“THE WHITE STUFF”
Episode VI
“ZERO DARK THIRTY” – as an expression it’s a number of things … it’s U.S. military terminology for the time of half past midnight; it’s a common term for any unpleasant time of the (predominantly) night and, perhaps most famously, it’s the title of the (can you believe?) 2012 movie by Kathleen BIGELOW depicting the military operation to capture or kill Osama Bin LADEN. For me 00:30 was the precise time that I noticed on my phone display as I tried to silently exit the bedroom without disturbing the deep slumber of my faithful night time companion and bedfellow Floss – the cat, of course!
The phone beneath my pillow had rung quietly enough not to have awakened Floss and it signalled a call from Rob, my duty controller, but, more importantly, my inspirational, emblematic and – quite literally – exemplary Team Leader. Despite the ridiculous hour he was, as always, affable and charming, personable and precise and I still can’t quite work out not only how he does it, but how he makes it seem so naturally easy! Just as well this episode of the ongoing saga of my life-journey through Blood Bike volunteering isn’t going out for “general public consumption” as I’m sure he’s modest enough to be utterly embarrassed by the public expression of my views.
It felt distinctly odd to be struggling back into the clothing that I’d discarded for p.j.’s less than an hour before. I was on 1st rider duty cover for a couple of days which, up until then, had been completely uneventful (we endeavour always to avoid the use of the “Q” word!!) but this particular, late January Sunday-night-into-Monday-morning would transpire to be anything but ‘Q’ or ‘U’!
“Good morning Adrian, sorry to disturb your sleep!” As it transpired, I hadn’t actually entered into a real sleep and was certainly not in that blissful, precious state of REM sleep, so I muttered a barely coherent reply explaining that my habitual and ritual viewing of Match of the Day and MOTD2 invariably meant a very late start to my weekend slumbers. I’m not sure that I was, in reality, coherent enough to make a valid point but at that moment, it seemed to stick and went unchallenged. Rob went on to explain that he’d received a request from the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit (NNICU) at Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital to assist with an URGENT need for human breast milk. It seemed that the Unit’s normal stock had suffered an unexpected and unusually high demand and the urgent need for replenishment warranted the immediate provision of a stop-gap supply from Southmead Hospital in Bristol. This interim supply was to be collected and transported from Southmead by their local FREEWHEELERS Blood Bike EVS and they, in turn, had requested support from SWBB via a relay at the off-motorway 24 hour Services at M5 J24, Bridgwater. Since I live close to the M5 J27 it’s relatively quick and convenient for me to make relay meetings of this sort and timings for the meetings are usually quite straightforward and convenient.
Under “normal” circumstances a transfer relay would be an uncomplicated matter of the Duty Controller agreeing a meeting time and place; notifying both parties who would then do a straightforward collect; meet; handover of the package, sign the giving and receiving documentation and depart. Simples! This particular case in point, however, was very different. The Freewheelers volunteer would have provided or collected a purpose made ‘Milk Box’ capable of keeping chilled contents at a stable temperature for an extended period. The box would have been loaded, checked and sealed by the relevant and appropriate member of hospital staff who would be identifiable in the ‘chain of custody’ for the product and that filled and sealed box would be the one carried by the Freewheelers volunteer whom I was being asked to meet. The upshot of all this is that the filled and sealed milk box being collected would need to be swapped with a like for like – albeit empty – box so that the process could be seamlessly repeated at the next required product movement. See where I’m going with this? In order to collect and deliver a full box, I needed to provide an empty milk box – which, of course, I didn’t actually have ….
This dilemma formed a substantial part of the early hours, 10 minute conversation I had with Rob and he quickly reached the conclusion that the only possible solution to this particular conundrum was for me to collect an empty box that he had at his home. His home, however, lies roughly 30 miles south from mine so, in order to maintain the agreed relay meet timings, Rob proposed that we should meet as soon as possible at the off motorway service station at Junction 30. From mine, that journey would be a fairly quick and easy 25 – 30 minutes max.; brief handover while I secured the milk box then I could begin my journey onwards to the 02:15 scheduled relay meet at J24 Bridgwater Services. The ‘timings’ and logistics all looked straightforward and easily achievable so that plan was immediately agreed and adopted as we individually and both set to waking up and manning up to the early hours challenges ahead of us.
