Hello Ambulance... I've knocked down Scooby Doo!

Gary Cooper. Now there was a man who sat tall in the saddle. Coop’s face flashed through my mind. Yeah, a real cactus hero. Everyone thought that I was odd, especially Sally. She thought I should be into Garage or House music, instead of fifties cowboys. She turned the irritating noise up, I turned it down, she turned it up. Annoyed, I blazed a look at her and then... oh my God! I slammed hard on the brakes and the antilock braking system kicked in, allowing me to steer out of trouble, but it was no use. A split-second sickening thud meant I had hit. Sally screamed,The car stopped, I flung the door open and ran back to the poor pedestrian I had flung into the side of the hedge. It was a man. He looked quite old and judging by his groan, he was American. “Jeeesus H Christ,” he repeated over and over. Remembering my first aid, I decided not to move him. What appeared to be his wallet lay a couple of feet away from him I opened it and took out a card. It read ‘Roy Hubbard,
voice-over artist. Shows include, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, Wacky Races...’ and in bold letters most prominent of all... ‘The Original Scooby Doo’. I ran back to the car. Sally, too scared to come and look, asked, “Is he alright?”,Too panicked to answer, I grabbed the mobile phone from out of my jacket and dialled 999. “Hello, Ambulance? I’ve knocked down Scooby Doo.” The ambulance arrived swiftly, as did the police car and the
collection of ghouls, who either stopped mid way from walking their dogs, or stopped their cars and got out for a look.
The policeman was nonplussed that I had thrown a cultural icon and
cartoon superstar into the brambles. He was more interested in Sally’s legs, Sally’s address, and whether Sally would like to go out with him one night. “Great,” I thought. “ Scooby Doo is lying half dead in the brambles and all he can worry about is my girlfriend's availability’.”When Sally made it clear she would rather ‘eat pins,’ he turned on me and asked
whether I had been drinking or ‘smoking anything I shouldn’t ?’ I knew exactly what he meant by the last bit, but I decided to play it dumb. “What like officer? cigarettes that didn’t belong to me? Or something I shouldn’t have smoked like a rolled-up copy of Hello?” Wrong move. Hell hath no fury like a traffic policeman scorned and ridiculed. I don’t suppose my reply of, “why are your chips hot?” to his request for me to “blow into this bag” helped. The ambulance and another police car arrived just in time. I was sure he was about to give me a roadside crevice-check. Eventually, I was given a ticket to produce my documents and Scooby was rushed to hospital. We followed and swept through the
city in the glow of the screaming blue lights. When we got to the hospital, I was asked all his details. A nurse told me to sit down when all I could offer was that he was ‘the one, the only, the original, Scooby Doo’. The accident and emergency department was the usual mixture of drunks, harassed mothers and someone in a really bad pair of pyjamas. We sat next to a woman with a bag of Birds Eye peas lashed to her left ankle with a pair of American Tan tights. The funny thing was, she had come with a suspected broken thumb. She explained to Sally that when she’d been on her feet all day, her ankle swells up something rotten, so she likes nothing better than to secure a packet of frozen peas on it and put
her feet up with a cup of minestrone cuppa soup and a Lovejoy video. A small, hyperactive child, was sent hurtling into the plastic chairs as he ran past and slipped on the pool of defrosted pea ice on the floor. His mum, tormented it seemed by his very existence, grabbed him like a teddy and screamed like it was his fault. “See!”, she screamed, “see what you’ve done! you’ve broken the lady’s foot. now she’ll have to get it cut off and the hospital will bring it round and nail it to the headboard of your bed.” The whole department raised eyebrows in unison. The mother, realising the absurdity of her rant, turned bright pink and sat back down.“Phew.” I thought. “heaven help the poor lad if he ever does something slightly naughty, like not brush his teeth”. I wonder what she’d tell him would happen; a troll from the sewer would come with rusty pliers and drag the lot of ‘em out of his tiny mouth? The antics of the boy made amusing relief for the assemblage of walking wounded. a boxer, obvious by the fact he was wearing boxing boots and looking
like he’d been hit in the face with a hot wok, plus a gawdy, red satin robe proclaiming that he was Edddie ‘Fast Fists’ Domingo, tried not to look, his broken ribs hurting like hell every time he laughed. It was clear his fast fists weren’t fast enough. A man with a minor headwound and belly full of beer, occasionally woke and shouted something incoherent at
the boy. Sally tutted loudly and he turned around, tried to focus and fell back asleep. I approached the window and asked on the wellbeing of Scooby Doo. The nurse looked at me. “And who are you? Rolf friggin’ Harris?” I explained that it was I who had flung him into the hedge and she disappeared in a fit of, “really can’t be bothered, my feet are killing me and God I could do with a cuppa soup” but came back a few minutes later. She rang up to the ward and told me that he was being admitted as we spoke “Can I see him?” I asked. “Obviously not the nurse cackled back ...or you wouldn’t have knocked him over in the first place”. “Oh great!” I thought. an Angel Of Mercy with a sarcastic streak. I don’t remember anyone mentioning that in relation to Florence Nightingale. I must have missed it. Picture the scene; a young officer lies mortally wounded in a field hospital... a warm flicker of light luminates the gentle, caring face of young woman who approaches with the grace of an angel. “Is it? Can it be? Is that you lady of the lamp?” No, it’s bloody Dyno Rod”. I don’t think so somehow do you? She never really gave me an answer, so I sat back down. Sally came back from a vending machine with what tasted like soup with two sugars. The smell awoke Mr minor headwound, who had now been attended to, but sat back down in his original seat. They’d shaved a patch of hair from the back of his head and he now looked like a neutered kitten and judging by the state of the stitches, Doctor ‘Baron Von Frankenstein’ was sewing up in casualty tonight .He looked at Sally and said, “Soup”. Sally automatically entered into a game of word association with him. “Bowl? Spoon? Knife? Fork?” The words ran freely
until Mr minor headwound got back to ‘Soup’ and ran an unusually large tongue over his drylips. Sally, somewhat freaked out by the sight handed him the soup. “Any bread?”, he asked.
“No, surprisingly not”. Sally retorted, plainly heavily influenced by the sarcastic Angel Of Mercy’s shining example. It seemed that beggars could indeed be choosers. I enquired again, this time getting a ward number. Sally gave the soup back to Mr Minor headwound and we
headed for the ward. When we got there, the ward sister was on her way out with a clipboard and curry flavoured Pot Rice. She stopped and glared at us with a suspicious nurse-like eye.
“Yes?”, she enquired. I explained that we had come to see Scooby Doo. “Well you can’t”, she replied, “smackheads robbed the telly two summers ago”. Sally gave his real name. “Ah, the American nutter. he’s been driving everyone mad with stupid cartoon voices. do you realise how difficult it is to fit a catheter to someone who’s talking like Dick Dastardly? “Nurse you snickering, floppy-earred hound, when tenderness is required you’re never around. those badges you wear on your moth eaten chest, should be there for bungling, at which you are best”. Me and Sally looked at each other. it was a bad impression. The nurse somewhat embarrassed by what she’s just said, blurted out, “he’s in a private room-BUPA patient. treat ‘em like royalty, charge ‘em the earth. The doctor is just warming his bedpan for him now. you can go in when he’s finished”.

