Would you give a crack addict mouth-to-mouth if you found him unconscious on your doorstep? I did, and I was convinced I was going to die, writes SACHIN KUREISHI

Whoever wins this week’s election will have one major priority: addressing our crisis-hit NHS. Sachin Kureishi wonders why so little has been fixed since a chilling incident on his doorstep in 2019 

I will tell it exactly how I remember it, though traumatic memories like this can deceive.

What I know for sure was that it was early afternoon on 16 November 2019 and I was standing in the front passage of my family home in Shepherd’s Bush, the culturally and racially diverse kernel of West London where my twin brother and I were born and brought up. We were both readying ourselves before the big mirror, primping and preening.

At 12:25 I sent a text to the friend we were meeting for lunch: ‘Leaving now’.

At 12:31 I sent a second text, ‘Currently dealing with some guy passed out on my front steps. Crack.’

My brother had discovered him there, lying spread-eagled outside our house. He was a hulking, unwieldy man, likely in his 30s, but aged prematurely by his bad habits. Dirty glass vials and drug paraphernalia littered the area around him.

By now, my brother and I had become accustomed to the rougher edges of ‘the Bush’. Our mother’s street, with its pretty terraced homes, acts as a thoroughfare from the high street to the residential side of the area – an offshoot for drunks, addicts and criminals out to conduct their business in privacy. All too often their business is that of relieving themselves, usually in the front area of our house, the first on the street, as my mother rails at them from her top window.

At 12:33 I called 999. The operator transferred me to the ambulance service, and a straight-talking woman who instructed me to carry out a series of tests on the man, to check his vital signs. It was then that the truth began to reveal itself: there was no indication that he was still alive.

The operator informed us an ambulance was on its way, but in the interim we needed to transfer him from the steps to a flat surface. It bears reminding that this was a big man, over 6ft tall, and he wasn’t going to be much help in assisting us. With the aid of a passerby, a man in his late 20s who looked too clean and frightened to be from the area, we elected to drag him carefully down the steps to the basement area of the house. Then the situation took another grim turn.

As a student of philosophy, I had spent years grappling with questions of morality, and the nature of altruism. Those theoretical questions were brought into focus when the operator issued the following imperative: ‘Now, one of you will have to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.’

Under normal circumstances I enjoy kissing, and I believe that most people would, on balance, kiss a stranger to save their life. There’s a romance to it, ‘the kiss of life’; the fact that human beings can restore life through an act of love. This scene, however, was no Richard Curtis depiction.

The guy’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head, his face was bloated and mottled. As I got closer, I could see that he was bleeding from the mouth.

The three of us conveyed to the operator our hesitation at pressing our lips against his. It was then that she said something I’ll never forget – ‘It’s life or death: you decide.’

Although UK law doesn’t legally compel a bystander to administer mouth- to-mouth resuscitation, the nature of a life-or-death scenario effectively eliminates any sense of choice – particularly when the operator delivers her words with such critical emphasis.

A few onlookers had now gathered on the street above, craning their necks over my mother’s railings. I was writing for a well-known British soap opera at the time but even we would baulk at such trite plot contrivances. The moment called for a hero.

I was determined that it not be me.

The row that ensued between me and my brother was not unlike the countless ones we’d had over whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher. And I knew he would bully me into it, like he always did. By now the once helpful passerby had calcified in fear and was no longer producing words.

I realised it was going to be me.

I’d like to say my thoughts were with the man who lay before me, the life he had lived and his family, but the truth is I was thinking hard about myself, whether I could face the guilt of not doing it. What does it mean to let a man die, if you had the chance to save him? Does karma exist? Would other people judge me?

Another prevailing emotion was that of intense indignation. While severe drug abuse has always been a problem in my area, it had escalated in recent years. This incident followed a string of burglaries impacting my family, and an increase in other crime- and drug-related activity in the neighbourhood.

And now this, a man so drug-addled and brazen he sees your home as a convenient location for a pitstop, a man who casually lets himself through your gate and takes a seat, smokes some nice crack, then overdoses. He had taken the complete p***. All the same, ultimately the dread of potential guilt prevailed.

Neither my brother nor I had received formal CPR training, so the operator talked us through it. What ensued was one of the most unpleasant experiences I have ever had – and hopefully will never have again.

I will spare you the details but it lasted around 17 minutes, my brother pumping his chest, and I spitting out his blood; and everyone was watching, including my mum.

I eventually heard sirens, the medical crew arrived and took over [pictured above].

I then found myself being assessed in the back of an ambulance. In the frantic commotion I remember my mother hurrying out of the house clutching empty shopping bags, ashen-faced, fleeing to the safety of Waitrose. Someone must have convinced her to reconsider, as she accompanied me to the hospital instead, where I spent the remainder of the afternoon undergoing blood tests. At 14:37 I texted my friend to tell them I wasn’t going to make it to lunch.

Later that day my neighbour came over to relay that, according to a paramedic he had stayed in contact with, the guy had survived. But any sense of self-gratification was eclipsed by having to wait for my blood-test results for days, during which I had convinced myself I was going to die from some terrible blood-related illness.

Infuriatingly, the hospital also refused to disclose the other guy’s results due to confidentiality laws. Despite my philosophy training, I wasn’t able to convince them why, on this occasion, it was ethically justified for me to have access to that information.

Three days later I got the all-clear. I can now say that I saved someone’s life. But there is something profoundly wretched about what happened, and a symptom of societal sickness that NHS workers are acutely aware of. Like the beachgoers who’ve gone for a dip only to find themselves breast-stroking through excrement, we are now frequently reminded, often to our horror and revulsion, of the alarming extent of this country’s decline.

I don’t know if the guy would have been so lucky if the incident happened today – as of February 2024, the ambulance response time for a category 2 call (which includes suspected heart attacks) was on average 40 minutes and 6 seconds, which is well beyond the official target of 18 minutes. Given this, bystander CPR is even more critical now.

Should you suffer a heart attack, you’d better hope there are some well-meaning people around.

Getty Images, Mirrorpix, Alamy, Sachin Kureishi