The World According to Bob by James Bowen Read Free Book Online Page B

Selflessness isn’t really a strong suit in heroin addicts.
    ‘Sorry, mate, I’ll get out of your way,’ he said in a thick East End accent, taking his ‘works’ out of his leg and pulling up his trousers. I could tell that he’d finished injecting. His eyes had that tell-tale glazed look.
    I decided to let him go first. I knew better than to completely trust an addict. I wanted to keep him ahead of me where I could see him.
    He was pretty unsteady on his feet and stumbled up the short flight of stairs to the landing on the fifth floor, through the doors and into the hallway heading for the lift.
    Bob had trotted up the final flight of stairs behind me on the end of his lead. I just wanted to get him inside to safety so headed for the door of our flat. I had just put the key in the door and let Bob in when I heard a loud groan. I turned round and saw the guy collapse. He just suddenly went down like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground with a smack.
    ‘Mate, are you all right?’ I said, running over to him. He clearly wasn’t.
    I could see immediately that he was in a really bad way. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
    ‘Oh God, he’s OD’d!’ I said to myself, recognising the symptoms of an overdose.
    Fortunately, I had my cheap Nokia mobile on me. I called 999 and asked for an emergency ambulance. The lady on the other end of the line took my address but then told me it was going to take at least ten minutes.
    ‘Can you describe his condition to me?’ she asked, her voice calm and professional.
    ‘He’s unconscious and he’s not breathing,’ I said. ‘And his skin is changing colour.’
    ‘OK, sounds like his heart has stopped. I’m going to ask you to give him CPR. Do you know what that is?’ the lady said.
    ‘Yes, I do. But you will have to talk me through it really carefully.’
    She got me to turn the guy on his side and to check that his airwaves were clear. I then had to turn him on to his back so that I could apply compression to his chest to try to jump start his heart. Then I had to breathe into his mouth to try to get him to respond.
    Within moments I was pressing down on his chest with both hands, counting as I did so. When I got to thirty I stopped to see if there was any change in his condition.
    The lady from the emergency services was still on the line.
    ‘Any response?’ she asked.
    ‘No. Nothing. He’s not breathing,’ I said. ‘I’ll try again.’
    I carried on like this for what must have been several minutes, pressing his chest furiously in short bursts then breathing into his mouth. Looking back on it later, I was surprised at how calm I felt. I realise now that it was one of those situations where the brain goes into a different mode. The emotional reality of what was happening wasn’t registering in my mind at all. Instead, I was just focussing on the physical side of things, trying to get this guy to breathe again. Despite my best efforts, however, his condition remained the same.
    At one point he started making a gurgling, snoring sound. I’d heard about the ‘death rattle’ a person makes as they draw their last breath. I didn’t want to think it, but I feared that’s what I was hearing here.
    After what seemed like an age, I heard the buzzer of my door going so ran over to my flat.
    ‘Ambulance service,’ a voice said. I hit the buzzer and told them to come up. Thankfully our flaky lift was now working again, so they arrived on the fifth floor within seconds. They threw down their bags and immediately produced a CPR kit with paddles to conduct electric shocks. They then cut open his t-shirt.
    ‘Stand back, Sir,’ one of them said. ‘We can take it from here.’
    For the next five or so minutes they kept working feverishly to get him moving. But his body was lying there, limp and lifeless. By now the shock was kicking in and I was standing by the doorway, shaking.
    Eventually, one of the ambulance men slumped over and turned to the other one: ‘No. He’s