in the day when such things mattered more. And I realised, as everybody else did, that she didn’t suffer fools gladly (come to think of it, I’ve yet to meet anyone who did) and had very high standards. But she had no time for standing on ceremony, and did not hesitate to defer to me on matters where she thought I was more knowledgeable.  Both of those suggestions, the U3A and the volunteering, are perfectly laudable, and, I am sure, far from unpleasant things to do. But they are things I will see to in that fluid, hypothetical, tomorrow. So, I have admitted, and perhaps once you have admitted it, it is less oppressive, less of a bogeyman, that I am no longer young. In fact, frankly, no longer middle aged. I am old. But I am not old enough to be interesting. I am not old enough to attract either admiration or sympathy, though I daresay I don’t deserve the former, and hope I never require the latter, though of course, I will. Never as much as when Kevin died, though, and I very much doubt there’s a single person here in town who ever knew him. Of course, it is not impossible. Small World, as the saying goes, but it seems unlikely.

     I have turned into the kind of person who automatically apologises for being in front of a shop window when others wish to look at it, and who makes the assumption that I am in the way. One of those insignificant, unobtrusive old, but not interestingly old, women. 

     Well, now I am on the other side of that lobby that looks almost, but not quite, like a hotel reception area, and have decided I will walk today, at least this way. I am determined not to develop the old lady walk, the shuffle and mince and wobbly-stiff walk, yet I know I walk in a different manner from the one I did even a couple of years ago. I have turned, as I suppose most people do, from someone who complains and jokes about pot holes and uneven kerbstones to someone who fears them, and sees them as ambushes and hazards. I did have a fall about six months ago, though the ice was mainly to blame, and of course there’s no ice today. I only grazed my knee and felt a bit shaken, and yet it occurred to me that I will never be a person without the fear of falling anymore. Like many people (that’s one cliché that’s true) who’ve worked in hospitals I have no especial urge to end up in one as a patient, but because I have, even though I was never in orthopaedics myself, I know the possible consequences of a fall – the broken hip, the decline, the loss of independence. 

     Good God, what was that? Even caught up in my own moping thoughts, and even telling myself I didn’t dread going into town and being an anonymous, futile nobody among all the somebodies with something to do, I couldn’t miss a noise like that. The crash of metal on metal, the skid of wheels, the impact, the brief silence and then the throng of panic and activity. Two cars have crashed head on – and it seems as if their drivers and passengers are not badly hurt, but an unfortunate motorcyclist was caught, so to speak, in the crossfire.

     Someone has called the emergency services. No matter what some older folk reckon, there’s a lot to be said for mobile phones. A crowd is gathering round the motorbike rider, who is lying on the road, and is conscious, but moaning in pain. His left leg is bleeding heavily. Some have turned aside in revulsion. I think a couple have been sick. But I have heard someone, one of those people who always means well, saying, “I’ll put a tourniquet on it! To stem the bleeding!”

     How is it that it just doesn’t seem to get through that this is a very bad idea? It’s been publicised enough. The change of advice on tourniquets must have happened at least 40 years ago. But people still think they’re doing right. Well, they’re not, and I’m going to do something about it.

     I push my way to the front of the crowd, and say in a no-nonsense voice that sounds reassuringly like Laura in her most no-nonsense mood. “Please, stop doing that! It could do him great harm!”

     For a couple of seconds I am looked at as if I am a slight oddity, a little mouse who has decided it is time to squeak. “I am a nurse!” 

     Well, there might not be, and probably no bad thing, the notion of nurses as “angels” they used to be, but if one good thing came out of that awful pandemic it was that we are now regarded with more respect by almost everyone again. I am a nurse. I am not a little grey mouse of an old lady scared of falling over an uneven paving stone and apologising for blocking someone’s view when there is no need. “Oh, thank God!” someone says. Under my supervision, makeshift padding is put on the gaping wound. His pulse is racing, as anyone’s would after such a shock, but it seems strong enough. He is still conscious, and I speak gently and practically to him. I discover his name is Alan. I hope he will not plead with me, “Will I lose the leg?” I don’t think he will, I’m pretty sure he won’t, but - well, I still hope he doesn’t ask me. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover my own pulse is racing as much as Alan’s, but nobody else seems to have realised it, and I don’t intend them doing. I can still remember back in my earliest training a matron (and despite the way some treat them as the answer to everything, there were some pretty dire ones, but she was one of the best kind) saying, “A good nurse never loses her own human feelings. I never have and wouldn’t expect any of you to. But there are times not to show them. And that can be the hard bit.”

     Yes, this is the hard bit. But I have coped with hard bits before. The police have already closed the road off, and now I can hear the sirens of the ambulance. “Will you come with me, Jean?” Alan asks, “Please?”

     One of the crowd who have now stepped back says, “She’s a nurse. She’s been brilliant.”

     “Of course,” the paramedic says. Once they have loaded Alan in on a stretcher, he puts out his hand to help me, and it’s meant courteously, so I accept it, but I realise I don’t need it. I’m not saying I will never be afraid of tripping or falling again, but at the moment, I’m not. He uses a phrase I’m familiar with myself for medically trained people being at the scene of an accident – the wrong place at the right time.

     My cautious optimism about Alan’s leg has been proved right. He has a deep gash, as well as a fracture, and will be on crutches for a while, but he should be absolutely fine. His mother has been round to see me with a massive bunch of flowers. 

     I feel different now when I go into town. I have an absolute right to be there, and though of course, like everyone else, I get in the way at times, I no longer regard it as my default position. I no longer feel invisible and insignificant. Of course, some of it is because some people I encounter know about the accident, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not gratifying when they say how fortunate it was that I was there, and how everyone owes a massive debt of gratitude to nurses.

     But I think far more of it is not because they know, but because I do!