Watch out for the wheelchair!

There are some days when you wish that the ground will open and swallow you up and today has been one of those days.
At a practice based study day today I was coming out of the maternity area with a friend when we saw a car parked on the chevrons with its owner doing some kind of frenetic river dance on the spot. Another employee also saw this and asked him if he was okay...not that we think that it's normal to do this kind of dance whilst parked where you shouldn't be and looking around you rather wildly, only that this kind of thing never happens around me. I have never been the antenatal teacher whose clients' waters break in class, I've never been on a plane with a woman who goes into labour (I know, this probably is a GOOD thing!) Yes, even when I work in a busy maternity suite, I still miss the drama (I am grateful of this...honestly and know that it will happen and I will probably rue the day I put this in black and white here on this page!).
However, we went over to check he was okay, only to find his wife contracting heavily on the front seat.

As if that wasn't enough for the poor fella, but they sent me to go to retrieve a wheelchair from A & E.

So, two problems with this:

1. I have no idea where A & E stash their chairs and I also have a rather embarassing habit of having a total memory block surrounding the names of things when I'm in a bit of a panic. It doesn't bode well does it? So,  running into the A & E department asking them if they have an 'ambulance', didn't get me much futher than  some very odd looks and about four people kicking into automatic pilot and rushing towards me. They all retreated hurriedly when I corrected myself and I was demoted from sexy doctor service to elderly porter service!

2. I am still donning a learner's license for pushing chairs, although in my defence, have you ever pushed a hospital wheel chair? The break is on the handle so you have to push the handle up and keep it up to keep it moving. Allow the handle some slack and you'll end up in the lap of your patient...head first!
Of course, you may not actually go over the top of the handlebars, you may, in fact hit the receptionist's desk..or a nurse's shins...or just go round in circles whilst dropping all the leaflets that you'd actually been to collect before the drama began in the first place...just saying of course ;-)

Fortunately, the one gift I do possess is that of not actually having eyes in the back of my head (don't tell my kids!) so I had no idea what faces they must have been pulling at me as I left.

I did get back to the poor woman before she had her baby and they did get her into labour ward, however, I did manage to complete my comedy of errors with one more faux pas. As the woman was aided into the seat of the chair, my colleague handed me back my leaflet on contraception that she was about to sit on...oops, I doubt she needed that reading material right now!!

I do suppose there is a reason as to why these things don't tend to happen around me often...