It was a beautiful summer day, sunny with clear skies and warm gentle breeze, blowing through the open window. Shelly and I were sitting in the ambulance, over in Telopea. I was busy doing my case sheet from the last job, when a loud bang on the side of the ambulance startled us both.

I looked out of the passenger window, and was greeted by a guy with a huge, goofy grin on his face. It was one of our regulars from the area, with a long psychiatric history of self-harm.

This was not going to turn out pretty.

He was usually an avid fan of sticking things into himself, and he often did it directly in front of the police.

Let’s call him Dave, for the sake of reference.

Now that Dave had our attention, the show began.

Along the footpath were a line of gum trees, with trunks about four inches in diameter, that had obviously been planted by the council as part of the suburbs beautification program if that was at all possible amongst the line-up of housing commission units.

I leant out of the window, and asked Dave how he was going today, and he replied that he just found a tent. I asked where the tent was, and he held up a steel wire tent peg.

Oh shit! Here we go again.

I opened the door slowly so as to not spook Dave, and asked him where he got the peg from. He said from a tent.

At that, he turned and ran headlong into one of the gum trees, colliding with it headfirst. Well, the tree shook, and Dave staggered back, clutching the peg, and shaking his head. At that, I asked Dave to stop head butting things, because he was going to cause some damage. I also noted that there was some fresh blood on the front of his shirt. I asked him what the blood was from. He stopped, looked at me, looked down at his shirt, then ran at the tree again.

Shelly told me to get back into the ambulance, which was probably the best thing at that time, as it seemed that my presence out there was aggravating him even more than before, so I climbed back into the ambulance.

At that, Dave promptly turned and ran headfirst into the side of the ambulance.

I casually leaned out the window again, and said to Dave that hitting the ambulance with his head isn’t good, as he’s going to knock himself out if he keeps it up. I know it must have been hurting him with his display of anger. Just as we were radioing the coordination centre to call the police down there urgently, he surprised us yet again.

Dave stepped towards the front of the ambulance, for what I thought was the reason of getting us both to view his actions.

He lifted up his shirt, and I saw the reason for the bleeding I noted earlier on. Dave had some stitches from a previous wound on his stomach, which was most probably from a self-inflicted wound. It looked as though he had been picking at the stitches. A couple of the stitches had separated, and there was a small trickle of fresh blood running down into his shorts. He had a history of impaling himself with objects, which is most likely the reason for the tent peg he was taunting us with.

I mentioned to Dave that I had called the police, at which he took off at a run, towards the blocks of units down in Eyle place. There was no way we were being drawn into chasing after him as he was known to be violent towards ambulance officers when approached in one of his moods.

When the police arrived on scene, we advised them of where he had run to, and they were going to see if they could find him. Something told me that they wouldn’t find him till he was ready to be found.