The scenario was too real to be imagined. I lay in some sort of vehicle; my mind hazy, my vision blurred.
A man had his head leaning out of a window he’d just slid open. “Nee-naw, nee-naw,” he sang at the top of his voice in unison with tinkly music that sounded like La Cucaracha.
A badge on his shirt helpfully told me his name: Mr Whippy. I looked up from my horizontal position as two men appeared on each side of me, one wearing a Glengarry.
One took a chocolate flake from a jar labelled “for 99s”. “We’ve been rushed off our feet, hence your very long wait,” he said. “Would you like a cone?”
I shook my head and asked: “Am I in an ice cream van?” “Yes,” he replied. “Every vehicle of this size has been commissioned by the Scottish Government to fix the ambulance problem.”
The other man, resplendent in a smart navy blue uniform and a peaked cap, nodded confirmation as the nee-naw guy began to cough and splutter and sound hoarse.
“I hate to have to tell you this,” he said, “but Public Health Scotland has reported that 1,410 people spent more than 12 hours waiting to be seen in A&E in August, while 5,460 were there for eight hours or more.
“It could be tomorrow before a doctor sees you. Nicola’s NHS is crumbling.”
‘It’s all hands to the pump’
I was aware that the Police Federation in Scotland had announced some of their officers were called upon to transport patients to hospital in police vehicles, a claim the SAS – Scottish Ambulance Service, not the Who Dares Wins lot – denied. “One of us is lying,” sang Abba (the Amalgamated British Bobbies Association).
I recalled that the Scottish Government target for 95% of patients to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours had not been met nationally since July 2020. But hadn’t Scottish health secretary Humza Yousaf called in the army to help ease the backlog of those waiting, often in pain and discomfort, for an ambulance?
It was a query I put to the man in the Glengarry as I was being wheeled along a hospital corridor. I saw he was wearing a kilt. “We’re in our respective armies,” he said, before pointing at his colleague. “He’s in the Salvation Army and I’m a fully paid-up member of the Tartan Army, ready to cheer on Scotland aainst Israel on Saturday. It’s all hands to the pump.”
By then, the nee-naw man was silent and had an oxygen mask on his face. I woke up from my Scotland 2021 nightmare.