These ‘best laid plans’ are almost invariably fraught with all manner of dangers but in this case all went exactly to plan. The extra, unexpected meet with Rob to collect a milk box worked perfectly and I was able then to get to the fuel station at J24 at a few minutes before 02:00 ahead of my Freewheelers counterpart who arrived by car at a few minutes before 02:15. We kept the handover brief – I assumed he’d want to make a swift return to a nice warm bed, and I expect that he rightly assumed that I wanted to get quickly underway and have the grip heaters put some warmth back into the bone cold palms of my hands. I waved farewell to him as I completed the task of securing the large empty box to the rear seat of the RT. Having secured the milk box, I then set the sat nav for my eventual destination at Derriford Hospital and notified the Controller of the nav. calculated ETA of 03:40. What the sat nav probably failed to take into account for its calculations was a substantial stretch of M5 roadworks with two lane contra-flow and average speed cameras set up for the long term carriageway repairs and I thought that a more realistic eta would have been - at the earliest - 03:50. It was, for me, a moot point - my sole and immediate focus was to get back in the saddle, get the bike back in motion on to the highway and adopt that familiar maxim and routine of “maximum progress with maximum safety”.
The late January night air and a strong, swirling easterly wind had a wicked bite and I felt unendingly grateful to BMW for incorporating very efficient, high quality heated grips and heated seat on this touring behemoth, though neither could entirely overcome the core-chilling effect of the occasional lashing of heavy, squally rain showers. Nevertheless, I seemed to be making good progress southwards on the M5 motorway which ends just before Kennford and cedes its traffic bearing dominion to two major South Devon arterial trunk roads – the A38 and A380 – which diverge at the appropriately and alliteratively named Splatford Split. At this point the two roads rise from approximately 150ft above sea level to the crest of the ridge of the densely forested Haldon Hills at about 785 feet above sea level. That’s an elevation change of over 630 feet in less than a mile – not massively steep but very definitely obvious and noticeable. The big Beemer, of course, barely notices the gradient and only mechanical empathy prompts a change from 6th to 5th gear for the climb as my heading veers west onto the A38 to skirt the dark, brooding hulk of the southern shoulders of the Dartmoor National Park. The A38 dual carriageway traffic is ”wee small hours” light, predominantly commercial - vans, trucks and articulated lorries – so I’m not slowed by it. Indeed, my rigid adherence to the national speed limit finds me occasionally seeming to slow down more than one LCV intent on making the most of the opportunity of low traffic volumes to stretch the notional boundary of “10 per cent plus two”!. Since I’m running at the sat nav’s displayed speed of 70 it’s sometimes quite astonishing just how quickly a large van will disappear towards - and beyond - the horizon but I guess there’s little risk these days of encountering traffic patrol cars at any time and rarely less than at this hour of a bleak, late January Monday morning!
The A38 runs south and westwards through some quiet, sparsely populated parts of south Devon and is a largely unlit dual carriageway. The dark bleakness of this early hours run is underscored by occasional sharp and moderately heavy rain showers. Rather more ‘entertainingly’, I suppose, is an impromptu light show with distant flashes of sheet lightning illuminating the low clouds ahead of me but, as there’s no noticeable sound of thunder, I dismiss the theatrical flashes of light on the horizon as atmospheric and inconsequential.
I’m not sure of my actual arrival time at the Derriford Hospital campus but I probably wasted a few minutes searching for signage to the NNICU and eventually conceded that I needed to ask an ambulance crew member who was near the main entrance. His directions got me to the unit’s locked entrance doors and a brief conversation via the wall mounted intercom saw me marching quickly down brightly lit corridors into the Unit’s ward. I was greeted by a nurse with what seemed to me to be an almost palpable sense of joy and relief. I was ushered into a small room with a large viewing window looking into an even larger, dimly lit room that appeared to have a number of rows of “pods” that themselves appeared to emit an eerily faint, blue-white glow. Bearing in mind I’d had an intense 3 and a half hour journey in cold, wet and windy conditions and it was 4 o’clock in the morning, I’m hoping I can be forgiven for my reflex thinking that I’d somehow walked onto the set of a Ridley SCOTT sci-fi movie! While I was stood speechless and gawping at the wholly alien scene in front of me, the nurse eagerly took the box from my hands and set about offloading the contents into what I assumed to be a large refridgerator. I THINK she uttered something along the lines of me being “an angel” for getting the supply of HBM to them so quickly but, to be perfectly honest I couldn’t really fully absorb - in any rational form whatsoever – anything! My visual and audible senses seemed to have gone into a sudden stasis of meltdown. I knew they were receiving input but I just couldn’t work out or interpret what those inputs actually meant – I was really struggling here!
