ER made it look easy

So last night I reluctantly missed Book Club in favour of drinks with my new team. There were about 20 of us at Pearl, which I thought was an odd choice for a team event, since the last time I went there the bill almost made my fingertips bleed. Still, the crunch is allegedly turning, and the cocktails were good, so I was happy to go with the flow. At least until the tide turned against me at around nine o'clock, when suddenly we were told that it was time for the "(COO) dinner", so those who weren't invited for the dinner would have to leave. That's fine, obviously, since I hadn't expected dinner, particularly in light of the cost. What wasn't quite so good was when it transpired that the non-COOs were quite literally every woman (and one gay man) there. It was bizzare. I'm not normally one for the sexism argument, although I do think it exists and that I've experienced it and seen it all through my career. I just happen to also think that it's possible to buck the trends. It's just harder, is all. After that though, I'm not sure.

There are a couple of very good women in my workplace, who deserve to do better than they have done. This obviously doesn't bode well for me long-term. The thing that I thought was strangest was how, in a group of 20, they left 5 people to walk away. Did they not see how badly that reflected? I'm guessing they just can't care.

As an act of rebellion, I took two of my future colleagues for dinner at one of my favourite restaurants, Ciao Bella. Dinner was relatively uneventful, although I do think that Ciao Bella has lost a lot of it's charm now that it's no longer a secret. Still, there aren't many places where you can give the potatoes on your plate to a random stranger sitting next to you. Or where a different table of (American) strangers will share massive slices of home made cake with you. Anyway, when I got to Holborn tube to get home, there was a man passed out by the lifts. His eyes were open but very glazed and he didn't look good. About 5 or 6 people were standing around him and someone had cunningly put him into the recovery position. Sadly, they then chose to leave and I arrived just as one of the spectators was in the act of turning him over. That was pretty much when he turned blue.

There was blood on the ground around his head where I think he'd cracked it on landing. I couldn't see any wounds though, and the girl next to me (who turned out to be a doctor, albeit a paedetrician) agreed that this was not a good sign. Another doctor in the crowd started giving him CPR while the ambulance was on its way, but he stayed blue. She got tired, so the paedetrician took over, then me. It is so much harder than it looks on TV. The ambulance eventually got there and I gave them my card in case they needed a contact but haven't heard anything. I'm not optimistic though. He was blue and cold.

I just remember thinking as I was trying to help that he probably had a family, and what a horrible thing it must be. I also remember noticing that his belly wobbled as we did the compressions and that it seemed undignified, but how could it be helped (in the end I rearranged his scarf). I hope he made it.