Espe, as part of her Red Cross Volunteer training, is having two day’s worth of practical training in an Ambulance. The first of these took place on Monday night, and the events of the night make for a pretty good story.

She joined the ambulance driver, trainer and another trainee mid afternoon. A brief tour of the station was interrupted by their first alert. A reported labourer had an limb injury. The other trainee somehow heard this as a limb amputation and got out of the ambulance at the scene of the muttering something along the lines of please don’t let it be to bad, just a finger just a finger, I can’t handle this for a first real accident. Turned out to be a sprained wrist.

The later alert was for an old lady who had suddenly fallen quite ill. The ambulance only seats three, so Espe found herself being thrown around in the back with all sorts of apparatus falling on her as they hurtled through Madrid rush hour traffic.

They arrived at the address and knocked on the door repeatedly but got no response. The Red Cross trainer then realised that they’d got the wrong address. They were twenty flats up the road… They rushed back down to the ambulance, but it would not start!

Thankfully as it was downhill they were able to coast down (sirens blaring) to the correct address. At which point things got worse. First the little machine that was measured the woman’s blood pressure and heart beat ran out of batteries, then the tank that they were administering oxygen to her from ran out!

Espe had to run down stairs to the ambulance to get some spare batteries and a second oxygen tank, but this was missing. So not only did they have to call for a tow truck for the ambulance that was refusing to start, but they also had to call a second ambulance for more oxygen.

With the old womens situation stabilised, they were able to relax a little and the ambulance driver managed to get the thing started. Great, except that the side door to the ambulance was locked so they couldn’t put the equipment back in. The driver didn’t want to remove the keys in case the ambulance wouldn’t start a second time, so they ask Espe, the smallest, to try and squeeze through the little hatch between the driver’s cab and the back of the ambulance to open the door from the inside. This she managed, but got stuck in the hatch in the process! The other managed to get her out, but not before inadvertently stretching her as they pulled her arms and legs at the same time.

A catalog of little disasters, but they all had a very good night and learned a lot in the process. I just hope everyday is not like that in the Red Cross…