I finish work at 4.45. Which generally means that I’m out of the door by 4.40 at the latest.
Not on Friday.
At 4.35 a girl came racing down to the service desk asking for a first aider because there was a lad upstairs having a fit. *Sigh* And as all eyes turned to me I had to bite my tongue to stop myself saying “Does he realise what time it is?” Instead I asked what floor he was on.
Top floor. Of course.
And, of course, by the time I got up there and said ‘Yes, he’s having a fit’ and had sent someone to phone for an ambulance he’d pretty much finished. And right at the second that he started to come round in rushed a proper trained first aider to leap to the lad’s side and talk patronisingly to him until the paramedics arrived.
Not that that meant I could go. I had to stay there, standing around gimpily, until they’d wheeled him out so that I could fill in the terribly dramatic accident report form, the first question on which is ‘Has anyone died?’
I managed to escape at about 5pm, at any rate. And the lad was perfectly fine.