I thought that the gods had surely smiled upon me.
On Thursday and Friday morning, I woke up to the most lovely Irish lilt coming from out my bedroom window. Now some of you know that I live on the fourth floor and as such, it's not usual for me to hear anything but birds from my room (and occasionally the neighbours below screaming at each other) let alone a sexy Irish Man-Voice.
Okay, so he was yelling things like "Oi mate, kin ya git me some grrrrrrrrrout?" but still. If the neigghbours want to hire a mason to rebuild their chimney, who am I to complain? Especially when he looks and sounds like that.
Being who I am, I lifted the blinds and smiled at this beautiful man standing at eye level and asked him very nicely if maybe he couldn't say things like, "Good morning beautiful" and "Sweetheart, it's time to get up". He chuckled and promised to make an effort to do so.
So yesterday, an hour or so after our morning chat I heard the most terrible metallic crash. My whole apartment actually shook with the force of it and it took me a moment to realize what had happened.
My Irish man was lying on the ground, about 35-40 feet from where he should be outside my bedroom window.
So I ran downstairs. His buddy, a young guy who had been working with him was on the phone and had already called 911. The scaffolding that they had built had sank into the wet ground and crumbly bricks. They hadn't secured or tied it off, nor had they used any wooden platforms for footing it. The young guy had just jumped off it when started to sink. My guy -whose name ended up being Danny- and felt the scaffold falling, and lurched forward. He'd grabbed the gutter and hung there for a few moments at which point the gutter bent and he ended up falling.
He landed on his feet briefly before falling back and bumping his head. The impact caused a compound fracture of his left ankle and he had a small head wound that bled a lot but was pretty insignificant. He never lost consciousness thankfully.
Grossness follows in the next paragraph.
OMG. His left ankle was actually poking out of his leg. His foot was where it should be, maybe pointing a little out to the left, but his ankle (which was no longer connected to his foot, it seemd) was pointing toward his right foot. You could see the joint man. It must have hurt like a son of a bitch but OMG it looked so cool.
The young guy was in obvious shock and I told him to go wait out on the street to direct the ambulance. The firetrucks were the first on the scene and a few minutes later the paramedics showed up. I was right in there. I briefed the EMS as they arrived, I applied pressure to his head wound and held his hand while they worked on him. I helped to hook up the blood pressure cuff and held the barf bag when they gave him morphine. He didn't chuck. I want to be a Paramedic when I grow up dude!
We called his wife dammit and let her know which hospital he was being taken to. He's going to need a couple of surgeries at least, and he'll be lucky if he doesn't walk with a limp for the rest of his life, but he was DAMN lucky.
And that was my excitement for the weekend. And because I couldn`t get enough of the firemen, I called them back later to come and retrieve his toolbag from the roof where it had been precariously left.
I like firemen.
In other news, Natalie has the sick. She`s coughing and sneezing and her voice sounds like crap. And because of this Swine Flue thing when I`m out in the community nursing homes and hospitals a couple of times a week for work, I`m supposed to be filling out these forms that ask all about my exposure to others who are sick. Blech.
How`s YOUR weekend going...