Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, I was NIC on a late shift. We had a patient in who was a frequent flyer, both of the boys in blue and our ward. The police had a nickname for him, let’s say they called him ‘Four Fingers Castle.’ What you need to know was a) he lived in a caravan on his mum’s back garden because, even though she loved him it wasn’t safe for him to live in the house with her, or even to be let in, because he had threatened and assaulted her too many times when ill and/or high. B) He was in our bin because this time, he was ill.
The consultant, who was actually one of the good ones, i.e. wasn’t up his own bottom, granted him escorted leave. I argued against it. We knew this patient quite well, you see. I said, ‘he hasn’t yet accepted the fact he’s locked up. He’s still railing against it. He’ll get there, but for now, don’t give him the chance to bolt.’ The doctor thought having the staff escort would prevent that. I got overruled. I bet you can’t guess what happened next?
The staff who’d escorted him to the local shops came running back to tell me he legged it. This was just before mobile phones. He was fit but not as speedy as Four Fingers. He took it as a personal failure, which it wasn’t, and got himself more bothered about losing the troop than he needed to be.
The rest of my shift, about 4 hours, was completely used up trying to contact a) Mum, to warn her not to go home until he was nicked and b) the police, to nick him, given he was a risk to Mum. Police were great. They put a car on the road they expected him to walk home on. Mum was at work. I had her home number but not work. It was tracking down that number that ate up most of the time. It was a great relief to get a call, before I finished, from the police saying Four Fingers was in the car being driven back to us and I could phone Mum and tell her it was safe to go home.
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