It might seem odd, but I think it’s worth me digressing from the narrative text at this point and explaining that I’ve never wanted, had, or missed having children of my own. It seems likely that some quirk of nature at the point of my conception resulted in the deletion of the line of genetic code that would have led me to procreate! Sure, I’ve held my fair share of the ‘things’ at christenings, birthdays and other celebrations with family and friends, but I can honestly, genuinely and sincerely say that I have absolutely NO regrets, doubts or misgivings about the inevitable prospect of becoming the absolute ‘end of the line’ for my particular strand of DNA.
So, for all of my hard-hearted, self-willed dislike and dismissal of human infancy it was hard to comprehend why I was struggling VERY hard to work out why my chest felt like it was being compressed by a gigantic, unseen band pressing down on my heart, and why that inexorable pressure seemed to be pushing moisture out toward my eyes while I stared at those rows of faintly glowing incubators in the ward room beyond the window I was gawping through. The nurse worked quickly to offload the milk box and was chattering at the same time but, for the life of me, I can recall NOTHING about what she was saying – my logical brain had stopped entirely while my subconscious senses jarred, jangled and wrestled with the ineluctable reality of the visual input of the scene beyond that window. I stood motionless for what seemed like an age, but was probably no more than a second or two, still trying to process, absorb and accommodate the visual and mental hammer blow delivered by the image of those ranks of glowing incubators.
The nurse handed back the now empty milk box and I silently wondered if my tumultuous inner emotions were somehow clear and visible. I remember thinking that if this nurse were to ask me if I’d be willing to “go and get another box full please?” I’d ask at what time and to where she wanted it delivered! I’d have gladly and quickly got back on the bike and ridden the same distance - and more – if it meant I might be supporting, sustaining or, perhaps, even saving one of those hidden, fragile bundles of nascent human flesh and bone silently clinging to life.
I snapped quickly out of my wandering thoughts and bade the nurse a good night, despite the fact that it was now close to 04:00 so, technically should have been “good morning”! I returned to the bike and strapped the empty milk box to the pillion seat. The milk box, though very light, is a not insubstantial size – hopefully there’ll be an image attached below, a picture that was actually taken that morning shortly before I departed Derriford NNICU towards home. That picture shows just how much room the milk box actually takes up on the spacious pillion seat of the R1200RT Blood Bike. What it doesn’t (thankfully!) show is exactly how awkward and difficult it is to mount the bike with the box’s size and position on that seat space! As a very short person of significantly advanced years (!) it’s not particularly easy to swing a (29 inch inseam) leg over the bike when it’s upright and it is, to all intents and purposes, pretty near impossible to do so when there’s a VERY substantial box in the way. I could, I suppose, stand on the left rider footpeg and swing my right leg fairly easily over the box but this is a habit and technique very quickly abandoned if you’ve ever experienced a side stand frame lug bend or break caused by the repeated habit of standing on the left rider foot peg to mount the bike when it’s on the sidestand!! So, in the absence of a horse mounting block, or the like, when there’s a blood/milk box on the pillion seat I’m usually obliged to use a John CLEESE style “Ministry of Silly Mounting Methods” single leg ‘hop-on’ technique. This involves facing the bike’s left side at just under a leg length away from the machine; lifting my right leg as high as possible above the rider seat then, in essence, hopping forwards on my left leg towards the bike until my right leg is far enough over the saddle for me to pivot my body anti-clockwise slightly, grab the handlebars and lift and turn to face forwards before lowering my right leg to the footrest …. or the ground if the seat is low enough!! It sounds more complicated and inelegant in a description than it looks in real life – at least I hope it does! In reality it becomes a natural reflex series of actions that are of no interest beyond what I imagine is quite a comical image (even more so if the right leg becomes entangled in the retaining straps!) to behold at four o’clock in the morning on a wild, wet and windy night!
I notified Control of my departure from Derriford at 04:20 and headed out onto the rain slicked streets of Plymouth. It’s still quiet and relatively traffic free and I reach the eastbound A38 in a matter of a few minutes. The rain showers are heavier and more frequent now and once out of the city and into more open country the near-theatrical flashes of lightning I’d seen on the distant horizon earlier appear brighter and more frequent than before though they remain a silent portent. I’m unsure now at exactly what point on that journey a heavy squall of rain breached my waterproofs but the memory of what felt like a pool of very cold water sloshing around the inside of the crotch of my (once) waterproof trousers remains painfully clear and positively unpleasant! It felt like things couldn’t get much worse but – how wrong could I be?
