I have a category named ‘strange’, this is for life stories, strange or interesting things that have happened to me during my life, this weeks post is one of those ‘strange’ stories.

This is a very true story, all people and places in this story are real so I cannot identify who and where.

To set the scene, I was working for the NHS in O….., living in a converted ambulance, it was Friday morning before a weekend of raving in the wild Welsh hills.

I arrived at work at as usual at 7 am got a coffee, sat down to be informed of the unit’s previous night’s problems and was introduced to a student nurse who was to be training with us for the next couple of days. While the talking continued I could hear some very deep breathing, in fact one could describe it as a loud gasping. I asked the nurse in charge what that noise was and was told it was J, he hadn’t slept well that night, he had just sat up all night in a chair in the lounge.

The hand over continued and so did the noise until I just had to go and check on him, it just didn’t sound very good to me.

Before training as a nurse I had done half of a course on traditional Chinese medicine, the first two years, the years I actually did , were mainly involved with methods of diagnosis, one of which was pulse diagnosis.

I walked into the lounge and there was J asleep, breathing very heavily with long gaps between each breath.

I took his pulse and realised he was dying, I called the nurse in charge and in he came with student nurse.

I told them J was dying and was met with complete disbelief from the nurse in charge and a look of abject fear on the face of the poor student.

“He is just tired” said the nurse in charge, “He is dying” I repeated,

“No he just breaths like that” replied, a by now, very scared looking nurse in charge.

“He is dying” I repeated.

Now part of me wanted to laugh as anyone familiar with the Monty Python ‘Parrot Sketch’ will see the funny side to this conversation, but inside I knew what I had to.

J was about to die. What he may or may not have been conscious of at the time I do not know but ignoring the nurse in charge’s conversation I held J in my arms until, telling him it was all OK that he had nothing to fear, the breathing became shallower and shallower until his life spirit left.

Now I describe this moment as I felt it to be, everything that had been J just seemed to leave his earthly body, it felt like I was left holding just some skin and bone.

The skin and bone let out one last gasp, the nurse in charge said “look see he is just sleeping” I stood up and turned to the other two completely clueless as to what they should be doing and took charge of the situation.

“J is dead, call the doctor” I said to the frozen nurse in charge and beckoned to the student to help get what was once J into a wheel chair so we could take his body to his room.

The rest of my shift was worked and after having a chat with J’s wife I was allowed to leave early.

I got some sleep, woke up and got some food and when the people I was giving a lift to arrived we set off for Wales in my home.

There is something really cool about being a snail, that is taking one’s home everywhere one goes, finally we arrived at the turn off that took us up high into the welsh hills forestry land, as I parked up I felt like I had earned the weekend of fun that was about to happen.

And so at about 11 pm I self medicated (having prescribed myself an ecstasy tablet) and walked down to where the party was taking place. Needing to urinate I walked over to a bush and began to pee, as I looked up at the stars I thought of J, wondering where he was now and asked him if everything was now OK, as the ecstasy began to take effect I continued to think of the day’s events and this time I allowed myself to laugh at the tragic comedy of my ‘Parrot Sketch’ conversation. And then a realisation of my present situation made me really burst out in loud laughter, I had suddenly realised anyone looking at me would have been watching a guy for twenty minutes or so standing in front of a bush holding his willy babbling to himself and then breaking down in hysterical laughter.

I zipped up and joined the festivities !!