Call of duty: One medic’s fight on the frontline
My son’s face fills the screen of my phone. He smiles and laughs… and occasionally turns me upside down. He’s only 16 months old and the way he holds the phone, making the screen wobble or focus on a skirting board instead of his face, makes me smile.
‘Say goodbye to Daddy,’ his mum urges when our time is up and Thomas plants a kiss on the screen. Kissing like this is a new skill, only learnt in the past few weeks.
‘Night night, beautiful,’ I whisper, from my hotel room in London’s Docklands.
When I hang up, I think of Thomas – at home with his mum in Rayleigh, Essex – and my arms ache to hold him, to kiss him goodnight.
I was almost 40 when Thomas was born and he changed everything. I was retired from the army by then, but just looking at him I vowed I would never put my own life at risk again. My duty now was to Thomas, to being there for him.
So, you might wonder why I find myself volunteering to fight in another battle.
I’m one of thousands of volunteers working at the newly constructed NHS Nightingale hospital in the ExCeL building, east London.
It used to be home to concerts, exhibitions. In its latest transformation it is a 4,000-bed hospital for critically ill patients, victims of the Coronavirus.
After 15 years in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) within the British Army with seven operational deployments and tours under my belt, as an army medic I’d served around the world including Iraq and Afghanistan. I had planned to leave all that behind. Living in Colchester, I usually work as a Health Safety and High Risk Advisor and see Thomas, who lives with his mum at the weekend or in the evenings.
But when the virus struck, I felt a desire to do something,
I couldn’t just sit back. I responded to the request from the NHS for volunteers.
The same day I received notice that I was being furloughed, I received an email at 8pm asking me to report at the new Nightingale at 9am the following day.
I reported for duty on 1 April. After that first day I was approached to stay for another three days and was finally given the role of Operating Department Practitioner (ODP), helping to make sure ventilators and other emergency resuscitation equipment are fully functioning to save the lives of
Covid-19 patients when their condition becomes critical.
I am also part of the resuscitation team and respond when someone goes into cardiac arrest.
So – I went home to say my goodbyes. My ex partner, Thomas’s mum, Emma, is a Metropolitan Police Sergeant, so her sister is helping care for Thomas; however she has Multiple Sclerosis (MS) which means she would be at high risk if she contracts Covid-19. I have to stay away to avoid putting her at risk. I held Thomas close, telling him I loved him. ‘Daddy has to go away for a while,’ I explained.