The rise back up to the crest of the Haldon Hills from the south is not anything like as steep as that on the northern approach but the gradient is both noticeable and notable on this journey as it’s heralded by the light rainfall turning swiftly to significant amounts of windblown snow. It’s easy enough to ignore at first – a few flakes dancing in the darkness on a swirling, blustery wind - but not for very long as it’s soon visibly sticking to the road surface and rapidly accumulating in depth! Traffic is still fairly light and most of it slows so I tuck in behind an articulated lorry and stay as exactly as I can in the offside wheel tracks with as much of a trailing gap as I can manage. The heightened sense of my awareness of the parlous conditions seems to jangle at my every breath and I hear an inner voice screaming in my skull and ordering me to STAY AWAY FROM THE BRAKE LEVER AND PEDAL!!! I try to make every single action as slow, calm and gentle as possible - even my nervous ragged breathing has to be deliberately, forcibly slowed. The northbound carriageway I’m on goes through a series of 3 or 4 sweeping bends that are usually a delight but not so on this trip. I’m not looking for a line – safety or otherwise – I’m looking for any reasonable amount of visible, snow free tarmac cleared by the truck in front and hoping it’s safe. I’m down to second and first gear now and the road is starting its steep descent towards Kennford so even second gear sees the bike picking up speed and gaining on the truck, so gentle, gradual and occasional disengagement and re-engagement of the clutch is employed to slow my momentum. The whole ‘episode’ lasted a matter of two or three miles and perhaps 10 or so minutes at most but it felt as if I’d held my breath for every second of every one of those slow motion minutes. I hadn’t of course, so I offered a brief and silent prayer of deep gratitude to the inventor of the Pinlock visor insert – he or she had probably done as much for my safety and sanity that morning as had anyone! On reflection, it’s hard to see how anything or anyone could possibly do ANYTHING about my sanity, but let’s leave that to one side for now – I’ve got a journey, a day and a story to finish!
I was almost glad to see the rain replacing the snow though the rain was falling harder and colder, now but that became, by and large, the least of my concerns as the bike’s dash display was warning me that the fuel in the tank was going to last fewer than 30 miles. That wasn’t a real or serious concern, of course, I was only a few miles away from Exeter and a variety of supermarket fuel stations, my concern was over the accuracy of the onboard fuel computer’s calculations. As it was, I came off the motorway and made it to the Sainsbury’s fuel station without suffering the impending doom forecast by the BMW. It was, though, seriously uncomfortable having to walk into the forecourt shop with cold rainwater sloshing around my nether regions ………. perhaps best to leave that particular mental image and avenue of conversation right there and move on, eh? And move on is exactly what I did. Early morning commuter traffic was growing now but I was close enough to the motorway to get quickly away from all that and get on with the final, homeward stretch of what was beginning to feel like another odyssey – my online dictionary defines odyssey as “a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune” and this particular journey felt like it had qualified in every element of that definition! It had certainly been a journey of momentous and enormous emotional highs and lows but one I would not have missed for anything and certainly not one that I wouldn’t repeat in a heartbeat – regardless of the time of day or night.
I notified Control of my safe arrival at home at 06:20 and Floss, my cat, notified me – in very vocal and no uncertain terms - at 06:21 of her displeasure that she’d been left alone all night! My wife, on the other hand, had difficulty working out why I was half asleep on the floor in front of the log burner in the lounge when she came down at 07:00! I’m sure she thinks that I’m the only person in the country that could or would sneak silently out of a nice warm bed and house at silly o’clock then ride 200 miles and take 6 hours to deliver 4 pints of milk!! Definitely NOT the fastest milkman in the west!
My duty day didn’t actually end there as I had two more trips to make that day but the first was a quick and easy local rendezvous to hand over the milk box to a colleague who was charged with collecting further supplies of HBM for the Unit. The second was another relay and ride but this one was to take blood to the North Devon District Hospital so an easy and straightforward 80 or so miles round trip.
It had been a long and very emotional day but one that was unendingly satisfying – for me at least.
Beautifully narrated - riveting stuff. Hats off to you 
