I remember, it was back in the “good old days”.
When we were at least forty men strong.
Our region, to make it sound badass; the turf was also impressive. You could walk for fifteen minutes and still find our people scattered here and there together. It wasn’t like that we were some kind of vile gang or something.
The crew mostly consisted of teenage outcasts, stoners, rockers, punks and associates.
The police knew us and were fine with us, as long as we were not too loud or obnoxious.
Plus that we did scatter around instead of forming a black mass of goth. The neighborhood was also quite fine with us, except for the lady in white. Anyway, I think I got carried away with this nostalgia thing. Needles to say, even as well behaved as we were, we weren’t innocent.
We drank and a lot of us were also using a range of different substances to enhance themselves. Or just to get their derailed mind back on track, so to speak. On one of those Friday nights, something went askew. Somebody got in a state that was definitely beyond the bad trip and right in the area of “sick as shit”. We knew that he was sick on a base level, he had just gotten a new kind of medication in. The problem was that he drank on it and in a shitty turn of mind he smoked a joint to top it off. Medics were called.
It arrived within fifteen minutes or so and it was gone faster than a prarie hound in a meatgrinder. An ambulance is way faster if it leaves it’s patient behind.
The alleged reason for abandonment was that he was stoned. And they don’t deal with stoned people. We couldn’t believe it, but we also couldn’t do a thing about it either.
The crew jumped in action. Suddenly everybody knew his or her place and role. There were the ones closest to him, who were figuring out what has gone wrong within him and what were the best courses of action. Next to them were the gruff workers. They were the ones holding his head so he could puke without choking or moving his body into the best positions. For a while, I was among them, for a half an hour his head was balancing between my hands.
Next to it all was the great reserve, the ones who sometimes took over a place or were just going about their merryments a few meters more to the side to give space.
Like this, we were taking care of him, switching in shifts. Waiting till he got well enough to be transported home by two.
In the end, we found out that he was in abuses because of a broken heart.
Nevertheless, after my shift was done. I grabbed my beer and went back to having a good night. That one of us was down and near out was no reason for any of us to stop entirely.
