Ambulance

by admin

December 18, 2019

380

• Bombay
• Madras

It must be a measure of a happy life in this modern world to never have ridden in an ambulance. I had my first three rides in a matter of a fortnight last year. The three ambulances couldn’t have been more different from one another.

The first was a modified Maruti van with no air conditioning and no discernible life-saving equipment at all. I sat on a little stool meant for the acompanyimg family member. I braced the stretcher with my feet so that she wouldn’t slide head first into the back of the driver’s seat. This was not a dramatic ride, since we didn’t yet know what the matter was with her. The driver did ask me if I’d like the siren on but this seemed far too intrusive and would have probably alarmed her. We drove sedately, no siren or flashing lights. The driver and his crew were both very merry men and I held my breath until they deposited us at the clinic. They were canny businessmen too. They wouldn’t offload the stretcher until they had been paid their dues in cash.

The next day, we moved her from basic clinic to cutting edge hospital. The ambulance that took us there was state of the art. Beautifully clean, with an automated pulley system to load the stretcher smoothly and a crew of three efficient men. The inside of the ambulance hummed and beeped quietly, the air conditioning set to not too deathly cold, the various cylinders and monitors turned on and working. They treated her so gently. They covered her with a clean, warm blanket, strapped her in securely and one young man sat next to her, holding her hand. I was installed in a very secure seat of my own, and admonished to wear my seat belt. Without any fanfare, the siren came on and we had the smoothest ride through the crowded streets of my home town. Traffic is nightmarish here. Cows, cycles, two wheelers, hand carts compete for right of way with cars and trucks and buses driven by wild eyed men. As the ambulance made its way into the busiest part of town, the chaos parted ahead of us. Cows were shooed away, two wheelers waited on the edge of narrow streets to make way for us, and at one point, a large SUV reversed recklessly down a one way street, the driver gesticulating frantically to us to ‘come on! Come on!’. And we did. The ambulance moved ahead inexorably. Constables manning the cross roads waved us through, curious faces peered in at slower stretches, caught my eye and sympathetically looked away.

The third and last time she rode in an ambulance was back here in my city. It was easily the worst ride of my life. We waited for almost an hour before the ambulance showed up at the airport. Though it looked very professional (note to self: do not, in future, judge the efficiency of ambulances by their eco-friendly colour scheme of green and yellow), the driver and his crew had no idea how to load a partially paralysed, visually impaired and elderly patient into their vehicle without causing her considerable discomfort and distress. Once again, I spent the hour long ride bracing her with my feet. The Sunday drivers along the way, especially the ones who seem to take out their fancy cars only on weekends (and only because the chauffeur has to be given a weekly off) think it fine sport to either tail gate an ambulance or to drive ahead of it, never quite giving way. It was a frustrating, hellish ride home. When we arrived, the two men simply picked her up as if she were a bundle of old rags and deposited her in her wheelchair. They almost dropped her while doing so. It was only exhaustion and numbness that kept me from lashing out at them.

One year later and I find myself watching ambulances with interest. I used to wonder about the statistics of people who lost their lives stuck inside ambulances stuck (in turn) in traffic jams. On my way to work and back, I travel down an arterial road of the city. I meet, on an average, three ambulances on my way home. Since my ride in one last year, there has been an awareness campaign to help ambulances reach hospitals and patients on time.

Since we of this city like to imagine that we live anywhere but here (New York accents, Dubai shopping, Moscow drinking), it is only natural that we now give way to sirens as if we are on the Autobahn. We’ve all seen that WhatsApp forward. The one where everyone hustles into the outer lanes, a corps de ballet of vehicles gracefully pointed outwards, choreographed precisely at the same angle, while the prima donna, the ambulant ballerina, swans her way down the centre. Here, in our city, some amount of abusing from taxi drivers is required to encourage the laggards, as we all do our best to point our noses outwards at an angle, or at least as close an approximation of this scenario as we can manage. Perhaps not as well choreographed as we fondly imagine but really, have you tried to accommodate a line of portly, wheezy dancers on a potholed stage? The ambulance squeezes through, a ding here or a scratch there forgiven for the greater good. The taxi drivers, having done their good deed for the day, spit and hawk out of the open window, slam into second gear and cut out behind the ambulance for a free ride.

The people glimpsed in ambulances are never the patient. He or she lies hidden out of sight. We see only the distraught, the harassed, the exhausted. The helpless, the hopeless. We can only share a sympathetic nod or a look of empathy before they are hurried away to help and succour.

Ambulances – may you never need to ride in one, jamming your feet against a stretcher. May you never meet the glance of a stranger through a dirty window, peering in on your loved one. May you never be deafened or defeated by the siren as it cuts its way through the city. May there always be a kind person to hold your loved one’s hand.