WTF is wrong with people these days?

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I can only guess that the assailant is a drunk, a chav, a complete moron or all of the above.

Hope your friend gets better. I have yet to come off second best in a fight (well, I tend to avoid altercations as best I can) but sometimes you can be going about your own business and someobody can take a swipe at you. Glad the other mate sorted the problem out.

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Here's what was probably going on in the assailant's mind:

'Yeah, ee was looking at mah missus, I seen 'im. Wew, I'll do 'im, ee ain gunna look at mah missus an fink nuffink gunna appen. I'll fukken bo'l 'im.'

or

'...'ats the bloke give my mate a load of bollox the other night, innit? I'm sure ats the one. Wew, ee's gunna fink diffrent nah, innie?'

Any number of misguided, alcohol-impaired reasons could have been conjured up by the man who hit your friend.

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That's a good idea, T-Bone. It wouldn't hurt the well-behaved people who drink responsibly.

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@ Kenny

Yes, there is such a thing (even though it may not be known as Black Friday in every hospital). In fact at our hospital in Johannesburg we used to increase the shift number and stand-by people just because of booze-related incidents particularly over New Year. Here are some of the classics I remember:

1) The chief trauma surgeon was donated a brand-new Ford Falcon with all the emergency kit you can think of. It was the lead car in the Emergency Response 'fleet' and represented the latest in technology at the time. One New Year's Eve in 1998 or 1999 he drove out to a suburb in response to a stabbed chest call. The victim was lying on the pavement bleeding liberally. Instead of helping, the locals in the blocks of flats on either side were leaning out of their windows hurling bricks and flower pots down onto the response car in their drunken stupor. The car was extensively damaged and the victim's treatment was delayed. (What really annoys me about this incident is that the emergency vehicles all have red lights in SA, so these cars can't be mistaken for police vehicles, which are regular targets).

2) The sharps bin water-shoot. In every casualty cubicle there is a stretcher, a wall-mounted cabinet with various dressing equipment such as gloves, bandages, sprays, and a side tray with needles, syringes and basic antiseptic lotions. On the floor, there is a rigid yellow tub with a small tamper-proof aperture into which 'sharps' such as needles and scalpels go when used. These tubs are then incinerated. Every year, without fail, over the festive season, there is at least one drunk who climbs off his trolley and pisses in the sharps bin and all over the floor. Some of them just unzip, dangle the johnny over the trolley side and piss freely all over the place. One guy even asked me for a smoke immediately afterwards!

3) The in-hospital brawl. It is not enough that people get drunk and get into fights with bottles, knives, (sometimes even guns) and then end up in hospital. No, they have to pick a fight with another drunk patient at the hospital, or his relatives, or a member of staff. I've had a drunk patient push me around quite hard, and there was nothing I could do. It happens to everyone: nurses, radiographers, porters and doctors.

4) The X-factor. This is also known as the Drunken Choir, or the Squealing Weasels. The game here is to try to get seen to before a more seriously-injured patient by feigning a more life-threatening injury. How do you do that? Easy. You scream, yodel, do a Michael Jackson "eeee-heeee" while pulling a face resembling a bulldog chewing on a wasp. Of course, if you have competition from the drunk in the next cubicle, you gotta turn the volume up. This can go on for a few hours (or less, if the trauma chief comes in, has had a gutsful and roars SHUT THE FUKUP !!)

Yes, And let me not go into the delights of cleaning up other people's puke that has run into the sensitive electronics of the X-ray machine, or the sh1t-skid on the edge of the trolley mattress where the guy was so drunk he didn't even care where he relieved himself. And if they are bleeding, I promise you there is one smell you never get used to: blood and alcohol mixed. It is dire.

So spare a thought for us here in the hospitals where the 'festive season' is the blackest of seasons.

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Oh, I forgot a really good one that happened one Christmas eve:

A husband and wife had a drunken argument in the kitchen. On the stove there was a large iron pot with thick porridge oats bubbling inside, really hot. The husband tipped this pot of boiling oats over his wife and she got badly burned by the mix as it was sticky and stuck to her skin. She screamed and dropped to the floor trying to claw the porridge off her, and the husband simply went to bed, satisfied that he had won the argument.

Well...little did he know...

...because the wife got a new pot and made another mix of oats (sugar and butter included) and pulled the husband's covers back while he was sleeping and tipped the boiling oats over his face and carried on pouring right down to his feet, by which stage he was awake and was screaming in pain.

They came to hospital together (having made up over a few bottles of booze), both of them still reeking of alcohol and covered with dried oats that were almost bonded to their skin. The husband was so drunk that he needed an IV infusion of stuff we call 'jet fuel' which is a {bleep}tail of drugs used to sober people up faster. The wife seemed to be in a better state and she was taken to the bathroom by the nurse, and a bath was run for her so that the oats could be washed off. When the nurse came back after 5 minutes, the woman was sitting on the edge of the bath, refusing to get back in. Why: she had defecated in the water and was most outraged that the nurse could not have forseen this.

She soon got a bag of jet fuel too...