Not my story, but a lucky escape for someone!
I have a mate who is a psychiatric nurse. His job has stresses that I can barely comprehend; many and various are the tales of psychotic patients doing amusing/amazing/appalling things. To compensate for this, he does of course do massive drugs at the weekends...

So, bright one Monday morning, a rather worse-for-wear Q turns up at work. He's barely conscious, with parts of his brain still asleep, and others floating somewhere around Neptune.

The entrance door opens onto a staircase leading upwards. As he opens the door, he sees movement above, and instinctively catches the object that's flying through the air toward him. I have to say that "coordinated" is not a word that I associate with this guy - he's more like a shambling pile of laundry that leaves a trail of fag papers, knocked-over mugs and broken appliances behind him - so this was a pretty lucky catch.

Especially as the flying object turns out to be a baby.

Some muppet on the night-shift had given a patient access to her child, which turned out to be one of their less impressive judgement calls. Q says that he's never sobered up quite so quickly: spangled to straight in 0.00005 of a second.

So, I don't know who you are, little baby, but you had the narrowest of escapes that morning...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 10:58, 4 replies)

I hope
he has a big chestie for a big shiny medal.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 11:20, closed)

I believe
he got some kind of official commendation. Didn't make up for the rest of the day spent in a cold sweat or the flashbacks, of course.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 11:56, closed)

Just the rest of the day?
Jesus... It'd be replaying in my head for weeks... what'd have happened if I'd missed catching the baby, or had been there a few seconds earlier or later... Psychiatric nurses do not get paid enough at all for the job they do.
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 12:28, closed)

Holy fucking shit!
I feel like I need a low-down just thinking about that.

Fucking hell...

Big congrats to your mate for that one
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 12:19, closed)

When I reached 'instinctively catches the object that's flying through the air toward him'
I was expecting something like a turd or a human body part!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 12:28, closed)

In that case
The escape would have had to be "...deftly side-steps the object flying toward him".
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 12:29, closed)

*click*
And well done to your mate. Quick question though: What happened to the fucking moron who left an obviously dangerous patient unsupervised with their child? There must have been risk assessments in place and such that'd have indicated that this might happen, so surely if they'd managed to endanger a child's life by blatantly not following them they must have been disciplined quite severely?
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 12:33, closed)

I don't know the details
but yes, I think there was a certain amount of career-destroying shit flying around
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 13:06, closed)

Good
Whoever managed that fuckup clearly managed to traumatise the psychiatric nurse concerned, probably the patient who threw the baby if and when they become sane enough to realise what happened and nearly managed to kill a baby.
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Wed 25 Aug 2010, 13:35, closed)