We were ushered into a rest room/smoking room/TV room (without the television of course). A man in his mid-forties, with a large lint pad across the bridge of his nose, sat staring out of the window. He was aware of our presence, but chose to ignore our entry and continued his gaze into the night. He reached down into a plastic bag and took out a pair of binoculars, which he looked through and tutted heavily. Sally nudged me in the ribs, prompting me to break the awkward silence. I replied, "Nice night," awkwardly. “It’d be a lot nicer if that bugger would get out of my house and stop chatting up the missus,” he replied, not bothering to break his surveillance. It turned out that he only needed a bit of minor nasal surgery and that he lived over the road. He could see his house from where he was sitting and, more than a tad uncomfortable with the attention of his neighbour towards his missus, started making sort of moaning-cum-howling noises, when he saw the living room light go out and the bedroom light come on. A nurse scuttled over, wrestled the binoculars from his hands, and dragged him back to his bed.

Sister returned soon after. "This way," she instructed us both, and we both followed. I felt a tad nervous. I mean, I’d just run this guy over and he was the original Scooby Doo. We were told to wait outside the door. The sister entered the room and quickly left. “Mr Hubbard will see you now”. I stepped in and there he sat. His face was grazed and his arm was in a sling, but he was upright and seemed conscious. He greeted me with a drawl, “Well if it ain’t the guy who tried to damn kill me?” Was he joking? What was I to say? I panicked. "Err, nice to meet you Scooby”. We got talking and he was a really pleasant chap. “How come you are in this part of the world?” I asked. “Well”, he sighed, “I was going to attend a voice-over convention at The Metropole”. "Really?" I asked. “Yep”, he replied, “and I would have made it too -

If it hadn’t been for you meddlin’ kids!”

The end.