Chapter 1: Christmas Party

The problem with a Christmas Party for a company that works deep in the defence industry is that there are few personal contacts between employees in different parts of the organisation. It is clearly illegal to discuss one’s work with anyone not assigned to your particular project, so each Section tends to socialise as a group and don’t really get to know people from other sections.

This was very evident in the groupings when David Ransome arrived at the smallish hotel hosting their Christmas Party on the last Friday in November. All the trimmings were up, festive music was playing in one corner of the ‘ballroom’, the free bar was open in the opposite corner, but still the four sections were in different places, one at each side of the dance floor and one in each unoccupied corner.

The most annoying feature of this from David’s point of view was that a recent recruit to the company, Phoebe Bryant, quite pretty, but only half his age, had clearly decided that the route to quick promotion was to make herself very friendly with, possibly even available to, the head of her Section, the man who had hired her. She had spent the evening following him round like a faithful spaniel, and had tried to join in every conversation.

Suddenly there was a commotion in one of the other sections some twenty feet away, where it appeared that someone had collapsed. Then David saw that it was a young man having an epileptic fit, but that nobody appeared to know what to do. They were all frozen watching the patient twitching.

Since nobody moved, David tried to remember what he had been told on the one occasion he had attended a talk on first aid. It had been given to the local rugby referees’ society and during the questions afterwards someone had apparently had a fit among the spectators at a local match and the referee had not known what to do. David had decided that if he had been the referee he would simply have carried on with the game.

Basically, he thought he remembered that the advice was simply to restrain the thrashing about to protect the unfortunate victim from damaging himself and any bystanders. Then when the patient quietened down if he was still unconscious to put him into the recovery position and make sure the airways were clear, and especially that the patient had not swallowed his own tongue.

Moving quickly to the scene he told two of the younger members of Section 4 to hold the patient’s legs so nobody got kicked. Turning to the barman he said, “Get your first aider here, now.”

The barman fled only to bump into the hotel manager coming into the room.

David repeated his order for the first aider to the manager, who looked very worried and admitted, “We don’t have one, not a qualified one. We just call an ambulance if someone is ill.”

“Then call one now. Tell them it is an epileptic fit.”

“Is that really necessary?” asked the manager, “There is always unwanted publicity.”

David turned to one of Section 4’s team and said, “Ring for an ambulance. Tell them it is an epileptic fit,” and then he turned to the hotel manager and said, “I’ll deal with you later.”

By this time the seizure had subsided, but David said, “Hang on to those legs while we turn him on his side.” He then proceeded to open the patient’s mouth as he appeared to be choking. As he could not see any sign of his tongue, David put two fingers in the patient’s mouth and pulled the tongue forward and clear of the throat, getting an amount of vomit over his hand as a reward.

A young and quite pretty girl was very close and asked, “Will he be alright?”

“Yes, I certainly hope so,” David replied, “And who are you?”

“I’m his wife, Gillian,” she said.