The Panic of Someone Collapsing On a London Bus

My name is John Doran and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE’s website thought it would be amusing to employ a 42-year-old who remembers where he was when Elvis died.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use urban dictionary, "menk" is Scouse/Woollyback slang for a mentally ill or educationally subnormal person, and is a shortened version of mental. As in, “Your Sergio Tacchini trackie is sick la, look at that menk Doran, he can’t even afford a Walker trackie. Let’s hit him with a brick and push him in the canal." MENK 65: THIS IS THE WAY, STEP INSIDE

I was on the 106 headed for Bethnal Green on Saturday morning when the woman collapsed. There was no noise. She just vanished from view and rematerialised face down on the deck with her Caterpillar boots in the wheelchair bay and her dyed red hair near the rear doors.

Perhaps if she had fallen with a resounding thud, there would have been immediate and decisive action. Instead, a ripple of faff spread through the double decker followed two seconds later by an aftershock of ambulance calling and pulse checking.

The woman with the baby in a buggy and a toddler in hand was the first to shout to the driver to pull over. She dialled 999 and answered the operator’s questions quickly and precisely, asking other passengers for assistance when she needed it.

Generally the parents of the very young are hypersensitive to danger and the immediate responsive action it requires in a way that other people simply aren’t. She injected just the right amount of urgency and command into what she was doing as if she were whipping a butter knife being pressed into a plug socket out of sticky little fingers. She almost had the situation under control before anyone else realised what was happening.

“Where are we?” she asked.

As people started shouting things like, “In Hackney!”, “By the Shell Garage!” and “Near Paddy Power!” I scanned the shop fronts out of the rear window looking for the actual address to relay to her.

She seemed to be answering a very long list of questions.

In front of me a man was having a phone conversation with someone called Sharon. Despite speaking in the most measured, persuasive and conciliatory way to her he would break off occasionally without warning to bellow instructions to the woman making the 999 call. Presumably he was shouting so that the operator on the other end of the line could hear what he was saying.

“Look Sharon I ain’t an evil man… You know that I am a moral man… All I can say is that I made a mistake… BLOODCLAART! THAT’S ENOUGH WITH THE QUESTIONS! SHE HAS PASSED OUT JUST SEND AN AMBULANCE! Look Sharon… I just need to come round and see you face to face so we can talk about it… I feel like we can both learn from this experience… SHE NEEDS AN AMBULANCE! WHY ARE YOU ASKING IF SHE’S WITH ANYONE? DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT COLOUR COAT SHE HAS ON? JUST SEND A BLOODY AMBULANCE! I could be round in 15 minutes, Sharon…”

Outside of the window I couldn’t help but notice how nice the weather was. For a second, I genuinely believed that death and accident had only ever been in close proximity to me on a beautiful Spring day.

It was exactly the same weather in 1987 when the breaks failed on the yellow Datsun Sunny with no insurance. As we rolled down the hill in Thirsk it picked up speed while everyone inside flapped wildly. We rolled onto the dual carriageway and into the back of a speeding Ford Sierra, taking off the rear left wing and the hatchback door. We barely moved but the other car span off the road and straight through a fence.

It was exactly the same weather in 1996 when Joyce stroked out at work. She slumped from her chair and instead of leaving her on the floor I pulled her upright so she was leaning against the wall. I’d always hated having to work with her but at that moment I was overcome with anger on her behalf. The utter fucking indignity of life, leaving her like this, face twisted into some grotesque parody of its former self. The angry girl who wore the beret was standing over her shouting: “It’s alright Joyce… you’ve just had a facial spasm… it’s nothing… Don’t worry Joyce…”

It was exactly the same weather in 2001 when the truck hit the biker. We were on the M6 and the traffic slowed to a funereal pace. Outside the window, close enough to touch, there was a biker in purple leathers and another in green and yellow standing smoking cigarettes. A few yards away a biker in black leathers was lying face down, limbs splayed at weird angles, not moving. The sunlight was glinting off his helmet. Another man was standing over him shouting into a mobile phone.

It was exactly the same weather in 2002 when the boy landed on the pavement in front of me on Leyton High Street…

For a second there I believed that maybe I could cheat death, illness and accident simply by moving to a town where the sun never shines. Stockport or somewhere like that.

The rapid response paramedic arrived literally within a couple of minutes. She asked us all to get off the bus. As I stepped over her I saw that she was completely still apart from the fact her eyes were vibrating rapidly behind closed lids. It was like these small organs were escape pods trying to jettison a crippled vessel. I felt bad for her in an abstract way, I hoped she would be alright even though it wasn’t looking that good for her.

You can’t cheat death by moving to a rainy town. Once you reach a certain age, preparation for death is paramount. You can’t flinch it. You can’t wear blinkers. You can’t drink enough to forget about it. You can no longer ignore it. All you can do is walk calmly toward it. The only nobility left on offer to you is to live like you’re ready to go at any time.

This isn’t how I used to live. I hope I’m different now.

When the boy landed on the floor in front of me on Leyton High Street in 2002 it was almost comical at first because I didn’t understand that he’d been hit by a bus. He just lay on the floor in front of me like he’d fallen out of a tree. He looked directly at me and it was a full second before a crazy paving, cracked ice pattern of blood appeared all over his pale face. He let out a massive exhalation – Hssssssssss! – and as he did, a large bubble of blood inflated from his nose. There was such a sense of unreality to what happened that I just stepped over him and carried on walking. I was barely aware of the commotion that erupted behind me: car horns blaring, people shouting… I reached the pub just as the doors were opening and I managed to drink five pints before it fully sank in about what I’d just done.

Previously – If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next