‘Call another ambulance,’ she shouted to the people gathered round. ‘Now.’ She screamed and bent back down over the man. It was so dark and with the people about her cutting out the street lights overhead, she couldn’t see if his chest was rising or not. She bent down closer, put her ear next to his mouth and nose. He smelled of musk and lemon and she drew in the scent of him for a moment. Oh, God. Please don’t let him die, she prayed. She called out again for people to give him space to breathe and then she wasn’t sure if she heard or felt it. It was something, a soft noise or a warm breath on her cheek. She looked down at him; he was breathing. She was so close to him now, it felt intimate in a way that she’d never felt in her nursing career before.

And then, she noticed it. A thin trickle of blood was dripping, forming a sinister black pool on the ground beneath his ear.

Oh God. Oh God. No.

The sound of not one, but two sirens nearby pushed through a deep schism in the crowd around her. A familiar face, she couldn’t remember his name, asked people to move back. He was one of the older paramedics. He knew his job well and Liv was relieved it was him and not one of the younger ones playing to an audience.

After carrying out what felt like a million checks, they moved him swiftly and securely to a stretcher and it seemed within minutes they were all racing back up the hospital avenue, speeding to the A&E entrance with their casualty.

His name was Finn O’Connell. Or at least, that’s what it said on his driver’s licence. It felt wrong, to be going through his personal items, this man who until so recently had been a complete stranger to Liv. And yet, wrong and all as it might be, she wanted to know everything about him. Well, they needed to let his next of kin know that he was here. There could be a wife or children at home waiting for him. There would be family somewhere and friends – Liv had a feeling this man would have good friends. Lots of friends, solid and reliable, and they would worry about him too.

There was no wedding ring though. Liv had checked, surreptitiously, in spite of herself. The blood that had trailed from his ear had stopped now. It dried in a soft line down the side of his head. She wanted to reach out and wipe it away, but of course, she knew that bleeding from the ear, after a fall like Finn O’Connell had just sustained, was not a good sign.

So, instead, she set about trying to help the EMT to fill in the blanks about who he was and what had happened to him.