Man with Black & White Dog

So just before youth club we hear a smashing sound. Not once as in a car crash but again and again and again. I hurry downstairs with my phone at the ready and see ‘man with black and white dog’, carrying a broom handle, crossing my path with blood dripping from his hand. I also see the flat of the guy who had threatened his dog, with its now broken windows. I wonder what had happened.

The first aid kit came out and as I tended to him he told me it wasn’t him, he didn’t want an ambulance that he only wanted to wash it in a sink despite the fact it really needed stitches. He was appreciative of the care he got but turned when he didn’t get his own way.

He only sat while I bandaged his hand and wouldn’t put it on his shoulder to keep it raised or put pressure on it. I hoped the bandaging was tight enough to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t a text book first aid treatment. The text books assume the ‘patient’ will just do what they are told or will be unconscious so won’t have a choice.

I was glad to see the back of my patient and my compassion for him. I had been trying to see the positive in him since I had seen him at our centre because his behaviour towards me in the surrounding neighbourhood had been so negative before that. Being a ‘professional’ I put my feelings aside and put it all down to alcoholism and ill-mental-health. Of course he could just not be a very nice person. I’m beginning to suspect as much.

I’m a youth worker, I work better with young people…I might have been able to work better with him when he was a young person.