Carpet-fitter Ian James, a familiar face at The Flooring Show and the closest thing the industry has to a stand-up comedian, narrowly survived a very unfunny experience with Covid-19.

‘Can he speak?’

That was the first question the 911 operator asked Ian James’s partner, Justine, when she rang them to report his rapidly deteriorating condition.

‘Yes,’ said Justine.

‘Can you let me talk to him?’ the woman said.

Ian was sitting on his sofa at that point, struggling to breathe. Justine, his partner of four years, put the receiver to his ear. ‘I couldn’t tell you what she asked me,’ says Ian, trying to recall the conversation. ‘All I know is I didn’t say more than three words as I was gasping for breath. She said: ‘There’s an ambulance coming!’, then asked me to hand the phone back to Justine. I don’t get worried about much to be honest but it had quickly become real that I had the dreaded virus and that it wasn’t looking good because I’d never felt that way. I felt completely helpless.’

We’ve all heard the horror stories about how viciously Covid-19 attacks the body, particularly before vaccines became available. Back in late 2019 and early 2020, it swept across Europe and the UK with frightening speed and often lethal consequences. The images from Italy, where the virus struck with ferocity, shocked the world. Hospitals were full to overflowing with the sick and the dying; ventilators quickly became the most valuable pieces of equipment on Earth; and soon we were hearing about people we knew who’d contracted the virus. Not everybody who got it was in danger, particularly if you were young. But for some people it was the kiss of death. It’s no exaggeration to say Ian James was very nearly one of those unfortunates.

He’d tested positive soon after Christmas 2020, just as cases were rocketing to unprecedented levels. He isn’t entirely sure when and where he contracted it because ‘I was sanitising on jobs and doing everything sensibly as far as health and safety was concerned’, but he suspects it may have been when he visited a friend’s house for coffee on 18 December. ‘We were socially distanced and, as far as we knew, both negative, but on Boxing Day my friend texted me to say he’d tested positive after feeling ill on 19 December. I was due to have my kids around for Boxing Day evening and felt perfectly fine but decided to postpone it as a precaution, particularly because my eldest daughter, Chloe, is a nurse.’

Ian woke up the next morning feeling as though he’d been hit by a bus. ‘Just like that, I couldn’t get out of bed. I’d never felt anything like it. My body ached all over, it hurt to open my eyes. It was like a really awful hangover. I had hot sweats one moment and cold sweats the next. I was lethargic, and kept drinking water and taking tablets in the hope that it would pass.’

But the virus wasn’t going anywhere. After getting tested at the nearest test facility, he was messaged that he was positive, so he isolated in his upstairs room, where he remained for the rest of the week. Justine, however, was worried his condition seemed to be worsening rather than improving, which led to her calling 911.

A first-response paramedic had just finished his shift when he heard the call-out regarding Ian on the radio. Because he was only five minutes from Ian’s house, he told the operators he’d attend. When he arrived at Ian’s house, he placed him face-down on the floor which is less restrictive for the lungs than lying face-up. ‘I’m just going to make you more comfortable because your breathing isn’t good,’ said the paramedic.

Ian has no recollection of how long he lay like that, describing the time until the ambulance arrived as ‘a blur. I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and I know how that feels because I was once thrown off a motorbike at 90 miles an hour and woke up in a Spanish hospital after losing three days of my life’.

With the ambulance reversed up the driveway, Ian was moved into it. Around him masked and gloved-up paramedics worked quickly to ensure he was in a position to breathe. So stringent were the precautions that a facemask was placed over Ian’s oxygen mask. ‘One thing I remember as I lay in the back was Justine saying goodbye.’

Justine later told Ian she was convinced she wouldn’t see him again. Her dilemma could so easily have been the same one faced by so many people all over the country at that time who, owing to lockdown restrictions, couldn’t be with their loved ones during their last days and hours and in some cases couldn’t even attend the funeral.

After that, Ian didn’t register anything until the ambulance arrived at the hospital, at which point the doors opened at the back and a paramedic said: ‘You’re going straight in – you’re not waiting in a queue.’

Ian was wheeled to the ‘red zone’, specifically for Covid-19 patients, then onto a ward with two other patients. ‘I don’t remember answering questions. I couldn’t even have told you what time of day or night it was. All I hazily recall is someone asking: ‘Why didn’t you come in earlier?’.’

That night, still lying face-down to facilitate his breathing, he was aware that the person lying on the bed next to him – one of his two wardmates – was in real trouble. With machines connected to him and his neighbour constantly bleeping, Ian heard ‘a kerfuffle’ before a doctor said: ‘We’ve done all we can’. It was quite traumatic, and it only hit me afterwards.’

In fact, for many nights after he was discharged from hospital, Ian couldn’t sleep because he kept hearing the bleeping.
One thing that stood out for Ian at the time was how many members of staff were being drafted in from just about anywhere else because the NHS desperately needed extra staff. It wouldn’t be true to say Ian was completely alone in hospital because although he couldn’t receive visitors, his daughter Chloe happened to work for the NHS on the floor below his. However, because she worked in a non-Covid-19 ward, she wasn’t permitted to ‘come through the double doors’, as Ian puts it, to see her dad. And she wasn’t going to tolerate any soft-soaping.

‘Don’t BS me about my dad’s condition,’ she told the doctors who were dealing with him. ‘I know what’s what. I want the whole truth.’

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN SEPTEMBER CFJ