Clare Devlin, 47, retail selling assistant
It was just a usual Sunday and I was pottering around helping customers when I heard a horrible sound. I never saw the man collapse, but the noise he made when he hit the ground was something I will never forget. I went over to see what the commotion was and there was a lot of people standing around.
I checked his pulse and asked him to open his eyes. I was even nipping the back of his hand and he wasn’t responding to anything, so I panicked for a split second because I realised he wasn’t breathing. But then I said to myself ‘there’s no time for that, you need to get on with it’, and I shouted to a manager to phone an ambulance because he was in cardiac arrest.
A customer came out of the crowd and said that she wasn’t first aid trained but that she could do the chest compressions for me while I did mouth to mouth. I didn’t even have time to think about my own emotions. In training you are told to do the compressions to the rhythm of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees, but when it actually comes to it that is the last thing you are thinking about. He was touch and go – I would think he had started breathing and then he would stop again. I could hear that there was still a crowd around but I was just completely focused on the gentleman I was working on: adrenalin just kicks in and keeps you going.
It took a while for the ambulance to arrive and set up their equipment so I ended up doing CPR for 22 minutes, but it felt like hours because it is physically exhausting. The paramedics managed to get his heart beating and they decided to take him into the ambulance – but while they were moving him from the shop his heart stopped and he had to get more CPR.
While it was happening I was so focused I didn’t have time to consider it all, but when I got home it really hit me and I thought ‘wow, what just happened?’ I got absolutely no sleep that night because I couldn’t stop thinking about the man and how he was.
On the Monday when I went back into work I phoned his partner to see how he was. I was completely dreading the phone call because I didn’t know how I would deal with it if it was bad news. Luckily she said that he was stable in hospital and I just felt utter relief. At the end of my shift my manager came over and told me there was someone into see me. She said: 'It’s the brother of the guy who collapsed, you actually saved his life.'
He had come in to thank me on his way to the hospital and he had got me a bunch of flowers, a card and a bottle of champagne. I was gobsmacked.
When something like that goes on it doesn’t leave you, and every time I walk past the spot where it happened I wonder how he is and what he is doing. I don’t think I will ever forget it.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here