The Poppy Factory by Liz Trenow Page A

decent, law abiding lives the rest of the time seemed to abandon their collective sanity by taking party drugs, drinking themselves senseless and getting into fights in every town centre.
    At first, Jess managed to summon reserves of compassion by trying to see herself in each of them. This was more or less me, just a few months ago, she’d say to herself when, for example, attending to a drunken young woman who’d been in a cat fight and had minor abrasions to her face. She’d eventually been persuaded to call it a night and get into a taxi. When a young man took a swipe at her as she tried to examine the hand he’d just punched through a window, she recalled the blinding effects of her own alcohol-fuelled anger and how she felt like lashing out at anything or anyone around her.
    But mostly she failed to find any sympathy. Did they have any idea how much time and taxpayers’ money they were wasting? What if they were made to pay for the medical treatment they received – would that make any difference? The only people benefiting from these nightly binges were the alcohol companies and bar owners, she thought bitterly. Perhaps they should be made to pay up too?
    It was August, and a stifling heatwave had brought crowds out of the bars onto the streets when, one Saturday night, she lost it. They’d been asked by the police to help a semi-naked young woman found unconscious in the gutter, and the others were briefly called away to help a more serious casualty, leaving Jess to look after the girl. As she knelt down to examine her, a large, burly man with a beer belly protruding beneath his shirt began to stagger unsteadily across the street towards them, shouting obscenities.
    ‘Leave her be, you stupid bitch,’ he shouted, lurching closer.
    ‘Just stand back, sir, please,’ Jess said, pleased with herself for refusing to rise to the insult.
    ‘Fuck you,’ the man said, taking a few steps nearer. For a moment he seemed to stop in his tracks and went quiet, so Jess turned her attention back to the casualty. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he was fiddling with his flies and, before she knew what was happening, both she and the young woman were drenched in foul-smelling urine.
    ‘What the hell?’ she shouted, powerless to resist the heat of her fury. A dense red mist descended in front of her eyes and all common sense deserted her. Instead of leaving the scene and calling for help as she had been trained to do, her only thought was to stop him pissing onto the poor woman. She leapt at him, trying to spin him round by pushing his shoulder. For all his inebriation he managed to stand his ground, the urine now running down his trousers and splashing her feet.
    ‘Try that again, bitch,’ he said, laughing in her face with a blast of beery breath.
    ‘You bastard.’ She was about to push him again when she heard Dave’s shout.
    ‘Back off, Jess.’
    ‘He’s pissing all over us.’
    ‘Just. Back. Off. Now . Go to the van and get yourself cleaned up. Stay there till I get back.’
    She slunk away and, as the anger dissipated, she was left feeling sick and ashamed, waiting in the ambulance and stinking of urine.
    ‘I’m sorry, Dave,’ she said when he returned. ‘It was so disgusting. I just lost it. How’s the girl?’
    ‘Come round now, and we got her into a taxi. The police have arrested him for abuse and assault.’ He laughed. ‘Can’t wait to read the police report: “detail of assault weapon: stream of stinking piss”. It’s gotta be a first.’
    ‘Thanks for the sympathy,’ she said, managing a smile.
    Dave started up the engine and pulled off. ‘We’d better get you back to the station for a change – you don’t half smell.’ And then, after driving for a few moments, ‘In theory I ought to write this up, you know?’
    She held herself still, heart in mouth.
    He gave a deep sigh. ‘But it’s been a bloody awful night and you were under severe provocation, so I’ll keep