Chapter 33 – OD 2
When the doorbell rang insistently late at night Danny thought that it was unlikely to be good news. There weren’t many people who would call at gone midnight. His heart sank. He knew it was probably Terry once again and he did not relish the prospect one tiny bit.
Danny bounded down the stairs, hoping it was going to be Alan, but sure enough found a distraught June standing at the door with tears streaming down her face.
‘Danny! Danny!’ she implored, grabbing at him in desperation. ‘You’ve gotta come quick. It’s Terry. I think he’s gone an’ done it this time!’
Danny stepped forward and gave her a big hug. She was so big now with the baby due any day that he could hardly get his arms round her. So much for Mr Rose’s policy of no pets, hippies or children, he found himself thinking. The whole house was going to be full of all of them all. If it wasn’t that it was alcoholic gangsters from the Gorbals and drug dealers. The policy had gone out the window.
‘OK,’ he promised, soothingly, hugging her and patting her back. ‘It’ll be OK.’
‘No it won’t,’ June wailed in great sobs. ‘He’s turned blue. I think he’s really gone and done it.’
The sound of that was not at all good. It gave Danny a bigger sense of urgency. Maybe the idiot had gone and done it after all?
‘You know the score,’ Danny said as calmly as he could in the circumstances. He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. ‘You ring the ambulance and tell them to come quickly. Make sure you give them the address. I’ll go and see to Terry.’
With that Danny was off. He raced up the stairs. He had the feeling that every second was going to be crucial. This time he found Terry slumped on the sofa in the living room. The needle, this time, was hanging from his arm. A cursory glance told him that things did not bode well Terry was indeed looking decidedly blue.
Danny pulled the needle out and put it in the table next to the blackened spoon. He took Terry’s wrist and felt for the pulse. He was expecting not to find one but could feel a feeble throb. Terry wasn’t quite as gone as he looked. He quickly laid him back on the sofa. There was no apparent breathing. He gave him the kiss of life. He pumped in five lungfuls in quick succession – feeling Terry’s chest rise and fall. He checked the pulse again and it felt a little bit stronger but was by no means racing. He gave him another set of mouth to mouth and held back to see the effect. He thought that he could see some movement of the chest; it seemed that Terry was definitely breathing on his own. His colour was slightly less cyanosed. Things were looking up.
He dragged Terry off the sofa and on to the ground, pushing the coffee table back and tipping everything off on to the floor.
He positioned him in the recovery position and kept checking his pulse and breathing. It was all slow and steady. Only then did Danny allow himself the luxury of feeling panicky. Had he done things right? Should he have moved him on to the floor? He’d given his head a bang in the process – what if he’d made things worse?
It took an age. He thought the ambulance was never coming. He kept checking Terry’s vital signs. Every second dragged. He felt the sweat on his brow and felt hot and jittery. What was taking them so long? Terry looked dreadful. He had a terrible feeling that they would be too late. He did not know what else to do.
Eventually they came in with their stretcher and June waddling behind still looking completely distraught.
Danny quickly extricated himself and headed off back to his flat. He had no wish to witness what came next. He really did not want to go through it all again. He felt completely drained. All he knew was that Terry was alive and in good hands. He’d done his job and he wanted no more of it.
Nobody had even noticed him slip away.
This book took fifty years in the making.
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Reblogged this on Opher's World and commented:
Here’s another chapter of Danny’s Story. I based this book on real-life from an old house in Manor House that had been converted into bedsits. It was full of an assortment of people – druggies, sex workers, gangsters, artists, piss-artists, friends, readers, thieves, music lovers, travellers, dreamers, lovers and musicians. Somehow it gelled into a community.
I fictionalised it and created a novel. It took me nearly 50 years to find the way of doing it!
This is a chapter dealing with an OD.