recollections
Section 2. emergency services
5/5

At all events, within a very short time after my emergency call, a Black Maria (appropriately coloured) screeched to a halt, and a dozen or more uniformed policemen surged out. Almost at once, an ambulance also arrived, and the paramedical personnel began to attend to their patient, telling him that he should go to hospital. He might have a kidney problem, they thought. But by then he had got up and was sitting on a low garden wall. A small crowd of onlookers had also gathered, despite the late hour. In a short while, the man got up, ignoring the police and the ambulancemen and the onlookers, picked up his bike, and wheeled it off along the road.

I went back to reading Plato. It was the first and only time I dialled 999, and I wondered at the fact that at my behest so many people had gathered so quickly to help someone, or just to look on, when it turned out (I hoped) to have been unnecessary.

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